Re: Study: Way Less Porn on the Web Than You Might Think

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

I guess I have to spell it out for you. :-)

Personally, I don't care one way or another about the percentage
of pr0n on the Internet -- the real interesting tidbits in this
article are buried beyond the first couple of paragraphs:

[snip]

"The Justice Department had commissioned the study as part of an effort
to resurrect the Children's Online Protection Act, which was signed by
President Clinton in 1998, but immediately challenged by the ACLU.

A federal district court in Philadelphia and a federal appeals court
found the law to be unconstitutional. In June 2005, the Supreme Court
upheld the ban on enforcement of the law but sent the case back to
district court for more fact finding regarding Internet filters.

``One of the things we think came out of the government's study is that
the chance of running into graphic content on the Web when filters are
on is extremely low,'' said Catherine Crump, staff attorney at the
American Civil Liberties Union.

Stark's study found that only 6 percent of all queries returned a
sexually explicit Web site, despite the consistant popularity of
queries related to sex. It also found that the filters which did the
best job blocking sexually explicit content also inadvertently blocked
lots of content that was not explicit.

Government witnesses argued that while the percent of sexually explicit
Web pages was small, it still amounted to a huge number. ``A lot of
sexually explicit material is not blocked by filters,'' Stark wrote in
the conclusion to his study.

Attorneys for the Justice Department were not available for comment on
Monday afternoon.

The eight-year-old lawsuit ignited widespread public debate last year
after Google objected to a subpoena it had received to turn over
billions of Web site addresses and two months of search queries to
government attorneys. Google argued in federal court that the request
would put both the private queries of Google users and the Mountain
View giant's trade secrets at risk.

A federal judge subsequently ordered Google to turn over 50,000 random
copies of Web pages from its index, but did not require Google to
produce search-engine queries. Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo provided a
sample of 1 million Web sites. MSN, Yahoo and AOL also provided a week
of search queries.

Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and civil-liberties activist, said
Google's stance was ``horribly self-serving.''

[snip]

- ferg


-- mikeiscool <michaelslists () gmail com> wrote:

On 11/14/06, Fergie <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote:
> Via The Merc.
>
> [snip]
>
> A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample
> of Web pages taken from Google and Microsoft's giant Internet indices
> showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually
> explicit material.

That just means people don't use google/msn to search for porn, it
doesn't mean that porn isn't on the web.

The web != googles index.

-- mic


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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