Internet gambling and pornography: illustrative examples of the psychological consequences of communication anarchy. Storm A. King Pacific Graduate School of Psychology Cite as; King, S. A. (1999). Internet gambling and pornography: illustrative examples of the psychological consequences of communication anarchy. CyberPsychology and Behavior, Vol. 2, 3, 175-184. Abstract Two areas of Internet behavior, gambling and pornography distribution, are examined for what they reveal about the profound social and psychological changes caused by recent advances in communication technology. The overview of these domains clearly shows that there will be an expected increase in people presenting for treatment with Internet behavior related difficulties, and that their treatment will be, at present, uninformed by any specific empirical research. These two domains are used as examples to illustrate how the Internet is creating a paradigm shift in the basic nature of an individuals relationships to local, state and federal governments. It is no longer possible for people, even minors, to be fully protected by their governments from material deemed harmful by the community one lives in. This is demonstrated by a review of the current availability, in millions of homes nation-wide, of the opportunity to experience Internet casino gambling and to acquire pornographic material not sold in United States adult bookstores. The psychological effect of the increased need for individual responsibility in the access to potentially harmful domains is not well understood at this time. This article is a call for the kind of basic research that will delineate the base rates for pathological involvement in online gambling and pornography, as a means of discovering the potential negative psychological consequences of the inability to regulate Internet content. an·ar·chy (àn¹er-kê) noun 1. Absence of any form of political authority. From the Latin anarchia, without a ruler. [1] The Internet is anarchy. No one owns it, no one controls it, no government has political authority over it. There are no precedents for the types of social changes that the Internet is bringing. Psychologists have barely begun to understand the social and interpersonal dynamics of on-line behavior. In just the last few years, the Internet has progressed from the being the domain of the tech savvy and a badge of geekdom, to being an essential part of individual and business life. There are now over 30 million Americans that are deemed 'technologically savvy', in that they can not only access and use the Internet but also understand technical aspects of computer use [2]. The nature of the media hype, where web addresses are advertised extensively in all commercial mediums and where the benefits of being online are dramatized for everyone on a daily basis, would lead one to believe that being on-line was essential. Not having an email address, or a web site for a business, is to be seen as so far behind the times that it is a shameful state. Is the Internet truly an information panacea? Or, is there a dark side to this most wonderful, exciting ability to connect to anywhere anytime? It is the purpose of this commentary to point out some important areas where the data, and the methodology for research, is simply missing. Areas of intense Internet traffic for which we have little or no idea what the social significance will be. This article is a call for basic research that will establish base rates for significant Internet interpersonal and intrapersonal behavior. The paradigm shift is this: people can no longer turn to local, national, or world governing bodies to enact legislation that will protect them from areas online that are deemed harmful. There will never be the equivalent of the Federal Drug Administration that will allow only approved web sites to have medical content, yet thousands of people look up medical information online every day. Local authorities can no longer impose it's community standards as to what is deemed pornographic online, or legislate that no online adult only sites will exist in their county. It seems to be missed at times that the Internet is truly word wide, and not just an American phenomena. No matter what effort the United States government puts into attempts to pass and enforce Communication Decency Acts, there is no way to censor the Internet. There are pornography shops and casinos and racist hate messages available for the click of a mouse in millions and millions of homes world wide. Judging this situation as bad or good is a moot point. It is just a very, very different state of affairs than existed in the early 90's. It is time mental health professionals started the process of rigorous investigations to determine what, if any, psychological consequences are occurring. In seeking to understand the psychological consequences of Internet use, it is tempting to look at the effects of the emergence of past mass communications technologies. However, there is a fundamental difference between the Internet and previous communication technologies. The Internet places the possibility of world wide broadcasting into the hands of ordinary people. This article will examine two domains to illustrate how this world wide networking is changing the nature of the social contract that Americans have with their local, state and federal government. Online gambling is wide spread, pervasive and increasingly used in the United States even though most all of the servers that run the casino programs are located off-shore. Online pornography is also examined to show how the lowest common international denominator for what is considered legal pornography is now available everywhere. Local governments no longer have the ability to set community standards for what is considered pornographic. Very little is known about the social and psychological consequences of this situation. There is a glaring need for basic research to establish base rates. How many people access online pornography? How many people gamble online? Once the base rates are known, a lot more can be said about the potential for psychological problems. It is not even clear at this time what percentage of clients in therapy are being treated for problematic Internet related behavior. Free speech online: What is yelling 'Fire' in a crowded chat room? Nothing that is illegal becomes legal just because it occurs on the Internet. The laws that protect free speech in the United States do not allow for acts that can directly damage another, such as falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. The laws against gambling and certain kinds of pornography apply to the Internet just as they would to any communication technology. The Federal Trade Commission, working with state officials, recently arrested 67 people in a sweep of Internet based pyramid money scam schemes [3]. Another example can be found in the new area of online pharmacies. These companies expect to profit from the ease of access and the anonymity of the Internet by filling prescriptions over the Internet. These companies must be licensed to fill prescriptions in every state they do business in [4]. What is at issue is the ability of local, state or federal government to enforce such existing laws in an online world wide environment that is beyond political control. The 1996 Telecom Bill's "Communications Decency" amendment attempted to place restrictions on Internet material deemed unsuitable for children. This amendment was found to be unconstitutional, as it tried to place stricter relations on online material then existed off line. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org) put out a press release at that time, and quoted Lori Fena as follows: "What this means is that the responsibility for controlling our content lies on us -- the citizens and the parents -- and this is a call for all of us once again to demonstrate how we can be trusted to use this medium responsibly. This means that the parents, rather than the government, are empowered to make the choices about Internet content." [5]. The courts decision is also an affirmation that in the United States, Internet content can not easily be controlled by any form of political authority. Other countries may still have a chance to implement different methods of dealing with unsuitable Internet content. In Saudi Arabia, all Internet service providers must be licensed, and that license requires them to get their Internet content only from an authorized government service that filters out unwanted material. It remains to be seen how countries that are not devoted to protecting First Amendment rights to free speech will cope with the coming emergence of satellite communications that will directly link home personal computers to the Internet. What will the psychological effects be when extremely religious Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia have to face the fact that any of their citizens can now access previously forbidden material (pornography) and engage in forbidden behavior (gambling) from the privacy of their own home? In Oct., 1998, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law a new "sequel" to the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act. This new Internet censorship bill, the Child Online Protect Act (COPA, a.k.a. "CDA II") would establish criminal penalties for any "commercial" distribution of material deemed "harmful to minors". The numerous problems with this legislation include overbreadth, vagueness of definitions of key terms such as "commercial", an illegal attempt to force adults to give up privacy to exercise their right to read, prior restraints on publication, and a flawed "community standards" approach that would allow the most conservative jurisdiction in the US country to set the "decency" standards for all Web content nationally (indeed globally). [6] A District Court Judge in Philadelphia has issued a temporary restraining order preventing the government from enforcing the COPA. "The content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought," wrote Judge Reed in his decision. "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection." [7]. When a web site that promoted anti-abortion by listing 200 abortion doctors and their addresses was court ordered removed from the web,[8] the same material reappeared on an overseas web server almost immediately. It is beyond the scope of this commentary to try to address all the nuances in the ongoing effort to clarify the legal issue of what constitutes free speech on the Internet and what may be considered speech that could directly damage another. The interested reader is directed to web sites like www.eff.org (Electronic Frontier Foundation) or www.epic.org (Electronic Privacy Information Center) or www.cdt.org (The Center For Democracy & Technology) for a more detailed and current review of this ongoing, thorny legal issue. It is the purpose of this commentary to point out the need for research that will elaborate on the psychology involved when people are exposed for the first time to material they were previously protected from. It is clear that, regardless of how much Internet content and behavior may be deemed illegal now or in the future, people in the United States will continue to have access to whatever anyone world wide can implement on the Internet. It is up to the individual consumer to protect themselves from content and behavior they find problematic. Some people will not be able to show appropriate restraint. An unknown number of people are at this moment addicted to online gambling or pornography. This can be said with assurance, due to the simple extrapolation of data generated by studies of addiction to traditional gambling and pornographic consumption behavior. What is not known, and what desperately needs to be researched, is how many people are finding exposure to online gambling or pornography problematic, that would not otherwise have such an impulse control disorder? The purpose of the following two sections is to offer a broad overview of the current state of availability regarding online gambling and pornography. This will delineate the tremendous differences between this material and its accompanying behavior as it occurs online, versus traditional forms it has taken in the past. This clear understanding of how online pornography and gambling are different from traditional pornography and gambling will help researchers to find a starting point. Research must determine what the potential adverse psychological consequences can be, due to the easy exposure to what was previously available only with great effort and/or risk. Internet Gambling "The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen." George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Speech, 11 April 1933, New York City. There are 280 web sites that offer online gambling for real money. All of them may be considered illegal. Online betters are expected to gamble 2.3 billion dollars a year by 2001 [9]. The United States Attorney Generals' Office has a task force investigating online gambling. Since 1997, only 3 gambling web site operators have been charged with infractions of gambling laws. There is a bill before Congress to outlaw Internet gambling, but it is not clear how this law will be enforced if it passes. "My bill will protect children from logging on to the family computer, borrowing the family credit card, and losing the family home, all before their parents get home from work," said Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), author of the Online Gambling Prohibition Act [10] (Note: all online gambling sites reviewed for this article imposed an initial approximate 500 dollar deposit limit, making losing "the family home" highly improbable). Critics of this bill say that, not only is it unenforceable, but regulating online gambling is a better solution then attempting to ban it altogether. Most all the computer sites that host gambling on the Internet are physically outside the jurisdiction of the United States. The Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) at http://www.igcouncil.org/ is an organization with a mission to "advance common interests in the global interactive gaming industry; to establish fair and responsible trade guidelines and practices that enhance consumer confidence in interactive gaming products and services, and to serve as the industry’s public policy advocate and information clearinghouse." (see http://www.igcouncil.org/ ) There is a FAQ (frequently asked questions) document at this site, and the first question is "Can Internet gambling be prohibited?" After a thorough explanation of the effects of regulation as opposed to a total ban of online gambling the IGC concludes with: "In summary, an outright prohibition would be technologically difficult, if not impossible, to enforce on suppliers of interactive wagering services, and equally troubling to enforce on the demand side of the equation." This restates John Gilmore's often quoted comment of "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." The IGC also has posted a Code of Conduct that includes suggestions for how to deal with such issues as regulatory compliance accountability, consumer privacy, data protection and truth in advertising (see http://www.igcouncil.org/code.html). Many online gambling sites have agreed to adhere to this code and post an emblem on their site to verify their compliance with these suggested regulations. This is an attempt by this new, highly profitable Internet industry to self regulate in an effort to forestall external bans and imposed regulations. The need for this type of self regulation is another example of the anarchy of the Internet, where local governments are incapable of regulating content on world wide communication networks. It is estimated that somewhere between one and three percent of adults in the United States could be diagnosed with the disorder Pathological Gambling, as it is defined by the American Psychiatric Association [11]. Pathological gamblers can cause great harm to themselves and others with their behavior and are often unsuccessful in their attempts to stop. The major difference between online gambling and traditional means of gambling is the ease of access available online. One online gambler reported the effect of this as follows: "If I go to a casino, when I lose my stake I go home. Internet gambling is very hard for me to stop, because it is in my home." (Anonymous personal message to author, February, 1999). Teenagers who would be unable to enter a traditional casino can go online and gamble. All they need is a valid credit card. One woman who lost more than $70,000 gambling online has filed a lawsuit in an effort to avoid paying her credit card bills, on the ground that wagering on the Internet is illegal [12]. "Not only does online gambling threaten to increase the number of compulsive gamblers overall, it threatens to change the demographics of this group. Despite state efforts to control access to gaming through strict age or income restrictions [13] , gambling addiction in the U.S. today is growing fastest among high school and college youths. [14] In an online environment of anonymous identity, the ease with which teenagers and children can access Internet gambling, coupled with their proclivity for gambling addiction, will exacerbate this worrisome trend. Moreover, today's Internet users, who are predominantly young affluent males, make up a demographic segment that is particularly at risk to gambling addiction.