Cardinal warns about media devices

Washington, Nov. 15 – A leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography.

Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.

"Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography," Keeler told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday. [Source]

Well that is not quite technically accurate. There is currently no way that iPods and probably PDA’s could receive unwanted media of any sort. In the case of iPods they would first have to put it into iTunes before they could upload it to a video iPod or graphics to a photo iPod. Plus these devices can not send media that is not already on the user’s computer. PDAs also sync to a computer to get any media delivered to them. I haven’t heard that unsolicited porn was being sent to cell phones either. Though parents should always be quite aware of the potential of any devices and how they can be abused, though in this case it would be willed abuse and nothing accidental.

"The technology itself is not dangerous, in fact technology in itself is good," Keeler said. "The danger lies in the fact that there are not safeguards or regulations in place to protect children or teens from being exposed to unwanted pornography."

Keeler spoke the same day that The Washington Post reported that users had downloaded 1 million images of naked models from one pornographic Web site within a week. The Post also reported that a wireless industry trade group is exploring rating standards to help prevent underage access to pornography.

Of course underage age access should be considered as anybody younger than say Methuselah.