Internet porn: Guilty till proven innocent

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My Own Experiences

I have had 2 experiences with the above situation.

I am a computer professional who a lot of the time surfs the net looking for solutions for programming problems etc. This can lead me to the lesser known sites where people have placed coding examples - complete with the scrolling advertising in the back ground.

Once - many years ago (1997) I was in a department working with a team. It came to my bosses notice that I was gay, and only due to the fact that I mentioned my long term partners name in conversation.
As part of my job I was involved in some cutting edge work where I was continually referencing MS's site using the net. This was an essential part of my work and my Net access was vital to me.
One morning I came in and found that my access account had been taken away, and mention of 'inappropriate mention' was thrown about.
Nothing more than this, and it took me 6 weeks of fighting to get my account re-instated.
No evidence was ever presented to me for the reason, and when I finally told them to 'Prove it or shut up' my account was instantly re-instated.

I found later that my boss, being homophobic, had got straight to his boss literally screaming that he wanted this 'f*gg*t' off his team, and that was the excuse he tried to use.

Since then the internet has florished as a repository for information of all kinds. I personally hold no moral views on what should and what should not be stored. We are adults and as such should have the right to choose what we view, so-long as it does not infringe on others civil rights (enought said here!)
I has also caused me to be more.. vigillant on what my new browsing accesses.

Regarding my mention of scrolling advertising. These are adverts that will appear at the top of the page and are often random in their selection from a collection of adverts.
Should one of these be a advert for a porn site or similar, one is - by proxy, guilty of accessing said in-appropriate material.

I think that before a case if brought against a person regarding 'porn' on their computer we need to establish several things.

Has the porn been downloaded and stored in a specific directory, and not just floating in the history or temporary folder area.

Was the porn downloaded via a primary link (url typed in or clicked) or was the porn brough down by a secondary link or scrolling advert system embeded within another page.
The above IS important as it could help counter the 'guilt by association' situation.

Finally - definition of porn!!. In some countries clothing styles and beliefs are very much different from our own. To us - what is normal could very well be porn in anothers' country. And as the net IS universal.. There again lies the issue.

In the end - it is all a matter of perspective.
A full 600x400 glossy JPEG showing a sex act would be called porn.

A blurry 60x60 jpeg of a woman's left nipple, part of a scrolling advert on a respectable page. well - that is for you to decide.

Just my views.

Dave

Posted by: Marcwolf   Posted on: 09/03/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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