[15]" [16] Cynthia Janower, author of the above quote, wrote in 1996 that "even if might be desirable to halt the development of online gaming, it is unlikely that any government can do so."[17]. The inability of local, state, or federal governments to control the content of Internet sites is a phenomena that is causing a change in the manner in which people in the United States (individually and collectively) relate to their government. The psychological effects of this paradigm shift are unknown at this time. Every government has policies regarding gambling by their citizens. Some prohibit it, while others heavily regulate it. In contrast, Internet gambling is anarchy within our midst; It's an arena where no rules apply and no public policies are applicable. The future of Internet gambling will be shaped by the struggle between government's attempt to control the behavior of its citizens against the technical and other problems involved in enforcing such policies [18] The online gambling experience. Advertisements for online gambling sites are appearing all over the Web, some in very prominent cyberspaces. One gambling site had an add banner on AltaVista Discovery, a new search tool from one of the most recognized names in web searching. In preparing this commentary, the author logged on to and registered with several Internet gambling sites. It was not necessary to gamble with real money, as most of the sites offer the opportunity to gamble just for fun. It was necessary to register with the site even to play for 'funny' money. All that is required to start gambling for real money very quickly is the information contained on the face of a valid Visa or Master Card. The manner in which online gambling sites advertise themselves is seen in this listing from a web search for gambling sites: Casino Sunrise - INTERNET CASINO - VIRTUAL CASINO - INTERNET GAMBLING The Multimedia Casino on the Net !!! The Best Internet Enabled Casino - Complete Secured Internet Server - Fully Licensed and... INTERNET GAMBLING - Casino Gambling - Virtual Casino Sites where you can gamble. Voted No. 1 Online Casino. Experience the THRILL of cyber gambling - the BEST Online Casino on the Internet. Play for FREE or for real money.... Casino Gambling - Virtual Casino Sites where you can gamble and win big money. The best casino on the Internet to gamble with real money. With secure credit card transaction. Come, visit us and win real cash and our jackpot! INTERNET GAMBLING - Casino Gambling - Virtual Casino Sites where you can gamble. Click Here To Enter The Casino Lounge Internet Casino. Adult Sites NFL, NV, Odds, online gaming, Pai-Gow, 1st Bet Internet Casino. One of the first sites examined was one of the oldest online casinos, Internet Casino, at http://www.casino.org/ The first screen at this site contains the following warning: Special Notice to all Citizens of The USA: If gambling or depositing funds with Internet Casino or it's affiliates constitutes illegal activity in your state or jurisdiction, please do not gamble or deposit funds with us. No gaming funds will be accepted from the residents of: (Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, and Wisconsin) NOTICE TO INDIANA RESIDENTS: WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED THAT IT IS ILLEGAL FOR YOU TO USE OUR SERVICES OR OTHERWISE TO GAMBLE OVER THE INTERNET. More typical of warnings found on online gambling sites are ones that leave it up to the consumer to determine if they are breaking the law, such as the following: ALESCO Limited is fully licensed and regulated by the laws of British Virgin Islands, for the purpose of operating virtual casino gambling on the Internet under the name: Casino Sunrise. Such gambling, however, may not be legal in some jurisdictions under certain conditions, and in some jurisdictions may not be legal under any conditions. Please verify the laws in your jurisdiction before registering and read carefully our terms and conditions. US citizens: please note that the courts in the states of Missouri and Minnesota have interpreted on-line gambling to be unlawful. Despite the above warning, the author was able to log on and, pretending to be a resident of Missouri, was issued the password and logon name needed to play for real money. Most gambling sites require that the consumer download and install a program in order to access the online casino. These programs are from 2 meg to 10 meg files, with most being around 4 meg. These programs install the graphics that one sees while one is gambling. One site, Classic Casino (http://www.classiccasino.com/) offers two different software versions, standard and erotic (adult-oriented). Members of online service content providers as America On-Line (AOL) or The Microsoft Net (MSN) do not support Internet access programs like these casino downloads. The online gambling establishment is now providing sites that do not require any download to gamble for real money, thus making their casino available to the millions of subscribers of AOL and MSN. These web based sites are often available in addition to the download software. The Internet Casino offers such a web-only gambling site. It is required that a valid email address be given, at which point a user name (picked by the consumer) and a password chosen by the site software are immediately emailed to the consumer. Upon receipt of the assigned password, one can log on to the web site and gamble, starting with a 1,000 dollars of play money. Each scene of the play gambling has a prominent link at the bottom of the page that says "click here to play for real money." Each site reviewed had slightly different requirements in terms of the information needed to register. All sites needed a valid email address. All requested a name and address and most wanted a phone number. Some required you affirm that you were over 18 years old. One site asked for one's mothers maiden name, which seemed like it could be potentially a large violation of a person's privacy, as that is the information used by most United States banks when setting up a bank account. Most sites reviewed had a 500 dollar deposit limit that was in effect until the person received (by regular snail mail) a letter containing an assigned password. This assured that the address given was in fact the one used by the credit card holder. Many of the sites shared the same software, and differed only in the graphical interface the users interacted with. For example, USA Casino (http://www.usacasino.com/) and Diamond Club (http://www.diamondclubcasino.com/) both have graphics that are sharp and realistic, and both used the exact same format for registering, logging on and ordering credit transfers. Both used the same outside company to handle the credit transactions. All online gambling sites used outside companies to handle credit card transactions. These companies, with names like CryptoLogic, provided financial services that enable secure electronic banking and electronic payment on the Internet. The experience of gambling online was seductively real. This was especially true on newer sites that offered advanced graphics and sound. When one clicks with the mouse on these sites to place a chip on a roulette table, there is a realistic sound of the chip hitting the table. One can see and hear the ball drop into the spinning roulette wheel. When cards are dealt on an online blackjack table, one can hear the swish they make as they glide over the table. There are options for animation and sound that enable one to hear a voice of the dealer state the outcome, as in "dealer has 21, player loses." Video slot machines have a realistic movement of the slot wheels that mimic what one would see while using a video slot machine at a real casino. The following pictures are provided to show the extent of the realism available in an online gambling casino. Two different pictures of roulette tables are provided, from two different online casinos, to show the difference in graphics between online casinos. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- insert figures one, two, three and four here (Cas11.bmp, Cas22.bmp, Cas33.bmp, Cas44.bmp ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- How online gambling differs from real casinos. The first part of researching the psychological consequences of the availability of online gambling must include a thorough understanding of how the gambling experience differs online from that of a real life casino. The most important difference is the ease of access to online gambling. The ability to log on to an online gambling site and wager real money from the comfort and convenience of one's own home is a remarkable new state of affairs. Many people want to be able to gamble recreationally by betting small amounts on their favorite sports team. Online sports wagering, available from lots of online gambling sites, is a dramatic new means of satisfying the demand for this form of gambling. This availability factor has unique advantages and disadvantages. For example: "Solitary gambling at home over the Internet also lacks the social and environmental experience of an actual casino. A large part and draw of the casino experience is the spontaneous sights and sounds of a live casino. These can include the personalities of other players, the challenge of beating a live dealer, and the shared excitement and attention of a winning streak. A virtual casino lacks these elements. To a small segment of the population, however, the solitude of Internet gambling may be an advantage. Some persons actually do not like standing next to a cigar smoking heavy equipment operator from Buffalo named Mugsy who yells "Baby needs new shoes" at the top of his lungs on every throw of the dice. Others (e.g. politicians and evangelists) may prefer the anonymity of in home gambling. Still others may be physically unable to travel to the casinos or are not of legal age. These small market segments, however, may suffice to create a thriving industry."[19] A subtle, but important difference between online gambling and real casino gambling is the time available to the gamble to make bets. In a real casino, the action does not stop. One has only a limited amount of time to decide to hit a black jack hand, or how many chips to place on a roulette table. Online, one can take as much time as one wants. One has more true control over the online gambling experience, and, possibly, a subjective feeling of being more in charge. One of the many potential negative differences between online gambling and real life casinos is the fact that online, one is playing against a software program and the odds of winning are not as fixed as in real life. It may seem like a true blackjack table online, but the computer controls the cards and the outcome. In a real casino, at a roulette table, one can calculate with certainty the odds against any particular bet. Online, this does not hold true. Even when online casinos state they have a standard pay-off percentage (and most sites do have such a disclaimer) one can not be sure that the odds of winning are what they would be in a real casino. One of the hallmarks of pathological gambling is lying about how much one gambles, or trying to hide how much one gambles from friends and family. Online gambling can occur in total privacy, and be more easily hidden form significant others. By not having to leave the home to go gambling, one can avoid much of the scrutiny that problem gamblers often face. It is possible to have an online gambling site currently running on one's computer right along with other applications, like word processing, so that it can look to others as if they are engaged in benign activities. Summary of online gambling The legal or illegal nature of online gambling web sites is an open question. A thorough review of the applicable federal laws is provided in an article by Mark W. Rickard, titled "Virtual Casino: Illegal?" written for an Internet and the Law Seminar held at the University of Miami School of Law. It is available online at http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/seminar/papers/rickard.htm. Regardless of it's legality, online gambling, including online sports wagering, is a rapidly expanding business that is only going to continue to grow. Simply put, whether Internet gaming is legal is irrelevant because governments can do little to prevent it [20]. "Perhaps the only pressure which is greater than the moral pressures placed on the United States government to prevent the spread of [online] gaming is the economic pressure which it will face given the potential of Internet gaming revenues. Licensing by foreign nations seems likely, and that in turn will apply pressure on the United States to follow in like fashion. As the Internet shrinks the world, American policy will undoubtedly be influenced by world views and concepts in the same way that America's cultural values impact the rest of the world. Thus, the ability to derive income through an operator licensing regulatory scheme may ultimately be the impetus which causes a rethinking or reapplication of the law" [21]. Gaming addiction expert, Dr. Robert Hunter of Las Vegas, Nevada, suggests that gaming addictions could reach an unprecedented level now that gaming is accessible over the Internet. Computer users can frequently fit the specific personality profile that typifies potential gaming addicts: frequently introverted, mentally preoccupied and obsessive [22]. It must be emphasized that this article is not a moral argument for or against online gambling (or for or against online pornography in the next section). These domains are used only as examples of the types of new online behaviors that mental health professionals have little of no empirical research to back up their efforts to help people for whom access to these domains is problematic. This article is an attempt to point out where holes in our understanding of online behavior exist, and a call for basic research to fill these holes. As yet there is no empirical research to show one way or the other if online gambling is increasing the number of pathological gamblers in the United States or not. There are no studies of the psychological effects of having illegal gambling suddenly available in millions of homes world wide. This is a huge gap in our understanding of how communication technology advances, and the anarchical nature of the Internet, are affecting human behavior. Internet pornography "My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm— as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy." Camille Paglia (b. 1947), U.S. author, critic, educator. Sex, Art, and American Culture, Introduction (1992). Pornography is a controversial subject. Some people claim that it is benign, a welcome addition to their erotic sexual life. Others claim that it is almost always a denigration of women and has no redeeming social value at all. Either way, there is now pornography available on the Internet of a type and quality that is not available in any adult bookstore in the United States. This material may be legal in other countries, such as bestiality pictures that are legally sold in adult stores in Amsterdam, or it may be of a type (child pornography) that is illegal everywhere. The Internet has recently changed the nature of pornography consumption in the United States, and research has not kept up with this change. There are many parallels to the situation with online pornography to the recent availability of online gambling. In both cases the law (or the ability to enforce the law) is murky, and both cases can be conceived of as "victimless crimes" (a concept that this author finds rather oxymoronic). The potential for addiction to online pornography exists, as it does for online gambling, but is a pathology even less understood and less likely to present for treatment. As with online gambling, online web sites featuring pornography are advertised all over the web. Like online gambling, online pornography has sprung up overnight into a huge money making enterprise. As with online gambling, easy access by minors fuels the controversy over attempts to ban or regulate online pornography. In both cases, people who are compulsive in their use of gambling or pornography may have their main coping strategy (of staying away from sources) sabotaged by online availability. It is not the simple availability of pornography online that has created a need for basic research, it is the easy availability of types of pornography previously available only with great expense and or personal risk that is the poorly understood development. In an article on sexuality and the Internet, Al Cooper delineated three factors he termed the Three A's that give the Internet a unique and important effect on people who use it to enhance their sex life. These factors are access, affordability and anonymity [23]. Online pornography is easily accessible, can be found in large quantities for free on the UseNet, and can be 'consumed' from the privacy and anonymity of one's own home. It is these free UseNet bulletin boards, where pornographic material is exchanged world wide, that will be reviewed in this article .The purpose will be to point out where psychological research has not kept up with the advances in communication technology. There are uncounted