'Nothing new under the sun': old fears and new media

Abstract

The internet, the newest of the mass media, has many positive benefits in the fields of research and entertainment. It has the potential to be a supremely useful tool for private, professional and commercial uses. However, fears about its dark side, specifically the potential exposure of children to the harmful effects of pornography - both legal and illegal - have given rise to strong demands for the introduction of heavy censorship. Others fear that this will lead to excessive state control over 'freedom of speech'. The furore over internet pornography, follows the classic pattern of moral panic throughout the ages. From Plato's concerns regarding the 'dramatic poets'' effects on the young to the 1980s video nasties scare, to screen violence and internet pornography in the 1990s and beyond: the contexts change but the arguments are consistent. I thus begin this series of three articles considering the whys and wherefores of internet content regulation by setting the debate in its full social and historical context, the better to understand the issues at stake when I come to discuss in depth the current situation.