Government Study: Approximately 1% of Web Content is Sexually Explicit

According to a study of Internet search queries and a sampling of random Web pages taken from both Google and MSN Search, analysts say that only approximately 1% of all Web pages on the Internet contain sexually explicit materials. The study results were used in Federal Court last week in Philadelphia in a case that was brought against US Attorney General Gonzales by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).The ACLU's position is that the study supports their challenge of the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA) that was signed by President Clinton back in 1998 - an Act that the current Attorney General and other Government Officials are attempting to resurrect. The ACLU believes that the study shows that the Department of Justice is over zealous in its efforts to create criminal penalties in order to protect minors from exposure to adult content sites on the Internet.
The Federal District Court in Philadelphia as well as a Federal Appeals Court found the law to be unconstitutional. Back in June of 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the ban on enforcement of the law as well, however it sent the case back to the Philly district court for more ;fact finding; regarding the use of Internet filters. Catherine Crump, a staff attorney for the ACLU told the press, ;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.; In fact, the study showed that only 6% of all queries returned a sexually explicit Web site despite the high-rate of popular sex-related queries posed on the 'Net each day. The data used in this study has seen controversy in the news itself. The data comes from a court order by a federal judge that required Google to turn over 50k random copies of Web pages from its index after a long battle over what Google called ;privacy issues; that would put both its users and trade secrets at risk. MSN, Yahoo and AOL also turned over search query data that assisted in the results of this study. Experts say that the study's overall results reveal that the Internet ;reflects life; and contrary to popular opinion, is not ;more sexual than people are in general.

http://www.protect-x.com/