RICHARD BULL |
The initial list of banned websites included explicitly adult websites along with more innocent ones, including the website for punk band the Sex Pistols, the movie Sex and the City, and the news aggregator The Huffington Post. It showed that the authorities, in this case the Nepal Telecommunication Authority, are completely out of touch with basic cultural and media milestones. It also highlighted the fact that sorting out the wheat from the chaff is an incredibly difficult task.
The Home Ministry said the ban was enforced because young people are addicted to porn, and are running around crazed committing sex crimes. Except there have been no studies on the link between porn and crime in Nepal and there are no numbers to prove there is one. In fact, sex crimes actually declined following the legalisation of pornography in Denmark in 1969. This is not to diminish the role of aggressive law enforcement, longer prison sentences, scientific investigation methods, and community programs in curbing crime. What was remarkable in Denmark, however, was that as soon as the blue stuff became easily available, interest in pornography went down and sales of all kinds of porn material declined.
In the mainstream newspapers, there seems to be an unwillingness to challenge the wisdom of the ban, perhaps because talking about sex or images of sex openly isn't very becoming in Nepal. This ban, however, isn't just about porn but what could come after. If the reason is that porn is simply 'bad', then it is not and should not be the government's job to enforce morality.
There are legitimate arguments about the vices of the porn industry. Studies have shown that child pornography is the fastest growing form of porn on the internet. Many countries have restrictions on child porn and forced participation, and those producing or marketing porn must register their activity and pass appropriate inspections to address these concerns. Around 10,000 porn films are made in Hollywood every year and, as most of Tiger Wood's mistresses will testify, there are women who do want to make a living out of it. That illegal activities are present in an industry is not always an argument for banning the whole industry, otherwise most industries would be banned.
The real problem is that of censorship. This infringes on two pillars of a free society � freedom of expression and freedom of information. Conversely, the restriction of these freedoms is essential to totalitarian societies such as China and Iran. If the government is allowed to restrict freedom of expression and information because of a shallow argument like 'porn is bad', how long until editorials that 'threaten stability' are prohibited?
Like the body searches on the road every night, the government has implemented the ban as an easy fix for crime. The fact that it has failed to demonstrate maturity and intelligence is all the more reason we should be wary of such attempts to limit individual freedom. Honestly, it might be a better use of their time if the bureaucrats educated themselves about the Sex Pistols. I would be happy to lend them a CD.
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