Purposeful paedophilia
Sir: Simon Winchester has discovered, as journalists do from time to time, sex on the Internet (`An electronic sink of depravity', 4 February). He says he came across `alt.sex. stories', wherein men with computers discuss paedophilia, `by acci- dent'. Had he been a little more purpose- ful he would have found that with a cou- ple of key clicks he could have brought a listing of almost all of of the world's news- groups to his screen and learned that there are 11,000 of them, of which 150 or so are notionally devoted to sex. Many of those usegroups — I've checked — are empty or moribund, many more contain nothing stronger than you can buy where you buy your Spectator, many more are joke groups.
Before calling for legislation to control the 1 per cent or so of newsgroups devoted to perversion (and remembering that news- groups make up a small part of the whole Internet), Mr Winchester should ask how much of, say, the Royal Mail is secretly devoted to carrying pornography, or how many faxes contain obscene material, and then tell us whether he'd be prepared to have all his letters opened at the local post office or his faxes routed via the local police station in order that the traffic be controlled. If a tiny number of computer users want to dream their appalling dreams on computer, let them; if they try to make those dreams come true, there are already perfectly good laws in force to lock them up.
John Diamond
227 Goldhawk Road, Shepherd's Bush London W12
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