NRC Report on Kids and Internet Porn
Calls for Balanced Approach
A congressionally mandated study examining tools and strategies for protecting kids from Internet pornography has found that “No single approach—technical, legal, economic, or educational—will be sufficient. Rather, an effective framework for protecting our children from inappropriate materials and experiences on the Internet will require a balanced composite of all of these elements.”
In a preface to the report, which was released May 2 by the National Research Council, former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who chaired the project, said the findings “will disappoint those who expect a technological ‘quick fix’ to the challenge of pornography on the Internet.” Declaring that “neither technology nor policy can provide a complete—or even a nearly complete—solution,” the report emphasizes social and educational strategies “to reduce the number of children who are strongly motivated to obtain inappropriate sexually explicit materials.”
Judith Krug, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told the May 2 New York Times that the report “confirms the ALA’s view that protecting children online is complex, and it’s going to demand complex and varied solutions. In other words, filters are not going to be the solution.”
The study, launched in February 2000, was requested in the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, which called for the NRC to research the issue “in order to develop possible amendments to Federal criminal law and other law enforcement techniques to respond to the problem.”
Posted May 6, 2002.
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