Internet's porn problem

That it is a problem is not a self-evident proposition to readers of The Atlantic Monthly. Fortunately, Ross Douthat is brave enough to engage them on this issue. He makes a series of arguments obliterating the fantasy-reality distinction which Libertarians hide behind. Unfortunately, his attack stops there as he concludes the piece taking a realist “put-up with it” position.

I wonder, however, if his realism is really just a form of resignation. He concedes too many arguments in the second half of the article. For example, he thinks that there is no correlation between porn use and violence. But Paul Hunker, an U.S. government attorney, has reported that thousands have been arrested because of this very thing. Douthat also seems to think that the Internet cannot regulated. Like David Rowan, he thinks censoring the Internet is “like trying to catch the wind.” Yet Michael Cook has discusses how many countries are working on the problem. Australia’s “internet traffic has to pass through a handful of “pipelines” which could be filtered.” Malaysia recently signed a contract with Internet Traffic to filter their websites. And Harvard Law School reports that Iran “has one of the most sophisticated government filtering systems in the world.” (Usually, I do not cite Iran for examples of good governance, but just because it is bad in some things, that doesn’t mean its bad in all things. Thinking only in black and white categories, like U.S. is the Great Satan, is exactly what we fault Muslim Fundamentalists for.)

Anyway, this is where the debate needs to go. Constant technological innovations suggest an effective filtering device could be created. There just has to be a market for it. The only reason there isn’t one is because of the fatalist tendency of good guys like Douthat on this question. Where there is market, there is way.