The case set a precedent and the police were relieved to find that criminals are no longer protected by the blurred geographical boundaries the Internet presents. Police, government and parent groups would have us believe porn on the Net is the biggest threat to our moral fibre since the contraceptive pill, but I for one don't buy it. In its attempt to control what happens in cyberspace, the government is desperate to convince us they need to bug our PCs and decrypt and intercept our email as part of the ongoing fight against drugs and pornography. But when the National Criminal Intelligence Service published its Operation Trawler report on serious crime on the Net in June, it wasn't able to produce one single statistic to bear out their claims of an Internet overrun by porn and drugs. Instead, porn seems to be a convenient smokescreen for the police and government to hide behind when attempting to convince us of the need for draconian surveillance and monitoring of the Net.
Conspiracy theories abound on the government's real attitude to the Internet.
It is fear of the unknown which is sending the suits of Whitehall rushing to the legislative books to try and slap some kind of order on a communications medium that is unruly and new. For the porn-mongers who spend their time surfing around for the most perverse images they can find to titillate the online voyeur, porn equals profit. The more hard core, the more profitable and most hard core sites require users to give out credit card details and large wads of cash before they can access doggysex or whatever turns them on. It is a very determined child that will get there at all, and perhaps we credit our children with greater sensitivity than they have to think they will be irreparably damaged by such a visit. To wrap the Net in cotton wool in order to offer our children a sanitised Web seems as unnecessary as banning them from playing outdoors in case a pervert is on the prowl.