1) The internet is not ruled by any one country, so any attempt to control the internet without international treaty will result in offshoring what’s being controlled, and causing the government to either actively try to find and block all domains that have porn (even a single picture could bring down all domains and subdomains) or have massive government (or ISP) surveillance and random checks of government. Both have a chilling effect on free speech of non-porn content.

2) There is no universal definition of what is porn other than “I’ll know it when I see it”. At one time, showing a woman’s ankles was considered porn and let’s not even talk about Jeannie’s belly button (on the show “I dream of Jeannie”). In some parts of the world, full frontal nudity is considered okay (entire families see each other naked without sexual innuendo) while in others western beachwear would be taboo. Some would consider pictures of Lina Medina (look it up on google) child porn while others would consider it a medical picture for research only. Some consider computer generated pictures porn, while others say it’s ridiculous to do so. Without unified standards, you’ve gone down the slippery slope of having the police arrest people “just because they say you’re guilty”.

3) What exactly is the reason to regulate it? I’m firmly against the over-sexualization of society. I hate it when advertisers think that they can get me to buy their products just because they sex it up. I hate the way the media portrays sex and the way many people believe that sex is god, even in the selection of a marriage partner or a marriage itself. Anyone whose been married knows there are long stretches (particularly if you have children, or there’s illness, or Christopher Reeve-like tragedies) when sex just isn’t possible and if you have nothing else to fall back on, your marriage is toast. But here’s some intuitive stats of the top of my head that most people would agree with. Over 90% of people have seen porn and have not turned into rapists, addicts, or children predators. The problem isn’t the porn. Porn is the strawman. The problem is social, and I know most people don’t like to hear this, but there’s no easy solution because you have to get people to *want* to change for something better. That can’t happen through control. It has to happen through inspiration. I don’t know how to do it, but I do know that people like Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Kennedy have been able to raise our eyes beyond the ordinary into a better world, so perhaps instead we should focus on creating these sorts of visionaries instead of this whack-a-mole control game.

Any government control attempts on a global network will be insufficient, problematic, and freedom limiting.

Paul hit it right on the nose. #1 and #2 are dead easy to bypass. And you are missing the reason the Internet became extremely popular when you mention #3. The Internet works because it is democratic with very minimal rules.

Any laws to attempt to implement #1 would fail the same way spam laws have failed. The bad people disregard the laws, or move out of the country. (See Pirate Bay, spam zombies, etc)

Moving all porn to .XXX is impossible. One reason, see previous paragraph. Another reason is that the US govt cannot control the domain registration of other countries.

In summary, any non-global government control of this global network will fail, and only hinder the honest by removing existing freedoms.

How are you going to make companies whose webservers are in a different country abide by US laws? It’s impossible and silly to try to demand everyone in the world submit to draconian US laws.

However, you nail the point when it comes to education - that’s the real solution. Not to mention, is pornography _really_ the problem we need to be working on? Whatever your thoughts on the subject, you can certainly agree that there are _much_ more important things that America can be fixing with both the Internet and the country than movies of people having sex. Porn is like smoking, it’s just another shill issue that congress like to bring up to distract people from the huge real problems that we have.

Huntsman and Hatch both love to use things like “For the children” and “morals” to garner votes and push things through.

Also, I don’t think I agree with your #3 suggestion of tiering of the internet. If you start with one new pipe you’ll start an avalanche of the same and our ISPs will start nickel-and-diming us to death for everything.

“ohh, you want slashdot too? you want torrents? those are on separate pipes. that’s a connection fee, extra pipe fee, customer is bent over to the corporation fee, etc”

keep the net neutral. use option 1, 2 or just plain education.