Child Pornography: An Absolute Evil... ?

If I let my kids use the internet alone, it would be because I believe they're ready for it. I don't believe in content filters or making certain conversations illegal as a substitute for parenting, I wouldn't let my 6 year old browse the web without me watching what they do (so they don't visit on.nimp.org or whatever). And really, by the age of 11 or 12 I was seeking out that kind of sexual content on my own, it wasn't being forced on me by any means. How many sites lack that "you must be 18+ to view this site due to content of an adult nature"? If a kid sees it, it's cause they were looking for it.

Kids are curious, and trying to shelter them just makes them more vulnerable to predators and people who will take advantage of them.

Is it really in the kids best interest to leave their parents in charge of all their rights? Most child molestation is done by immediate family members. Who can they turn to if the people who own them aren't acting in their best interest?

That's a whole other thing. A child going out of their way to come across adult material is not the same thing as an adult propositioning a child.

Replace "IMing with friends from school" in my previous example to "waiting outside of school for a ride home". Would you appreciate an adult coming up to your child and making sexual propositions?

I agree that the parent must be responsible for maintaining safety of their children, but there are simply some things which shouldn't be allowed regardless. For example, hardcore pornography over the air during the day is something you will never see. This is because it's impossible to maintain safety of exposure without cutting off all ties altogether otherwise. Would you want to homeschool your child to protect them, or would you rather just have what you're protecting them from be illegal? The only reason said thing would even be legal is on the ideals of freedom of speech, but again, like I said, "your" freedom of speech ends at "my" ears when private matters are concerned.

But yeah, a child deciding to look at pornography is a VASTLY different thing than an adult hunting out a child and attempting to engage them in an illicit affair.

Sheltering children from danger in a sense is disabling their sense of alerting danger.

It is entirely possible to make children aware of dangerous situations without putting them into said situations. For example, you don't need to take a child on an interstate doing 100 MPH weaving through traffic for them to know that it is dangerous to do so.

And no, you can't blame it on the style of dress little girls wear these days. That's the classic blame-the-victim ideal... i.e., it's not rape because she was "begging for it". It's disappointing that parents would do that to their children, but still, they're not the ones doing wrong here-- those who would molest/rape those children are.