Internet Only 1% Porn

Eli Gottlieb writes "In what surely comes as a complete and utter surprise to everyone here, a new calculation shows that only one percent of web pages contain pornography. While the calculations were performed using data forced from Google's and Microsoft's search indices by the government, they will help the American Civil Liberties Union to keep enforcement of the Children's Online Protection Act of 1998 banned. A loss for business privacy has become a victory for free speech, even though netizens lose a beloved old proverb."

Comments

In about 1 per cent of the Slashdot articles

[igny]

I get "Nothing to see here, move along".

Re:In about 1 per cent of the Slashdot articles

[jamstar7]

I just wanna know what happened to all the pr0n, if the 'Net is only 1%. Who knew so many idiots would put pages on MySpace?

Re:In about 1 per cent of the Slashdot articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell Trekkie.

In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Jan L.A. Van De Snepscheut

1%... No

[Anonymous Coward]

1%... No... it's... not... possible...

Re:1%... No

[Kingrames]

SEARCH your browser history, you KNOW it to be true!

Seriously, you probably troll thousands of times more pages in forums and such than you download in porn.

I suspect

[WormholeFiend]

that everyone's hard drive pron content percentage is much higher, however.

Re:I suspect

[Salvance]

Hmmm .... a few years ago the journal Nature found that 2% of the internet was porn. This would explain why it now takes me twice as long to find what I'm looking for.

Re:I suspect

[ghyd]

What would be interesting is the amount of data transfered.

Re:I suspect

[ajs]

I suspect that the porn content of the Net is highly underrated. Having done such surveys in my life for businesses, I can say that any metric that you're looking for can be skewed drastically by looking at the numbers differently. For example, if you many porn sites want only a handful of pages to be indexed, so if you go by page count, porn will be very low. If you go by machine or domain names, then porn will rank fairly high, since many porn sites use domains to isolate different types of content for the same service.

If you discount auto-generated pages, you willl also eliminate a huge fraction of the Web.

There's an awful lot of play in these numbers, so don't be too shocked if they're just dead wrong from most points of view.

Re:I suspect

[grazzy]

We must take this threat to internet porn seriously and ACT before it's to late. According to these statistics internet porn will be down to 0% in just a couple of years. Save the porn before it goes extinct!

Re:I suspect

[Kelt]

DING DING DING! Get this man a donut. And a mod of +1 a couple of times.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur! Any women above the general hotness index of a 7 that have an interest in making a few movies please contact me!

Re:I suspect

[darkstar949]

However, if those pages are not being indexed then theoretically it should be harder for "minors", which the COPA is intended to protect, to accidentally come across pornography. That's not to say that this is really the situation (it's not that hard to find it if you are looking for it), but it does indicate that a child who is not looking for it is more unlikely to find it.

Re:I suspect

[Crucial]

I can see the article now:

"A new study has found that internet porn is the first media to show characteristics of unstable elements. The study shows the internet pron has a half-life of approximately 2.65 years. At this rate, Scientists state that internet porn will makeup only .25% of the content of the internet in the year 2015.

Art Newburger, Lead Scientist who discovered this anomaly states, "We're working on a solution. We've talked to the distribution companies and they chalk the cause up to media and bandwidth concerns. We're hoping to develop a new compression scheme to help internet porn to continue to thrive again. I think we're making great progress."

The National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood (NO MA'AM) is the largest donator of research funds."

Re:I suspect

[Gerzel]

Heh, I always heard it as most of the Internet is porn by the amount of data transfered. Websites would be a rough measurement of the number of transfers but not the amount of data. Because porn tends to be pictures and movies it takes up more space and is thus more of the Internet. However I am also not surprised that it has been put down because of things like ipods, Utube, ect.

Re:I suspect

[Dark_MadMax666]

Well depends how you count . Space taken - yeah, but if counting by amount of files then heck no :)

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I'm saving it as fast as I can...

Re:I suspect

[llamabot]

You do realise the majority of pornography involves the outright exploitation of women don't you (with the rest being indirect exploitation)? "I suspect" you just don't care. Oh well, have fun masturbating in a dark room... by yourself...

Re:I suspect

[uniqueSnowflake2]

While porn may only account for 1%, I would like to see usage of porn versus non-porn sites. While www.google.com is only one site, it shouldn't be dismissed as irrelevant.

So let's sing The internet is for Porn song. Audio sample (my apologies for the wm link)

Re:I suspect

[Chris whatever]

Also most porn site visisted arent searches done in google but links inside that porn site which can ammount to hundreds sometimes, so it doesnt have to show in google to exist.

i'm pretty sure they are overlooking those

Re:I suspect

[kfg]

According to these statistics internet porn will be down to 0% in just a couple of years. Save the porn before it goes extinct!

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd. - Tom Lehrer

KFG

Re:I suspect

[grazzy]

Are you saying all women in porn are victims? Because if you are I think you're the sexist here, not me. Besides I do care about women being exploited. I just dont care about the ones doing it for the money for whatever reason. Whats there to stop women from exploiting men in pornmovies? Nothing, money talks. All you need to record a porno movie is a some people, a room and a camrecorder you can rent for a couple of hundred bucks. Distribution is easy with the internet.

So I call you out for what you really are, troll.

Re:I suspect

[TRS80NT]

Also, porn pages are probably more temporary than, say, My First Web Page, with less archiving than a blog or news site. Not that I would know first-hand, of course. But I've heard.

Re:I suspect

[mattwarden]

I suspect that the porn content of the Net is highly underrated. Having done such surveys in my life for businesses

I want your job.

Re:I suspect

[T-Ranger]

Perhaps your need for something more and more specific is a sign of getting old. I think they have a little pill for that.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Concede that with an explosion of media, blogs, and other uses of the web, porn is now in a minority. But only 1% of the web doesn't mean only 1% of the internet. Don't forget other mediums like Usenet, FTP Sites, Peer to peer networks; the aggregate of the content available on these networks is also part of the internet.

Porn is basically image files, not HTML content. It should be no surprise that the size is larger than of HTML pages, and it should be no surprise that porn tends to live in file repositories more so than on web sites you will find in Google.

Re:I suspect

[mini me]

All jobs are based on exploitation. You might work a desk job where your employer is exploiting your knowledge. Or you might do physical labour where your employer is exploiting your energy. Or you might work in porn where the employer is exploiting your abilities to perform in that role. They all exploit equally, and it's up to you to decide which form of exploitation best suits your preferences and abilities.

Re:I suspect

[jbrader]

Why would you store porn? You can easily go back and look at it again or find some new stuff and if your viewing online you need only get rid of your browser history to prevent embarrassing discoveries when others use your machine.

Re:I suspect

[skinfaxi]

"Everyone" doesn't look at porn. According to a Harris poll, only 27% of Americans agreed with the statement "All men look at pornography." (Paul, Pornified, P268)

MOST men don't look at pornography. Perhaps not even MOST men on Slashdot. The ones that say "everyone does it" are the ones that do it themselves.

University of Alabama researchers Zillman and Bryant found that prolonged exposure to pornography leads people to overestimate the incidence of almost all sexual activities - particularly sodomy, group sex, S&M and sexual contact with animals. (Paul, Pornified, P226) It's no wonder that porn addicts assume that "everyone looks at porn." Their world-view is so twisted that they can't imagine someone not being interested in porn.

(BTW, there aren't many current studies of the effects of porn exposure, because of the findings of researchers like Zillman and Bryant. The changes in the way people thought after heavy porn exposure were so extreme that research boards will not approve further porn research on human subjects.)

Re:I suspect

[ajs]

In the words of a friend whose job really was to surf porn professionally, "no job should ever force you to do something that you would otherwise enjoy... it ruins a perfectly good hobby." ;-)

Re:I suspect

[benplaut]

Unfortunately, that's a lot harder to measure.

Re:I suspect

[mnmn]

I would suspect 98% being spam and domain squatters however.

And lots and lots of spyware.

Re:I suspect

[Physician]

I think it's safe to say that pornography exploits to a much greater degree than a desk job. Pornography steals a woman's innocence, degrades her in the eyes of millions and herself. It impairs the ability to form intimate relationships (just as with any promiscuous individual). Think of her children on the playground, "Your mommy is a slut!" or "You're a bastard!"

Re:I suspect

[Superpants]

Yes, I agree the porn content on the web is underrated, I mean, I think it's pretty good. Sure it could be better, but who are we kidding...it's porn.

Re:I suspect

[compro01]

hmm. one thing i always question in such studies is the honesty factor, as in how many of the people surveyed are lying.

and also, that is quite a leap in taking that 73% disagreeing with "all men look at pornography" means that only 27% of men look at pornography. actually, i'm suprised that 27% were making that kind of generalization. the statement would have been better made as "Most men look at pornography" or "a majority of men look at pornography", which would likely have given a more accurate picture, as anyone with reasonable critical thinking would not be able to come to the conclusion that ALL men look at pornography, but i would put some money that the number would be higher than 27% given a random grouping of men, assuming all tell the truth. (polygraph them during the questions or something. i dunno)

Re:I suspect

[slofstra]

No. There's a huge difference between a fair exchange of your labour for a reasonable wage, and performing an act you don't want to do as a last resort in order to obtain just enough money to survive. That could be working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage because you don't have even basic language skills to do anything else, or making a fast buck acting in a porn flick. Neither of these situations is necessarily exploitative, but sometimes they are.

Re:I suspect

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Think of her children on the playground, "Your mommy is a slut!" or "You're a bastard!"

When your definition of morality is defined by playground taunts you pretty much have no standing in the debate. But I do have to hand it to you, in a discussion about adult sexuality you still found a way to work in that mainstay of cliches, "but think of the children!"

Re:I suspect

[celardore]

Think of her children on the playground, "Your mommy is a slut!" or "You're a bastard!"

Can work to your advantage too though. My parents were never married, so by rights I'm a bastard. I regard it as my birthright to be the best damn bastard I can be!

Re:I suspect

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

Really?????

I thought "Bang Bus" was just offering them rides, that "Pimp my black teen" was a charity makeover! I thought that "Black meat white treat" was for giving girls a viable alternative to dieting, that "I'm 18" was a celebration for their birthdays! I thought the girls on "Captain Stabbin's" cruise wanted to go swimming, that "pump that ass" was all about female satisfaction! Most of all, I thought "facial humiliation" was about giving downtrodden girls a shot of much needed encouragement.

Re:I suspect

[zero_offset]

Ha! If I could make the same coin just for lounging around naked all day, or maybe having sex with a bunch of experienced professionals, I sure as hell would ditch this desk job double-quick. As for "stealing a woman's innocence"... I'd wager that few pornstars got tricked into that line of work during whatever period of their life they were experiencing this mystical innocence you're hung up on.

You have issues.

Re:I suspect

[metalligoth]

I work in the entertainment business. While I don't work in porn, I definitely know plenty of strippers. (For example, my roommate gives strippers choreography lessons every Sunday at my house.) Every single one of them chose that job because they like sexuality, they like showing off and being in the spotlight, and it's exactly what they wanted to do with their lives while they are young. Your arguments are completely wrong.

You seem to be a Christian, so let me ask you this: in the Bible, Jesus spent his time with the poor and destitute. He spent time with criminals and prostitutes. Have you ever actually met anyone that currently works in pornography and befriended them? You might be shocked at what they have to say about their chosen profession. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Re:I suspect

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, then, you must be okay with Gay porn.

Re:I suspect

[uberphear]

Actually, if it was halving every few years, the level of pr0n would never reach 0%, just become infinitely close.

