Cyberporn On a Screen Near You

Cybersex. This word brings to mind a barrage of images, which might be on Stra Trek or virtual reality

video by aerosmith. Sex is everywhere today--in books, magazines, films, internet, television, and music

videos. Something about the combination of sex and computers seems to make children and adults for that

matter, a little crazy.

In an 18 month study, the team surveyed 917,840 sexually explicit pictures on the internet where

pornographic. Trading in explicit imagery is now "one of thelargest recreational applications of users of

computer networks." The great majority (71%) of the sexual images on the newsgrouls originate from adult

oriented bulletin-board systems (BBS). According to BBS, 98.9% of the consumers of online porn are men.

The women hold a 1.1% in chat rooms and on Bulletin boards. Perhaps because hard-core sex pictures are

so widely available elsewhere, the adult BBS market seems to be driven by demand for images that can't be

found on the average magazine rack, such as pedophilia, hebephilia, and paraphilia.

While groups like the Family Research Council insisdt that online child molesters represent a clear and

present danger, there is no evidence that it is any greater than that thousands of other threats children face

everyday. The Exxon bill proposed to outlaw obscene material and impose fines uo to $100,000and prison

term up to two years on anyone who knowinglymakes "indecent" material available to children under the age

of 18.

Robert Thomas spends his days like any other inmate at the U.S. Medicalcenter for Federal prisoners in

Springfield. Thomas,39 a amateur BBS in California, made headlines last year when he and his wife

were indicted for transmitting pornographic material to a government agent in Tennessee. This case shows

how tight of a squeeze the govenment is putting on internet Freedom.