PHILADELPHIA – A recent U.S. government-commissioned study has found that only one percent of websites indexed by Google and Microsoft are considered sexually explicit.
Government lawyers introduced the study — which concluded that stricter filters blocked 91 percent of sexually explicit websites, and filters with less restrictive filters blocked 40 percent — in court this month.
University of California, Berkley, Statistics Professor, Philip B. Stark, prepared the study.
"Filters are more than 90 percent effective, according to Stark," ACLU attorney Chris Hansen, told AP writer Maryclaire Dale on Tuesday during a break in the trial. "Also, with filters, it's up to the parents how to use it, whereas COPA requires a one-solution-fits-all (approach)."
Dale’s report went on to say that “COPA follows Congress' unsuccessful 1996 effort to ban online pornography. The Supreme Court, in 1997, deemed key portions of that law unconstitutional because it was too vague and trampled on adults' rights. It would have criminalized putting adult-oriented material online where children can find it.”
The 1998 law narrowed the restrictions to commercial websites and defined indecency more specifically.
Stark’s report was based on information the Justice Department obtained through subpoenas sent to search engine companies and Internet service providers.
According to Dale, Stark also examined a random sample of search-engine queries. He estimated that 1.7 percent of search results at Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, MSN and Yahoo Inc. are sexually explicit and 1.1 percent of Web sites cataloged at Google and MSN fall in that category.
“About 6 percent of searches yield at least one explicit website,” he told the report, “and the most popular queries return a sexually explicit site nearly 40 percent of the time.
“But filters blocked 87 percent to 98 percent of the explicit results from the most popular searches on the Web.”
Closing arguments in the trial before Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. are expected Monday.