Re:I suspect

[tomithychen]

Everyone" doesn't look at porn. According to a Harris poll, only 27% of Americans agreed with the statement "All men look at pornography." (Paul, Pornified, P268) MOST men don't look at pornography.

That's horribly flawed logic you have there. All that statistic says is that 73% of Americans agreed that there is at least one man that doesn't look at pornography. How you made the leap from that to saying, "MOST men don't look at pornography" is beyond me.

Re:I suspect

[steelfood]

All jobs are based on trade. Generally speaking, the employee trades a service (the job) for goods (money). We each have certain expectations as to the value of our service, relative to the good that we get back. Which is to say, we expect a certain amount of money for what we do. This is an oversimplification, but for this argument, it will suffice. Exploitation is when one side receives something of greater value than the other side. Get paid too little, your employer is exploiting you. Get paid too much, and you're exploiting your employer.

From this standpoint, being a porn star is like every other job. The service is sex, or nudity, etc. The goods is still money. And whether it is exploitation is still dependent on the value of the service. Some people put great value on the service. Others put little value on the service. Therein lies the true point of contention. It isn't whether people are being exploited so much as it is the value of exposing oneself, or performing sexual acts, etc.

Re:I suspect

[SeaFox]

According to these statistics internet porn will be down to 0% in just a couple of years. Save the porn before it goes extinct!

My first action will be to tag this article "thinkofthepornography"

Re:I suspect

[jamstar7]

that everyone's hard drive pron content percentage is much higher, however.

Naw, I'm just sticking to mp3s & movies until I get the 20 terabyte RAID up & running here.

THEN I'll go loot the pr0n...

Re:I suspect

[tosk_p10]

I strongly recommend you listen to Dr Drew's radio show Loveline (mp3's can be found here http://www.lovelinearchive.com/ for a while at least). He's an actual doctor, not a radio doctor, and he has been taking calls on sex and addictions for over 10 years, and the subject of stripping/porn acting/prostitution comes up regularly. Basically, anyone working in the sex industry believes they are just doing it for the money, or it's what they want, but invariably they suffered some sort of tramua as a child, sexually abused by a family member usually. Now stripping is on the light end of this spectrum, so I wouldn't want to say I know what's going on in your roommate, or his student's mind. But people who have sex with strangers on film are not "perfectly normal", and do not have stable happy lives. It's worth bearing in mind that we as humans are really bad at understand just what it is that motivates us. But again, do not take my word for it. It is actally amazing how much Dr Drew can tell from a caller, just from talking to them for a minute or so.

Thomas.

Re:I suspect

[jamstar7]

Are you saying all women in porn are victims?

What, the feminazis are wrong???????? Can't be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:I suspect

[StewedSquirrel]

I'm sorry? A "woman's innocence"? As if women... are somehow in a special category that is somehow more extra specially "innocent"?

that sounds like a parrot talking, not an intelligent discussion.

Stew

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptops + Bus rides + No wireless. You do the math.

The horrifying math.

PS, if you're on my bus, don't look in the back row when I'm there. /checks PostAnon box.

Re:I suspect

[StewedSquirrel]

This is an excellent analysis and really made me understand what the contention is...

People who think sex is "sacred" or somesuch, seem to think that ANY amount of money is unacceptable in trade for it.

This explains the whole "christians + sex - money =bad" equation.

Very insightful.

Stew

Re:I suspect

[mackyrae]

0% here :)

Re:I suspect

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Pornography steals a woman's innocence,

Can you point to a woman's innocence? I really want to know how somebody "steals" an immaterial object.

Re:I suspect

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Do you take lessons from the BOFH?

Re:I suspect

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I suspect that people who weren't abused as children are really a minority- or at least will be in the future as our idea of what constitutes abuse seems to encompass more stuff every freakin' year.

Re:I suspect

[sillybilly]

I don't think it degrades her in the eyes of millions and herself. True that most societies that survived have evolved complex taboo systems (except ones where the connection hasn't been made between sex and children being born), and there must be a reason for that, because of children, but to think where you would be if yo momma was never a whore? Something is sacred about the whole thing, and taboo at the same time especially when it comes to kids not past puberty/maturity where such things disturb them hormonally/emotionally/developmentally a lot. But as far as adults go, it's only healthy to be a pervert. For one, the shakers figured out how to live without ever being sluts, except they don't exist today. Everybody who is today is an end result of somebody else doing something "nastay." Ewww? Not eww, that's the stuff life is made of. Religions/cultural taboos do interfere, but more as a balancing act, because with too much porn there is a larger danger of overpopulation, and there are places on earth where overpopulation is still a big issue even in face of taboos. But porn teaches people for a quality life, generates more overall happiness in people's lives, as opposed to completely uneducated suppressed people, or even sex-ed-d people you just don't get the teachings of art in a sex ed class you get from real porn.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

While Jesus most certainly did spend time with the downtrodden, worked to help them, and forgave them, He also told many of them to "go and sin no more." I believe that the incident where Jesus saved the woman caught in adultery would be the most salient example.

Re:I suspect

[bbcisdabomb]

Oh, I don't think you need to worry. If the internet pr0n all goes away, I'm betting Slashdot can, collectively, put it ALL BACK UP! Ohh. . . a Slashdot-only pr0n server. . .

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

One) people who engage in more sex are likely to have the same thoguhts, but most people think its their own business. Two) it's also possible that the ones who look at the most porn are also the ones who have the most sex and therefore are more likely to assume other people are having sex . . .or belong to sex groups, have more exposure to more types of desire (also define sodomy - do you mean oral, anal, or all of the above? I mean, really, who doesn't engage in at the least former, if not tries the latter in this day and age). Also, the more sex one has, the more likely one is to try different things (like knitting - beginners knit scarves, intermediates knit hats and scarves and socks, experts knit everything), so perhaps they are more likely to assume other people are trying more things . . . Just wondering how they factored that in (i.e. causation or corrolation?) Finally, what year was this done? I assume the '60s and '70s due to your last comment and the reason studies like this can't be done anymore has to do with a whole series of studies, plus these studies need to be blind and that isn't allowed at all anymore, unfortunately. I'm in the field and its a bitch to get around.

How did they measure what the actual occurance of these events were? Or for people lying? Or did they test the same people before and after to see their thoughts on the numbers? Or just how much was though to occur in the minds of the overall population? How did they account for the tenancy of people who are more comfortable with sex/ who have had more sex being more likely to agree to take part in a study involving watching lost of porn? Were women involved as well? What type of porn was shown (I imagine that makes a difference)? How did they define addiction?

Also, what was the book's name? Or the study's? I'd love to read it . . .

Finally, so what if people who have been exposed to porn think most of those things are more common than the average person thinks they are (with the exception of animals - issues of consent and all that)? None of it hurts people if they choose to engage in it properly, with other consenting adults, and a lot of it is very fun.

P.S. I'm a woman, don't watch porn, and know that I think all these things happen more often than the average person thinks they do, plus I bet the numbers have shifted consiterably since the time of the study as to thoughts on these activities . . . Not only porn "addicts" believe that most people watch porn (*all*, however, is hyperbole and should be avoided - hell, not *all* people have sex, period.)

Re:I suspect

[bkr1_2k]

Invariably is incredibly inaccurate. I will say that most of the girls I know who have worked or are working as strippers (the limited 3 or 4 I know well) have had some sort of fucked up shit in their pasts. But I have met a couple who didn't. I knew one girl who had a middle class life, good relationship with her parents (to this day) and no apparent abuse as a kid (none that she remembered at least) and she went into stripping, and then prostitution (high dollar) for the money and because she loved sex and being watched.

Sure there are plenty of girls (and guys-though less so) who go into it because they have issues, but many of them have already worked through the issues and are genuinely happy to be there. Many are not, but certainly not all of them. Most of the girls I talked to (as friends of my friends) definitely didn't want it to be a career since they recognized the older they got the harder the lifestyle would be, but they were happy to be making the money they were making. Many were wasting it on meth and coke, but a couple had paid cash for houses and were investing in other ways.

Re:I suspect

[RsG]

Think of her children on the playground, "Your mommy is a slut!" or "You're a bastard!"

Would those children face those same insults if people like yourself didn't teach them that their mother was somehow in the wrong? Your beliefs make sex dirty, ergo when your children are the ones flinging insults like "slut", the blame lies with you.

Re:I suspect

[kni52]

This is slashdot. I think you're asking in the wrong place. Then again, being that you're asking on slashdot, you probably don't know of any better place to ask anyway! :)

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who don't have some sort of issues are the ones you don't know very well. That in and of itself tells you nothing of what motivates them, or why they are where they are in life. I don't think it's at all accurate to assume that people in the sex business got there because of past trauma; if at least some of them _didn't_ have traumatic experiences, then they'd be unusual.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

He spent time with criminals and prostitutes.

All without saying that crime or prostitution were okay.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

You understand this to mean that we should not assert anything to be wrong?

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

I despise people who (although sometimes with good intentions) pretend to know about me more than I know about myself. Dr Drew's Babble (Doctor or no Doctor) is a nothing but a scripted set of questions based on common perception deisgned to get the person on the other side of the line to agree with everything he says or implies. This is the same method used by so called "psychics" and it is called "cold calling" it has nothing to do with his ability to know anything from a caller, it has to do a lot (However,) with his ability to get the caller to subjectively agree with all the crap he is implying. on the other hand on a recent poll conducted a respectable university 40% of americans between the ages of 18 to 30 years old admit to having sex with a total stranger they met at some random bar at least once 12% of those admit to have been filmed during sex acts. Am I to believe that 40% of americans were abused during their childhood? This is a rather harsh statement but I believe that if you take into account the crusades, the holly? inquisition and the witch hunts and religious wars (don't even get me strated on Iraq) there has been more murder and torture commited in the name of christ than in the name of porn. The fact that an actor or actress decides to do a film depicting an intimate act does not necessarily brands them as "sick" individuals anymore than an actor or actress that decides to take part on a film which depicts act of violence including murder and assasinations (which for some odd reason is more widely accepted by most americans including christians) Freedom of choice is an inherent right of any democratic and civilized society and as such you should respect other peoples choices instead of attacking their constitutionally given right to do just that as consenting adults. and even more so when noth you and Dr Drew question people's ability to make a sound and reasonable choice based on a fabricated assumption that the individual in question suffers some kind of mental incompetence, sounds to me like another demagogue attempt to impose your beliefs and your opinions over those who do not share your prude ways and narrow vision. Please free your mind and your spirit and learn to ignore that which makes you unhappy and embrace that which makes you thrive as an individual and bluntly put stop putting your nose in other people's life or accept that you (an others like you) will be the downfall of this society as we know it.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a rather harsh statement but I believe that if you take into account the crusades, the holly? inquisition and the witch hunts and religious wars (don't even get me strated on Iraq) there has been more murder and torture commited in the name of christ than in the name of porn.

Then let us invade a third world country... for porn!!!

Re:I suspect

[Unknown_monkey]

And usually if he asks about abuse and they say no, he tells them their in denial or outright lying to him and can't be helped if they won't admit what happened.

Re:I suspect

[S.O.B.]

Only if the guys are Caucasian, otherwise it would be racist gay porn.

Re:I suspect

[pipingguy]

my roommate gives strippers choreography lessons every Sunday at my house

Can I come over and visit after Church this week?

Re:I suspect

[Physician]

Ok, seriously people. This doesn't garner "troll". Do you people really understand the purpose of rating something "troll"? Disagree with the premise all you want but any good psychologist (which I'm not) can explain much more clearly how damaging pornography is to women (and men) who are in it.

Re:I suspect

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

There is at least one huge mitigating factor to Dr Drew - all the callers are self-selecting.

