Germany and now France have told major online porn operators that they must block children's access to pornography – and it's believed the 27 nations of the European Union will follow suit. Not so in America, according to Benjamin Bull, General Counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. He notes that in 1998, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, which banned the transmission of any indecent material harmful to minors.
"The problem was that it was struck down as unconstitutional," he tells AFN. "What Congress has not done is require online providers to limit the distribution of their material to only adults to protect minors, which they could do."
According to a report at DailyMail.com, France and Germany would require legal identification to prove a customer's age. So why not implement a similar method in America? Bull says it's doable.
"Congress could pass a law tomorrow if it wanted to requiring online providers to limit access to their material to people who are 18 and older. They [just] haven't done that," the attorney laments. The only ones objecting to Congress taking such action, he continues, are the online providers.
"And of course, they have lots of money. They have hundreds of millions of dollars [that] they invest every year in lobbying Congress," he notes. "And they also throw money around during elections. So, basically it's a situation in which it's the people of America versus Big Tech."
Bull argues it ought to be a bipartisan effort with all parties in favor of a method to keep the filth away from children.
