ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Despite the best filters, pornography could still find its way onto children’s computer screens — but perhaps not for long.
A Maryland lawmaker believes he has come up with a simple, cost-free way to block online pornography.
Even the most innocent, innocuous commands while searching the Internet can turn up sites that make parents blush and dive for the delete button, the station reported.
The solution? Calling porn what it is by adding “.sex” to the end of the Web site address.
“As a parent, I have this wonderful research tool available that has so many land mines that are out there that I don’t want to have to explain to my children,” said Delegate Michael Smigiel Sr.
Smigiel, who is the House Deputy Minority Whip, brainstormed what he called a simple solution that he’s confident will receive wide support in the state’s General Assembly.
“This bill would require that any sexually-explicit materials sent over the Internet to have a suffix of dot-sex,” Smigiel said. “Dot sex” would be easy for computer filters to weed out because the material would be flagged at the Internet service provider level, the port where online information travels. That way, material adults deem unfit for children wouldn’t find their way into schools, libraries or home offices, the station said.
“They [ISPs] will be able to afford to do this because they could sell those names, … [they would be] able to sell that name for what the market would allow that money would be used to put in these filters,” Smigiel said.
The bill is being filled as a commercial law, not a criminal matter. ISPs that do not comply would be fined $1,000 per violation.
According to Smigiel, the feedback so far is universal.
“What took so long? Why didn’t anybody think of this before?” he said others say.