On-Line Dangers Essays - Sex Laws, Pornography, Sexuality

On-Line Dangers On-line Dangers In this day and age of super high-speed networking and digital communications, just about anything on any subject can be found on the Internet. Some materials, such as online libraries are helpful, some, such as students personal homepages are fairly useless, and some sites, such as online medical references, can be lifesaving. All these sites have a right to be on the web. However, there are also sites that could be detrimental to people, such as pornography sites, pages detailing the manufacture of illegal drugs, and instructions on how to build high explosives and other illegal devices. With the number of these types increasing daily, parents and lawmakers alike are becoming concerned for the well being of the public, specifically the younger sector of the population. This raises the issue of how safe the Internet is. With the wealth of useful information available on the Internet also comes dangerous and harmful information regarding everything from stealing cable to manufacturin g high explosives, as well as child pornography and invasion of privacy. If the wrong information fell into the wrong hands, disaster could result. One of the issues most common in the papers today is pornography available on the Internet. There are two main types of pornography available on the Internet: regular and child pornography. Regular porn is rationalized by the following argument: The idea that a TV show or lyric can transform a healthy and connected child into a dangerous monster is absurd. The same goes for the Internet. The idea that certain material on the net can cause a child to grow up to be a child molester is primarily the invention of politicians, who use it to frighten and rally. Religious groups who use it to teach belief to the young, and journalists, who use it to regain their once powerful position in American society. The Internet should be treated with respect, and used with responsibility, just like any other form of media. This type of porno should be allowed on the net, but all sites should require a password of some kind. However, the other type of pornography, child porn, is much more dangerous as well as illegal. This type of pornography often involves people that are willing to spend great amounts of time, money, and energy to gradually seduce their targets, as well as people that immediately engage in sexually explicit conversations with children. Often times children are indirectly victimized through chat rooms and e-mail, or directly by being coerced into a real life meeting. This type of direct meeting can ultimately result in the childs death. Also, children may come across pornographic material in any one of the alt.sex news groups. These news groups provide a public forum for the discussion of various topics. Several of the alt.sex news groups are alt.sex.incest, alt.sex.beastiality, and alt.sex.pedophilia. Although there are bills providing penalties for the knowing transmission of indecent material to minors through a remote computer or other means, child pornography is still a major problem and threat in cyberspace There are, however, some types of sites that have content that could be hazardous to the public in general, not just children, and have no place on public forums. One example of this type of site is the Books for a Free People. This site contains various books for download, including the Big Book of Mischief, which has details on how to build explosives, and the Book of Fun, which gives detailed instructions on how to do illegal things such as stealing HBO and eavesdropping on cellular telephone conversations. While these two acts are not physically dangerous, they are still illegal. However, the Big Book of Mischief has explicit instructions on how to manufacture such dangerous compounds as nitroglycerin. NITROGLYCERINE Nitroglycerin is one of the most sensitive explosives, if it is not the most sensitive. Although it is possible to make it safely, it is difficult. Many a young anarchist has been killed or seriously injured while trying to make the stuff. When Nobel's factories make it, many people were killed by the all-to-frequent factory explosions. Usually, as soon as it is made, it is converted into a safer substance, such as dynamite. An idiot who attempts to make nitroglycerin