Morality in Media swipes summit

An Internet watchdog group Monday blasted the Internet summit as doing too little to protect children from pornography.

In a prepared statement, Morality in Media President Robert W. Peters called for stronger legal sanctions against creators and distributors of online pornography.

"The plan is to go easy on the multibillion dollar Internet communications industry," said Peters. "Protecting America's children is a secondary consideration."

He said the summit is "stacked with individuals opposed to legal regulation."

Although parental screening technology is a useful tool, it can't blocks all sites containing harmful sexual content, Peters said.

Arguments that effective legal regulation will cripple the Internet are "lies dreamed up by self-serving Internet companies and 'civil libertarians' driven by fallacious ideology."

He agrees with one of the summit's objectives, to compel vigorous enforcement of Federal obscenity laws.

Morality in Media supported the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.