With newer technology comes a price and with the internet it is our children's innocence. A huge problem concerning the internet from the time it first began has been the issue of inappropriate material on the internet, a large part of which is child pornography. This has initiated a need for regulation which prevents this kind of material appearing on the internet. Censorship in one form or another is the only way the internet can be saved from becoming a site for offensive and illegal material.
One of the largest problems on the internet is the case of child pornography, which is not only offensive but illegal. This is a global problem and is one of the foundations that governments are using to build their case for censorship. The government and various organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) try to regulate the internet by locating and removing all illegal material on the internet, a big part of which is child pornography.
American Civil Liberties Union
English: A page from American Civil Liberties Unio...
English: Mike German, former FBI agent, now Nation...But it is an uphill struggle due to an increasing number of people supplying the material and an increase in demand for it.1
There are various ways in which this offensive material can find it's way onto the internet. One of the easiest is on a chatline while many people are 'chatting' to each other under login names. This process allows a person to login under an assumed name and distribute the illegal material anonomously. This is one of the simplest ways to do this and it is virtually impossible to block. A similar method is anonomous email - where a person can open an email account with a web based server such as hotmail, yahoo, mailcity etc., give a false name and then distribute their material freely through the member directory. This could be disastorous as...