So, while he is pretty good at picking out the people with a history of varying degrees of abuse, it doesn't say all that much about the population in general. When the only people who call in are the ones with problems, it isn't that hard to guess that the, surprise, the caller has a problem and surprise, it is probably related to the reason they are calling.

While it is certainly more complicated than this, Dr Drew would have just about as high a success rate if he asked each caller if they were regular milk drinkers as children as he does asking if they were abused.

You can't make accurate judgments about the general population by only looking at the extremes.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother always taught me that if you can't explain something, then you don't understand it.

Re:I suspect

[Kokuyo]

Yeah, "Think of the children" will bring your argument a looooong way on /. ;)

Re:I suspect

[xnixman]

"Pornography steals a woman's innocence"

Actually, I am the one stealing their innocence (sorry).

I just throw porn around to throw CSI off my trail.

Re:I suspect

[Kokuyo]

The fact that this guy rather moderates a radio show instead of actually meeting his patients and spending time with them to actually analyze a problem didn't let you doubt that he might be overdoing it a bit to get ratings, no?

That whole "abused as a child" clusterfuck gives me the creeps and makes me angry at the same time. That phrase has been abused so many times that it's save to say it's become FUD. And what is the outcome of that? Real victims have a harder time getting people to believe them. False victims destroy lives of innocent people and the population has one more thing to be scared of in the wrong places and in a vastly exagerated magnitude...

This argument you are presenting is very dangerous as well: "See, the doctor says you are sick so it doesn't matter whether you believe that you are fine and feel great. Deep down you are hurting. Here take these pills and all will be better..." Doctors are only human. They make mistakes and their characters aren't angelic and pure by default. Just because someone holds the title of a doctor doesn't mean shit. How do you know his daddy just bought that one for the guy?

So, in short, I find it questionable to put the word of a doctor who analyzes patients over the phone alone above the word of the patient.

Re:I suspect

[Kokuyo]

Yeah, I guess when "holding a child's hand" is to receive that honour then I'll finally be able to get over my childhood traumata.

Re:I suspect

[name*censored*]

Uh huh, and you are of course, Jesus? Which makes you exempt from following His rules? He also told many people to "practice forgiveness and compassion.". I believe that the incident where Jesus said those words dozens upon dozens of times would be the most salient example.

Re:I suspect

[JohnFluxx]

Didn't Jesus also say that prostitutes would be the first to go to heaven when Jesus returns? He liked prostitutes a lot.

Re:I suspect

[skinfaxi]

Men have (and lose) innocence too, not just women. Porn erodes the innocence of everyone involved.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Save the porn before it goes extinct!

I'm saving, I'm saving!!

Re:I suspect

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, I guess when "holding a child's hand" is to receive that honour then I'll finally be able to get over my childhood traumata.

The real question is when will you be able to USE your childhood traumata to become a better person to your children, not when will you be able to "get over it".

I find it very interesting that events that we'd have considered character building 30, 50, even 70 years ago, are considered abuse now. But I don't find it surprising- 70 years ago they were passing the first child-labor laws cutting families off from what had been considered a valid source of income for the 100 years before that, merely because the children were being "exploited".

Oh, yeah- I did get accosted in the store the other day because my 3-year-old didn't want to hold my hand or ride in the shopping cart...he was crying and a clerk thought I was abusing him.

Re:I suspect

[penguinoid]

You seem to be a Christian, so let me ask you this: in the Bible, Jesus spent his time with the poor and destitute. He spent time with criminals and prostitutes.

You're also forgetting the incident at the cross. Mmmm, fetish God porn...

You can mod me down now.

Re:I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Not agreeing or disageering with the parent, but Dr. Drew a a real life doctor who specializes in addiction medicine and treats real life patients all the time, outside of radio. He is the least bullshit radio doctor out there.

Re:I suspect

[Physician]

That's a moot point. I don't have to understand something completely for it to be true.

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet != (a bunch of webpages)

Re:really?

[HeroreV]

Exactly. The web may only be 1% porn, but bittorent traffic is probably much higher. That's where I get all my gigs of pr0n from anyway. Never downloaded much over HTTP.

oh no!

[rayde]

Dang! Now what am I gonna do with my new Dell?

Re:oh no!

[neoform]

Get yourself a hotmail account. You'll be shown where to get porn in a few hours.

Re:oh no!

[neuro_guy]

"hot"mail. Now I get it... tehehe

Re:oh no!

[noamsml]

That's nothing. When I set an MSN account for my now deceased grandfather, he wasn't able to use his own Hotmail account for one reason or another (I didn't quite pick up on the reason, and couldn't go over and help him myself since the Atlantic separated us), but somehow managed to sign up when he mistyped his e-mail address as "somethingoranother@hotnail.com", and since then insisted that that's how things work. I never told him what hotnail.com probably was (he had little knowledge of English, so it is actually reasonable that he didn't know what "nail" could mean).

99-1 law

[cucucu]

99% of the people spend their time in 1% of the web

Re:99-1 law

[Bemopolis]

Hmm, and all this time I thought that the Internet was a series of canals...

Bemopolis

Re:99-1 law

[tomjen]

No no no. Unix is a series of Canals the most frightening of which is the root canal.

Hey why do you think early geeks wore white?

Only 1%?

[Digitus1337]

What have we become?

Re:Only 1%?

[somersault]

has experienced that one percent

Re:Only 1%?

[Anonymous Coward]

Goes away in the end

Re:Only 1%?

[LiquidCoooled]

BURMA SHAVE!

Re:Only 1%?

[dedalus2000]

must seem like more because of the implants.

Missed a word

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's not "Internet Only 1% Not Porn"?

you mean

[EspressoFreak]

i have only captilized 1% of the resources that are available to me?

Irrelevant to policy makers

[regular_gonzalez]

As if this will change the opinions of any of the powers that be in favor of increased legislation and restriction of online content? The argument will shift to "...but that 1% makes up (20 / 30 / 50 / arbitrary number) % of internet traffic! Save the children now!"

Re:Irrelevant to policy makers

[Apocalypse111]

All that porn is clogging up the tubes, and it making them really sticky - that's why it takes so long for me to get the internets that my staff sends me.

Re:Irrelevant to policy makers

[regular_gonzalez]

Your tubes are particularly sticky, eh? Time to stop IMing pages, Senator.

Re:Irrelevant to policy makers

[Ninjaesque One]

They have Senatorial pages, too?

The other 99%

[Baal Sebub]

are link farms to porn sites.

Re:The other 99%

[EinZweiDrei]

Tubes.

Re:The other 99%

[egr]

ads

Re:The other 99%

[binarybum]

thumbnails that claim to lead to porn that really only lead to more thumbnails that then lead to pop-up technology so sophisticated that it validates the existence of a higher being, and apparently he doesn't want us getting to that 1% very easily.

But, but... I thought...

[cswiii]

that The Internet is for Porn?

(Old link by now, sorry).

The Internet is...

[consumer_whore]

99% useless

Re:The Internet is...

[owlnation]

Of course the whole 99% isn't useless. However a significant percentage does indeed seem to be.

For example if I use English words to search for something in Google.de....

(At this point I would like to point out to any web designers who code to redirect users to country specific sites and languages based on their IP address, that if I ever find you I will hurt you, that's a promise. I live in Germany and travel a lot in the EU, but I speak English, I'm damned if I can ever get the page I'm looking for after a cookie clear. Seriously, do you think I'm too stupid to know the difference between .com and .de; that's why I typed one not the other, why on earth should you redirect me?)

...anyway, using almost any English words in Google.de pulls up almost nothing but link farms, SEO pages and click fraud sites, etc. It makes me seriously wonder about the true value of my Adwords account - I really don't think enough is being done about this issue. (And to anyone from Google who's reading, please encourage your German colleagues to do some work, SEO is rampant here.)

Or perhaps we're just long overdue for the next generation of search engine. Google is better than that which came before it, but it still has a long way to go. I want to find my porn without click fraud crap.

Re:The Internet is...

[lmfr]

It's pointed at the end of every country specific google page:

http://www.google.com/ncr

Re:The Internet is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah ha! That proves it! 99% of the internet is used for pirating music, movies and software!

Sincerely,
The RIAA
The MPAA
The BSA

Re:The Internet is...

[jamstar7]

Of course the whole 99% isn't useless. However a significant percentage does indeed seem to be.

Just back from MySpace, eh?

Re:The Internet is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as you are German please don't mention porn and crap in the same sentence.

Re:The Internet is...

[Jesus_666]

(At this point I would like to point out to any web designers who code to redirect users to country specific sites and languages based on their IP address, that if I ever find you I will hurt you, that's a promise. I live in Germany and travel a lot in the EU, but I speak English, I'm damned if I can ever get the page I'm looking for after a cookie clear. Seriously, do you think I'm too stupid to know the difference between .com and .de; that's why I typed one not the other, why on earth should you redirect me?)

Even worse, Google randomly sets my searches to "in German only", cookies be damned. Thank you, Google, for assuming that my request for sites related to prefix portage slang "/fix/your/edest" is best suited by searching only German sites.

Re:The Internet is...

[pipingguy]

why on earth should you redirect me?

Localized targetted advertising.

Why I usually don't RTFA...

[geoffspear]

A giant, annoying ad floating over the page and they still can't earn enough money to hire a copyeditor who can spell "Microsoft" correctly? How can I subscribe to this fine publication?

Re:Why I usually don't RTFA...

[fire_missionary]

2 suggestions for you... Firefox + Adblock Now in 2 easy to click links!

Supply, Demand, Availability

[Rahga]

Let's face it... The supply of women ready to put themselves out on display on the internet pales in comparison to the sheer mass of teen angst that flows out onto myspace/youtube/livjournals etc. :)

Re:Supply, Demand, Availability

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think there is a shortage of porn ?

Re:Supply, Demand, Availability

[kabocox]

Let's face it... The supply of women ready to put themselves out on display on the internet pales in comparison to the sheer mass of teen angst that flows out onto myspace/youtube/livjournals etc. :)

Yes, but how will our culture change if it was socially acceptable for younger 20 somethings to post their entire sex life through a combo myspace/youtube site. I think that both the myspace and youtube terms of service say that they don't allow porn. People would release their home made porn out there like crazy if their was an easy/fun way to do it.

Ok but...

[otacon]

Search engines don't index all of the things on porn sites that are for members only i.e. Terabytes of member's only pages, video, and pics. For example sex.com could only have a few pages for the public that Google would show, but in reality they have thousands more. So it would be hard to be accurate at only 1%

Re:Ok but...

[Daemonstar]

Also, it depends on of they were searching with Google's "Safe Search" on or not (it is on by default; you have to turn it off in the "Advanced Search").

Re:Ok but...

[pacalis]

Google and MS don't push porn in ads, so I'm certain their indexes are optimized on minimizing impact of porn content. For example, google weighs text links, not porn related data content, as a measure of 'votes'. That is, if a jpg file is not treated as a vote, a porn gallery counts as 1 page, no votes. In a more porn friendly index, 1 page with 90 jpg addresses would count as 91 voting pages. 3rd party ads probably aren't treated as votes either. In the final anaylsis, Google and MS should deliver for their ad programs, and their indices should match their customers needs - ie. adwords is likely 99% not porn.

Re:Ok but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, heh... you said "member".

Re:Ok but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it would be hard to be accurate at only 1%

It'd be accurate to be hard at 1%, surely?

Re:Ok but...

[porcupine8]

But you could argue that that's likely to be balanced out by the non-porn members-only pages. Ever tried to google something in Lexis-Nexis? (I doubt they included scholar.google.com in this search.)

