Johnny ran across a book title he had never heard of, something called Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. He had never heard of this book. He tried to look it up on the library's computer, and they didn't have it. Confused he ran a search on the Internet. He found a few pages using the old Altavista Search engine, but all of the pages had been removed by the authority of the Internet Police.
Johnny had never really understood what the Internet police really did but he had run into many pages that they had removed. Pages at the Christian Coalition, Planned Parenthood, and even the National Institute of Health, had been removed. He just accepted that there were some things that he could not find. They were not in the libraries or available on the Internet.
Johnny lives in one of our possible futures. It is one where every piece of information is tightly controlled for the fear of the young and old being exposed to controversial material. Johnny must experience these truths in the real world, away from the protections and the guiding of a skillful author. The horrors that the supporters of the Internet Decency Act and Book Bannings had seeked to shield Johnny from are now sought by him in the real world, with an insatiable hunger.
We must protect the ability to openly share information; to read classics that deal with controversial subjects. If our society chooses the heavy hand of government censorship over the intelligent guiding of an attentive parent or author we all will lose, some of our most important freedom. The first amendment must be preserved, in an unrestricted form. People have the ability and the will to control what is seen, heard, and published by the most powerful of million dollar corporations, this power, the power of the purse. By not watching, listening, or buying materials that are found objectionable the providers of these materials will no longer offer them to the public, providing a natural and non-governmental means to what soul be viewed in today's information abundant society.