The Internet Is Not the Problem : It’s up to parents--not a free government-to control minors’ access to cyberspace.

Like many others, I’m sure, I’ve been frantically cruising the Internet in search of the “lascivious” material that the Senate voted to punish with two years in jail. It’s a primordial urge most of us have: Ban something and we all want to see it. Not as a prurient interest, mind you, but only as research. We can handle it even if others can’t.

As a kid I carefully researched a smuggled copy of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” Now that Miller’s works are legal, they hardly fly off bookstore shelves, but that’s censorship for you.

Ah, but, the senators warn, the Internet is intrinsically more threatening than any smuggled book. It is, as a form, a voyage into the unknown, the mind escaping the body and wandering loosey-goosey in cyberspace like an acid trip without the drug. It easily conjures up fantasies that titillate our virginal expectations. We’ve all known books, but how many of us have ever gone interactive and on-line?

Unfortunately, I have, for 15 years now. And like many of life’s promises, anticipation proved to be the major reward. I first got hooked at Radio Shack when one of the earliest of the wired sold me the mysterious software permitting entry to a now defunct on-line service called “The Source.” It wasn’t the source of much except endless “chats” with people who had nothing to say. I kept thinking the problem must be me since the technology was obviously so wonderful.

In those days, 300 baud seemed wild. Now I putz around at almost 100 times that speed. But for sexual stimulation, I’d still rather watch an Elvis rerun. Not to mention one of those blue movies on Showtime and HBO. Perhaps you noticed that while the Senate sought to chill the Internet, it further freed cable and broadcast operators from government control.

It is absurd to suggest that the Internet can rival the vast “ethernet” of sexual stimulation that embraces our every waking moment, from the tacky exhibitionism that now dominates daytime television to the slasher films that take over at night. For interactive there’s always the newspaper personal ads. Anyway, the existing obscenity and very tough child pornography laws already cover on-line, so why the Senate’s panic?

The answer is that it’s easy for politicians to play on the public’s fear of the unknown. And what could be more unknown to most parents than the workings of a computer modem? It’s the old problem of kids doing something different from their parents, whether it’s skateboarding, rap or even as namby-pamby as spending a lot of hours on America Online. So we put the worst spin on it. All that’s required for a new round of repression are a few anecdotes about how the devil got into the lyrics or the modem and led some 13-year-old astray.

Suddenly the frame of reference turns negative. The emphasis is on the danger that lurks behind every door rather than the joys of exploration. But any kid who develops the competence to cruise the Internet will learn far more that is positive than otherwise. There are also risks in reading the wrong books in a public library, but encountering them is part of growth. What arenas are truly risk-free in modern life? And where are the parents in this risk management? Is it asking too much for them to become sufficiently computer literate to guide their child’s journey? Or to restrict modem access to that which accords with a family’s values? Time on-line requires billing, and generally some parent’s credit card is paying. Check it out before you ask the government to do it for you.

Anyway, the government can’t. Not a free one. The only nations that have been effective in preventing access to the Internet are those that decide who will own a computer and make a habit of tapping their citizens’ phone lines. But that won’t work for players in the modern global economy.

For better and worse, the Internet is an ultimately uncontrollable exercise in international free speech of unprecedented proportions. The problem with freedom is that it is value-free; the good, the bad and the ugly all get to play. There is no way to stop a fool or a degenerate from setting up a bulletin board somewhere in this vast world that might also be available to a curious citizen of some distant country. But after half a century of claiming to be the champion of the free world, it is unbecoming, as well as impractical, for the Senate to now try to put the genie of freedom back into the bottle.