The Internet, first designed for the military and the scientific community, has grown larger and faster than anyone could have ever expected. Now being a potpourri of information, from business to entertainment, the Internet is quickly gaining respect as a useful and important tool in thousands of applications, both globally and domestically. But, the growth that the Internet has seen in the last few years has come with some growing pains. Reports of harmful information reaching children are always painful to hear; who wouldn't feel for a mother who lost a child to a pipe bomb that was built from instructions on the Internet? But the greatest pain thus far has been the issue of accessibility of pornography on the Internet, and it has many parents concerned. But is it as big of a threat as the media would like us to think, or has it been a bit exaggerated?

On July 3, 1995, Time Magazine published a story called "On a screen near you: Cyberporn." This article discussed the types of pornography that could be found on the Internet such as, Pedophilia, S and M, urination, defecation, bestiality, and everything else in between. In Julia Wilkins' Humanist article,

In early December 1997, the Internet industry leaders, along with the White House, armed with a goal to standardize an Internet rating scheme, held a summit about the issue of "virtually" protecting children. This was an attempt at collectively finding middle ground for protecting children from Internet porn. But, Bruce Handy, a reporter for Time describes government officials pleading with the private sector to develop a system that works, and the industry leaders looking for the potential profit that a "clean and well-lighted " Internet can bring (Handy 2). Bringing big business and the government together to discuss the strategies of the subject was an image booster for both parties, but little else. And according to Berry Streinhardt of the ACLU, one of the few advocacy groups invited, "This had seemed more like a trade show than a summit" (qtd. in Handy). It ended up producing more questions than answers.

Another hole in the PICS labeling system is the cost and the man hours required to do such a task. It probably wouldn't hurt empires like CNN or Microsoft to spend the man hours to label their entire web presence, but the ACLU states non-profit organizations would be impacted greatly by burdens that rating large sites would require (Beeson 6). We all know what would happen if organizations decided not to label themselves. So what choice would they have? They would have no choice and that is wrong. It's wrong because the cost and burden of such a task "would effectively shut most noncommercial speakers out of the Internet marketplace" (Beeson 6). Along the same lines the, the U.S. Supreme Court In the landmark case, Reno v. ACLU, in regards to use age verification for internet forums, the Justices stated that it would be "prohibitively expensive" (qtd. in Beeson 6). And according to the ACLU this ruling would also apply to self-rating for some organizations (Beeson 6). Even if pro-rates get past the shortcomings of government intervention and justify the costs to the self-rating proposals what they sometimes forget is that the Internet is global and knows no boundaries.

she states that the Time magazine article was based on a George Town University undergraduate student's law journal paper that claimed that 83.5 percent of the pictures on the Internet were pornographic. Unfortunately, after Time published the article, it was discovered that the paper's research was found to be wrong. So wrong in fact that Time retracted the figure, which really was less then 1 percent, yet the damage had already been done (1). She also claimed that the article, which was the first of its kind, was responsible for sparking what can be compared to a Salem witch-hunt or the McCarthy hearings. In effect setting off many child protection and religious groups who were being fueled more by inaccurate data and a "Moral Panic " type attitude, than the facts (1). With government officials being pressured from these groups, they declared war and the "anti-Internet" campaign had begun.

In conclusion, based on key short falls of the recently endorsed PICS content labeling system, we can see that parental level blocking systems are the only solution, at the present time, that can protect our children as well as are freedoms. We see that a voluntary rating system will only lead to government censorship, and commercialized homogenized content. Potentially leaving the U.S. in a "Fortress American" Internet presence, instead of the important global one. While free speech advocacy groups, such as the ACLU, support parents and educators rights to choose, what is and isn't appropriate for children. They continue warding caution that freedom of speech is one of our greatest freedoms, and not examining the long-term ramifications in a system such as PICS may someday cost us that freedom, and others.

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Approximate Word count = 2574
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)