Today's Global News

(www.todaysglobalnews.com)
July 16, 2003

GREAT FALLS, Va. (TGN) - The statistics are enough to make a parent tremble: the cybersex industry generates $1 billion a year and three-quarters of adult commercial sites provide free teaser images on their home page.

Sixty percent of all Web site visits are sexual in nature and 25 million Americans visit cybersex sites at least one hour a week. Also, 90 percent of the nation's children ages 8-16 already have viewed pornography online, mostly accidentally while doing homework.

These are the reasons Donna Rice Hughes, an Internet safety expert who
already has been running her own Web site at www.protectkids.com, is taking on additional duties to be president of Enough is Enough, which is at enough.org.

Even more alarming to parents should be the fact that of four million
children ages 7-17 who surf the Internet, nearly one-third said they
would freely give out their home address if asked.

And, a review of Internet references to 26 popular children's characters such as Pokemon, My Little Pony and Action Man revealed thousands of links to porn sites.

A new tool has become available in the battle with the U.S. Supreme
Court's decision to affirm the Children's Internet Protection Act.
The law essentially requires schools and public libraries to install Internet filtering programs if they are going to accept federal funding for those programs.

"This is the first time that the Supreme Court has upheld a law that
Congress has passed in attempting to protect children from sexual
exploitation on the Internet. So it's a big victory and also a precedent-setting case," said Rice Hughes.

Her work for a number of years has involved her Web site www.ProtectKids.com, which offers a parents' safety guide, a youth safety guide, advice on how to watch out for and avoid problems and myriad other resources.

But the task is so large, she added the duties as president at Enough
Is Enough, which is a sister site and provides other resources such as
"Safe Harbors," a "Captain's Message," information about "Pirates" and
"Myths and Legends" and "Reefs," "Rocks," "Sharks," and "Tugboats."

Its focus is to address two primary threats on the Internet: children's
easy access to pornography and pedophiles' easy access to children.

The new law will help because it is such a simple, straightforward
approach to such issues, she said.

"Congress said if you're going to take taxpayer dollars for your
computer and Internet access then you're going to have to implement
technological tools such as filtering in order to prevent, as best you can, illegal materials from coming in through that Internet connection and getting into the hands of kids," she said.

The old argument offered by those who reject any sort of responsibility for pornographic images has been if a person doesn't want to see it, they shouldn't go looking for it.

That might have been applicable when X-rated books were only in
stores.

"And we've been saying for years, kids can accidentally access this
material because of the intrusive nature of it, the way that pornographers trick not only children but adults to get into their sites. A child can type an innocent word into a search engine and easily get to a porn site, something like toys, or boys-dot-com is a hardcore homosexual porn site," she said.

There's no infringement on "rights," because filters allow librarians to unblock a site if, for example, a site needed to research breast cancer was blocked.

The site currently is generating support for its operations, and information not only is available on the Web site but also is available at 1-888-744-0004.

Rice Hughes is an internationally known Internet safety expert and advocate and has authored "Kids Online: Protecting Your Children In
Cyberspace."

In 1999, she received a Congressional appointment to the Child Online
Protection Commission to examine technological solutions to protect
children on the Internet.

Steve Case, chairman of America Online, has applauded her as an
"effective advocate on behalf of children's online safety."

In 2002 she was given the National Law Center for Children and
Families Annual Appreciation Award and the "Protector of Children Award" from the National Abstinence Clearinghouse.

Other groups have joined in praising the Supreme Court's approval of
CIPA. Jan LaRue, of Concerned Women for America, noted that the
decision "soundly rejected the inane idea that the First Amendment
requires taxpayers to provide access to illegal porn in a library."

Roberta Combs, of the Christian Coalition of America, also said that
Solicitor General Ted Olson is right "when he says that libraries
should not allow pornography on library computers which they would not allow on library bookshelves."

Further information is at www.enough.org and www.protectkids.com.

Todays Global News is an Internet-based news service that focuses on news of Christian interest and from a Christian perspective.