1996-02-16
Craig A. Johnson
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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 03:45:08 -0500
From: Dave Farber <•••@••.•••>
Subject: IP: "Has the government gone mad?" Re: DoJ Brief
To: •••@••.••• (interesting-people mailing list)
Posted-Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:10:03 -0500
From: Donna Hoffman <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: IP: DoJ Brief is Filed [and they insulted the Public and
the Executive Branch by using the Rimm "study" djf] To:
•••@••.••• (Dave Farber) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996
20:16:02 -0600 (CST)
Dave:
Has the government gone mad?
> February 15, 1996
> Web posted at: 12:30 p.m. EST
>
> PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- The Justice Department filed its
> written response Wednesday to a lawsuit seeking to block the new
> computer "indecency" law, saying criminal prosecutions are needed to
> stop a huge increase in the availability of pornography.
>
[snip]
> "In the end, plaintiffs cannot dispute that a large and growing
> amount of pornography is presently available on-line and easily
> accessible to children in the home, far exceeding anything available
> prior to the advent of on-line computer services," the government
> said.
What? How can the plaintiffs dispute that which has not been
demonstrated! Is there really a "large and growing amount of
pornography...online...far exceeding anything available prior to the
advent of on-line computer services"?
Large and growing compared to what? The Web is currently enjoying
phenomenal rates of growth. Digital's altavista search engine
currently indexes over 15 million unique URLs. A reasonable
hypothesis is that the number of URLs which would be considered
pornographic is small relative to the total and that the proportion
may actually be *shrinking* as the total grows. Does the government
have evidence to the contrary?
It is estimated that there are over 15,000 Usenet newsgroups on the
Internet. In a recent case, CompuServe denied its subscribers access
to 200 of those groups. Now, all but 5, yes FIVE, have been restored.
A reasonable hypothesis is that the number of Usenet newsgroups which
would be considered pornographic is small relative to the total number
of groups and that the proportion may actually be *shrinking* as the
total grows. Does the government have evidence to the contrary?
If we examine commercial activity on the Web, using latest available
data sources, we can easily argue that there are at least 100,000 Web
sites and that at least 25% of those are commercial. As the number of
Web sites grows and as commercial activity continues to explode, we
would expect that the amount of commercial pornographic activity, as a
percent of total, will continue to *decrease*. Based on this simple
argument (and we could get much more complicated by using different
measures), there is no evidence that the amount of pornography on the
Internet is either large or growing, as a proportion of the total
amount of material available on the Internet.
Indeed, an interesting exercise for the government might be to examine
all the different ways this problem can be measured and see what each
tells us.
Now, what about the idea that the amount of pornography on the
Internet far exceeds anything available in the terrestrial world?
Well, what proportion of content on pre-recorded videocassettes is
pornographic? Is that proportion rising or falling? What proportion
of content on cable television is pornographic? Is that proportion
rising or falling? What about print media? What proportion of print
content is pornographic? Is that proportion increasing or decreasing?
What are the best ways to measure this activity in these different
media?
It is interesting that the government has made these statements,
because it suggests they have access to data which support them.
While no one disputes the availability of sexual content on the
Internet, I know of no credible studies to support the government's
contentions that the amount of such content is large, growing and
exceeds that available in traditional media.
DLH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ Professor Donna L. Hoffman
•••@••.••• Owen Graduate School of Management
615-343-6904 voice Vanderbilt University
615-343-7177 fax Nashville, TN 37203
129.59.210.109 CU-SeeMe
Project 2000: http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/
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