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Good News You May Not Know about Internet Porn

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This past summer, UK Prime Minister David Cameron was able to make sure that families in the UK must make a choice whether they want easy access to Internet pornography or not. The UK has begun to require all Internet Service providers (ISP’s) to add filtering software to block pornography. As a result, customers must make the choice to remove the filtering or “opt out.”

But what if the husband wants easy access to porn but the wife doesn’t?

david cameron

Here's Cameron's answer:

“The fact is...when you sign up to an internet service provider, when you take out your broadband account, you are prompted with an online message...[about] pornography filters that are switched on.

‘If you want to keep them, go ahead, particularly if you’ve got children in the house; if you want to take them off, you have to make an active choice. And I think that’s the right thing to do.”

Some people in the U.S. are petitioning at the We the People website for the same protection. This petition is not legislation; it's not meant to be. It's meant to rally citizens and our government to find a solution for accidental exposure to vile and graphic images (and, I might add, the predatory practices of the porn industry which targets kids).

Of course, many people are up in arms crying that blocking porn is going to have dire consequences for freedom of speech. Do you buy that? I think our founding Fathers (and Mothers) are rolling in their graves at that argument.

Require porn to be "opt-in"

No one is asking the U.S. government to control the Internet like China does. But regulating ISP’s seems like a perfectly reasonable and oh-so-needed action. (We recently stopped shipments of toy dolls from China that were laced with chemical toxins--why not protect kids from the much worse brain toxin of pornography?) It’s actually not that difficult, though filters are far from perfect. So, as for me, I’m all for signing the petition (and I did!). You can too, here.

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More Progress Against Searches for Child Pornography

This past summer Cameron also threw down the gauntlet at search engine companies, challenging them to clean up their act when it comes to the ability to search for child pornography. As reported by SitePro News:

“Put simply, there needs to be a list of terms — a black list — which offer up no direct search returns,” Cameron said in a speech this summer. “So I have a very clear message for Google, Bing, Yahoo and the rest: You have a duty to act on this — and it is a moral duty. I simply don’t accept the argument that some of these companies have used to say that these searches should be allowed because of freedom of speech.”

Eric Schmidt

Apparently Cameron's challenge got the intended response: Google's Eric Schmidt explained that they have changed their algorithms and "have cleaned up the results for over 100,000 queries that might be related to  the sexual abuse of kids." Furthermore, they've added preventative measures to warn searchers that child pornography is illegal. New technology has also been developed to tag illegal pictures so copies of them can be removed wherever they are on the Internet.

Some may argue that pedophiles use site to site sharing, thus avoiding the big search engines. That may be true, but how many people have started down this degraded path by using a search engine? All of them!

This progress is crucial and heartening! But in order to truly protect our kids, we must open up a dialogue with them, early and often, explaining to them how life will be much better without porn.

I love to read your comments so please share your thoughts on protecting your kids from pornography. Thank you!

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Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids

"I really like the no-shame approach the author takes. It's so much more than just 'don't watch or look at porn.' It gave my children a real understanding about the brain and its natural response to pornography, how it can affect you if you look at it, and how to be prepared when you do come across it (since, let's face it... it's gonna happen at some point)." -Amazon Review by D.O.

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