HOWARD DAVIS looks at the Internet's shame as the world's largest child porn ring is smashed.

I think the internet gets a raw deal where pornography is concerned. Everybody is always talking about how depraved the World Wide Web is because of its abundance of porn.

Yet, as with anything in a free society, you will always have to put up with the distasteful fringe elements. The quality of free porn on the web is appalling and, if you want to pay for it, then that's your business.

However, this week seven men pleaded guilty to their involvement in the Wonderland child-porn ring. These seven, self-styled "cream of paedophiles", had to provide 10,000 images each of children being abused or tortured in order to join the ring.

The ring was smashed by Operation Cathedral, which saw London police coordinating 107 synchronised arrests in 12 different countries.

Some 750,000 images of more than 1,200 victims and 1,800 video-clips were found. Detective Chief Inspector Alex Wood said: "Stomach-churning does not quite describe well enough what it is."

What is it with our Victorian attitude that allows Britain on the one hand to look down our noses in disapproval at the more lax moral attitudes of our brethren in the European community, while simultaneously spawning repellent perverts who trade in sexual gratification through young children?

My permissive, Guardian-reading liberal side believes whole-heartedly that strict controls on the Internet equals the loss of freedom of speech, which equals fascism. The creator of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, himself described the notion of censoring the Internet as "horrific".

Yet, news such as this makes me rethink everything. It is beholden to society to protect the innocent and the vulnerable. We have not done so here. No amount of philosophical musings protected the abused.

It is small consolation that Wonderland is believed to be the largest and most sophisticated paedophile ring in the world, but 750,000 images?

The seven arrested will only receive the maximum sentence for the distribution of child pornography - three years. The Home Office have announced an increase of this sentence to ten years, but I doubt this will be enough. A report in the Observer last weekend highlighted the lenient attitude taken toward child porn by the courts.

Cases such as Wonderland create a massive public outcry, but your average pervert gets off quite lightly when trading in other people's misery.

It was the Internet that brought Wonderland together and allowed them to swap images across the world. Should the Internet be brought to heel now whilst there is still time, or should it be treated like other mediums, such as magazines and videos, in which some uses are deemed a necessary evil?

On any other subject than this I would vehemently argue against the censorship of the web. Freedom of speech is what makes the Internet so vibrant. However, in this case I have to concede the point. I have absolutely no idea how to implement such controls, and I don't think anybody else has either.