The internet can be a scary place. Amid the greatly helpful online research databases, fascinating historical sites and great sports coverage, there are legions of web sites dedicated to pornography, hatred, and anarchy.

In this age of widespread computer literacy, more and more children have found themselves on the internet, and parents are faced with the reality that their children are just a few points and clicks away from all of the undesirable materials that the internet has to offer. Obviously, there has to be a solution to this problem - after all, your local video store is probably filled with just as much undesirable material as is the internet.

The knee-jerk reaction to this problem is censorship. As was the case with television and movies in the early days of those media, many people believe the producers of unpopular or undesirable material bear a responsibility to stymie their beliefs and limit their creativity so that children are not exposed to "adult" subjects.

For the majority of television and cinematic history, producers would engage in self-censorship in the fear that their works would be blackballed by the major production houses. In this manner, the movie houses existed as a buffer between the producers and customers of such information.

The beauty of the internet is that there is no go-between. Anyone, at any time, can pay a small fee and post a web site. Instantly, that person has gained the ability to communicate with people in all corners of the world. This makes the internet a highly democratic place - a place where a novice computer user can exist shoulder-to-shoulder with experts hired by multinational corporations.

Obviously, the content of some web sites is questionable. In the age of widespread e-mail marketing, we're all familiar with waking up to a mailbox stuffed with numerous unsolicited e-mail messages ranging from the latest "get rich quick" scheme" all the way to those all-too-familiar ads for internet pornography sites.

So what happens when a child finds these advertisements in his or her e-mail box? Well, we all know how curious children are, and so the odds are that the first instinct is to click on that enticing hyperlink. All of a sudden, offensive images are dancing before a child's dazzled eyes - a nightmare scenario for almost all parents.

What can be done to stop this phenomenon? The answer is simple, and it's not censorship. The answer is even older than the idea of censorship. It's the idea of parental responsibility. The people who run pornography sites are just expressing themselves, or trying to make some money from the "dirty old men" of the world. Last time I checked, both of these things were morally reprehensible; they were also completely legal.

Parents have to be more vigilant in keeping their children shielded from content that they feel to be offensive or inappropriate. It is not the place of the pornographers to stop fulfilling their hobbies (or fantasies) because some parents don't pay attention to what their children are doing on-line.

And as for those unsolicited e-mails? Well, parents should read their e-mail with their kids, or periodically check up to see what is there. Or maybe they should tell their kids that Santa sees everything. Whatever works.

The point is, that free speech and free expression are the beauty of the internet. By limiting what can be displayed on the internet, we set ourselves, once again, on a very slippery slope. Putting freedom of speech and freedom of expression aside for a second, another glaring question arises. How does one go about censoring sites on the internet? Because it is a worldwide network, you have both clean-cut and filthy sites from every country in the civilized world. Who is going to be the legislative body for a censorship effort?

So not only is internet censorship wrong, but it's completely impractical. The only solution to this problem is, again, the age old one: parental responsibility.

What a novel concept.

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