Craig Burton

Could the Internet be the most dangerous place for a child? Porn sites continue to reign and it's getting more and more difficult to shield young kids. Today a child is lured by innocent looking links to Adult site. What's the answer?

A new Act: Now it seems there is going to be additional protection being provided at least to the American children. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 would impose:

1. Stricter penalties and limitations on sex offenders
2. Jail time and fines on those who try to trick minors into viewing sexual content via misspelled domain names, search, and misleading hyperlinks and
3. Ensure links to such content will need to be clearly labeled as to the nature of it.

The Act’s other important measures concerning the Internet:

1. Providing statutory authorization for one of the Attorney General's major initiatives, Project Safe Childhood, which will be implemented through U.S. Attorney-led, locally designed partnerships of federal, state, and local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute technologically facilitated crimes against children.

2. More consistent availability to the public through the Internet of information concerning the identities and locations of sex offenders who are required to register.

3. Authorizing the Attorney General to make grants to support pilot programs for electronic monitoring of released sex offenders, and to support effective civil commitment programs for mentally disordered or abnormal sex offenders who remain dangerous.

4. Including the provisions of what is popularly known as "Masha's Law," to make it clear that adults who were victims of sexual exploitation when they were children can sue both those who initially committed the exploitation and those who perpetuate the exploitation by downloading the images of abuse.

5. Enhancing record keeping requirements to ensure that minors are not depicted in sexually explicit material.

6. Prohibiting the insidious practice engaged in by certain sexually explicit web sites of hiding innocuous terms in the hypertext markup language so that a search for those terms on the Internet yields links to the sexually explicit web sites.

So better protection to American kids. For the rest, around the world… a path to follow!

A lot of people feel the government must play a role in protecting the public. Me, I instinctively don't like it. Who are these guys to decide what anyone can listen to or see?

// posted by Craig @ 5:47 PM