Let’s Talk About Sex

What’s your website rating?

When reading over the new website rating proposal, I began thinking about the .XXX domain proposal.  It’s pretty much the same thing.  Just like the .XXX domain proposal the rating proposal cannot be required, and it can’t be enforced in other countries.  Another reason why I don’t necessarily believe this is the best proposal is due to the fact that even our blogs for this class would probably receive a pretty high rating; therefore people have to click through warning screens in order to read our blogs, even though almost all of them are educational.  Not to mention that although they can be warning screens many will simply click through them.

If the website rating proposal is being discussed to protect children I think they need to consider many facts.  The first one being that children are going to read a warning and most of them will click through it just to see what’s on the next page.  Yes it will help prevent children from finding pornography when they are doing research for their projects, but if they’re searching for pornography they will see the warning screen and know that they’ve found what they were looking for.

In order to effectively protect children from viewing pornography we need to use the adult verification system on the warning screens of these websites.  However, even this isn’t fail proof.  If adults are given a special number when they become old enough to view adult material, that number can be easily seen and found by children who are not of age, which defeats the purpose.  Many adult verification systems use credit cards as proof that the viewer is of age.  However, I’ve had a credit card since I was in 8^th grade.  Not one of the reloadable ones, it was a regular Mastercard.  I wonder if I would’ve been able to view material when I was only in 8^th grade.  Another problem with the credit card verification process is that its very easy for children to get access to their parent’s credit cards, therefore all they need to do is type in the numbers and name and they’re in.

Like stated in many places that discuss protecting children from pornography, in order to do it effectively more than one method must be used along with intervention and supervision from parents.  Sometimes I wonder if within our technologically advanced world is there ever going to be a completely fail proof way to protect our children?