New Legislation Against Porn Sites Based On Old Data?
from the ah,-politicians-at-work dept
The buzz started spreading last week that some politicians were getting ready to announce some kind of anti-online porn bill, that would include a 25% tax on any online porn sales. We were waiting for the bill to actually be introduced to comment on it, but it looks like the politicians behind this one are doing everything possible to get attention early and often. To support the bill in question, they've now released a study talking about the horrors of online porn sites and how they prey on children. The study claims that children are the top viewers of online porn. However, as the article notes, most of the data is very old and obsolete. I have no idea if this is true or not, but one of the responses to the report from a lobbyist supported by the adult entertainment industry (so the bias is obvious) is that most online porn sites have changed their business models away from traffic/visitor based models to transaction models. If that's true, then it would suggest that these sites are much less interested in attracting underage visitors, who are unlikely to be able to buy anything anyway. However, why let the facts stand in the way of a good quote? Senator Blanche Lincoln, ignores the claims of obsolete data to make sure she repeated the idea that underage web surfers are the top consumers of online porn. In the meantime, you still have to ask exactly how sites are going to be classified? What will count as online porn? There will be a legal fight about this at some point. Anyway, apparently this is the way things will be for a while now, as everyone in Congress feels they need to legislate morality.
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