What if you saw a big headline in the newspaper one morning that said: : "World telephone system hotbed of crime!"?

When you read the story, you'd learn the shocking truth. Bad folks are actually using the telephones to plan crimes, to talk dirty, to sell drugs, to pass along information that compromises national security and to set up phony boiler-room operations designed to separate suckers from their money.

It might fool you for a moment but then you would stop and think. Heck, it is not the phone system's fault that all of this stuff is going on. Instead, we ought to blame the people -- and stop them if we can -- who are planning the crimes.

It's a people problem, not one of technology. If you disconnected all the telephones in the world, it wouldn't put a dent in murder, pornography, espionage and con games. The folks who have the hankering for this sort of stuff would find a different way to talk.

The Internet -- like the telephone system -- is just a network of wires that allows us to communicate almost instantly. It does not have a soul.

There's been a lot written and said lately about the filth and crime on the Internet. And the Supreme Court finally decided the efforts to shield folks from filth amounts to a cure that's worse than the disease. It would abridge our freedom of speech.

Truth is, the Internet doesn't care if you use it to send a sweet note to your Aunt Sally or exchange smutty pictures with someone in Moscow. It's understandable that people want to blame the Internet for the material that it transmits. But it's also just as naive as blaming the phone system for the material that passes over it.

Think for a moment about efforts -- like the Communications Decency Act -- to control the content of the Internet. Since most of us are against crime and smut, it sounds like a good idea at first blush.

Besides the obvious fact that -- unless you want to live in a fascist state -- would be impossible to regulate the content of the telephone system or the Internet, it goes against the American grain to even think of such an idea.

The only way to really make sure that nothing illegal or offensive travels down these pipelines is to pull the plug. But that's as wrong-headed as shooting your dog because he has worms.

This is a good time to think about the price of freedom, with the flares and sky-rockets of the Fourth of July still fresh in our minds. Part of that price is living in a world that can't be completely regulated. Part of that price is acknowledging that freedom will be abused by some.

Don't get me wrong. I'm as old-fashioned as the next country boy from Arkadelphia, Ark. I still stop my walk to the office when they raise the flag over the post office. I'm all for stopping child pornographers, the criminals and the con men. There are laws against that stuff, and they ought to be enforced.

But blame the criminals -- put them in jail if you can. Just don't pull the plug on freedom.

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Bill Husted is a writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Bill also has a very interesting personal Web page which contains a number of rather unusual links that you probably won't find elsewhere. His URL is http://www.mindspring.com/~bhusted/bills.htm.

You may also find some of his other columns in the archives of the Atlanta Journal-Constittion.