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The moral panic over Net porn

Sirs,

Mark Vernon's article about pornography on the Internet (3 February) seems a rerun of earlier arguments. I remember the moral panic over television and then pornographic videos getting into the hands of children.

Every new technology has the potential for the best and the worst in human endeavour. The invention of the printing press gave us Shakespeare's First Folio, but it also gave us the Sunday Sport.

The invention of television gave us Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, but also Eurotrash. Now we are on the brink of a new age which will give us virtual sex - what one might call Inter-course.

It is up to all of us to be discriminating, to realise that we have got to act responsibly - steering a middle path between the fulminations of Mary Whitehouse and the sexploitation of Paul Raymond. Otherwise, the regulators will step in and we will all suffer.

Peter Stockhill

Middlesbrough

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