Pornography and New Media Pornography, depending on how one defines it, has existed for thousands of years in the forms of picture, sculpture, performance, and writing. Over the centuries the advent of new media has broadened the flow of distribution of pornography and erotica to the masses, making it readily accessible. From the printing press, to photography, to film, each new medium has provoked a call for censorship from concerned citizens during the early stages of its existence. Pornography has taken major steps, particularly in the last fifty years: Playboy, the first magazine of its type, produced its first issue in 1955; pornographic film gained widespread popularity in the 1970's; the invention of the VCR allowed consumers to
There is little control over who views the pornography; a child can easily find their way on to a porn site. Friends and I found our way into obscene Internet chat rooms and private chats by age 11, and viewed cyber sex as a game. More disturbing is the fact that children can very easily stumble onto porn unintentionally, perhaps doing research about government and typing in whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov. Luckily whitehouse.com is a buffered Internet site where one has to actively read a disclaimer and click a link before being exposed to material. This, however, is not always the case. Internet porn has become frighteningly aggressive in its advertising techniques in recent years. E-mail advertisements alone can be an overwhelming aggressor. For example, I checked my own junk mail folder, and in the past week I had received over 200 sexually related, unsolicited email advertisements. Of those, more than 80 contain sexually explicit photos within the body of the email, despite the fact that I have never logged into a porn site or given any indication that I would welcome such material.
Even more frightening is the aggressive nature of sites themselves. An accidental click on the wrong Internet link can cause an avalanche of windows to open on the computer screen. Closing one window