Government Study Determines That There's Porn Online
from the thanks-for-clearing-that-up dept
Remember how the government basically subpoenaed everyone they could possibly think of to get data to support their argument defending the constitutionality of the COPA (Child Online Protection Act)? Apparently, they used all of that data to crunch some numbers and tell the court that (would you believe it?) there's actually some pornography online. Aren't you glad that plenty of taxpayer money went into figuring that out? Despite what both sides in the case are trying to say about the results, it's not clear that it really says much at all. They found that 6% of queries lead to results that have adult material (and only 1% if filters are turned on) -- but it's not clear what that really means. A query returns tons of results. Is it counted if only one leads to sexually explicit material? If all of them? A certain threshold? The first link? Also, how do they define adult material? While it may be obvious in some cases, in plenty of others it's very much a subjective decision. Finally, the 6% number is still misleading, because most of those searches are probably by adults who are looking for completely legal adult material. If the case is about protecting children, shouldn't the real question be how often adult content is returned when kids do searches? So, in the end, we have the government demanding (and getting) a bunch of data from all sorts of internet and search companies, and then conducting a survey with taxpayer money, to tell us that there's a fair amount of porn online (though not overwhelmingly so) -- but little else of practical use to the actual question at hand, about whether or not the law is constitutional.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Not a serious study
If these parameters were not defined as part of the report then it is baseless and worthless as a scientific document. In other words it was never intended as a serious study, which raises the question; Why was the data collected. I suspect that the data itself was always irrelevant, rather the entire exercise was constructed for alterior motives.
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Re: Not a serious study
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Re: Not a serious study
I second that...
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Re: Re: Not a serious study
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pay me
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beavers on google?
I'd recommend that *you* leave safesearch on on your computer (or at least turn it back on after you're done). Even if you don't, he'll find a good picture of a beaver for his biology paper long before he finds smut.
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For a report for my CompSci ethics class, I interviewed teachers, administrators, and librarians at a technology oriented elementary school. They've pretty much never had a problem with the tykes finding bad material - the only problems they had were when a parent or someone posing as such used the library computers and left smut open after they left. The kids would usually run to the teacher and tell them there was something on the computer that wasn't supposed to be there. (that's what I was told, and I'm inclined to believe them.)
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Re: beaver is a clean word
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Re:
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Re: [no subject] by Not-So-Anonymous Coward
If you are allowing your child free-access to the internet then you get what you deserve.
US Government shouldn't be a nanny to your children. Take responsibility or put them in foster care.
Charles~
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Re: Re: [no subject] by Not-So-Anonymous Coward
OOOOOOOOOOOH!... It's soooooooo *MUCH* fun to 'make' them, but it's _not_ so much fun to raise them CORRECTLY!
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In other news
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beavers?
The first page of results was entirely about small furry mammals (and in one case, larger non-furry mammals playing baseball)
So just for fun, I looked through all of the first ten pages and couldn't find one remotely adult link anywhere.
And did I mention this is _without_ using Google's safe-search filter?
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Porn study
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Government Studies
Besides, then internet doesn't have that much porn (depending on the types of sites you visit). It all depends what kind of sites you are visiting.
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What it was really about...
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Re: What it was really about...
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This study is rediculous, porn is everywhere in life. Why not go against something more useful like violence? We need a war against violent imagery now. Number 5, what if your son searched for history? I'm sure he'd get a lot of violent images, or even Iraq would dispaly lots of violent images, where is the study here? It would be MORE meaningful than this shit. Damn It the Internet was NOT MADE FOR CHILDREN, GET OVER IT!!
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oh my!
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GOVERNMENT STUDY DETERMINES THAT THERE'S PORN ONLI
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my last comment
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uh..
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Re: uh..
If by "naked ladies" you mean "that oh so hot, wet, dripping.....aquatic mammal action" which can be found freely throughout the first 15 pages of a GIS of "beaver" WITHOUT SafeSearch on..then yeah, TONS of naked ladies.
Oh man, look at all that fur! That one's got quite the tail on her if you know what I mean ;) ;)
OH GOD!!! Now I see it! Oh man, this is completely out of line and MUST be stopped immediately. Please children I beg you to shield your eyes!
http://www.slylockfox.com/e-comics_htd/e-htd_beaver/htd_beaver.gif
Horrible. Just horrible.
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Re: uh..
Makes me wonder if YOU search so much porn that google knew your preferances.
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Re: uh..
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Also In other news...
Nice to know my dads tax money went into something GREAT. Need to get registered to vote next time elections come up... But who am I kidding? It seems like everytime you meet a smart person you also find 80 morons that think they're rulers of the cosmos or something. That guarantees the prettiest face wins. Then again this IS America! Home of the fat people and hypocrites. (Did I mention I don't like living in the US much anymore?)
There was definitely ulterior motives to this stuff including the government wanting to see how far it could go with this. And I bet it could get them alot of checks in the mail from big business if they gave out stuff like this to them, free targeted advertising anyone? Wait thats SPAM!
To quote Charlie, "Good Grief!"
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That's an underestimate
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Beavers, again
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No beavers here
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What next? News blogs?
Wait..What's a blog, anyway?
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