Critics of Internet porn, take note: Only 1 to 6 percent of all Web searches turns up sexually explicit material. This information came out during the Children’s Online Protection Act challenge in federal district court.
The amount is much less than the attorney general’s office expected—even Phillip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, testified that only 6 percent of all Internet searches resulted in sexual content.
“What we are learning about the Internet is that it reflects life and that the Internet is not—contrary to what some people think—more sexual than people are in general,” Stark said. This conclusion was confirmed by a confidential analysis made by Google and Microsoft, which the American Civil Liberties Union introduced into evidence as part of its argument against COPA.
Both Internet giants’ analysis stated only 1 percent of all Web pages contained sexually explicit material. Catherine Crump, staff attorney at the ACLU, noted, “One of the things we think came out of the government’s study is that the chance of running into graphic content on the Web when filters are on is extremely low.”
The information was revealed during the ongoing eight-year-old COPA challenge by the ACLU on the heels of a federal statute that proposes steep fines and jail time for adult entertainment companies. The government was proposing screening users according to methods the ACLU deems as overreaching into protected free speech.
