OFF: Cyber Sleaze

[Andy Gilham]

Um.  I'm in two minds here, because I think this is really off-topic, but I'm
quite interested in it as well...

Surely the point about internet porn is that what was previously only
available by jumping through lots of hoops might now be easily available to
everybody - people that might never go into a porn shop for fear of being
recognised, or whatever, can log onto alt.sex.with.animals and perv out to
their hearts' content.  Yes, you do still have to seek it out, but it's
really easy to seek it out.  Thus, the worry is that the internet might make
pornography much more widespread.  Now, many people (including me) feel that
porn, especially of the hard-core kind, can do actual social harm, both to
the users of porn, the families of users of porn, and also to the people
(usually women) that are photographed for porn.  (If you think that coercion
isn't a normal part of procuring women (or children) for the sex industry,
and it's just a freely undertaken transaction, then that's just naive.)

Of course, the pornographers and their sympathisers are more than happy to
defend their degrading practices by shouting "freedom of speech".  This isn't
what most people think of as freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech in a
constitutional context means, principally, being able to freely debate
political or religious issues without fearing the knock on the door at 3 am.
 All countries have laws against libel and slander, for instance, as well as
laws on the permissible content of advertisements and so on.  I don't believe
that such laws constitute "censorship" in any sinister sense.

An interesting text is Michael Moorcock's essay "The Case against
Pornography", in the _Casablanca_ collection (a-ha, some HW/BOC relevance!).

BTW, I believe I may have broken the law in Georgia :)

- Andy