Net porn claims debunked
p2pnet.net News:- The Net is crawling with dangerous porn, threatening innocent children who might stumble upon it, or be exposed to it via the same p2p file sharing applications the Big Six movie studios and Big Four record labels are killing so the programs can be re-born as dedicated corporate distribution systems, acquired for the cost of a court case.
However, the dangerous porn claim is pure bunkum on both counts, like so many other nebulous assertions pumped out in streams by the RIAA, MPAA and BSA, ably supported by the Bush administration, and swallowed whole as uncontested fact by the mainstream media.
Now, a confidential analysis of search queries and a random sample of web pages commissioned, ironically, by the US Justice Department, has given the lie to the industry Net pornography charges.
The study was produced by the DoJ as part of an effort to resurrect the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA), but it shows only about 1% of all web pages contain sexually explicit material, says The Mercury News, going on:
“The analysis was presented in a federal court hearing last week in Philadelphia in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Produced by Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California-Berkeley, the analysis, “did not appear to substantially help the Justice Department in its effort to prove that criminal penalties are necessary to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit information on the Internet”.
In June 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the COPA ban for constitutional reasons but sent the case back to district court for more fact finding regarding Internet filters, says The Mercury News, continuing:
“Stark’s study found that only 6 percent of all queries returned a sexually explicit Web site, despite the consistent popularity of queries related to sex. It also found that the filters that did the best job blocking sexually explicit content also inadvertently blocked lots of content that was not explicit.”
But, “Government witnesses argued that while the percent of sexually explicit Web pages was small, it still amounted to a huge number.”
Attorneys for the Justice Department were not available for comment Monday afternoon, adds the story.
Also See:
The Mercury News – Study finds Web isn’t teeming with sex, November 14, 2006
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November 16th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
The % of porn pages to non porn pages doesn’t matter. Porn is easily accessiable freely to all if the Internet is used in an improper way. A ten year old at google image search just types in the “right’ words and the first results page hits em with straight, gay and everything in between.
Parents: It’s up to you to educate and protect your children.
November 16th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Is 1 percent of Web sites being pornographic a lot or a little? Letâs do the math.
In 2004, Google claimed to have indexed over 4.2 billion web pages (http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/sizeofweb.html). Assuming an average number of web pages for all sites, 1 percent of 4.2 billion is 42 million–that’s 42 million distinct pages of pornography on the Internet.
If we use the domain count increase over the past 2 years as an indicator for the increase in websites and WebPages (approximately 20 percent), the number of pornographic web pages swells to roughly 60 million.
So is 1 percent of the Web a lot of porn? Let’s put it this way, if someone spent 30 seconds to view each Web page of porn, it would take about 57 years for that person to view it all.
Or better, if you had a Playboy/Penthouse magazine that had 60 million pages in it–not including the articles of course–the magazine would be as taller than any skyscraper on earth, taller than Mt. Everest–in fact the magazine would be approximately 180,000 feet tall, 3.4 miles high.
That … is a lot of porn.
Support the CP80 Internet Channel Initiative which is working to categorize content into Interrnet channels, allow individuals to choose what content they want to access (like cable TV) and protect children from Internet Pornography.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:08 am
I wouldn’t mind a pile o’ porn higher than mount everest… Just as long as I’ve got a box of tissues deeper than the Mariana trench close to hand
November 18th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Just keep some cats panties and bust all up in them when your pleasuring. Hey, at least it touched her pc. Oh yeah, be sure 2 keep em washed and all.