Surfing Of Pornographic Sites At I-Cafés

Surfing or viewing of pornographic sites inside i-cafés should not be allowed. Many cities and municipalities around the country already have local ordinances prohibiting the act with appropriate penalties to boot. Most local ordinances provide penalties for both the customer and the i-café owner caught violating the prohibition. Penalties or fines range from a few thousand pesos for first and second time offenders to shop closure on third violation. As decent members of society, i-café owners should not allow surfing of pornographic sites in their shops even if there are no existing ordinance in their areas.

Worldwide statistics show that around forty-two (42%) percent of those surfing the web daily visit pornographic sites. It can be presumed that majority of pornographic site visitors do their surfing in the privacy of their homes. It is hard to imagine doing it in a public place like an i-café. Not even the low revenues of some i-cafés could justify allowing such misdeeds to happen inside the establishments.

The question on how the local government units (LGUs) would check violations of ordinances prohibiting the surfing of porno sites by i-café customers always crop-up in the early days of implementation. There were those who say that a violation is committed if the authorities caught a café customer doing the act. A typical provision in the ordinance compels the cafés to have posters in prominent areas saying "Surfing Of Pornographic Sites Is Prohibited" but we all know that this is not enough to exact compliance from some hard-headed i-cafe customers.

Determining the compliance of an i-café owner to the ordinance prohibiting the surfing of pornographic sites by its customers is done by compelling the establishment to install software that will filter or block the unwanted pornographic sites. When doing inspection, all that a local authority must do is go to a computer station in a i-cafe, type a known pornographic site on its browser and see if the site will open.

Some LGUs are going to the extent of issuing list of pornographic sites that should be blocked obligatorily and use the same list when doing the inspection. The list is issued without prejudice to i-café owner's obligation to filter or block all porno sites as much as they could. Pornographic sites are being created every minute of the day so café owners must be vigilant enough to see if some smart i-café goers skirt his filter.