web sites that charge a monthly access fee to view pornography collections, and others sites that are password protected. There are also Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, where people communicate in real time, that are devoted to trading pornography. These site are beyond the scope of this review and were not accessed. A review of pornographic UseNet groups provides the most salient illustration of the psychological consequences of easy access to Internet pornography, as the two main web browsing software (Netscape and Internet Explorer) in use today both come with newsgroup readers, making access to pornography UseNet groups technologically a vary simple matter. All Internet content providers, like AOL, also offer access to UseNet groups. UseNet groups are also called newsgroups. Like in the review of online gambling, no laws were broken in this review of UseNet pornographic bulletin boards. "The UseNet, one of the most unique and popular aspects of the Internet, is merely a system of public newsgroups which are "neither owned by anyone nor subject to any central authority." [24] It is helpful to conceive of the UseNet as a "floating system" of discussion groups administered by some relatively simple organizational software. [25] Invented in 1980 by students at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, [26] the UseNet remains one of the Internet's more popular activities, consisting in 1996 of about 17,000 public newsgroups that are "created and maintained by users at sites throughout the United States and the world." [27] As it works, when someone posts a message to a newsgroup, the message is propagated from computer to computer until it reaches every system on the Usenet." [28] While web sites that sell pornography take in about one billion dollars a year [29], there are hundreds of UseNet groups that exchange all kinds of pornography for free. There are even programs that are sold online that are designed to sort the pictures from the plain text messages on UseNet groups, and save them automatically to one's hard drive. Most Internet service providers allow access to all UseNet groups, and make the last 30 days worth of postings available at any one time. Some groups get so many messages and pictures posted to them that Internet service providers can archive only a week or so of notes. The how and why of cyber-sexuality. Volume 22, Number 1 (1998) of the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy was devoted to the topic of Internet related sexuality. In an excellent academic review of the use of the Internet by people with abnormal sexual desires, Kim and Bailey stated they found, in 1998, 68 news groups at that time with the word "fetish" in their title, like alt.sex.fetish.feet, a discussion group for people with a foot fetish [30]. The authors outline the process by which people with a paraphilia (possessing a sexual arousal pattern involving abnormal objects or situations that, to some degree, is egodystonic) find others with similar interests online to share with and exchange pornography with. "The Internet may be a haven for people who are looking for such desired objects or avenues to pursue their paraphilic behavior." [31] Several shocking examples are given of messages from people looking for animals to have sex with. "The potential for finding a suitable partner of fetish objects through a (newsgroup) posting is dramatically increased, as the audience is large and spread out all over the world." [32] This ability to find one's peers online, no matter how esoteric the topic of interest, is fueling the explosion in virtual community formation [33] and causing some people to spend so much time online that their Internet use becomes problematic for them [34]. Cyber-dating and cyber-romances, and the whole notion of Internet facilitated intimate interpersonal relationships, is another area that psychological research has not adequately addressed. While this review will focus on Internet pornography, many of the same points about the effect of the Three A's (access, affordability and anonymity) apply to cyber romances also. This author has presented at several psychology conferences, talking about Internet interpersonal relationships. At each of four presentations, the audience, composed of psychologists and mental health workers, was asked to raise their hand if they knew of someone (friend, family or client) that had partaken in a cyber-romance. Each time, of the approximately 50 people in the audience, about half the hands went up. This impromptu polling does indicate the wide spread use of the net by people for satisfaction of their intimacy desires. It is unknown at this time how many of these cyber-romances became problematic for the participants. To the Three A's described above, I would add another one. Acceptability. It is now considered acceptable to use the Internet to meet and date others. This acceptability most likely extends to the use of the net to acquire and indulge in pornography. The use of real time chat rooms (IRC or AOL chat rooms) for flirtatious encounters is a well know phenomena. In an age when promiscuous sex can be lethal, sexual encounters in real time chat rooms on the Internet offer what may seem an innocuous and safe outlet for sexual desires. These encounters are, essential, mutual masturbation sessions, where participants send and receive erotic messages to each other. People use the anonymity of the net to experiment with gender swapping and will often mis-represent their age or other details, as it is not expected that such an encounter will lead to a lasting relationship. Other chat rooms and email lists are devoted to singles looking for true relationships. The author is aware of one case where a middle aged woman, over the course of 4 years, had 3 consecutive intimate relationships with men she first met online. Another report that is typical of online sexual behavior is the case of a man who met, dated, and then moved from the United States to Germany to marry. Does the world wide nature of the Internet, and it's ability to assist finding people of similar interests, create more opportunity for happy ending romances? Or does the false sense of intimacy engendered by the nature of text based relationships [35] (which lead one to self-disclose rapidly) cause there to be more heartache then would be otherwise? Child Pornography No other subject, in the area of what can now be accessed online, is as fraught with emotional connotations and cries for censorship as the existence of Internet child pornography. The fear and suspicion around this topic goes so far that even academic researchers, especially if they are male, that have an honest desire to study the social effects of child porn are often suspected of having a covert interest in consuming such material. This topic is given it's own section here for two reasons. One, as opposed to most other forms of pornography, it is not possible to consider 'kiddy porn' to be a victimless crime. It is always a double crime, once in the making of it and again in the possession of it. Another reason to single it out here is that it's existence and proliferation online is the best example of the current easy availability of illegal material that used to be acquired only at great risk. "Child pornography.... and its availability and distribution should be regulated whether on the Internet (or) elsewhere. But the main concern should remain as the prevention of child abuse - the involvement of children in the making of pornography or its use to groom them to become involved in abusive acts, rather than discussion and fantasy. Child pornography is not only 'crime scene photographs' of child sexual abuse and exploitation but also a possible criminal tool for future abuse and exploitation of other children. Child pornography is considered 'illegal' in many countries so there is no need to single it out as special illegal content on the Internet. .....The production of child pornography is itself an act of child molestation or sexual abuse." [36]. As opposed to the operators of online gambling sites, people who produce and disseminate online child pornography are being actively pursued by law enforcement personnel world wide. Most all cases of arrests reviewed for this article involved people who had sent child pornography over the Internet. It would seem that the simple procurement of Interent child pornography is not enough to warrant investigation at this time. As early as 1995 there was an international investigation of a pedophile ring who used the Internet to distribute graphic pictures of child pornography. Nine British men were arrested as a result of the operation, which involved other arrests in Europe, America, South Africa and the Far East. The operation identified 37 men world wide. Detective Inspector David Davis, head of West Midlands Police Commercial Vice Squad stated that: "The pictures ranged from nudity, through erotica to explicit sexual material involving children, one as young as three."