Harm to Children and the Internet:
an Exploration of the Arguments for Censorship

Proposal:

This presentation will be supplemented by visiting internet sites where these arguments are put forth, including, The American Family Association. In each case, the arguments given will be examined and proven to be unsound. Some of these arguments are, frankly, absurd and should provide the basis for a lively atmosphere.

Abstract:

The most robust arguments for internet censorship in the United States have been based on the claim that children could be harmed by the internet remaining uncensored. Proponents of this argument paint the internet as a dangerous place to minors where pornography and predators lurk around every virtual corner. Congressional Representative Michael G. Oxley from Ohio claimed, in a hearing addressing legislative proposal to protect children from inappropriate materials on the internet, that we should address the "most serious threat" to morality that we face by "protecting kids from the degrading content readily available on the internet."1 This view has been extremely influential in the United States and is reflected in legislative attempts at internet censorship.

The "harmful to minors" standard has been used in most attempts to enact censorship legislation on the internet in the United States. The most striking example of this was the Communication Decency Act which passed successfully through the senate before being stuck down as unconstitutional in the supreme court in Reno v. ACLU. However, many other attempts have been made at legislation at the state and national level. At the time of this writing, many bills are pending at a state level to censor internet material that is "harmful to minors." In addition, amendments attached to several spending bills in the works require that educational institutions use filtering software in order to receive government funding.

Despite the popularity of the harmful to minors argument, it is seriously flawed. In this presentation II will explore the argument (and its sometimes humorous applications) and argue that it fails to justify internet censorship. Some of the reasons for its failure include: applying a narrow definition of harm, lack of concrete evidence of harm, subjectivity in its application and its inability to logically be applied to the internet.