Can we ever protect the children?

Given the Supreme Court's rejection (again) of yet another Congressional attempt to protect our children from online porn, I'm beginning to wonder if this is going to be a battle we will ever win. Not that I'm in favor of across the board censorship, but I do believe that it shouldn't be easy for children to access sexually explicit materials. I'm also concerned about how this case evolved and its impact on future issues relating to legislation and fast moving technology.

I guess the first issue to deal with is that of the easy availability of sexually explicit material on the internet. It doesn't take a genius to find it and most elementary children can and/or will stumble across it on their own without any direction for an authority figure. Now, I realize that due to our religious heritage we've over stigmatized sex in general, but keeping Jugs out of the hands of children is really in our own best interest. The question is, though, how to do this online without negatively impacting consenting adults from easily being able to access whatever they want, whenever they want. The suggestions outlined in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) that the Supremes injuncted from being enforced seemed a little too restrictive (who do you know who wants to have to register to be able to engage in perfectly legal activities?).

The overriding question is how, technically, can we erect barriers for children that won't get in the way of adults and that won't block access to any material deemed health related (including sex ed type stuff). More importantly, how can we implement legislation today that the courts won't eventually reject given the quick changes in technology and the length of time it takes for a court to get to the top and back. COPA is a perfect example because it was designed based on the constraints of the previous rejection of Congresses attempts to do the same thing, yet was struck down years later because technology had advanced such that the solutions outlined in the legislation were no longer the most effective.

One of the most obvious solutions I've heard discussed is to create a top level domain like .kid and then to restrict the sites that have access to that domain. Then parents and schools can easily setup filters not allowing access outside this domain. Appropriate health related information can also be included in this domain while keeping noticeably sexually explicit material out. Alternatively, a top level domain like .sex could be setup for true porn sights and they can be filtered out similarly. This later solution is no different than putting non see through wrappers on porn mags in very public bookstores and placing them on the top most shelves of the magazine rack. The material is still available, just in a different place.

In the end, I think the Supreme Court did the right thing, but I'm not sure we can craft a legislative solution to this problem that won't pose problems by the time it gets back to the Court on appeal. That said, the real solution is for the industry to engage in self regulation and for parents to step up and bear the responsibility of adequately dealing with the images in the public arena and how their children should respond to them. If this ever happens, the cry for legislative reform might die down long enough for Congress and the courts to solve this problem correctly.