When I was just an innocent lad, age eleven walking home from school through the park between Shackelford Junior High and my house, I happened upon several ragged magazines tossed aside on the ground.

Picking them up, they turned out to be a Penthouse magazine and the now long gone skin mag "Oui." (So yes I told my buddies later that I found a copy of "Oy" magazine, but anyways)

Now - as a child, exactly what harm was I afforded by happening upon this kind of material? Are the harms such that the government should regulate or restrict the sale and presentation of such materials?

Would government regulation actually WORK to keep dirty magazines out of the hands of minors? I think we are so used to living in a society with age restrictions for things, we don't even know why they are there. In Germany the drinking age is years younger than in the United States. Does this imply that life for kids in the United States is safer?

One last point - when people here talk about a .xxx domain or a .kids domain - does that mean that there should be a federal law on how you present your website? Let's say that I create a .com website devoted to the movie Carnal Knowledge, and some US Attorney in Johnson County, Texas deems it obscene.

Should someone be convicted and sentenced under federal criminal law for that?

Steve