Study highlights amount of porn on Web (about 1%)

[Newsjock]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/16004858.htm

By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News

A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Micrsoft's giant Internet indices showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material.

The analysis was presented during a federal court hearing last week in Philadelphia in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and obtained on Monday by the Mercury News.

The ACLU said the analysis, by Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, did not appear to substantially help the Department of Justice in its effort to prove that criminal penalties are necessary to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit information on the Internet.

... 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.

[meisje]

1. where is the other 99% I haven't seen yet?

[FVZA_Colonel]

2. Usually it's the large numbers that blow people's minds.

But seriously, only 1%? Wow.

[uncle ray]

3. i wonder how that compares to ten years ago.

[pitohui]

5. we all got bored w. porn in 1994

people today are seriously less sexual but don't know it, do you suppose it's hormone metabolites in the water supply?

[unblock]

4. only 1% of the pages, but 90% of the hits!

but seriously, folks, the entire internet, especially the commercial part, owes a HUGE debt to the online porn industry.

it seems like ancient history, but there was a time when business was extremely skeptical that anyone would "put their credit card number on the ether". soon enough, the porn industry proved that there's no glimpse of nudity for which many men won't risk their financial health.

porn paved the way for more obscene online businesses, like gambling and wal-mart.

[AlecBGreen]

6. good point

"the porn industry proved that there's no glimpse of nudity for which many men won't risk their financial health."

[hughee99]

7. It also was a significant reason for the success of the VCR. n/t

[Up2Late]

8. That seems a bit low, but when did persecuting the 1% at the expense of...

...the Innocent 99% ever stop these war criminals?

Anyone else remember a book called "The One Percent Doctrine"???

<http://www.amazon.com/One-Percent-Doctrine-Ron-Suskind/dp/0743271092>



<http://www.ronsuskind.com/theonepercentdoctrine/>

[LiberalFighter]

9. If they want to keep porn from underage then they should consider

requiring them to use xxx instead of www as the prefix to the website address. Or maybe it should be a different code so that minors wouldn't gravitate towards those websites but then again they are probably more savvy then most adults.

When my son lived with me I had to password protect my computer so he couldn't go online when I wasn't home. Before that I discovered that he was going to those type of websites. All I had to do was check the history and trash to see what he was doing.

[OneBlueSky]

10. a more significant figure is that 75% of all porn site hits are . . .

by good, right wing "Christian" Republicans . . .

okay, so I made it up . . . but it's probably not far off . . .

[SpiralHawk]

11. 75% !!! I am shocked, shocked, shocked at the republicon perversion

Your made-up statistic is totally convincing.

I had no idea.

I hope Faux news will do an in-depth report on your Faith-based findings.