Regarding OCAF's call to sue ISP's and such: I agree with you that it's ridiculous to call for shutting down the internet if it looks like it would be impossible to reduce the amount of pornography distributed by it. But I don't really think that you can compare the internet to the postal service or the telephone networks, simply because mail and telephones are indespenible to our nation while the Internet isn't: if you shut down the internet, many companies would be hurt (like mine), and some would be put out of business (like Clarinet and ISPs), but the country would keep on operating effectivly. However, if you closed down the postal service or the telephone networks, the country would screech to a halt. Also, you say that ISPs act as common carriers. If you read their "manifesto" (I have a copy and can send it to you), you would see that they are caling for ISPs to not carry any of the sex newsgroups. When an ISP carries a sex newsgroup, they know they're going to be getting pornographic stuff, and so OCAF feels that the ISP is responsible for pornographic stuff that is in the sex newsgroups. They recognize the fact that if all of the sex newsgroups were eliminated, that people who wanted to post to ponography could just post in a newgroup totaly unrelated to pornography, like sci.physics. However, they probably figure that (I'm guessing here): 1) Even though pornography could be posted to any existing newsgroup, that much less of it would be posted if there were no official newgroups to put them in. 2) That the pornography that is posted to non-germane newsgroups, like sci.physics, would be harder to find, thus reducing the consumption of pornography. OCAF want's to reduce the consumption of pornography not just to keep children from seeing it, but because they consider it to be 1) harmful to the consumer 2) somethig which can induce male consumers to commit sexual violence against women They base these conclusions on studies that back up these claims. When I have some time, I intend to send them references to studies showing that their studies are faulty and questionable. However, this won't change their minds, becuase they seem to be religously opposed to pornography: even if you proved to them beyond a doubt that pornography casuses no harm to anyone, they'd still be trying to ban it.
