Trends: Policing the net

EVEN as parents and guardians feverishly swap notes on how to limit access to porn websites, the reality of a 16-year-old school boy caught patenting an innocently named pornographic website featuring his own schoolmates and some teachers is yet to sink in. Worse still is the fact that in India there is no real law to deal with such a case. The media attention that this cool attracted, led to him being suspended from school, to the courts and then arrested.

The debate now centres not so much on the child's future as on the fact that this could well be repeated in the narrow confines of any home, or any cyber cafe. It could be any child doing it and with it the possibility of worse crimes on the net opening up. Opinions vary on the course of action that should have been taken against the young teenager responsible for the site. According to the principal of a leading school in New Delhi, as quoted in a magazine interview, "This kind of behaviour has been exhibited for a long time on building and bathroom walls. Only the space is different this time. We should treat it as grafitti."

Many would disagree with this view and contend that a heavy hand is necessary to send out a warning to future possible offenders as well as to porn site operators. The downside is that the real offenders who are net - smart and savvy may after all not jump into the trap. With more and more middle class children and homes acquiring a computer, what are the best possible options for this? Do parents then insist that the computer be placed in the middle of the family room where all and sundry surround it? And what happens to the privacy that a young, serious student may need when working? Does mother stand guard, half equipped to handle her net - savvy child or does dad take leave and stay at home?

Obviously neither is a satisfactory solution. The arm of the law has to be wider but has to look at porn sites, users, chatrooms in a very different light. In March this year, a public interest litigation was filed in the Delhi High Court where the petitioners wanted the Government to restrict Indians, specially minors, from accessing pornographic websites as well as those advocating the use of drugs, tobacco add alcohol. It also wanted the Government to direct all internet service providers to install filtering software at their gateways to prevent access to such websites. Cyber cafes and chatrooms should maintain a record of users at all times which could be easily accessed, the petition demanded. Though it may have made some relevant points, the Government has been slow in waking up to the consequences. That is till now, when the police caught its first victim. Unfortunately for him and the entire "porn-on-net" debate, the main issue was been deflected.

Unlike the West, which has already gone through the whole gamut of youngsters logging onto porn sites and using chatrooms to access porn, Indian cyber cafes are still not seen as dens of vice. Interestingly, realising that no amount of net mannies, parental supervision and school restriction, can ever curb a hugely burgeoning industry, computer retailers and software giant Microsoft have decided to join forces with the British police and children's charities to crack down on child porn on the internet.

According to a news reports in the Sunday Observer, "PC World", "Tiny" and "Time", have agreed that they have a responsibility for child protection when they sell computers to families. Accordingly all computers are to be pre fitted with software to filter out child poronography and "kite marks" will be introduced for child-friendly chat rooms. Packages will also be developed to block websites with adult content and access to chatrooms which paedophiles use.

Europe woke up to the latest threat of use of the net by paedophiles to lure young children, after the "Wonderland case" early this year, when more than a hundred paedophiles were arrested and tens thousands of images seized.

That porn sites are being looked at as an increasingly profitable venture in countries where the economic slowdown has taken its toll, is apparent from reports of displaced Hollywood technicians, and dotcom employees, turning to the porn industry for financial gains. Adult entertainment companies which once found it difficult to get people now report that their phones never seem to stop ringing and that there is a huge onslaught of job applicants. Porn has been rated as one of the few profitable ventures on the internet. According to one director with an entertainment company, sex is one of the low industries that is not affected by the meltdown.

India clearly has a long way to go. But if we take a leaf out of this book, we might just be one step ahead and prevent many more mishaps from occurring.

SUCHITRA BEHAL

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