1% ?

[kurt555gs]

I am sorry, does anyone here really believe this?

The only reason that internet porn is down is that every web page now comes with 5 or 6 aggressive pop ups for some type of medication scam, and about 100 spam emails.

Normal internet usage, from what i can tell is visiting sites many times a day. An example would be:

9:00 am

Slashdot
Fark
Groklaw
Pornsite
Google News

Now repeat that about 50 times a day.

Seems like porn accounts for 20(something) percent of normal internet usage to me.

Cheers

Re:1% ?

[regular_gonzalez]

This is a logical fallacy called a Biased Sample, also known as a "Pauline Kael"

Re:1% ?

[wiz31337]

I'm at work so I don't feel safe Ring'TFA, but this just seems wrong!

If you do a Google search for pr0n you get way more hits than searching for, I don't know, say, OMG PONIEZ! Obviously, I'm not going to try that now at work, so I'm guessing on this one.

Does someone want to do this study over?

Re:1% ?

[utnapistim]

I am sorry, does anyone here really believe this?

Ummm ... no; My computer is connected dayly to the internet and porn is on, 99% of the ... oh, wait!

Re:1% ?

[LunaticTippy]

I took the liberty of doing a study for you. Here are the results:

Results 1 - 10 of about 328 for omg poniez!!!. (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,630,000 for pr0n. (0.12 seconds)

From this I conclude that there is 11067.07X more pr0n than omg poniez!!! on the intarweb. Now, let's correct your spelling:

Results 1 - 10 of about 152,000 for omg ponies!!!. (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 106,000,000 for porn [definition]. (0.10 seconds)

Now we know that there is 697.36X more porn than omg ponies!!. I'll leave the other calculations to the reader.

Interestingly, the search for "porn" was the fastest search. Somehow they've optimized that one.

Re:1% ?

[toleraen]

Somehow they've optimized that one.

Welcome to tiered search optimizations! Google knows that you're not likely to click on any money generating ads for an OMG PONIEZ!1 search, but they sure know that you're likely to pay for some good ol' pr0n! Why should those free loading poniez fanatics get all the good database inquiries? Google knows where their revenue stream is coming from, and as a result, have optimized it for your clicking pleasure~

Re:1% ?

[wiz31337]

1. PONIEZ!1
2. Pr0n
3. ???
4. Profit

Not a good metric

[RISTMO]

People don't view "pages" of porn. They view graphics and videos. Each page might contain several dozen images. Then there are zip files full of images that are never displayed in the page itself and videos that only count as one file. A much better measurement would be the total size of all porn related files vs. the total filesize of the web.

Re:Not a good metric

[Anonymous Coward]

LINK?

Re:Not a good metric

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually when you think about that, it makes sense that the percentage of port would be at 1% or lower. Who can seriously afford the bandwidth required for porn? Most web hosts don't allow it for just this reason. I know a couple of sites that just give out torrents and they're practically falling over from the server load.

Re:Not a good metric

[tepples]

YES, LINK.

1% pornography, 93% "art"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see it's like this -- the internet contains only 1% "pornography"; but of the remaining 99%, 93% consists of "artistic nudity" and "adult performance art". :-)

Re:1% pornography, 93% "art"

[aplusjimages]

That is true. Only true artists do the ATM thing to make a statement about the current state of affairs.

Other figures:

[From A Far Away Land]

1% Porn
49% Erotica
2% Goatse
30% Bush haters
15% Bush supporters
2% Slashdot articles
10% Blogs
8% Math geniuses
42% AOL and MySpace pages .3% Good Stuff .01% Abandoned Stuff
69% Potty humour
80% Top Ten and Stupid Lists

Re:Other figures:

[otacon]

interesting theory considering that's like 308 percent

Re:Other figures:

[Anonymous Coward]

>8% Math geniuses
You, sir, are not one of them, otherwise you'd find out that the total sum of all % is significantly greater than 100% :-)

Re:Other figures:

[vidnet]

Many of them overlap. Take Bush supporters and Potty humour for instance.

Re:Other figures:

[Gefd]

I guess you're one of those 8%'ers

Re:Other figures:

[idugcoal]

you'd think the "42% Math geniuses" would give this away as a joke...

Re:Other figures:

[Combatjuan]

While obviously the poster was joking, many of those items are not mutually exclusive. His list does allow for overlap. For instance, one can imagine a page with both Bush haters and Bush supporters on slashdot with potty humor. Although there will seldom be overlap between for instance, myspace pages and math geniuses. (-8

Re:Other figures:

[From A Far Away Land]

"you'd think the "42% Math geniuses" would give this away as a joke..."

I forgot to include:
- Not enough pages describing humour to humourless drones.

Re:Other figures:

[From A Far Away Land]

"Although there will seldom be overlap between for instance, myspace pages and math geniuses. (-8"

Touche. But I'd bet a MySpacer would reply with, "Oh yeah, what do you know? I've got like eleventy billions more friends than yous got. You have only 20 and I have 120, so I have like 100 times more friends than you do!"

It's interesting to note that there's a LOT of overlap in the porn 1%, and erotica 49%, and MySpace.

Re:Other figures:

[andphi]

I'll generalize a little father. 100% of the web is created by people. Some of those people support Bush, some bash him, and some regret voting for him. Further more, most people laught at potty humour, even if they immediately wish they hadn't. Ergo, even if we disagree about Bush, we can usually all laugh at fart jokes.

Re:Other figures:

[From A Far Away Land]

Hey, why did this get ranked Overrated? The guy/gal/spacemonster? knows how to make a FUNNY pro-Bush joke. Or at the very least a funny anti-Bush-basher joke. I do believe that George Bush using The Google, and hearing rumours on the Internets, has helped companies to realize they need to improve their Tubes to better accommodate all Slashdotters and Internets users. The Internet is composed of a significant level of Bush jokes, so without him, Porn might otherwise still be the driving force behind the non-truck Internets.

Re:Other figures:

[JazzLad]

Not to mention Goatse and Slashdot.

Diluted

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> Internet Only 1% Porn

That's because the porn is diluted 99:1 with spam.

Re:Diluted

[An ominous Cow art]

And is that 1% by weight, or by volume?

Re:Diluted

[jamstar7]

And is that 1% by weight, or by volume?

Yes.

Doing my part...

[Rob T Firefly]

...to skew the odds back where they belong. --------> (_Y_)

Re:Doing my part...

[value_added]

(_Y_)

Don't nobody fall for this. She's underage and if you download it you'll be on TV with Stone Phillips.

Re:Doing my part...

[Aladrin]

Anyone else having trouble figuring out what that is?

I kid, I kid!

Re:Doing my part...

[gardyloo]

That looks like a double-amputee, you sick, sick person! Fetishes for every-body!

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one without the bra... --------> ( . )( . )

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stone Phillips...the kind of guy you hate until he's inside ya.

Re:Doing my part...

[Dunbal]

Here she is after the mastectomy---> (.) _/

Re:Doing my part...

[Kuvter]

I'm sick of this fake stuff. I want au natural.

Re:Doing my part...

[32771]

Hmm, parentheses. Now I know why I like Lisp, it's all those cushiony feminine curves.

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

\,/\,/

better?

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

(.Y.)

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that an ass or boobies?

(.Y.) or (_*_)?

because (_Y_) could be cleavage, but boobage or assage is where my penis gets confused

Re:Doing my part...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally something that plays into my disembodied ass fetish

Another way of loooking at it...

[91degrees]

Google indexes somewhere around 4000 million web pages. This means that the internet is flooded with 40 million pages of porn!

Numbers are great when you make them dance.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Word on the street is that they invented a word for 1000 million ... 91degrees meet "1 billion", "1 billion" meet 91degrees.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[91degrees]

No. The word you're looking for is "milliard". Billion is ambiguous since it can be used to mean 1 000 000 000 or 1 000 000 000 000.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[Xymor]

Those british and their weird scales... million = 10^6 billion = 10^9 trillion = 10^12

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[RexxFiend]

the clue is in the prefix:
Million = (10^6)^1
(bi)llion = (10^6)^2 (bi)
(tri)llion = (10^6)^3 (tri)
(quad)rillion = (10^6)^4 (quad)
etc etc,
yada yada.

colonials, sheesh.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those North Americans and their weird mathematics... A million doesn't equal ten to the power of six billion, nor does it equal ten to the power of nine trillion, which in turn doesn't equal ten to the power of twelve.

Your equation, sir, is seriously effed up.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[linuxmop]

The English speaking world now uses the short scale, i.e. billion = 1,000 ^ (1 + 2) = 1,000,000,000, trillion = 1,000 ^ (1 + 3). Britain has used these conventions in government since 1974.

Re:Another way of loooking at it...

[Xymor]

Misformating problems: million = 10^6
billion = 10^9
trillion = 10^12

Mod parent hilarious!

[walruz]

Perhaps they have the wrong concept of what pr0n is. Or maybe they are labeling "porn sites" to the fetish-less, old school, straight sex porn sites?

The internet is for porn...

[Kirgin]

Google and Microsoft search indices. Sounds like too pure a fountain to draw from. Try mining from a dirtier source, like my browser history.

The internet == the web?

[Rogerborg]

Well, I'm glad we've cleared up that little misunderstanding. I guess ISPs can block everything except port 80 now. Many thanks.

Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[Toby The Economist]

Percentages mean absolutely nothing if you don't know the sample upon which the percentage is based.

"30% of the Internet is porn".

Was the entire Internet checked? of course not. So what sample was taken? was it a list of random domains, or a list of random pages - which will produce quite different results. If it was random domains, which list was the sample taken from? was it from all sites, or just .com sites? how was the random number generated? presumably sites beginning with "s" (e.g. sex) will tend to be porn sites - was the generator biased in any way? if *pages* were chosen (unlikely, I guess, since it means indexing entire sites, and some porn sites will be pay access, so their pages will be hidden), was it a sample of pages from a sample of sites, or a full set of pages from a sample of sites?

Also, pointedly, what exactly *is* a site with porn? do we mean hardcore porn (peneratration) or do we include softcore porn (glamour)? shouldn't we differentiate between the two, and have two percentages?

So propositions like "the xxx is nn% yyy" are so trite that they are meaningless.

Re:Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[garcia]

More importantly, most free porn is not easily linked to from sites like google. If you do an image search on google you might find one 1000th of the amount of porn content that you would if you were to find a TPG site and then use an incremental URL to get to the rest.

Many free porn sites are now going to URLs that are not easy to guess and thus you cannot get to their content unless you know the specific URLs (linked by TPG listing sites like thehun, elephantlist, sublimedirectory, etc).

So while they might be using google and MSFT data, they aren't going to find shit which is a good thing.

Re:Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[drstock]

42% of all statistics are made up.

Re:Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[TommyMc]

Although it doesn't answer all of your questions the pdf of the "Expert Report" which the article links to has some discussion of the method. The sample size was 11,100 randomly selected 50,000 'Google supplied' websites and 39,999 from MSN supplied websites, if I'm not mistaken.

I completely agree with the sentiment of your post though. We have sloppy statistics from the media ('98% of Immigrants eat babies!'); from Advertising, which proclaims that "95% of participants loved their shampoo!" then in tiny small prints exclaims that the sample size was 30; and from Governments, which are infamous for it's statistical manipulation ("94% of people want to go to war").

Re:Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's incorrect.

1.4355353643278234897234789342 % (plus or minus 2.4e-28%) of statistics are made up and about 32% are not false unless you look at them. ;-)

Re:Lies, damn lies - and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

But many porn sites use hundreds of domains and subdomains with the same content all listed in multiple link farms so that google and others can find them. So the amount of actual porn only websites is probably lower then you think.

