Topic 126

Social impact of open access to unsuitable material on the Internet by Aditya

‘Unsuitable material’, in this essay, can be defined as anything, words or images or video, that can inspire an individual to do anything ethically incorrect.

Issues associated:

This topic deals with a number of issues.

1) Encouraging acts of sexual nature in minors
2) Encouraging sexual violence in minors
3) Encouraging sexual violence victimizing children
4) Encouraging forceful sexual actions
5) Propagating hate for another or own race, religion, sex, etc.
6) Displaying images of vulgarity (such as the death of another human being), examples being those of Al Jazeera broadcasting killings of Afghan citizens by the Taliban and also the hanging of Saddam Hussein
7) Material that is simply biased such as an only Tony Snow view of prison human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay or Iraq. This can be coupled with censorship.

Emergence of technology:

Unsuitable material, more specifically, pornography has been exchanged over the net for approximately the last 3 decades but has seen a colossal increase due to the presence of the world wide web in nearly every household which has access to internet databases. Also, a surge took place after the advent of P2Ps(peer-to-peer networks) with clients(people who exchange information(data or files) over P2P networks) finding it increasingly easy to satisfy their perverted needs. Also, videos like that of Saddam’s execution are spreading like wild fire in the online community.

Stakeholders:

On the one hand, in the case of politics, Presidents like George W. Bush and Governmental officers have much to gain with an image which is precisely why many videos like those of atrocities that occur in Afghanistan are aired using the internet as a medium. Also, it can also affect the governing body of a nation by preventing messages of hatred from being viewed by others possibly sparking off a civil war. Also, the stakeholders are a people who are not necessarily being fed the correct information of the whole story.

In the case of internet pornography, the stakeholders are perverts who get pleasure from viewing child pornography or just any genre of pornography. These people can go onto become pedophilic and therefore commit actions which involve children which are sexually explicit. They also abuse children(also stakeholders) sexually, and scar them, many times permanently, both physically and mentally.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

There are absolutely no advantages, in my opinion. The disadvantages are plenty. I have numbered the ones I thought of above.

Solutions:

It is difficult to overcome this problem because of the tedious nature of the task of cyber-policing. There are some ways to overcome this problem to a certain extent but even though efficient, they can’t overcome the problem completely, both due to the presence of hackers and a large population.

One such solution is the Access to Information Monitoring Tool. For more information, go to http://www.justiceinitiative.org/activities/foifoe/foi/foi_aimt

Areas of Impact:

A large area it impacts is the black market. Pornography has a flourishing market for porn in almost all countries. Also, like I mentioned above politics can influence the airing of videos on the internet.

Evaluation of impact locally and globally:

The impact is more on a global society both because of porn markets in countries across the world and the advent of the internet. Some countries like Saudi Arabia and China are less subject to issues like pornography due to censorship laws but still permit the airing of anti-US videos.