The Internet community hates censorship, and in many ways so do I.

But this rejection of censorship needs to be qualified.

Without doubt an indefensible use of censorship is that made by governments for political ends. All the one-party states in the world use censorship, and quickly realise that their continued existence depends on it. 'When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty', reminds us that even democratic countries justify censorship 'in the national interest.'

The Internet is a powerful defeater of censorship, as publication of sensitive material on the Net is very difficult for governments to prevent, particularly since the citizens of one country can read anything on the Net, regardless as to where it is being published.

The Cold War ended with a victory for capitalism more because the governments who most wished to finally were unable to prevent their own citizens discovering through all the media, including radio, what conditions in other countries were really like. The 'you can fool some of the people all of the time...' saying was once again demonstrated to be true.

Control of one's own nation's press and broadcasting media is useless for any dictator, if his imprisoned subjects have access to information by other means. Even the President of the world's most powerful country has been been made aware of the power of the Internet to provide a source of data he would rather have been able to suppress.

So the Internet's potential to defeat censorship is a great advantage to the progress of Truth, but is this the whole story...?

Without doubt there is a huge downside to the freedom which the Internet gives for people to present whatever they want for all to see. Things that would lead to prosecution if displayed anywhere else are to be found, all too easily, on the Internet. The newsgroups seem to give the opportunity for every possible (and some almost impossible) taste to be paraded. Some contributors seem to take a special delight in celebrating this freedom with every imaginable extreme.

It would be easy for moral indignation to respond to pictures of cruelty or abuse by suggesting censorship, and the pursuit of the perpetrators with all the vigour of the law.

But I do not believe this is the right answer. Not because it is not an appropriate response, but because it is ineffective.

I am old enough to remember the prosecution of the book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. Whatever it intended, it succeeded only in making a very boring book a best-seller. Mary Whitehouse managed much the same. She even had a girlie magazine named after her. Every attempt to curtail pornography succeeds only in giving it publicity.

So I am not an advocate of censorship being applied to the Internet, any more than to the cinema or the newsagent or the bookshop.

There is an obvious group one wants to protect, young children, but the best means of protecting them is by public opinion. If enough parents make enough of a response, locally, and boycott a newsagent, for instance, who displays items they do not want their children to see or buy, they are more likely to succeed than if they bring a lawsuit. The force of money is more effective than the law would be. One effect of the free availibility of porn on the Internet has been to reduce dramatically the sale of porn at the newsagent.

The only form of censorship which really works is that which I apply to myself. As a parent I must educate my children to treat other humans with respect, and not as objects. Medical education will help them understand enough of human anatomy to make what is called adult (a cynical use of the word, when it really means 'juvenile') simply boring. Human genitalia in a medical textbook are never particularly exciting, and the best antidote to pornography is to add medical labels to whatever is depicted.

So education is the first truly adult response to the huge sex industry. If my children turn away from pornography for the same reason as I do, partly because it is boring, and mainly because it is degrading of the person being depicted, which I find undesirable, I will have succeeded as a parent. Not because I have condemned it, but because they have found a good reason for rejecting it.

That is the moral dimension.

I am a person, a human being with a soul, and according to many philosophies intended for immortality. And so is every one else I will ever meet, face to face, or indirectly through pictures, films, or stories. I hope every one who has to do with me thinks of me as a person, not as a thing, presented to them for their pleasure. That is how I choose to think of them too.

Pornography will wither if enough people make these choices. There are far richer pleasures, and truer delights, in the world of real people.

Children do need to be protected, but the right agency for this is not any government, but their own parents.