I kind of think this is true...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

It is pretty easy to avoid porn if you don't want it, I'm always amused when a relative wants me to scrape all the spyware off their XP box and I suggest this could be avoided if they would stay off the porn. They act all indignant and confused until I pull up their IE history and look through their documents and find the videos they save.

Re:I kind of think this is true...

[evil_Tak]

A much more helpful suggestion would be for them to stay off the IE.

Re:I kind of think this is true...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

How is this a troll? You guys really need some kind of quiz or aptitude test before you just hand out mod points.

Re:I kind of think this is true...

[Dunbal]

I don't get it. Why is this a troll?

Re:I kind of think this is true...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

Perhaps it was the suggestion that people take responsibility for their surfing habits? You can blame IE but my wife uses it all day long and doesn't have any porn or spyware on here PC, so at least part of the blame for IEs issue has to lie with user habits and knowledge. But I know it's not popular to say things like that arond here.

The last official count?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last "official" number I heard were estimates on Wall Street Journal of about 50% right around 2000.

Either way: 1% or 50%, it's not high enough.

How the definition of "pornography" differs.....

[Anonymous Coward]

During a business trip to Alabama several weeks back, I met a fellow who I'd describe as the typical sort of Christian fundamentalist you'd find in the southeastern US. He's not a bad person, but his views are somewhat, in my mind, unusual.

We were talking about the Internet, and some of the work he'd done speeding up the TCP implementation for an embedded OS. He mentioned at one point that he was worried it'd be used to transmit pornography at a faster rate. I found this absurd, so I asked him to elaborate on what he considered pornography. He was telling me that he thought pictures of the adult women modelling underwear and bras in Wal-Mart flyers were pornographic!

Now, I don't know this guy very well. My best guess is that he's got a raging erection most of the time, but due to the beliefs and customs of the society and religion he has been exposed to his entire life, he's had to build up this anti-pronographic personality. It seems he's taken it to the extreme. But it showed to me the problem with pornography: its definition differs so widely between different individuals.

Uh...

[badenglishihave]

Most of the people I know who are serious about pornography use p2p, not the web. Bittorrent anyone?

A few calculations

[el_womble]

My maths isn't great, but I did a few simple calculations and that is still a metric fuckload of porn.

Feel free to convert it into imperial. I think rods would be an appropriate measure.

Re:A few calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

How many Rods to a Fuckload?

Re:A few calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally one, but it can be four or more, the value changes with the energy level of the participants.

Re:A few calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

you meant truckload. right?

Re:A few calculations

[someguyfromdenmark]

I think rods would be an appropriate measure. No no, they're called tubes, not rods. The internets are interconnected through tubes. Funny to think about, isn't it? :)

More than one percent porn spam

[yancey]

It may be true that only one percent of pages on the Internet contain porn, but porn-related spam gets to much more than one percent of Internet mailboxes.

Of course it's only 1% of sites...

[Phat_Tony]

I'm not in the least surprised it's only 1% of sites. I think the interesting thing is, what percent of traffic is it?

Millions of people can belong to one huge site and spend all their time there. Dozens and dozens of "mini" sites all just feed into the same big site, and depending on how they counted this, those might all be "one site." A whole ton of the porn out there probably isn't indexed, because you have to have an account and log in to the one accessible page the crawler saw to get to the ten million pages of porn behind it. A huge amount of the porn online probably never has anything to do with the web, as it's moving over bittorrent, usenet, gnutella, etc.

Estimates I've seen of the percent of internet traffic that's porn have been much, much higher than 1%.

Re:Of course it's only 1% of sites...

[klang]

I work at an ISP.

I remeber a day, back in 1999, when a network administrator announced that on the previous day, the ammount of traffic used by porn was the same as the ammount of traffic used on everything else. Before that day, porn traffic was higher.

Today I guess that bittorrent traffic in general has taken over the role ..

Re:Of course it's only 1% of sites...

[Anonymous Coward]

...based on a text based analysis? Of course, I read playboy for the articles.

Re:Of course it's only 1% of sites...

[AEton]

Happily, our government can now also check what percentage of Internet traffic is pornographic!

Quote From TFA

[MightyYar]

``What we are learning about the Internet is that it reflects life and that the Internet is not -- contrary to what some people might think -- more sexual than people are in general.''

That might be the most insightful thing that I've read all week...

Re:Quote From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey mods, he said INSIGHTFUL not Interesting...

Re:Quote From TFA

[dcw3]

``What we are learning about the Internet is that it reflects life and that the Internet is not -- contrary to what some people might think -- more sexual than people are in general.''
That might be the most insightful thing that I've read all week...

Well, we know that they couldn't have been polling the statistics for Slashdot readers...1% would be way more sex than we're getting.

Re:Quote From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey MightyYar Posting Anonymously .... YOU weren't insightful. You were quoting someone ELSE who was insightful. The fact that you brought it to the attention of the thread-readers is interesting. Chill yourself out, eh?

So thats why....

[gothzilla]

So THATS why it's so hard to find. Oh wait....

The other 99%

[Kadin2048]

I can't be the only one here left wondering ... "if 1% of the Internet is porn, what's the other 99%?"

Just one question...

[Pollux]

...did they included P2P in their calculations? I'm pretty confident that more than 1% of that traffic is porn.

ONLY 1% Porn?

[gambler_mtu]

Given the size of the Internet, I find that rather sad. Too many people's lives are damaged/ruined by porn for even 1% to be acceptable. It would be better for society if that number were 0, we'd have a lot less child predators and rapists on the streets. I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the right to debase themselves...I just think it is sad that it is made so easy by the internet.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[simonv]

I'd like to see the statistics of lives being ruined by porn. Also, wouldn't it be better if rapists had an outlet, like, say... porn, instead of people?

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[StoatBringer]

If it cheers you up, I find this thread difficult to masturbate to.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[n2art2]

Their lives are not ruined by the Porn. Their ruined by their choice to view it and to lust because of it. The true cause of those ruined lives you speak of is lust, and the choice to indulge that lust.

Beer doesn't make you get drunk. Kissing doesn't make babies. A gun doesn't make a murderer. And Porn doesn't ruin people's lives. It's all about the user's choices that they make.

We like to blame things, instead of blaming ourselves.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does lust damage lives?

Mine seems to be positively enhanced by lust. Who else agrees?

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[3rd_Floo]

Seriously, the internet offers nothing that doesnt have some form of demand. The pr0n is there because there is a demand for it, get rid of it from the net, and the demand will just be satisfied by some other medium just as accessable by those who really want it.

Besides, you oviously havent seen how hard it is to find good quality pr0n these days, easy isnt what I would describe it as.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[jweller]

I'd like to see the statistics of lives being ruined by porn. Also, wouldn't it be better if rapists had an outlet, like, say... porn, instead of people?

while I agree with you that a very small number of lives are ruined by porn, your second point is way off base. Giving porn to a rapist is like giving an arsonist a small fire to play with.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Dunbal]

Also, wouldn't it be better if rapists had an outlet, like, say... porn, instead of people?

      So instead of forcing women into dark alleys to have forced sex, he'd force women into dark alleys, whip out his laptop, and force them to watch porn?

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

tip: open this post only, not the entire thread...

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[LoveGoblin]

If it cheers you up, I find this thread difficult to masturbate to.

I can't help but notice that you said "difficult" and not "impossible."

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[TheDauthi]

But not impossible!

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[odyaws]

Clearly you didn't see this comment.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, you oviously havent seen how hard it is to find good quality pr0n these days, easy isnt what I would describe it as.

Get your ass over to Pure TNA and stop whining.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Eivind Eklund]

while I agree with you that a very small number of lives are ruined by porn, your second point is way off base. Giving porn to a rapist is like giving an arsonist a small fire to play with.

Do you have any references to back that up with? I'd be seriously interested in seeing studies that indicate this - it is an area I've been curious about and haven't seen anything published around.

Of course, if you don't have any studies, I'd recommend you get some pride in yourself - so much pride that you stop forming opinions until you have enough knowledge to make them informed.

Eivind.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[jweller]

I have, in fact, seen some research into the effects of pornograpy on rapists. Generally speaking the data is inconclusive. There is evidence to support both sides, and neither side has a real clincher. Part of the problem is that it is difficult to isolate one specific cause. I can't provide any links because it was in a textbook from a class about 10 years ago. I do feel that it just sounds like a bad idea. Like giving axes to conviceted ax murderers, heroin to recovering junkies, and having convicted pedophiles running a day care, I believe it's a bad idea to tempt fate.

as for the rest of your post, I'm going to resist the flamebait.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[e40]

BS. The opposite:
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/027311.h tml

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[R2.0]

"Like giving axes to conviceted ax murderers, heroin to recovering junkies, and having convicted pedophiles running a day care, I believe it's a bad idea to tempt fate."

So rapists used porn to rape their victims? What, they rolled up a Playboy and sodomized someone with it?

You are equating sex and rape. Rape is about violence, not sexual gratification. A rapist uses the sexual act to perform violence. I saw a study once where most rapists don't ejaculate, signifying that, whatever release a rapist is looking for, it isn't a sexual release.

With your analogies, axe murderers should be kept away from trees (axe related), junkies should be kept from hospitals (might be syringes there). I agree with pedophiles and day care, not because the kids are a temptation - a pedophile is going to be attracted to kids whether he is around them or not - but to reduce opportunities for pedophiles to have private time and/or develop trust with potential victims.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[StewedSquirrel]

So porn leads to child predators?

Riiiiiiiiight.

And your evidence is...... uhm.... I saw a group claim that "more than half" of rapists view porn before they rape.... They claimed it as evidence that porn was bad and should be made illegal.

What they neglected to mention is that in random population samples of ALL SINGLE MEN, the numbers are exactly the same.

the conclusion? Porn viewers are equally as likely as non-porn viewers to be rapists.

Shocked?

Didn't think so. You're shaking your head saying "it can't be true because I don't like what that means".

Whoop, see, you've already dismissed what I said without investigating it. hah!

Stew

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I was about to write a long-ish attack on you and your beliefs, but I think your score of "5, Funny" says it all.

I don't care whether you're being sarcastic or whether you really believe that, it's still funny as hell.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[gambler_mtu]

So porn leads to child predators?

No, people with no self control + porn CAN(not will) lead to becoming a child predator. People with self control + porn is less likely to lead to becoming a child predator. People with self control and no porn are even less likely to become a child predator. You don't need a study to know this is true, just use your brain.

What they neglected to mention is that in random population samples of ALL SINGLE MEN, the numbers are exactly the same.

I don't follow...the numbers are the same as what?

the conclusion? Porn viewers are equally as likely as non-porn viewers to be rapists.

That statement can't be backed up using common sense OR a study. Granted anybody CAN be a rapist even if they never set eyes on porn, but don't try to sell the fact that porn doesn't contribute to their lust.

Shocked?

No

Didn't think so. You're shaking your head saying "it can't be true because I don't like what that means".

No, I'm shaking my head saying, "it can't be true" because what you say doesn't follow logic.

Whoop, see, you've already dismissed what I said without investigating it. hah!

Yep, show me something that proves me wrong and I'll go investigate it further.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's an incorrect analogy. Better one:

Fire to an arsonist = penis/object to a rapist. (what they cause harm with)
Something to burn to an aronist = women/man to a rapist. (who/what they cause harm to/prove control by burning/raping)

A lack of fire doesn't stop an arsonist wanting to burn something any more than a lack of penis/object stops a rapist from wanting to rape (androgens are a different matter, though). Usually, as far as I understand from pschyology, both these situations are about power, not a desire for sex or fire.

