The porn dilemma

There are only a couple of people in the theater when the movie begins, but a few stragglers find their way in later. They haven't missed much. The Japanese debutante who is the star of the film hasn't gotten off her back in 20 minutes. She's wearing a pained expression and her brassiere around her waist.

If this is what is shown in Taiwan's adult movie theaters, it's no wonder nearly all of them have gone out of

business.

But there is a bigger reason this cinema on Taipei's west side is, according to its owner, the last of its kind in the city. The availability of free pornography over the Internet has led to the turnstiles of such establishments to rust and has created a problem far larger than the darkening of blue movie houses.

The problem now is pornography's potential audience no longer needs an ID to get in.

Over half of Taiwanese have access to the Internet, according to the Government Information Office, and most users are people under 30 years old. The younger the age bracket, down to the early teens, the higher the percentage of those familiar with the Web. Having lived most of their lives in a wired world, teens in Taiwan are more exposed to pornography than any generation before them.

Leading the charge against the onslaught of adult content on the local front are non-profit organizations, comprised mostly of concerned parents and women's groups, and government initiatives designed both to empower parents and hold content providers accountable.

One group is the Garden of Hope, a women's rights foundation which sees pornography as causing promiscuity and even prostitution among youths.

"Our approach has two sides," said Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), the foundation's CEO, "We fight for tougher laws against pornography on the one hand and, on the other, push to educate parents about what's out there and how they can keep their kids away from it."

The Garden of Hope helped push for the formation of another foundation established earlier this year, the Internet Rating System Promotion Foundation, that comprises Internet service providers (ISPs), government officials and acade-mics. It's armed with an annual budget of NT$15 million to use toward educating Web users and was started after it was discovered that some local Web portals were inadvertently providing space for the distribution of pornography and chat sites in which users advertised prostitution.

"There is a consensus that something needs to be done to curb the availability of pornography on the Internet -- especially to keep it away from children," Chi said. "The difficulty is in agreeing on how to do it."

The Department of Internet Crime, under the Taipei City Police, currently has a number of laws with which to keep pornography and prostitution at bay, including the Children and Youth Sexual Crime Prevention Law (兒童及少年性交易防止條例). The Measure Governing the Rating System of Internet Content (電腦網路內容分級處理辦法) is another means by which Web portals classify content as the film industry does movies. As the measure is only several months old and participation is voluntary, however, the vast majority of Web sites available through local ISPs carry no rating at all.

There is the additional problem that legislation aimed at keeping adult content from young eyes could impinge on the right to free speech. As such the Garden of Hope and other local foundations educate parents about what their kids could encounter on the Internet and how to make sure they don't. It also advises on the best available weapon to fight porn (technofiles say) which is to filter software that prevents a computer from accessing objectionable sites.