Internet Essay, Research Paper

Who is supposed to be the watchdog on the

net? This question will raise the temperature in almost any room. The government

already has to many regulations on lots of things, who wants Uncle Sam?s

hand in the web. Some of the regulations that are applied are there for

specific reasons. Those protect the people before the damage to say a young

child posing for porn can be done. Those people that would be trying to

regulate the Internet could be going after those sick, pathetic petafiles

that float around in the child chat rooms.

In my opinion, the parents should

be the ones that are responsible for what their children view on the Internet.

The net itself can be very valuable if used as a tool for learning. In

the group Families Against Internet Censorship, they understand the concept

of parental filtering (Censorship 2000). One of the families uses primarily

the Internet to home-school their children. When a child signs on to the

web, he or she has almost infinite resources right at the ends of their

fingertips. Where else can you maximize the worlds resources from inside

the comforts of home. I know that a young teenager can productively use

this information. I have been using the net for about eight years for my

reports and personal knowledge quests. My father would check on me every

now and again to make sure I was on task. Not only was he keeping what

I viewed pg13, he was helping me use different search engines and being

my troubleshooter until I could surf the web by myself. Lots of the children

now days are just tuned loose with a computer and not checked on until

suppertime or bedtime. With that much freedom come temptation, this leads

to the children looking up porn, explosives, or something else that their

parents would not want them to look at.

In my opinion, pornography should

be allowed on the Internet as long as it is within legal bounds that are

already established. I personally do not sit up all night trying to see

some naked body in a freaky position. Nevertheless, I do not have a problem

if my neighbor looks at pornographic material all day long as long as he

does not pressure me with it. You never know where an online neighbor is

from. The Internet is neither owned or ran by the United States. Many people

view the human body as a work of art. The United States especially makes

a big deal out of nudity. In Eastern Europe the children will not even

were bathing suits until they reach the age around puberty. What gives

our government the right to police the world based on our views?

Yesterday I was watching some television

with a female friend of mine when the talk show Sally came on. The show

happened to be about children and the Internet. In this ten to twelve-year-old

chat room, this ten-year-old girl chatted with someone across the net for

a little while. After the girl had talked to the person in the chat room

for about a week, she gave the person her telephone number. Later in the

week, the little girl found out the person on the other end of the computer

was an older man. This child molester was caught having sexual activity

with his eight-year-old neighbor in the state of Alabama. On another chat

room, the mother of the ten-year-old went to scout out another chat room

and found a petafile online admitting to being a pervert to the young children.

On this same episode, an undercover cop posed as a fourteen-year-old female.

The cop?s bait was immediately taken by a sixteen-year-old male. Within

a few minutes the male had already offered alcohol to who he thought was

a fourteen year old female. The next thing the male brought up in the conversation

was sexual offers. So within twenty minutes this police officer has already

been offered sex and alcohol. This officer, Detective Mike Harris, recently

went to the middle school where he resides in Jefferson County Colorado.

He was speaking to the kids about all the dangers on the net, and ran across

some crazy statistics. Out of 185 students, 145 of them have the Internet

in their household. Thirty-five of these children had access to the web

in their room (Sally 2000). This makes it even more difficult for the parents

to regulate these children?s Internet privileges.

Uncle Sam has no business in adding

more regulations to the net. That bear has his hand too far in the honey

jar already. The Internet can be one of the most valuable information tools

there is in the world today. This valuable tool can also carry very explicit

material. If parents do not pay attention to what their children are downloading,

this explicit content may weave its way across the web and into your house.

How many parents would pay a monthly fee to just hand their child a chainsaw

and turn them loose on an unsuspecting world? I do not know a single parent

who would even think of letting this hypothetical situation proceed. A

chainsaw can also be viewed as a valuable tool if used to clear land or

clear a road of fallen trees. If misused this can be a very dangerous piece

of equipment. Keeping this in mind, picture the web as a very important

tool. The Internet also has infinite knowledge paths waiting to be blazed

by a curious user (Exon 435). The dark side of this tool can be more damaging

on the inside of a young child?s mind, than the chainsaw could possibly

do.

This paper was written to awaken those

who would let our rights be infringed on because of their own negligence.

The computer skill level by some of the children of today far exceeds the

level of their parents. This also causes parents to be shocked at what

their children may be looking at when they are not in the room. If parents

would take five minutes out of the day to look in the temp folder or the

history in the navigator, they would know exactly what their children have

been viewing. If you can regulate your son or daughters use of the net,

then why violate other peoples? rights? I would just like to keep the information

superhighway open and without government restrictions so that I can put

my car on cruise control and ride all day long.