[37] Have these world wide law enforcement efforts been successful? The answer to this is a profound no. The reason that these efforts have not stemmed the tide of online child porn is at the heart of how the Internet is communication anarchy, and reveals a lot about the psychology that must be better understood if people are going to be helped for any Internet related pathology. Here is a proposed hypothetical explanation of what law enforcement is up against in this area: Someone using an anonymous email address posts a child porn picture to alt.sex.binaries.pre-teen (a free, universally accessible UseNet newsgroup). 100 people download and view this picture. Only 5 save it, the rest delete it right away. The original poster is arrested (he sent the picture in private to an undercover law enforcement official) and his computer files are destroyed. Two years later, one of the 5 people still in possession of this picture decides they can safely post it to share with others (due to being confident that his phony email address is completely untraceable). 100 people download and view this picture. Only 5 save it, the rest delete it right away. Just viewing the subject headers for the newsgroup alt.pictures.erotica.pre-teen revealed 2621 messages posted in a typical five day period. Sorting these messages by size, and counting only the ones with greater than 150 lines as being pictures, there were 1330 pictures posted in this five day sample. It was not necessary to actually view any child pornography to acquire these numbers. The following screen capture picture of a sample of the subject headers is offered here to demonstrate the varied nature of and types of labels used for pictures posted to this group. The screen names of the people posting the notes have been partially blanked out, to avoid any possibility of compromising their anonymity. ------------------------------------------------------- insert figure 5 here (Por11.bmp) ------------------------------------------------------ One would think that Internet content providers like AOL, as opposed to Internet service providers, would restrict access to harmful pornographic sites. This is not the case, and most AOL subscribers report getting more spam email pornography solicitations then subscribers of other less used Internet service providers. It may be that pornographic web sites target the largest possible audience, and AOL is the largest Internet content provider. In a 1995 Congressional Investigation, Barry F. Crimmins testified as follows: "There is a major crime wave taking place on America's computers. The proliferation of child pornography trafficking has created an anonymous "Pedophile Superstore." As a result, the de facto decriminalization of child pornography is taking place. The demand for child pornography is also a demand for innocent children to be abused. Child pornography is not protected speech. It is crime evidence. .....Working both under my own name and undercover (often with a profile that clearly stated I was 12 years old), I have been sent over a thousand pornographic photographs of children... I have seen every possible type of sexual degradation of children, from toddlers to teens. ....Among the services available on AOL is something called the "People Connection." People Connection is a three-tiered structure. The first two tiers or areas are accessible to anyone using the service unless the parental control software is utilized to limit a child's access. ...The third tier consists of private rooms. These are not publicly listed and are often used to rendezvous with other members without providing the rest of AOL's members access to the private electronic gathering. For several months, I did not discover the member rooms until I was informed that there was a regular meeting of Abuse Survivors in this area. Before I could find the Abuse Survivors' room on the member scroll, I came upon numerous atrocious rooms. Many were obviously created by, and for, pedophiles. There were rooms promoting rape, incest, the exchange of child pornography, hate crimes, and every possible, and in some cases impossible, sexual activity. If one could imagine it, it was there. The first time I found the Abuse Survivors' room, it was located between a room called "DadsNDaughtrs" and another entitled "lilboypix." ...... This testimony is the result of over six months of research. It documents something the American people need to know: not only are their children unsafe on America Online, their children are unsafe because of it." [38]. While this testimony was directed at AOL, (and reflectes what was current in 1995), it is unfair to single AOL out as being any more noncomplient than any other Internet service provider. In response to the above testimony, AOL officials assured the committee that it's policy was to fully cooperate with any law enforcement efforts to apprehend anyone disseminating child pornography. The statement "If one could imagine it, it was there'" is not unique to AOL, but it does accurately describe the availability of illegal pornographic material online. If this situation with child pornography online has been publicly known since 1995, where is the empirical research that shows the psychological consequences of this state of affairs? Are more pedophiles being created due to exposure to online child pornographic material ? Does availability of online child pornography diminish additional acts of child sexual molestation by providing an outlet for these distorted urges? How many people currently in jail for disseminating Internet child pornography where not consumers of child pornography until they found it online? What treatment protocols can be effective for pedophiles that must use the Internet as part of their daily lives? UseNet Pornography UseNet newsgroups can function as virtual communities, and they exist for every imaginable topic. People that post to the many newsgroups devoted to various forms of pornography do so out of a feeling of reciprocal altruism. The pornography newsgroups are kept alive by people posting large numbers of pornographic pictures, in the proven expectation that others will reciprocate. People can gain status and prestige in these virtual communities just as they would in other cyberspaces. In the pornography groups, this is done by frequent posting of on topic pornography, or by the origination of new material by scanning in pictures from available print pornography sources. A lot of UseNet pornography comes from subscription web sites: people pay to gain acess to online web based pornography collections and then repost these pictures to the free usenet newsgroups. One point must be clearly understood: what is legally available in Denmark (bestiality, bondage and teen porn) is now readily available and free world wide to anyone with an Internet connection. One rapidly growing area of online pornography is of a type never published before, amateur pornography. People take and develop their own pornographic photos, and then scan the pictures in, posting them for world wide consumption. As opposed to the existence of child pornography, it is debatable whether this current practice is benign or malevolent. It is unlikely to change, however. It is up to each individual to recognize and deal with the fact that what is available and considered pornographic in one area is now determined by level of the lowest common denominator world wide. If Japan allows the publication and sale of pornographic magazines depicting scantly clad 16 year olds in provocative poses, those pictures are immediately available by the score online. It is not possible to accurately know the membership of any particular newsgroup. There is no way to accurately track how many people view messages or pictures from any particular pornography newsgroup. It is only possible to count the number of messages posted to that group to get an idea of how popular that groups is. A review of the number of messages posted to various UseNet pornography newsgroups shows that the more popular ones are the ones which are devoted to types of pornography not available in adult bookstores in United States. Teen pornography, child pornography, hard core bondage and bizarre fetishes are among the largest groups. This reflects the fact that part of the attraction to Internet pornography is the ability to view pictures that are not available from traditional