Senator demands info on search engine subpoena

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That's *not* what they're looking for...

Hi, Looneytoon.

You said:

And there is no way to tell whether it was an adult or an underage child actually searching for porn or if porn turned up accidently during a search for other material. Because without the FBI obtaining your name and address and coming to your home to interview you there is no way to determine who was on the computer or what their intentions were.

Let me say at the outset that I don't believe most pornography is "harmful to minors" in any serious respect. The only way most (and I do think that child pornography is an exception, but that's already illegal) pornographic Web images could hurt a child is if you threw the monitor at them.

Having said that...

You're missing the point. This is a statistical exercise, not a question of who's getting exposed. They don't care if the person doing the searching is 5 or 35, and they don't care if it's accidental. What they care about is what search terms lead to what results.

But by passing a law that requires all individuals to register and obtain a number to be able to view adult sites they know that A: They will have a database of "known pervs" that the religious right will consider legitimate persons to discriminate against and persecute thereby destroying the porn industry or B: they figure that there will be too many adults that will be too embarrassed to register or fear the database will fall into the wrong hands or be abused thereby killing the porn industry.

COPA doesn't require a registry of "known pervs". It requires either credit card access or an "adult id" to visit sites whose main business comes from distributing material that is "harmful to minors".

I found the brief online:

http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2003/3mer/2mer/2003-0218.mer.aa.html

Here's part of what it says:

The pornography on the Web poses a serious threat to those compelling government interests. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the Web that offer "teasers"-free pornographic images designed to entice users to pay a fee to explore the whole site. H.R. Rep. No. 775, supra, at 7, 10. Minors today can search the Web as easily as they can change television channels. Id. at 9-10. Thus, in the seclusion of their homes or those of friends, unsupervised minors can, with the click of a mouse, visit one pornographic site after another, and view and then print one set of pornographic teasers after another. There is also a serious risk that minors will be inadvertently exposed to pornographic material. Id. at 9. Pornography businesses use copycat addresses, such as "Whitehouse. com," to lure unsuspecting viewers to their sites, and common search terms such as "girls," "toys," and "bambi" lead to pornographic sites. Ibid.

In the years since COPA has been enjoined, the problem has grown worse. The number of minors who use the Internet has increased dramatically. As of 2001, more than two-thirds of the minors between the ages of nine and 17 were using the Internet, and more than one-quarter of the minors between the ages of three and eight were doing so. National Telecommunications and Info. Admin., A Nation Online: How Americans are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, Tables 2-2 to 2-3 (Feb. 2002) . At the same time, pornographic Web businesses have developed more sophisticated techniques for luring viewers to their sites: They send unsolicited e-mail (known as "spam"), pay search engine companies for more prominent placement, acquire expired domain names that have a reputation for generating traffic, and pay other Web sites to obtain their exit traffic (known as "mouse trapping"). National Research Council, Youth, Pornography, and the Internet 74 (Dick Thornburgh & Herbert S. Lin eds., 2002). The results are disturbing. Based on data compiled in a report commissioned by Congress, approximately 70 million different individuals visit pornographic Web sites each week, and 16% of those visitors -approximately 11 million-are under the age of 18. Id. at 72, 78. Surveys show that 25% of minors between the ages of 10 and 17 who regularly use the Internet inadvertently viewed pornography in the prior year. Id. at 132-133. Of minors between the ages of 15 and 17, 70% have viewed pornography inadvertently. Id. at 133. The government has a compelling interest in addressing those serious problems.

You can see from the passage what the Google subpoena was about: They're looking to prove how easy it is to stumble upon porn, and how ineffective filters are. (They even tried to get Karin Schneider, of the American Libraries Association, to testify, but she refused.)

I used to be a supporter of the .xxx domain, until I realized it would never work. In the first place, .xxx domains would necessarily have to be all one kind of content. You couldn't, for example, have one page for your porn site and another for your (relatively innocent) blog. (Well, you could, but it would be pointless, as you wouldn't get any readers.)

The other problem would be the fact that the Internet is international, and standards for harmful-to-minors material is different in, say, Sweden, than it is in the U.S.

Plus, it opens a whole can of worms, with people lobbying for more and more content (gay issues, abortion, bomb making, etc.) to be pushed over to the xxx domain.

It's a valiant effort, but I think it's not going to work.

Posted by: bhartman36   Posted on: 01/27/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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