  Porn doesn't cause the rape any more than fire causes the arson. It's the person who does it and if they can't control it, then it's a matter of removing the fire and the object to be burned, or the analogous stuff for the rapist.

Also, since rape is found in all societies through all times and pornography is relatively new (i.e. there was no TV and most people couldn't afford painting, etc.) it must not be porn causing the raping.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[hairpinblue]

> Yep, show me something that proves me wrong

Easy enough. You completely forgot to consider the world before the availability of the internet--a world where all of the evils which you mention existed without the influence of internet pornography. How about the world before private home video? The world before television? The world before photography? There were still sexual predators.

Saying that the availability of pornography on the internet has increased the likelihood of any given sexual crime is infinitely debateable, at best. The numbers could easily be massaged any which way depending upon how they've been tallied--like we're ever truly going to know the per capita rate of sexual crime in the 1600s (not that we really know it today since reporting is still stigmatized). I'm not saying that it does or doesn't, just that you've not considered some very important points and cases which make most of your assertions moot.

The only thing which the availability of internet pornography has definitely done is to increase the number of people who have become addicted to internet pornography. That's the point of any good business, though: to get the consumers addicted to the product. Microsoft has managed to master this business model quite nicely.

The only way out is really very simple: Just Don't Do It.

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[Clever7Devil]

You forgot about giving violent video games to depressed teenagers. ;-)

Re:ONLY 1% Porn?

[tehcyder]

It's hilarious that the parent has been modded as Funny.

I'd believe it

[petrus4]

Pornography just isn't as big online as some people seem to think. Sure, it's there if you look for it...but for the most part, the Web gets used for other things. The ratio might be a bit higher on IRC and the p2p nets, but not actually all that much.

In terms of my own porn-viewing days, it was primarily before I got into a relationship. The other thing was that even at the time, I was aware that porn itself wasn't what I really wanted; sex was. From that point of view, porn is vicarious and frustrating. To a degree masturbation works, yes...but to nowhere near the same extent as sex itself.

Now that I'm able to have sex on a regular basis, I find that porn just isn't something I feel I need.

Re:I'd believe it

[pandrijeczko]

...except of course that porn doesn't get "headaches" and is still there waiting for you even though "you haven't mown the lawn like you promised"!

Re:I'd believe it

[Control Group]

So basically, your post is just the long way of saying: "I HAVE LOTS OF SEX"

Re:I'd believe it

[n2art2]

Your thinking about Masturbation, not Porn. Enjoy Rosey all you want, but please realize that Porn is just to help you with your Maturbation fantisies.

Without lonely people not getting any sex, except through Masterbation, there would be no such thing as Porn.

Re:I'd believe it

[LiLWiP]

On slashdot, we must brag as often as possible about having "LOTS OF SEX".

Being pale, malnourished, not showering for days at a time, playing EQ and WOW for multiple weeks on end without sleeping, chatting on IRC with your "girlfriend" (translated 35 year old man sitting in his living room in his underwear), and living in your parents basement posting on slashdot all day just isn't as cool as it used to be.... Man I miss the good old days.

Maybe a news organization should take that survey into consideration.

Re:I'd believe it

[Control Group]

You just need to find the right porn. My fiancee and I have been known to watch porn together on occasion, and this has yet to result in masturbation. The trick is to find stuff that caters to women, also - which means there has to be significant psychological eroticism along with the normal visual stimuli.

A fire in the fireplace, some decent wine, a spacious couch, and some artsy porn make for a real nice evening.

Re:I'd believe it

[Dunbal]

You're just jealous because he bought a dog and you didn't. WOOF!

Re:I'd believe it

[pandrijeczko]

I'm male.

I am constantly thinking about masturbation, porn and naked females (mainly my own loving wife of a decade-and-a-half).

However, I think you missed the humour in my comment.

Don't blame just the policy makers.

[Shivetya]

As with any government endeavour they hired scientist, computer experts, and a slew of other specialities. Do you think those people are come back with data that doesn't support their continued existance?

Government driven research leads to one thing, more government driven research usually by the same groups. When you don't have to show a profit from your results you return what best profits you.

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[monkeydo]

As with any government endeavour they hired scientist, computer experts, and a slew of other specialities. Do you think those people are come back with data that doesn't support their continued existance?

Yes, that's EXACTLY what they did. The government was trying to prove that there is a need for COPA. Instead they proved that there isn't.

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[El Torico]

Yes, that's EXACTLY what they did. The government was trying to prove that there is a need for COPA. Instead they proved that there isn't.

Don't open the champagne yet; the DOJ can find data in the study to support their claim.
I noted this in the article -

Stark's study found that only 6 percent of all queries returned a sexually explicit Web site, despite the consistent popularity of queries related to sex.

Which raises the question, what percentage of the search terms are of that nature? The report from Dr. Philip Stark states that in addition to the random search terms, 685 popular queries (as counted by Wordtracker) were used in the study. When those search terms were used, the return rate of sexually explicit sites was about 37%.

To me it shows that a lot of people are looking for pr0n (and finding it), so I wanted to see what people are currently looking for. These are the current top 30 search terms, but they have been edited by Wordtracker "so as not to cause offense." Does anyone have access to the current, unedited top 30, 100, 500, etc.?

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[kuerin]

While we're in the process of distributing blame, let's not forget about the alarmist parents to whom paternalistic legislation caters and whose irrational fears opportunistic politicians prey on.

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[LiquidCoooled]

Contact AOL, they will point you in the right direction.

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[PMuse]

People who are good at math (i.e., slashdot) should be more skeptical of whether 1% is a low number.

Would it be acceptable if 1% of web pages had viruses? were phishing sites? were fishing sites? After all, server uptime is measured to five nines, not two.

To decide whether the rate of porn on web pages is high or low requires a baseline for comparison. For instance, "what percentage of all printed pages (i.e. books, periodicals, etc.) contain porn?" or "what percentage of all video footage (i.e. TV, movies, etc) ever published contains porn?"

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[AppyPappy]

Porn is free speech like perjury is free speech

Re:Don't blame just the policy makers.

[Politburo]

Same thing happened with weed back in the 70s. Congress made the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse to study what schedule it should be placed it. The Commission recommended legalization. Nixon ignored the report because it didn't support his pre-formed conclusions.

No surprise

[sacrilicious]

In what surely comes as a complete and utter surprise to everyone here, a new calculation shows that only one percent of web pages contain pornography.

Doesn't surprise me. Less than 1% of my house's floor space is occupied by dining room chairs, yet somehow I manage to spend nearly 10% of my time in these chairs daily. Likewise, the percent of waking time spent by our household watching the 0.1% of our wallspace occupied by the television is a (disproportionate) 10%.

Re:No surprise

[Trogre]

I guess it shouldn't surprise me either. Less than 1% of my house's volume is taken up with sewer pipes, and I manage to spend exactly 0% of my time there.

Not that different from pornography after all.

1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consumed

[mrops]

On a more serious note: So what makes up the Internet? Webpages or the data that flows over networks.

Percentage of Internet traffic pls, not web sites

[slashdotmsiriv]

I would be much more interested in a statistic on what percentage of IP traffic carries porn-related information. That would be a much better metric metric for finding out what the Internet really ... is for.

what the hell is the internet?

[ChocolateBob]

"the internet is for porn!!!!!" dadadada doododododo dada

Internet by Diebold

[shirizaki]

1% Porn
40% Useless meme and trivia
59% George W. Bush

sniffle, sniffle...you are my family...

[evansky]

it's nice to see so many folks freely relishing their porn. i feel like i'm home, at last...

What is "business privacy"?

[IANAAC]

First off, privacy on the web doesn't exist. It wouldn't be on the web if it were meant to be private.

Also, what's the "beloved proverb" that "netizens" are losing?

Re:But what percentage of the traffic

[artemis67]

Somebody modded you down, but that really is a far more useful measurement.

Still, 1% of 5 billion is still a significant number.

500,000,000 pages, many of which are entry pages to sites that Google can't index, so the number skews even higher.

Random Slashdot Quote

[Morphine007]

Oh Random Slashdot Quote at the bottom of the page... sometimes you are just soooo apropos:

hard, adj.: The quality of your own...etc... ;-)

Re:Random Slashdot Quote

[Morphine007]

.... tough crowd :-(

Re:Random Slashdot Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Random Slashdot Quote at the bottom of the page... sometimes you are just soooo apropos:
hard, adj.: The quality of your own...etc... ;-)

*standing up and applauding*

Encore! Encore!

And SPAM

[pato101]

metric for finding out what the Internet really ... is for.

It would be interesting to know the Spam volume as well.

Internet is more than Web sites

[Foundryman]

More correctly they should maybe say 1% of Web Sites indexed are porn. They forget other means of porn transmittal, usenet, bittorrent, many p2p apps. Plus whose definition of porn did they use? Did sites with depictions of nudity qualify? How about lingerie model sites?

I Declare Shenanigans!

[lupine_stalker]

This is obviously a coverup by the International Pornographic Conspiracy, and as such is blatant lies and slander. Next you'll be saying that there is useful information available on this 'internet' and that I DON'T have to wear my tinfoil hat to prevent having my mind read by CIA satellites!

The amazing part is .....

[3seas]

that they were forced to hand over the information.

Think about it. what sort of distorted view does the government have of the people it is suppose to represent.

How embarrassing

[tooyoung]

Slashdot
Fark
Groklaw
Pornsite
Google News

You admit that you read Fark without posting anonymously? Wait, what if your family sees this?!?

1% is a lot

[still-a-geek]

If there are approximately 50,000,000 web pages out there (average of 5 web pages times approximately 10,000,000 websites - very rough estimate), 1% of 50,000,000 is 500,000 web pages. To me, that's a lot of porn.

Vince

Skeptical?

[jlf278]

Okay, 1% sounds fishy at first, but if you take a look at history, you find that pictures of women's belly buttons, armpits, shoulders, etc. were considered Porn. Now we are far more selective. Furthermore, according to Moore's Law's Inernet Porn Corollary you will see that technology has increased the rate at which porn becomes both more efficient and more easily attainable. Where you once had to pay your older sister $15 to buy you a copy of Penthouse, now you download whatever messed up $&!# videos your perverted heart desires in high res! So 40 years ago we had computers occupying 70% of a research lab, now it's more like 1%. Obviously that's like comparing apples to apples, so it's no surprise the exact same thing happened to internet porn.

Re:Skeptical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where you once had to pay your older sister $15 to buy you a copy of Penthouse

      For $15 my older sister would give me a blowjob. Obviously your older sister is quite the stuck up little bitch.

Yeah right.

[makoffee]

They must not be going to the same sites I do. :)

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[penix1]

Add to that the different avenues to pr0n (P2P, Usenet, IRC, etc) that this study didn't even consider that is likely to raise that 1% some. All-in-all, I still think (right or wrong) that pr0n is a big motivator for Internet access especially broadband.

B.

Yeah right...

[the dark hero]

...And 1% of your moms body weight is fat.

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...find this study hard to believe. I demand to see a list of all the websites deemed to contain "porn", so I can personally double check and cross reference these sites with my own index.

Please?

melons

[thinsoldier]

what's important is not how much porn there is but how easy it is for minors to access it.
I remember a few years back doing coursework in the highschool computer lab and I needed information about our phone company Batelco.
A visit to Batelco.com resulted in an endless stream of porn ad pop ups.

Anyone can turn off the safe search option on google in 2 clicks.
Go turn it off and search for melons. What's the first result?

the .xxx doman idea was a good idea I think.

