Make Internet Porn an Opt-in feature Only

This petition demands legislators to DO SOMETHING about the porn pandemic present in our country. Making Internet pornography an "opt-in" feature at the level of the Internet Service Provider is the best solution to safeguard our children from its real and present abuses.

The Internet plays a vital role in the life of many Americans, and this role is ever increasing year by year. Students are now assumed to have Internet access as early as kindergarten, and with the access of Internet comes the availability of all types of material including sexually explicit. Internet pornography has been dominating the web since the beginning of the Internet age, with one statistic showing that 30% of the Internet industry is now pornography.1

Children are a target of pornographers. Methods are used to expose children to pornography such as free teaser images, innocent word searches, cartoon characters, pop-up banners and stealth sites.2 Exposure to pornography has proven to have grave effects on a child's mental, emotional, and social development creating sexual deviance, addiction, violence and objectification toward women, voyeurism, and more.3

Our government has historically taken a stand to protect our children from legitimate harms. Concurring justices in ALA vs US said, "...of restricting obscenity, child pornography, and material that is comparably harmful to minors--are "legitimate," and indeed often "compelling.""4 Supreme court cases have shown that obscenity is not a protected right under the First Amendment, and that "the State has an independent interest in protecting the welfare of children and safeguarding them from abuses."5

Our country has a duty to safeguard our children from real and present abuses of Internet pornography. A default Internet filter blocking pornography on the Internet is the best solution for the onslaught. The filter would block by default the access of internet pornography unless otherwise "opted-in" by a service owner. This model has currently been adopted by all major ISP's in the UK.

1.Hughes, Donna. "Porn pandemic." Christian apologetics journal. 12.1 (Spring 2014): 20.Print.
2. Ibid
3.Covenant eyes. "Pornography statistics." . 2015 edition. . :Covenant eyes internet accountability and filtering, 2015. Print.
4.United States et al. v. American Library Association, INC., et al., (2003), 201 F. Supp. 2d 401 reversed.
5. Ginsberg v. New York (1968), No. 47 decided: April 22, 1968.




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