Why is porn so bad?

According to this USAToday (*snerk*) editorial, and countless ones before it, online ponography is corrupting America's youth and must be stopped.

Problem one: "Avoiding or blocking the X-rated onslaught can be nearly impossible. Internet content moves with no respect for borders and at such slippery speed that tracking it is like trying to grab hold of mercury. Innocuous-looking e-mail titled, say, "Here's the offer you requested" can link to pornography generated in the Ukraine. Much of what's out there makes the "adult content" of the past look quaint."

True, the net is rather clogged with less-than-squeaky-clean sites. It's not as if they're impossible to avoid, though. Switch from Explorer to a better browser (once you try FireFox, you will never go back to IE). Grab a popup blocker - they're cheap, if not free, and if you combine that and FireFox, you'll get minimal if any popups. Email? If you don't know who sent it, don't open it, for the love of god. Use a client with decent spam filtering - I've been thrilled with GMail, but even most free services offer some sort of filter. If you're dubious, play it safe and don't open it. Also, don't click the links, if you not only value your pretty virginal eyes, but also your computer.

Second problem: "A blanket ban is not a useful option because foreign sites are beyond the reach of U.S. law, which is why one fresh approach deserves encouragement."

Hello? What? Let's try this again: A blanket ban is not a useful option because the foundation of this nation provides for freedom of speech and expression, and the federal government is explicitely forbidden from messing with that. Things like that, as written above, scare me. I don't know the author's intent, and I'm willing to give it the slightest bit of ambiguity, but it seems possible that he meant exactly what he wrote: you can't ban all porn because some of it comes from outside the US. Not that there's something fundamentally wrong with telling people they're not allowed to put something entirely legal online for people to check out.

Third issue with it: "Parents need all the help they can get in protecting their kids' experience online. They have a variety of constantly improving filters and other tools."

*sigh*

The average 12-year-old is going to be able to get around any sort of parental blocks. Computers are this generations' technology: generally speaking, we know them so much more intuitively than our parents.

Also, am I seriously the only person who sees an unsettling parallel between blocking websites and book-burning? It's all censorship, and it doesn't matter if it's print or digital. For the record: Censorship has never worked out particularly well.