print sources. "My name is (deleted) and my husband has been addicted to porno on line for about three years now and sex magazines before that. I didn't realize it was a problem or maybe I wanted to ignore it. Let me say that we love each other very much and we want to try to work this out. I feel so very hurt because of him spending any of his free time with his addiction instead of me." (anonymous message to online self help group) Dana E. Putnam, Ph.D created and maintains a web site devoted to helping people that are compulsive in their sexual behavior on the World Wide Web. (see http://www.onlinesexaddict.com/) Other areas online also offer help and suggesting to anyone having problems with online pornography. The amount of traffic on these sites is considerable. A quick reading of messages posted to such online self help groups for recovery from Internet sexual addiction show that there are many people who are struggling to abstain from online pornography. Where is the empirical research that could guide psychologist and psychiatrist in formulating effective treatment plans for this growing population? In the same manner that online gambling is a new source of trouble for many pathological gamblers, online pornography is shown by the notes posted to these forums to be a problem for many, many people. (see also Friends of OnlineSexAddict at http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Villa/1295/) Simple extrapolation from studies of people addicted to traditional forms of pornography demonstrates that there are people addicted to online pornography as well. What is not known is how many are addicted to online pornography, or if online pornography addiction is more or less severe than addiction to it's traditional counterpart. There is a growing demand for software that blocks access to Internet pornography, at the point of consumption. These programs must be installed on the computer in use in order to work. With names like Net Nanny, Cybersitter, CyberPatrol and WebChaperone, and prices ranging from 30 to 50 dollars, these programs attempt to block access to web sites and newsgroups containing pornography while allowing one to access all other parts of the Internet. Ultimately, though, with the exception of clearly obscene material, it is only in the interests of protecting children that banning pornography on the Internet becomes justified. Given the regulatory and enforcement problems inherent to alt.sex.stories and other UseNet newsgroups, future products like "SurfWatch" and "Net Nanny" appear to be the right compromise needed in order to buffer the surge of obscene and indecent materials currently creating legal and political problems in this unique area of cyberspace. [39]. Conclusion The world has entered a new state of affairs regarding access to pornography and gambling. Future generations will grow up accustomed to having all sorts of information and opportunities available online and will be educated from an early age about how to deal with having a casino and an adult only bookstore in every home. For now this availability is new, a profound change from previous conditions, and very poorly understood. From a clinical psychology perspective, it is clear that this availability is causing a great many people to experience a pathological relationship to their Internet use. The results of future research are needed to guide the formulation of treatment protocols that will effectively help people who must operate Internet connected computes will trying to abstain from problematic Internet content. What are some of the research questions most in need of evaluation? In no particular order: Is the ability to access online pornography from the work place effecting worker production? Can a national (or international) phone poll determine base rates for online pornography and gambling? How many people can be expected to develop problems associated with online pornography or gambling that would not have developed such a problem if it had not been available on the Internet? What forms of treatment will be effective for people with problematic Internet behavior who have to use computers? How do people who experience a high level of moral outrage on finding child pornography easily available deal with the stress that anger causes? What are the psychological consequences when such people come to understand that they no longer have the option of passing laws to effectively ban potential harmful Internet content? Is the ease of access, and the anonymity of access, to online gambling and pornography going to cause a higher percentage of people to develop problems in this area, as opposed to the percentage of problematic uses that already exists for traditional gambling and pornography? What are the potential negative psychological consequences of the lack of political control over the Internet in areas not used as an example in this article, such as web sites with racist hat messages, sites related to cults, information of drugs and terrorist weapons or subversive militate organizations? In 1995 Marty Rimm published the results of an extensive review of pornography online. His work received a lot of criticism, due to the unethical nature of his deception of pay per view online pornography providers, and due to the rather alarmist nature of his reporting style. Still, it is amazing that 4 years later there has not been, to this authors knowledge, any follow up studies that address one of the main findings of the Rimm study: that the content, quality and quantity of pornography online, available to anyone, is radically different from what is available through traditional print media. Perhaps the valid criticism published about the Rimm study deterred other researcher from this topic. If so, it is time to rectify that. See http://trfn.pgh.pa.us/guest/mrstudy.html for the complete text of the Rimm study, and http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/cyberporn.debate.html for a collection of many of the articles critical of that study. An issue of the journal Psychology and Human Sexuality (now in press) will publish a study of Internet pornography titled "Sex, Guys, and Cyberspace: Effects of Internet Pornography and Individual Differences on Men's Attitudes toward Women." Azy Barak, the first author of the article, shared the results of his study with this author in time for it to be mentioned here as one of the few newer empirical studies in this area. Two controlled studies were done that exposed undergraduate males to Internet pornography under several different conditions. In the second study, men were administered a number of different self-report measures such as the Sexual Opinion Survey (SOS) and the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (ATWS). "The findings of Study 2 clearly support the notion that individual difference factors such as sensation seeking, hypermasculinity, and past experience with sexually explicit materials, and not exposure to sexually explicit Internet sites, may be most strongly related to the various measures of attitudes toward women. ..... The results of (the) two separate studies failed to show any detectable relationship between differential and substantial exposure to Internet pornography and men's attitudes toward women, acceptance of women as managers, likelihood of sexual harassment, or rape myth acceptance." If these findings are reliably duplicated in the additional research that this article is calling for, it would indicate that exposure to online pornography is not any more or less detrimental as exposure to print pornography. The implication of the findings is that--in contrast to former generalizations--the personality structure of the user is apparently a factor of major importance that intervenes and interacts with exposure to online pornography. Assuming that there are disturbed individuals using the Internet pornography sites, the effects on them might be quite negative in terms of antisocial attitudes and behaviors. [40]. What still needs to be addressed is any possible effect of the ease of access to online pornography, and if the anonymity of accessing this material is a factor in the overall number of people currently consuming Internet pornography. A very recent article (April, 1999) "Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological Expression" reports the results of a large survey of people that access online sex related sites [41]. Eight percent of the 9,177 who completed this extensive survey reported spending more then 11 hours a week pursuing Internet sexual activity, and experienced "significant problems typically associated with compulsive disorders." "A significant correlation was found between time spent on-line