Youth Opinion : On-Line Smut Laws: ‘A Wrench in the Gears’

Since on-line pornography became a public issue in recent months, politicians have called for government regulation of pornography on the sprawling Internet, and on-line providers have countered with voluntary plans to either tag “adult material” or tag “kid-friendly material” to allow parents to restrict access. KATHY SEAL interviewed some computer-savvy kids about their views of the controversy and whether regulation is feasible.

DAX BIAGAS

17, graduate of Hamilton High School, will attend Santa Monica College

I knew people in junior high who brought in pornographic stories that they would take off the computer. They were children of computer buffs who had access to a computer. They would bring them to school and sell them or read them off.

Now there are a lot of “chat rooms” [on-line locations where messages are exchanged in real time] that are basically full of people exchanging pornography. The vast majority of things on-line are educational or recreational, but in some of the chat rooms what they do is just exchange pictures. It’s a very odd environment but you can only be exposed to it by personal choice.

DONKOKKO BURNABY

17, graduate of Crossroads School, Santa Monica

Most of the people who use the Internet a lot don’t have lives, and [on-line pornography] is how they get their kicks. It’s not to say that everyone who uses the Internet is some sort of computer nerd, but there’s quite a few of them out there.

All you have to do is go into Usenet, the way of accessing news groups, and use a search string to look up alt.sex, and you will be confronted with a barrage of pornographic stories and images that you can download and then decode.

A lot of the pornography, especially among the younger populace, is spread around through the bulletin boards [of commercial on-line services].

Anybody who uses the Internet frequently is totally opposed to any regulation and these articles [on pornography and stalking via computer] are just pushing it closer and closer. That would almost completely shut down the Internet. It’d be just like throwing a wrench in the gears.

ILYA HAYKINSON

16, entering senior year, Santa Monica High School, summer intern testing software at Microsoft Corp., Seattle

I’m in favor [of some kind of restrictions] because right now they have no control. If [regulators] start to monitor pornography and work out some way of monitoring the pornographic sites and making sure no one gets into them, that would be a good way to monitor other things, like pirating of software.

Right now, the Internet is so huge and so disorganized that nobody knows where anything is. There’s no system of finding out who uses it, and no master list of places on the Internet. Monitoring pornography would be a first step toward understanding what the Internet is and where things are.

One brand-new thing is a program called CUseeme. If you have a video capture card and a camcorder you could send video images over the Internet as they happen. You put the camcorder next to your computer and you give someone your Internet address and they see you and whatever you do. I’ve heard that people are doing shows for minors.

SEAN FAIRCHILD

17, graduated from Hamilton High, plans to attend Cal State Northridge

I’ve been using local BBSs [electronic bulletin boards] for four or five years now. Any kid with an IQ of 20 could download a pornography picture. It’s as easy as downloading a text file.

There’s a file you can download called the Southern California BBS list. It’s like 40 pages long and almost every BBS has an “adult section.” All you have to do is say you’re over 18 and you have access to them.

With Al Gore becoming vice president and [his interest in] the information superhighway, there’s been a lot of publicity about pornography on-line. But it’s always been there and the media is just now catching on. So it makes it easier for people to point fingers.

In junior high school, kids were passing around disks. “Hey, look at this picture, that movie.” It was a fad. By the time we hit high school, it was over. When it’s no longer forbidden or a challenge to do, you don’t want to do it anymore.

I’ve never known anybody to be damaged by seeing these kinds of things. It’s just pictures. People think it’s very harmful, but if it’s not on the modem, they’re going to have an older brother who shows him Playboy.

ELI SHAMSZADEH

16, attends Bravo Medical Magnet

LAUSD Net is the Internet connection for the Los Angeles Unified School District. It provides a free account to any student or teacher who’s part of LAUSD and allows them to do classroom research and class activities on the Internet. But once you connect, it is extremely easy to get pornography on-line. One time, a friend came over and said, “Let’s do Playboy on-line.” They just have a picture of this month’s Playmate. They have Penthouse International on-line too, but you have to pay for that.

News groups are like a public message board--you can post anything to it. There are some groups that carry pornography. There are groups on bestiality, bondage, amateur models, some on gay men.

Federal regulation wouldn’t work because of the vastness of the Internet.

It’s the parents’ fault for letting kids use the computer this way. When you get your account through LAUSD Net, the parents and the students sign a form saying LAUSD is not responsible for any kind of material the Internet has. Parents usually sign it because they do not know how to use their computers. They really don’t know what their children are doing.