There has been a goodly deal of talk about "porn on the Internet." Much of this is the predictable posturing of anti-sex politicians, whose personal hunger for power is advanced by catering to those who, for whatever mixed-up reasons lurk in the depths of their own psyches, feel a need to control what others can say or see.

One frequently voiced concern is that erotica, once it is posted on the Internet, is supposed to be accessible to children; and this is supposed to be a bad thing. This concern strikes me as significantly overstated for several reasons.
 

"Children," in this context, is an excessively broad term. You either have actual children, whose interest in erotica is very small, and who if by chance they happen on it will probably laugh at it; and then you have adolescents, who will find the same sort of stimulation sought in erotica from so many sources that it will be impossible to censor them all. It is alleged, without any particular reason as to why this is thought to be true, that erotica is "harmful to minors." The nature of the alleged harm is never spelled out. Again, real children are immune; and when they become adolescents, the damage, if that's the right word, is already done.

That said, I would go on to say that, indeed as an "Internet pornographer," I actually share the concern of some people about the prevalence of sex on the 'Net. I speak from experience here. I have a hobby of creating cartoon pinups, many of which feature nudity. I post these pinups on the World Wide Web, and occasionally to Usenet newsgroups set up for these purposes. I warn those who are under 18 that they should not access the web site, and warn Usenet readers as to their explicit content either by a warning in the title or by the "adult" nature of the newsgroup in which they appear.

[The use of the word "adult" to mean "sex," and "family" to mean "sexless," is a truly barbaric twisting of the English language, which I must protest.] [And I would further question whether, if this concerns you, the Internet is an appropriate place for minors to be at all. Children have no place on the Net. And it is profoundly offensive to plan to invite a bunch of schoolchildren onto the Internet and then claim that their presence requires everyone who was already there to watch their language because they have invaded.]

Given the nature of the medium, there is indeed little else that can be done. And as I will attempt to show, attempting to require anyone to do more will in fact have the truly perverse result of encouraging the broadside promotion of pornography in places where it has no business being. The real problem is not sex per se, but hucksterism.
 

Whoever the damfool it was who decided to remove the Internet from the jurisdiction of the National Science Foundation, with its corresponding pledge of keeping the medium resolutely non-commercial, and allow the salesmen and corporate interests to invade it and attempt to remake it in the form of a commercial medium --- those idiots are responsible for perhaps the greatest resource-use disaster since the decision was made to allow motorcars to use the public highways. Idiots! What were they thinking?

The real problem with sex on the Internet, the problem with the perceived pervasion of the new medium by inappropriately placed erotica, is that people are trying to make a buck from it. Once the Internet was allowed to become a "marketplace," the amoral rules of the market began to take over, with certain predictable results.
 

All advertisers have every incentive to invade wherever they can, without regard at all for the sensibilities of those who are burdened by their message. This is as true of sex promoters as it is of anyone else. When the telephone technology was invented, eventually advertisers learned that it could be used to place cold sales calls, and as such a criminal assault on Americans' thought processes began.

Worse, the more worthless your wares are, the more zeal will be required to hawk them. If people want what you are offering, they will already be seeking it out. Advertising itself costs the advertiser something: if not always costing money in certain of the ways it has taken over the Internet, at least it costs effort and time. If a product must be promoted by the hard-sell approach, this guarantees that it will be at minimum overpriced, and likelier to be fraudulent.
 

These truths are evident in the Internet sex "industry." Back when the Net was officially non-commercial by policy, there was already a low-key traffic in pornographic pictures on the Usenet and via FTP. This way, at least, you had to seek out those sites or those newsgroups in order to access it. No one was trying to make money from it, and as such no one had any incentive to call attention to the availability of pornography in the wrong places.

Sex hucksters typically operate by operating web sites containing pornographic pictures. The HTTPD or Windows NT software typically used to run web sites has an unfortunate misfeature. It allows web sites to be established where you need a password to enter them. Trafficking in these passwords in exchange for a credit card charge is how the Internet sex hucksters hope to make a buck.

As such, the Internet sex hucksters' real goal is not to express a personal opinion or kink; it is to get their hands on your wallet. They are furthermore in the business of trying to sell something that is offered for free elsewhere, albeit in places like the Usenet that are marginally more difficult to access.

Their wares, therefore, are of course overpriced even if they are legitimate. They must therefore resort to the hard sell, like anyone else in that situation. They therefore saturate the Usenet with solicitations to visit their web sites, frequently offering "samples" of what can be had if you pay them. They send unsolicited e-mail with similar solicitations. They connive at the placing of banner ads, as widespread as possible, so that their sites are linked to ordinary celebrity and fan sites, and offer to pay part of the costs of maintaining other sites if they are willing to display the banners and promote the pay sex sites.

Some operate blanket systems behind which many commercial sites operate; and they promote themselves in part by making the unsubstantiated and dubious claim that only pay sites can be certain that they are inaccessible to minors. Given the nature of the medium, this inaccessibility is unachievable; all they actually do is give adolescents seeking pornography an incentive to also commit credit card fraud on their parents.

Now, the problem with most attempts to target Internet pornography, such as the Communications Decency Act, was that they attempted to restrict what could be said on the Net. This is considered a "content" restriction, and as such runs smack into the First Amendment, which is what the Supreme Court ruled.

I would submit that once the technical and economic aspects of the problem are understood in this manner, the solution to reducing Internet pornography is simple, obvious, easily implemented, and entirely Constitutional.

Don't ban the sex talk. Don't ban the sex pictures. Ban the passwords.

Require, by law, that no matter what you happen to be saying on the Internet, you cannot charge anyone money to see it; nor can you attempt to restrict the general availability of anything placed on the World Wide Web by hiding it behind the password.

It should be obvious that, unlike the CDA, this law imposes no content based restriction on Internet speech. You remain free to use the Internet to say whatever you want, even if it is about sex. All you are prohibited from doing is attempting to charge money to access your speech, or preventing anyone from looking at it.

It should also be obvious that, unlike the CDA, this proposal will be largely self-enforcing. It will of course require that the people behind HTTPD, Microsoft, and other makers of software will be required to modify their wares --- by removing the password routine, a correction that shouldn't be hard to achieve. They should perhaps be compensated for their troubles if the Congress enacts this.

And, after the economic dynamic of sex hucksterism on the Internet is grasped, it should be obvious that this measure will in fact seriously curb, if not eliminate, the inappropriate promotion of erotica on the Net. It may not satisfy sexual tee-totalitarians; but their approach has already been rejected by the Supreme Court. This may seem to those who deeply care about Net censorship to be a halfway measure. It may indeed be a halfway measure. But it is a halfway measure that is Constitutional, and which will work.

And in case anyone should have any further doubts, consider the collateral benefits: all I am proposing, after all, is a regime in which all information posted to the Internet will be free to all who seek it. Hucksterist ideology claims that it is somehow wrong to prevent people from trying to make money in every way they can figure how. Traditionally, this ideology has never been wholly accepted when sex is involved. It should not be the rule on the Internet either.

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