Re:melons

[Anonymous Coward]

the .xxx doman idea was a good idea I think.

Luckily for all of us, you are not an ICANN member.

Anyone can turn off the safe search option on google in 2 clicks.

Right. But that generally means they are actively looking for non-"safe" content. Switching off Safe Search and then complaining that some of your search results were porn is akin to shooting yourself in the foot and then blaming the gun.

Re:melons

[Anonymous Coward]

giving kids easy access to finding porn by allowing them to easily disable SafeSearch is akin to leaving candy shaped poison in an easily opened glass jar on the cafeteria counter.

typing in a seemingly innocent .com address and being shown a horse riding a man is akin to walking through the front door of a store called the GAP and realizing this particular GAP stands for GAPing cream filled holes.

Only 1% Porn but...

[mykhailjw]

95% links to it.

The real purpose for DNS

[LibertineR]

"Directions to Nasty Stuff."

Who doesn't know this? This was what they trying to do!
Dont believe me? Just try to remember the IP address for "Big Asian Titties" by yourself!

1% of what, exactly?

[Control Group]

I would love to know what they're counting. Are they talking about 1% of IPs? 1% of registered domain names? 1% of Google's cache? I've got a not-so-sneaking suspicion that the result would be significantly different depending on which of those you measured.

And, as other posters have indicated, what they ought to be measuring is the percentage of internet traffic that comprises porn, which would be (to me) a more valid metric for what impact porn has on the internet.

Easy now...

[Greyfox]

People could be looking at this from work. You don't want to get anyone fired, do you?

Re:Easy now...

[Trails]

Agreed. It's much easier for browsing habit monitoring software to search for (_Y_) than the bitmap equivalent, thereby making /. more dangerous than actual pr0n!!

business privacy?

[sprocketbox]

I am very much on the side of individuals having a right to privacy but since when does a business have a right to privacy? I say screw the corporate fat cats.

And 50%of that...

[Ayanami Rei]

... are teens channeling that angst, trying to convince other teens to put themselves out on display as well. The other 50% consists of sparkling "Thanks For The Add" graphics, bad poetry, stolen music video clips, and copy pasta from chain letters.

Yeah and 50% google garbage

[axonis]

Don't you just love those meaningless websites that just use Google Ads, I call the whole problem "google garbage" --> the real problem on the internet currently, porn is natural and 99% realistic with the current levels of population.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Anonymous Coward]

did you just rip that comment from ghyd's comment here below?

Of Course...

[lys1123]

This does vary some based on What you consider Porn.

Hahaha...

[Ayanami Rei]

you sad little man.

1% is still 1 out of every 100 pages

[King_TJ]

Not only does this figure not really surprise me, but I'm not even sure why it makes people feel like porn on the net isn't very prevalent?

When you consider that the majority of businesses put up some type of web site advertising their existence, all of the personal web pages/sites people have built over the years, all of the educational and research sites that exist, and all of the non-profit/charitable organizations with a web presence -- not to mention the huge amount of content related to computers, technology and even gaming (since the net is the best place to publish that type of content), it surely comes out to FAR more than the number of sites interested in selling porn.

For that matter, the porn site business on the net has probably been downsizing to reflect market interest, just like any other industry does as it "matures". For a while, everybody thought "throw up a web site full of naked women pics and PROFIT!" Now, you're seeing them struggle to find creative "niches" that hold people's interest. Otherwise, they look just like every other porn site and they slowly die off. I'm sure there's been a lot of consolidation going on too, with a successful site buying up not-so-successful sites and hosting them at new locations, with more cross-advertising and promotional subscription packages giving someone access to both site for one price, etc. etc.

Porn vs Mac

[scrotch]

I'm not sure what this says about me, but it occurred to me that Apple has better market share than porn...

Re:Porn vs Mac

[SnoopJeDi]

Well, they DO have a tendency to overemphasize the aesthetic appeal sometimes.

Do you have a problem with melons?

[Ayanami Rei]

They are firm and delicious.

Misnomer?

[DoomfrogBW]

I think the article means Websites not Webpages, which is drastically different. Since the number of webpages probably outnumbers the number of websites, the percentage may be lower when given that there are probably less pornographic webpages than websites. A typical pornographic website may have a dozen pornographic webpages whereas a non-pornographic website may have two dozen webpages. The numbers here are skewed. Just because only 1 % of webpages may be pornographic doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a law protecting children from them. Say for instance that if 1 % of crime in America is theft, does that mean that we don't need to have a law against it? Quantity of crime does not necessarily give reason for law. I'm not with the ACLU on this argument.

I want to know....

[hcob$]

How did they search the whole internet for porn.... And can I have some of the links.

I'm tired of wasting 10 minutes to.... errr.... Wasting 10 minutes to search a topic and finding nothing but porn. I need those links to err.... block the porn... yeah.

Re:I want to know....

[Anonymous Coward]

you want porn domains ?

450,000 over here...

http://research.vision-options.com/

Simple...

[AlXtreme]

216.22.28.33. Who needs DNS?

Kids these days with their new flashy toys. Now get off my lawn!

Re:Simple...

[LibertineR]

Damn, just when I was sure there WERE no big asian titties..........The Internet is a wonderland!

Spam

[Jotii]

Also, there are 98.99% spam sites. The remaining 0.01 are regular sites.

Re:Spam

[Dunbal]

Also, there are 98.99% spam sites.

      Nah I'd say it's about 70% spam sites, 18.99% slashdot dupes, and 0.01% regular sites.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[east coast]

All-in-all, I still think (right or wrong) that pr0n is a big motivator for Internet access especially broadband.

Come on now, you know Joe Sixpack got broadband to watch the MIT OCW lectures. Don't bring him down with bad noise. He needs all the encouragement he can get.

How do you define pornography?

[eno2001]

Considering the wide array of the kinds of porn and pecadillios out there... I'd say that the study is very likely flawed. To some people, the following are pornography:

1. Bare tit
2. Celebrity nipple slips
3. Non-detailed butt/bum shots
4. Up the skirt panty shots

To others who are more extreme in their anti-porn views, the following would qualify:

1. Females under the age of 18 wearing skimpy clothing and too much makeup on MySpace
2. Anything with a female of any age wearing clothing that starts above the knee and doesn't cover the legs, or exposes the midriff
3. Anything that celebrates female sexuality in terms of sexual pleasure. It's OK to celebrate it, if it's related to child bearing. Witness the number of couples who tell all their friends and family "we started trying to have a baby a few months ago" without batting an eye, but you wouldn't see them saying "we started trying to increase the quality and frequency of orgasm for both of us a few months ago". With "both" implying that she gets to have a lot of fun too.

The two groups above very likely would comdemn people to death for looking at images of activities like:

1. Gay/Lesbian Sex
2. Orgies
3. Bondage and Dicipline/Sado-Masochism
4. Female Domination
5. Infantilism
6. Furries/Yiff (sexual scenarios utilizing anthropomorphic animals in cartoon form)
7. Bisexual activity of any kind (forced homosexuality in the domination scene all the way to "lesbian" activity in the swingers scene)
8. Cross dressing
9. Extreme body play (super large anal and vaginal insertions. Think: bowling ball in ass or eggplant in vagina. It's been done. Many times. You'd be amazed at how much human tissue can stretch without breaking)
10. Nullo (the voluntary or involuntary removal of genitalia)
11. Amputation (removal of limbs for sexual pleasure)
12. Scat (sexual activity focused on fecal matter)
13. Bestiality (sexual activity with animals)
14. Hentai (anime with a strong sexual focus possibly even including "tentacle sex" and mutilation (typically of females))
15. Hirsute women (women with a lot of body hair who don't shave it off. As some men put it, "wool panties")
16. God/Goddess/Wife worship (people who literally worship their masters, mistresses and spouses in the BD/SM scene and take the worship very seriously)
17. Swingers (real people who engage in free exchange of sexual partners. Typically lots of straight couples and singles with bisexual activity between women. There is very little homosexual activity between men and some groups discourage it due to health concerns based around the lie that AIDS is a "gay" disease.)
18. Cybelle (Wife as goddess figure. Husband must submit to being a literal "human toilet" and ingest urine and feces of wife. Husband is also cut off crom all sexual contact with wife, while wife has right to take many lovers. Husband is also in financial bondage and all money he earns go to wife for her use only. Hehehe... I expect some guys here will say that that's why they got divorced in the first place. ;P)
19. Foot fetish
20. Hotwife/Cuckold culture. Wives sleep with other men and their husbands photo/video them for sharing on the net both free and pay. The cuckolds never get to have sex with their wives.

And that's just a smattering of what I've scene in my 16 years on the net as an amateur sexologist/enthusiast. All of the above activities/groups publish photos and text online that the simpler folk of our society would find appalling and unacceptable. Hell, even I was shocked when I found the Nullo, Amputation and Cybelle stuff. But, then after looking at these things I realized that this stuff has ALWAYS been around long before the first bits poured out onto the internet. And as long as humans exist, these things will continue to be around. In the past people did this stuff underground and kept their images, written words and fantasies to themselves. If they were caught, they were likely i

Re:How do you define pornography?

[Harry Coin]

10. Nullo (the voluntary or involuntary removal of genitalia)

Involuntary?!? I consider myself a pretty open guy, but damn. Hangin's too good for 'em.

Re:How do you define pornography?

[rark]

> as an amateur sexologist/enthusiast

Bwahahahaha!! Dude, I'm so calling myself this from here on out. "I'm not surfing porn/smut. I'm practicing amateur sexology." :)

Seriously, though, your list is incomplete. You missed about four of my interests and at least six more of people close to me...and I would have put 16, 18, and 20 under 4 and put 4 under 3.

More importantly, I question that much of the above was excluded and I question that there'd be such a large increase if all of this were considered, even if it were excluded. The data was gathered by considering random samples of Google's and Microsoft's internet indexes. I can't imagine that a person looking at most of the above would see it and consider it something other than porn.

As far as the ratio of "out there" erotica to mainstream porn, on one hand, yes, plenty of really out there stuff exists. On the other, a lot more mainstream porn exists. For every kinky person who is tying their spouse up or anally inserting duck pin balls (I'll believe bowling balls when I see them..I've seen duck pin balls) and putting pics or video on the net there's several (not sure how many, but I"d be shocked if as much as 10% of the population is into anything like the above list, not counting gay/lesbian because I consider that mainstream and I'd be *really* surprised if g/l porn wasn't counted, so I'd say the ratio is at least 1:10) "straight" folks putting pics and video of "normal" sex acts up. Most of the companies that are just in it for the money stick to vanilla or only a little kinky sex because it sells better and because it's less likely to acquire the attention of law enforcement officials.

But face it, it was just more fun to post a list of kinky activities to /. than to do whatever else was on your todo list today :)

1% porn, 20% business related, 79% "art"

[Cheeze]

I'm glad they think only 1% would classify as porn.

They Weren't Looking Hard Enough

[Greyfox]

As Tom Leher says smut is in the eye of the beholder. While it's true that occasionally nothing satisfies like a youtube video of 12 midgets getting it on with a llama and a hot nurse in a swimming pool filled with K-Y jelly, it can be just as much fun (Well, OK, almost as much fun) to look for homoerotic undertones in 1980's era cartoons (What do you think all those Smurfs were doing before Smurfette arrived?!) or in America's favorite gladatorial sport (12 men in tight pants all piling on top of one another? Come on!) I bet if you looked hard enough you could find porn everywhere! Even on the front pages of CNN. OK generally not on Google's though. You need to go to the next page on google for that. After entering "12 midgets getting it on with a llama and a hot nurse in a swimming pool filled with K-Y jelly".

