Cybersex. This word brings to mind a barrage of images, which might be on Stra Trek or
virtual reality
video by aerosmith. Sex is everywhere today--in books, magazines, films, internet,
television, and music
videos. Something about the combination of sex and computers seems to make children and
adults for that
matter, a little crazy.
In an 18 month study, the team surveyed 917,840 sexually explicit pictures on the
internet where
pornographic. Trading in explicit imagery is now "one of thelargest recreational
applications of users of
computer networks." The great majority (71%) of the sexual images on the newsgrouls
originate from adult
oriented bulletin-board systems (BBS). According to BBS, 98.9% of the consumers of
online porn are men.
The women hold a 1.1% in chat rooms and on Bulletin boards. Perhaps because hard-core
sex pictures are
so widely available elsewhere, the adult BBS market seems to be driven by demand for
images that can't be
found on the average magazine rack, such as pedophilia, hebephilia, and paraphilia.
While groups like the Family Research Council insisdt that online child molesters
represent a clear and
present danger, there is no evidence that it is any greater than that thousands of other
threats children face
everyday. The Exxon bill proposed to outlaw obscene material and impose fines uo to
$100,000and prison
term up to two years on anyone who knowinglymakes "indecent" material available to
children under the age
of 18.
Robert Thomas spends his days like any other inmate at the U.S. Medicalcenter for Federal
prisoners in
Springfield. Thomas,39 a amateur BBS in California, made headlines last year when he and
his wife
were indicted for transmitting pornographic material to a government agent in Tennessee.
This case shows
how tight of a squeeze the govenment is putting on internet Freedom.
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