PORNOGRAPHY ON THE INTERNET AS A THREAT TO THAI LAW

          The described above inability of international and national laws to provide workable standards of obscenity or indecency in relation to the materials available on the Internet poses, first of all, a threat to good morals of every nation, including Thailand. This essay does not aim to present and explain the moral and cultural danger. It is obvious to many Thai people. What this essay attempts to do is to point at the threat to the whole Thai law which is often left unnoticed. The danger which comes from pornography on the Internet far exceeds the sphere of sexual morality.

          The Internet has made it easy for people to access pornographic materials. They do not need to search for pornography. Pornography will find them. The threat for legal system comes not when pornography becomes freely available; the threat comes when people accept this easy availability as normal when law prohibits it. Pornography touches the foundation of the integrity of law. When the people access the materials which are illegal and access it easily and without hindrance, the law becomes an abstraction which has little to do with the reality. The efficiency of the law as a mechanism of social control is impaired. Law is not a computer. It has its own spirit and soul embodied in all those who make, administer and apply law in everyday life. The value of the habit of law abiding or acting according to law is difficult to overestimate. The nation with such habit is a truly free nation. A nation without such a habit will have to invest much in keeping an expensive mechanism of law enforcement, and even that mechanism will be subject to the plague of corruption.

          Law is a cultural phenomenon. Legal rules must and do reflect cultural values. Sexual decency is one of the most fundamental cornerstones of Thai traditional culture. Thai standard of decency does not allow even a partial exposition of naked body to the public. Those who have been to Thailand away from tourist beaches are often much surprised to see Thai families swimming in the sea fully dressed. The dress code in the East has much meaning. It is not simply a matter of fashion or a display of the individuality as it is in the West. It is a matter of personal honour and is the reflection of social status. Aggressive penetration of pornographic materials into Thai culture threatens more than the accepted standard of sexual behaviour. It threatens the basic ideas on social behaviour expressed through the dress code. The control mechanisms which present in the Western cultures are less developed in the East. Therefore, external social controls are taking a more significant role than in the West. Pornography undermines them, and by doing this it undermines the whole system of social control including law.

          Because of this indirect impact of the wide spread of pornography, the whole integrity of social system of control in Thailand is threatened. Where this system is broken once in an ordinary occurrence of every day life by an easy access to pornography on the Internet it can be and is broken on any other occasion.