Putting the byte on sex

SO, there is smut on the Internet. This, knowing the kind of people who use Internet, does not come as a surprise.

Nor does it come as a surprise that the language employed by these purveyors of, well, smutty stuff, is not on a par with Shakespeare. 'Alt.sex.bestiality.barney' hardly holds a candle to 'The wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease'. As for 'alt.sex.woody-allen', I would rather kiss Winnie Mandela.

But let's not get la-di-da about this. Smut has been around longer than Internet. The difficult judgement we must make about smut and all the paraphernalia that goes with it - drugs, drink, gambling, orgies and generally scuzzy people like Percy Bysshe Shelley - is when, as in the case of Internet, the smut police need to be called.

These are the people who are academically qualified at the University of Smut to decide what the rest of us can and cannot enjoy.

Why is it that when Aldous Huxley says 'Chronic and inescapable sobriety is a most horrible affliction' we laugh, yet when some dolt on the Internet downloads a file from alt.sex.nasal hair we start writing letters to newspapers? Because the children can see it. Which seems strange, when the children can also turn on the television and see Taiwanese politicians behaving like football fans in nylon suits and white socks or pick up a copy of The Sun newspaper and see occasional news stories between the nudity and the rampant vicars.

Vicars, if The Sun is to be believed, have more fun than you or I ever do.