for sexual pursuits and negative effects on one's life." While this report did not specifically address Internet access to sexual related material not previously easily available, it is a strong indication that mental health professionals will be faced with treating people who's online behavior is causing difficulties for them. "The number of individuals for whom Internet sex can be problematic appears consistent with estimates made of this problem in the population at large." Sexual related behavior in this study was assessed as accessing web sites, newsgroups, chat rooms or exchanging email. It is not clear what percent of that activity was pornography consumption, as opposed to individual exchanges of erotic writings. "Most respondents (68.2%) said that their on-line (sexual related) behavior does not interfere with, nor does it jeopardize (78.8%), any areas of their lives." An alternative interpretation of the results of this self report data is that over 30 percent of people who use the Internet for sexual pursuits do report that this activity interferes with some area of their lives [42]. This article contains excellent suggestions regarding what mental health professionals need to look for in clients presenting with pathology associated with online sexual activity, as well as a comprehensive evaluation and treatment protocol for the symptoms involved. Additional research is needed to determine if it is access to material not available in United States adult bookstores that is contributing to this reported distress. Online gambling has not been a salient issue for as long as online pornography has. It is a tremendous money making industry. Online casinos have no where near the cost overhead or initial set up expenses that traditional casinos incur. As sites like amazon.com, a large online bookstore, become more and more popular, more and more people are getting accustomed to giving their credit card to an online vendor. The growing acceptability of such personal Internet commerce is paving the way for online casinos to be perceived as a trustworthy, especially as people relate to each other by word of mouth and online that their winnings online were credited to their accounts. Sports betting has a longer tradition of being an acceptable past time then casino gambling, and online sports books are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the world wide desire to bet on state and national favorite teams. The odds offered on sports events are close, if not the same, as the odds published in all major newspapers. Even if people are leery of playing casino games online due to knowing that the software program has set the payoff to an unknowable figure, this aversion does not apply to online sport betting where the published odds match that of Las Vegas. What changes will this availability and acceptability of online sports betting cause in the traditional underground sports booking industry? The effect on online sports betting is already being felt in Las Vegas Casinos. This years Superbowl and the betting on basketball during the March Madness college final tournament resulted in a noticeable decrease in the usual amounts bet in Las Vegas casinos. Ten million dollars that would normally have been bet in Las Vegas on basketball in March was bet online instead [43]. The topics of online pornography and online gambling were chosen for this review only because they fully illustrate the paradigm shift towards an increased need for individual responsibility, vers government regulation, to deal with the Internet's ability to provide access internationally to material and activities that may be illegal in any one country. It has been stated here several times that the research needed to begin to understand the psychological consequences of this new communication area is missing. It is more accurate to state that some relatively obscure journal devoted to addiction, gambling or pornography may have addressed some of these issues. Nothing had appeared in any mainstream publications untill the very recent publication of Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological Expression (reviewed above) which appeared in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. This is important because research into Internet interpersonal behavior in general is occurring, but results are appearing in wide spread separate fields. New journals are being developed just to publish issues related to the ones discussed here. CyberPsychology and Behavior is a good example. There are also two new online journals that promise to bring an increased visibility to such needed research. These are the Journal of Online Behavior at http://www.behavior.net/JOB/ and the Journal of Technology in Counseling at http://jtc.colstate.edu/home.htm. The field of study termed Computer Mediated Communication has a long history of addressing social issues raised when people interact with computers as a communication tool, but few if any of the articles published in journals in that field address the potential for pathological intrapersonal problems. There is a new field of study called Social Informatics that has developed out of the field of Computer Mediated Communication and important research, like the kind called for here, may emerge from those efforts soon. See http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html for an explanation by Rob Kling of how Social Informatics developed and what it expects to accomplish. If, as is the premise here, clinical psychology and the mental health field are not prepared to deal with the intrapersonal consequences of the current anarchical nature of Internet communications, it is certainly not ready for what will come next. Right now the available bandwidth into the average Internet users home is apparently limited to the 56k maximum that can be accommodated by the twisted pair copper wire that the existing telephone infrastructure makes universally available. This is called "the last mile barrier" because, assuming a particular home is within a mile of it's nearest telephone main switch station, a much faster connection is available just a mile away. Nearly all local main switch stations are connected to each other and thus the Internet by either optic fibers or coax cables that allow for tremendous data transmission rates. The last mile barrier will not last long, and when it goes away, Internet uses will be afforded real time video connections that are of TV size and quality, web surfing at a speeds now reserved for expensive IDS lines, and the ability to take video vacations to far away inviting places. The advantages inherent in the anonymity and asynchronous nature of email assures its continued place in online interpersonal communications, and much of the resources devoted to research psychology will rightfully continue to be expended to illuminating the nuances of text-based relationships. 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(1998). Sidesteets on the Information Superhighway: Paraphilias and sexual variations on the Internet. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 22, 1, 35 - 43. 31 same as 30, on page 35. 32 same as 30, on page 36. 33 Jabs, C. (1996). Fatal Distractions? Home PC. May, 1996. Quoting, Storm King, page 68. 34 same as 33. see generally, Young, K., Caught in the Net, 35 see Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-Mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23, 1, p3-43. or King, S. A. (1995). Effects of mood states on social judgments in cyberspace: Self focused sad people as the source of flame wars. Available: WWW at http://www.grohol.com/storm1.htm for more about the nature of text based relationships. 36 Akdeniz Y 'The Regulation of Pornography and Child Pornography on the Internet', 1997 (1) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT). Available on 03/99 at http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/internet/97_1akdz/ 37 same as 36 38 Testimony of Barry F. Crimmins. Hearing on Child Pornography on the Internet. Senate Judiciary Committee. 104th United States Congress. 24 July 1995. Available on 03/99 at http://www.idealist.com/bcrimmins/senate.html 39 same as 28. 40 Barak, A., Fisher W. A.,Belfry S., and Lashambe. D. R. (in press). Sex, Guys, and Cyberspace: Effects of Internet Pornography and Individual Differences on Men's Attitudes toward Women. Psychology and Human Sexuality 41 Cooper. A., Scherer, C. R., Boies, S. C. & Gordon, B. L (1999) Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological Expression. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. April 1999 Vol. 30, No. 2. Available on 03/99 at http://www.apa.org/journals/pro/pro302154.html#c38 42 same as 41. 43 same as 9.