A social concern today

Furthermore, his study revealed, 25 percent of the daily hits on search engines are pornographic requests that lead to 35 percent of a day's total downloads.

Against this backdrop, Youth for Rights and Justice (YRJ) and Center for Women and Children Studies (CWCS) jointly organised a roundtable on Thursday at the CWCS conference room. Discussants from various fields discussed points to bring this concerned issue under a prohibition or restriction.

Prof Ishrat Shamim of Dhaka University's (DU) sociology department made several studies ahead of the roundtable, enough to realise the extremism and impact of pornography on teenagers.

Moreover, internet with all the advantages has also succeeded in disseminating pornographic websites under one tag 'world wide web'.

Curiosity of the young generation reveals an addiction towards pornographic websites, pictures and movies from the age as early as 11, the presentation said.

Lack of knowledge leaves the parents unaware of internet pornography and its impact on their children.

The discussants presented several solutions to this increasing problem from different aspects.

Among them, Dr M Haider Ali, associate professor of CSE department, DU, proposed websites can be blocked locally through machine intelligence. Number of images, percentage of colour can be considered in this regard.

Very recently the root server of internet has included .xxx domain which could directly be blocked from the ISP.

Parents should freely speak to their children, explaining the impact of pornography and pornographic materials so that they keep away from these.

Barrister Fatema Anwar recommended government initiatives to prevent internet obscenity, implementing machine intelligence and executing legal punishment under the proposed acts now undergoing evaluation.

"If we can't discuss a social truth like pornographic culture, it cannot be brought down by any means. We should also focus on better purposes of internet that could change its concept instead of only going for legal measures," said Prof Geeti Ara Nasreen of Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, DU.

Awareness is a must to prevent pornography and to restrict children from going into it. Parents should teach their children at their early age the impact of pornography, Nafid Imran Ahmed, in-charge of StarTech, The Daily Star, told the roundtable.

Shah Abdul Hannan, former secretary, Abul Hasan Chowdhury, former state minister for foreign affairs, Atiqur Rahman Ahad, chairman of YRJ and faculty of the Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, DU, Dr Shahnaz Huda, associate professor of Law Department, DU, Prof Rafiqun Nabi, institute of fine arts, DU, Mostafa Kamal Majumder, editor, The New Nation, Alamgir Mohiuddin, editor, Naya Diganta, among others, were present.

S.H