I was right there with you until that last part. You–yes, you–have the ability to set up your own website and loudly proclaim anything you like to as many people as you have the willpower to draw in. Maddox’s website is ranked higher in hits than those of KFC, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Taco Bell, even though those companies spend millions of dollars on web marketing and all he does is post comical pseudo-rants with MS Paint illustrations every once in a while if he feels like it. It’s this very freedom that has allowed weird, kinky porn to gain the foothold it has, whereas before widespread broadband Internet access, a company had to pander to the most mainstream audience to sustain itself.
Frankly, that’s absurd. We are not paid subscribers to the Internet. We pay intermediaries to connect us to the Internet, which is free and is owned by no one–not the majority of its users, not the Internet Electoral College, not the porn magnates and not any government or utility company. Everyone is quite free to discuss whatever intellectual pursuit they feel like–even if it is illegal or may be deemed immoral by the majority of his or her local demographic–and nobody owes you a vote over how other people get to use their Internet access. Now, if you felt that Interweb Shagfest Inc is poisoning your child’s mind or whatever, nothing’s stopping you from calling their ISP and demanding they be shut down.
The problem, really, is that there is too much of a democratic voice over digital content. Democratic governments tax and regulate the Internet–or try, anyway–wherever it’s used within their jurisdiction, mostly according to the needs of lobbyists and campaign contributors. (For example, the federal government–at the behest of the record industry, which is apparently frustrated at its inability to establish an online monopoly–is currently attempting to destroy Internet radio, having recently passed a ludicrous tax on songs played over the Internet that doesn’t apply to any other medium. Now, I’m not saying that (for example) child porn should be legal as long as it’s on the Internet. Things like that are a special case: the website isn’t the real problem, the child exploitation is the problem, and laws against distributing child porn on the Internet are a vital tool for shutting down child sex rings. But to argue that the world owes you a say in what other adults can see and do on the Internet, according to your perceived needs, is absurd. Remember, it’s the concept of free expression online that gave us (civilians) the Internet in the first place, when the US military could’ve kept it to itself all these years if it were a dictatorship that felt we didn’t deserve it.
If you think MySpace is dominated mostly by teenagers, you clearly haven’t been in a college computer lab lately. And I know exactly what MySpace is, thank you very much. What I said was that its secondary (ie not specifically advertised) purpose is to give people a free way to meet interesting new people in their local area, and that is thinly veiled. And of course MySpace is more concerned about profit than about its users–it’s a News Corporation outfit. If that makes you see red, your grudge is with the capitalist system, not the Internet.