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Using The Google Counter In The Supreme Court

from the oh,-please-make-it-stop... dept

Thu, Mar 4th 2004 2:08am — Mike Masnick

It seemed bad enough when a story popped up talking about journalists relying on the number of results of a Google search as some sort of proof of something - but I didn't expect such unscientific research to show up in the Supreme Court. However, reports concerning the hearing on whether or not the COPA child porn law is Constitutional, apparently Solicitor General Theodore Olson used the oh-so-scientific method of proving his point by claiming that a Google search on "free porn" turned up 6,230,000 sites. One of the justices immediately suspected that this isn't indicative of much and responded by asking if Olson could prove they all actually had porn. He responded with a joke, saying, he "didn't have time to see them all." While it apparently got a laugh, hopefully, the Justices will cut off that line of "evidence" to support an argument.

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6 Comments

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aNonMooseCowherd, 4 Mar 2004 @ 8:10am

what about just plain "free"?
Apparently he also couldn't be bothered jumping to the middle or the end of the list to see how many of the sites matched just because they contained the word "free".
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beck, 4 Mar 2004 @ 8:30pm

That's It?
Based on Google's index of over 4 billion pages, compared to 6 million pages with free porn, that's less than 2 tenths of 1 percent of all web pages.

So according to Google, 99.85% of the web does not have free porn. Why are they even spending time and taxpayer dollars on this?
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I have looked, 25 Jan 2006 @ 1:48am

And saw it all.....
and I hurt

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kiwi, 1 Jul 2007 @ 9:57pm

no way!
i agree with beck, enough already
tn_greco@yahoo.com.au
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Soft Sexy, 22 Jul 2008 @ 8:27pm

Looking for Fun Friend
I am looking for a fun friend.
Pics available.
f/21

softnsexy@gilbertnetworkconsulting.com
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donovan, 18 Nov 2009 @ 7:27am

bull shit
i thank that the court needs to just leave google alone look at you tube its fucking wores so go after them dumb asssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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