rased from their minds.”(1). Others call it the “first free speech case of the 21st century” and think that by restricting pornography on the net “The future of the Internet is at stake…” as Jerry Berman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, states (1).Maybe the issue shouldn’t be so black and white, maybe a compromise should be reached which neither permits nor prohibits pornography on the web, rather how access to pornography can be monitored and restricted. In that case the advocate of freedom of speech would be satisfied because it is not absolutely prohibited, and the moral advocate would be appeased because he doesn’t have to worry about people watching pornography unwillingly.A solution has to be found in which pornography can be restricted as long as the solution doesn’t “…walk over freedom of choice” and speech (3). The Communications Decency Act, which called for a constraint on “indecent” material on the web. The CDA asked that companies only expose “indecent” material to people who are able to establish that they are 18 or older, by a credit card number for example. The CDA would have been a good solution, since it would regulate pornography just like tobacco and alcohol are confined to adults in the real world. It was declared unconstitutional though because “indecent” wasn’t defined well enough, and because it conflicted with the 1st Amendment. The CDA is a prime example of the difficulties in passing legislature for pornography on the Internet.How one can achieve the goal of monitoring and restricting access to X-rated material on the web is a difficulty in it’s own, but it surely will cause less headaches and ambiguities than arguing about what is right and what is wrong will. And most important of all it will keep the focus on the problem and how to solve it rather than Russian r...
