Why countries where porn is illegal do not ban Internet porn sites?

It is quite well known that except for a very few countries that allow it, in most others the creation, distribution and consumption of pornographic content is not permissible. Actually, it is illegal and usually punishable with a prison sentence. Governments which allow porn, benefit from the 100 billion dollar or more Internet pornographic industry.

Today, the concept of soft porn which raged in the eighties no longer exists; it has been replaced by what we call sensual advertising. What is easily available on the Internet is hard porn showing erotic fantasies and sometimes violent or abusive sexual acts. Most of the pornographic sites do not even have the mandatory age notification and directly host hard porn on their home page. The ill effects of pornographic content on impressionable young children, starting from as early an age of eleven, are well known. Normal relationships and sexual acts are redefined, and as a consequence unnatural sex such as anal sex is on the rise.  It is a documented statistic that such acts reshape the perception of women in society and have led to a rise in cases of sexual misconduct and violence.  

Mobile phones and fast internet connections are making it easier for children to consume porn at odd hours, in schools and colleges and everywhere else. Entrepreneurial shopkeepers in India have seized on a business opportunity to sell preloaded memory cards with downloaded pornographic content to their customers who do not have an Internet connection. Instant messaging apps have made it easier to sext- sending nude or seminude selfies to partners. In many countries a nude selfie would actually contravene the law and one taken by an underage child would invoke the harsher penalty of child pornography.

Most companies rely on content filtering technologies and strict penalties to block pornographic sites. They are quite successful in blocking porn use with the added benefit of limiting exposure to malware that is normally found on illegitimate sites. Similar technologies, though not fool proof, can block the casual user from stumbling on pornographic material. Most countries have already mandated their telecom service providers to install technology to filter Internet sites based on court or government directives, as it is difficult to shut down sites hosted on Internet servers in other countries. True, these filters can be bypassed by proxies and there is the difficulty of pinning down the addresses of fast moving illegal pornographic sites but it would still restrict usage. Porn censorship will certainly limit the use of pornography, much in the away that prohibition cuts down alcohol consumption, though it still remains available through a thriving black market.

Personally, I believe the big reason why governments fail to censor is because of the assumed effect on their vote bank. Young voters in the digital age consider paramount their “freedom of expression online”. In reality, most of these digital citizens are themselves concerned as to the ill effects of pornography and would endorse any attempt to filter these sites, provided the decisions to filter are made transparently.