s around it. Regulating the Internet is not cheap and is not completely proven to even be effective with the infinite ways there are to disable and to circumvent these software packages. These packages are regulated by private companies and offer their synthetic regulation without any government sanctions. The government must first resolve squables within its ranks and define pornography in a universal sense. The politicians must mobilize against the enemy of ignorance with some tough legislation. Despite a statement made by Andrew Kantor's, senior editor of Internet World, that pornography represents less than one percent of the Internet (Lloyd 39), The Internet has a serious image problem with regards to pornography. It is generally accepted that pornography has psychological effects on the behavior of people. Last year, a University of Michigan student was arrested by the FBI for posting a story to the newsgroup, sex stories describing an "encounter" with a female student, which he named. His story was a "violent narrative of rape and torture" and he later e-mailed his friend that "just thinking about it his fantasies doesn't do the trick anymore. I need to do it" (Diamond 24). The government is mobilizing but without a clear enemy attidute, legislation and progress toward a final solution will get lost in beaucratic lag. As a result of the accessibility of the "adult" material on the Internet, the United States government is getting involved in the fight to stop pornography. Senators Jim Exon (D-Neb.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.) pushed a bill through the House of Representatives, the Senate, and eventually to President Clinton, that would require certain material on the Internet to be removed. In February, 1996, President Clinton passed this bill into law, making it a crime to send or receive pornographic material over the Internet. The intent of this law is that it is supposed to prevent the vile and hateful material on the net from bei...
