Violent pornography generates monsters! Violent pornography kills!

A title from the Telegraph.co.uk announced last year: “Downloading violent porn to be punished with jail” (especially downloading children pornography). The amazing part is that this law was given in the UK as a result of a tireless campaign started by a woman who lost her daughter because of violent Internet pornography. More precisely: the young Jane Longhurst was killed in 2003 by Graham Coutts who was addicted to violent online porn.

Jane’s mother, Liz Longhurst started then a campaign to determine the UK government make possession of violent pornography materials illegal both online and offline. And her fight was not in vain. One person. One voice. One 75 years old woman driven by love and sorrow for her lost child.

The Telegraph.co.uk announces today: Thousands caught in Austrian child porn sting. Among the 2360 people around the world discovered through an investigation conducted by the Austrian police, 72 come from Britain. Scary numbers? Well, we’ll redefine “scary” in a bit:

Suspects from more than 77 countries have been identified as logging on to the material.The 23 suspects from Austria, who range from 17 to 69 years of age, have been called in for questioning but there have been no arrests yet. A police spokesman said he expected warrants to be issued soon.

Investigations are continuing in Britain and Russia to discover who uploaded and filmed the videos.Guenther Platter, the Austrian interior minister, said that the material was of the “worst kind of child sexual abuse” where girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams.

These girls were five years of age. Scary? Yes, indeed.

Pornography is bad!

Whether children pornography as in the example described above, or we are dealing with cases when children accidentally (or not) stumble upon explicit adult materials (videos, pictures, texts) while browsing the Web, one thing is sure: pornography and childhood don’t belong in the same universe. Pornography, related to children in any form, is bad! Unfortunately they have to coexist in the same universe. The Web knows no borders.

I am going to be horribly frank: it’s our fault. Honestly! I am not talking about violent pornography anymore. I talk about pornography in general. We are consumers, and if we are not consumers, we just sit around and tolerate a pretty scary phenomenon (I’ll get to the point, just stick with me for a while!). Let’s face it: as adults watch porn, either online or offline. And I am not saying there’s something wrong with that. After all, each has his/her own sexual preferences, but do they need to be so “open”?

You don’t need to admit it publicly, but here comes the question: have you ever watched a very explicit adult video online for free? If you did, was the access to that video

  • Easy (just click on the play button and voila!)
  • Not so easy (you had to login to see the - once again FREE – video)

You’ll probably answer “a” – easy. Because this is what happens on the Web now: everyone has easy, free access to explicit adult materials. And by everyone I mean children, teenagers and adults. And by children I mean… probably your children!

Bloggers, unite! Let’s do something against a too easy access to online pornography!

It’s my personal belief that we cannot stop pornography. The porn industry is one of the most powerful and rich in the world. But I do believe that we can show civic consciousness and do something to slow down this industry. We can do something to prevent our children especially those really young – from 5 to 11 for example – from accidental exposure to online porn.

To forbid their access to the Internet is not the solution. I am sure you already know why. Another problem is that families with low income cannot afford to buy software like NetNanny and there’s no such software available for free (do post a link in your comments if you know one!). Purchasing spy software to learn what the kids do online is not the solution either: first because invading their privacy might cause behavioral problems, and second because you cannot control them everywhere.

As long as the porn websites are so “open”, showing free “demo” videos on their landing pages to “tempt” their visitors into making accounts and becoming paying customers, there’s always a chance for kids to stumble upon porn, even when searching for info on their favorite pop stars – Britney Spears for example (it’s not that Briteny Spears is a porn star, but the porn webmasters use her name as a keyword). Or when they look for info to complete their homework. Did you know that the term “goddess” might lead to a domina site?

So this is what we are going to do. Together with one of the most powerful PR voices I know – Jon Harmon, author of Force for Good, we are going to start a campaign that will somehow “slow down” the porn industry: Blogger Power: Safeguard the Web for Children. We have a pretty good idea of how this might work and we are going to share everything with you as soon as we have all the details of the plan in place. We already have some supporters and we are going to contact any VIPs we know to sustain this project. But in the meanwhile we are waiting for your best ideas on what could the bloggers do to protect the innocent.

Remember: this campaign will be based on your power. On bloggers’ power. So far it is pretty clear what bloggers can do: we join communities. We are ready to get paid to blog, or paid to publish advertisements from companies we don’t even care about. It doesn’t matter… The point is: we blog! We have voices! We have the power to publish our opinions freely and no one can really influence them and stop us from speaking! So let’s all say the same thing. All at once.

As you see, my blog is about SEO and PR. This is what I do, this is who I am. You are probably blogging about celebrities, or your own dog, or clothes and fashion. It doesn’t matter what you blog about! You still have a voice. You still have readers. You can make a difference! So make your voice heard. Post your thoughts about this campaign here or on Jon’s blog. We count on you. Without you it will be more difficult to convince the offline media to react and to make the politicians take serious, common sense measures.