Tommy Platinum

This is an old debate and another one that could arguably be better placed in Politics/Debate/Religion, but I will leave that to the staff's discretion.

Basically, the internet is often heavily criticised for its influence on young people and the decrease in morality in society in general. Obviously the internet has tremendous advantages and has made all of our lives a hell of a lot easier than they would have been before, but do you believe the internet has had a negative influence on society in any way?

What is your moral stance on pornography and how it is readily available for anybody online? I once heard that something ridiculous like 30% of internet traffic is porn. I know its not exactly a reliable number, but we all know there's a hell of a lot out there, and thats not the only thing. When there is no real censorship and people can post what the hell they like, that can potentially cause problems, whether it be porn, violence, gore or other potentially damaging things.

Then there is the question of downloading and the negative impact the internet has had on the music industy among other industries.

Basically, what are your thoughts on these issues, and do you believe they are that big a deal? Do you think that despite these things, the internet had provided more of a positive than a negative influence?

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neXus

I laughed at the "no real censorship part" The internet is hella enforced. People have been arrested and jailed for child porn, if bullying online is reported, charges will be laid, and so on. Not to mention police use social networking sites for crime stoppers and so on. However, if no one reports stuff, the police cant do anything about it.

As for morality, what makes internet porn different from the twenty million adult video stores, and the porn mags on store shelves? The gore on the net is pretty much the same thing you will see in movies. Hell just look at a news cast some time, they feed off of death. People will always find something to blame their morality issues on.

Tommy Platinum

Well obviously there is censorship concerning things that are against the law such as pedophilia, but it still happens.

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Kizza

Well, it's not like police are able to stop everything...

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The Brain

Yo dawg, I herd u liek to internet so I made u a thred about internets so u can internet while u internet!

Yeah, sorry about that.

As far as the morality aspect goes, people said the same thing about cable tv and movies. It just so happens that the internet is the new scapegoat. Not that all of it is unfounded, but there's more emphasis on it as the cause than is necessary.

Also, music downloads haven't hurt the music industry as bad as they'd like us to believe. The whole argument that a song downloaded is a song stolen is complete bullshit. Just because someone downloads a song doesn't mean they would have bought it if they couldn't find it for download. Most people just want to sample lots of different kinds of music.

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Daddy

In a sense it has had a negative influence. To the point where people get addicted and it's all they do is spend their lives online. Social skills are dropping because people can more easily talk to someone online that they don't know in real life and can do it better than communicating face to face. There are positives as we do get our news faster, and any information we seek. This could go back and forth either way.

Porn has been around for centuries but it's just right at our fingertips now. There is more censorship now then there was say 10 years ago and that is a good thing. I won't rehash what neXus said, but that's basically the statement I would have given.

Music industry isn't hurting that much. They are still getting paid. I think it goes down to quality of music that artists put out and that's why record sales are declining. It's really no different from 15-20 years ago when I would buy a tape and make a copy for all my friends, again it's just a convenience thing here now with the internet and we get it a lot of music online before it even comes out in stores. Whose fault is that? I blame that on the artists and the people they hire.

Inogenius

I would say that the internet has sort of desensitized us to a lot of things. When we're talking to one another on forums, or what not, we lose that human factor and forget that we're actually talking to another person. Eventually our actions online are carried over and we start to take some of those same actions into the real world.

With that said, I think the internet has also made some significant improvements in society. We're all much more globally aware now, and I think generations that have grown up on the internet are probably more tolerant and accepting of different types of people. That encompasses different religions, cultures, sexual preferences ... etc.

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Mr. Sam

Love it.

So, the internets. You can find some odd shit if you look hard enough. Sometimes I don't think you even have to look that hard.

You can get all that child protection shit put on it though, so I don't see the problem.