The muzzle of a cat?

[Ayanami Rei]

  o o
*(_Y_)*

Re:The muzzle of a cat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pussycat licken good.

The other 99%

[Benwick]

It's 1% pornography and 99% erotica.

yeah! i wonder when they'll learn about metatags

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

metatags can control what a search engine can/can't look at a website.

all the porn sites have to do is put "no-cache" metatags on their pages to keep them off gogle's cache.

now here comes the science. they do research using webcaches as source, come with a meaningles, wrong number and want us to let go of our proverb ???

well, they can have my proverb when they pry it from my cold dead hand!!! the left one, of course. the right is kinda busy right now.

yeah but...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but 98% are probably just domain name squatters

1% porn?

[aristolochene]

With the internet comprising just 1% smut, thank the Lord for google! I might never have been able to find pornography online without it.

I wonder what %ge of money made online is through this 1% of the content?

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

AKA "1% by number of pages, 99% by disk space on my computer"

There is NO pornography on the internet!

[mmell]

It's all just a series of electronic pulses; think of them as "ones" and "zeros". It's only when some ultra-conservative right-wing evangelical types assemble those ones and zeros into ghastly, fleshy-colored images that the pornography emerges. All the pr0n which supposedly suffuses the internet is Rush Limbaugh's fault! (I wonder how much of it is on Rush Limbaugh's hard drive?)

Re:There is NO pornography on the internet!

[Xanthis]

Yes, but some people think viewing pictures of other people performing 1000101 is pornography.

The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[shaneh0]

Ok, bad phonetic pun, sue me.

I do agree with you to an extent. Even if many households get broadband for a NUMBER of reasons, my guess is that if we had stats on the first website loaded after the Cable installer leaves, we'd have a fair cross-section of the fetish-porn industry.

Re:The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[laffer1]

I'm sure that some people get broadband for porn. Remember that previous research shows women use the internet more than men. Women rarely look at porn since they are not turned on by merely visual imagery. The first site I went to was a speedtest site to make sure I wasn't getting ripped off from the cable company! The second site was apple.com to stream some movie trailers.

I'm sure the typical slashdot reader is more likely to view porn since most of us don't get laid much. I'm married and do get laid so don't frequent porn sites.

Re:The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[jahudabudy]

I'm married and do get laid

Boy, I wish! I'm just too afraid that my wife will find out...

Re:The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[k1t10]

What a load of bollocks. I love porn.

Re:The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking, reading or writing? All three, judging by your website (which, incidentally, is so poorly coded it brought my browser to its knees, and *not* like in the story on the front page). I think it's great that in today's world women can explore their sexuality without being judged. But please - you've got great content, don't hide it behind an abomination of a webpage like that. I finally gave up after 2.7MB of render-engine-choking badness.

Re:The proof is in the... uh... "pudding"

[k1t10]

Looking mostly. I don't have much interest for reading it :) A friend built my page while he was learning, so i didn't have great expectations for the quality of the coding or graphics.

Indexing

[Ethan Allison]

Don't most search engines filter out NSFW sites?

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

WTF?!? I know I selected "post anonymously"! Umm, I mean, hey! Someone hijacked my /. account!

Mandatory link

[Alarash]

Internet is for pr0n.

I must assume.....

[LibertineR]

By your myriad knowledge of various forms of Pornography, that you have been married a looooooong time.

Re:I must assume.....

[Dunbal]

I must assume by your myriad knowledge of various forms of Pornography, that you have been married a looooooong time.

      That made me chuckle. Of course the BEST thing about being married is that you can STOP being married any time you want...

      Dunbal, the recently divorced.

Re:I must assume.....

[eno2001]

Heh. No. Only four years. I have just always had a huge interest in sex and sexuality and how its effect on human behavior. I've been studing sex since I was about 10. I'm 36 now. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a very liberal community with an excellent library stocked with everything from "On Human Sexuality", "The Joy of Sex" and "The Joy of Gay Sex" as well as the Whole Earth Review which gave me a great perspective on the world. That's where my varied knowledge comes from. Where it should: the library. :)

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Kozz]

So what makes up the Internet? Webpages or the data that flows over networks.

Answer: Yes.

One data point

[PhotoGuy]

Several years ago, I founded a photo sharing site, which grew quite large (tens of millions of photos, millions of users). At one point in our growth, we did an analysis of what percentage was adult content. Much to our surprise, it was only at 10%, we were expecting much higher. I do suspect the 1% number of this study is unrealistically low, though.

i truly wonder...

[Nocturnal Deviant]

if these people are trying to shelter their kids, i mean for real, kids tehse days know exactly what porn is by the time their 13, i mean for god sakes i was staring at Pamela Andersens boobs when i was what 6?

honestly, how many people expect kids to believe the stork dropped them off when there a teenager....and kids seeing porn....i have the same view with cursing, if there gonna learn it anyways, why shelter them from it, if they learn it im not gonna wallop their bottoms for it(like mine was when i was a kid, but thats an ENTIRELY different child abuse as it is called THESE days issue lol)

It's what they don't measure that counts

[davidwr]

Google doesn't measure captcha- or password-protected pay web pages.
Google doesn't measure file-sharing networks.
Google doesn't measure web pages that have robots.txt exclusions.

A much more interesting number than "porn sites" is:

1) how likely are you to find porn if you start at a well-known non-porn site and randomly click on links?
2) how likely are you to find porn on the first page of results on a search engine, if you are NOT searching for porn?
3) for the parents of 14 year old boys: a) how hard is it for my child to find porn if he IS looking for it, b) how effective are i) machine-, ii) router-, and iii) ISP-level blocking tools, and c) how easy can my son or his friends evade them without getting caught?

The first two will keep truly-innocent kids and adults from stumbling on porn. #3 demands both a technical and a proper-parenting solution.

Re:It's what they don't measure that counts

[Budenny]

I search quite a lot, on a variety of topics, never for porn, and can't remember coming on porn on the first page of results, ever. So the answer to your question (2) in at least one person's experience is, almost impossible for this to happen. I do (1) too occasionally to have a firm opinion - Slate for instance, or the Washington Post. Answer is the same, but this may not be representative.

Re:It's what they don't measure that counts

[Overzeetop]

There was a time when NASA.com and Whitehouse.com were pornographic in nature. I never saw either (really), and only found out about nasa.com when my father said he'd tried to find my page at nasa.gov and was greeted by a site having nothing to do with spaceflight. (Actually my mother related the story, and was laughing pretty hard about the gaffe)

Re:It's what they don't measure that counts

[StewedSquirrel]

1) how likely are you to find porn if you start at a well-known non-porn site and randomly click on links?

Very unlikely, but depends on the site.

2) how likely are you to find porn on the first page of results on a search engine, if you are NOT searching for porn?

Somewhat likely, but not frequent.

3) for the parents of 14 year old boys: a) how hard is it for my child to find porn if he IS looking for it, b) how effective are i) machine-, ii) router-, and iii) ISP-level blocking tools, and c) how easy can my son or his friends evade them without getting caught?


Trivially easy. Most teens I have heard talking about it, do so openly openly and say it's very simple to get porn on a computer that isn't totally locked down to the point of being virtually unusable... and even then in some cases.

I heard of one using TOR to circumvent ISP blocking. I spoke to another who uses his cell phone to "tether" an internet connection using EDGE wireless, avoiding ISP-level blocking. I know of one who installed VMWare and runs whatever he wants under the virtual machine, without the censor-ware having any idea what's going on.

Several online games I know of also have integrated browsers. In addition, there are lightweight java browsers that can display most pages and can run under limited permissions. There are web-based proxies and ran across a posting online of a 12 year old who claimed to have set up apache with a squid proxy on his father's web-hosting vserver that he helped administer.

The first two will keep truly-innocent kids and adults from stumbling on porn. #3 demands both a technical and a proper-parenting solution.

Without raising your kids in a bubble or under constant camera surveilance, I don't see this as very practical. When I was 10, porn was a novelty and kids would sneak around with a cutout picture from an older brother's Playboy... But by the time I was 14, it was pretty damn ho-hum ordinary for kids to have regular access to porn.

Frankly, surveys indicate that 90% of parents of young teens think their kids are "ignorant" to issues such as pornography, where the ACTUAL case is that something like 70% say they have had unrestricted access to hardcore porn, even if they don't use it... (and the other 30% are catholic, I guess) ;-)

Stew

About web search

[nieske]

This might also have something to do with the fact that sex-related topics also aren't the top in web search anymore, now only numbering 3,8% as opposed to 17% (!) in the mid-nineties.

That's not logical

[ColdWetDog]

This is a logical fallacy called a Biased Sample, also known as a "Pauline Kael"

No, it's just a bored, lonely slashdotter. Nothing at all to do with logic.

Lies!

[Neovanglist]

Ah, 1% is porn. But of the 99%, 29% are Wikipedia articles and 69% are Myspace pages. The extra 1% is /. and the like.

In the words of Scrubs, "If all the porn were taken off the internet there would only be one website left, and it would be www.bringbacktheporn.com"

Google's Limitations Skew This Lower

[1sockchuck]

The estimate is supposedly based on web pages in the Google index. To comply with COPPA, most porn sites have a "clickwrap" screen which makes the user verify that they are 18 before proceeding. Does Google see the pages behind this screen? Pages in paid membership areas are also not likely to be indexed (unless you're the New York Times, of course), which also probably limits the porn content in the sampling.

Nonetheless, a Google search for "sex" yields 393 million results, and a search for "porn" yields 82.9 million results. If the percentages of actual porn are as low as the survey suggests, what does that say about the (undisclosed) size of the Google index?

Obligitory quote from Potter Stewart

[skwang]

"I know it when I see it..."
--Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

See this wikipedia article for more details including the entire quotation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Internet Only 1% Porn...

[Tzorcelan]

... the other 98% is porn spam.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[gungh0]

So what makes up the Internet? Webpages or the data that flows over networks. > Would you like us to answer that for you ?

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Placido]

>> Joe Sixpack got broadband to watch the MIT OCW lectures
Don't dismiss it. Joe Sixpack probably has a pornstar for a girlfriend.

They're Feeling Lucky

[Doc Ruby]

Bush's government pissed off a lot of people, including Google and the ACLU (and me), by requisitioning these private search records. They tried to get all of the records, rationalized by "fighting kiddie porn". Now that they got the records, they found that the records undercut their case, as most reasonable people expected.

So all the time and money we let Bush's government spend creating, enforcing and defending the COPA was a waste, while surely unnecessarily hassling people.

Of course, Bush's government did get a copy of all that private data (though probably not from Google), even if their cover story ran out after they got the cat out of the bag.

What will be the next privacy invasion our government tries that backfires (on all of us), but delivers more info their Republican Party can use to spy on us?

Quick! Somebody do something!

[yummyporkproducts]

Before it's too late!

That only bolsters the argument though

[snowwrestler]

While it's interesting to think about, the absolute percentage of all existing Web content that is porn is not really the important question. The important question is how much porn the public sees inadvertantly, and whether federal legislation is needed to protect kids from porn when they are online. If most porn content is hidden behind logins, that lends strength to the idea that such a law is not needed.

Also I should point out that there are vast stores of Web-accessible, non-porn information hidden behind member login as well. Like all of Lexis-Nexis, for instance. Or many newspaper and magazine archives.

Re:That only bolsters the argument though

[Dhalka226]

The important question is [. . .] whether federal legislation is needed to protect kids from porn when they are online.

The important question is whether or not children need to be protected from porn at all.

I ask this question seriously: Have there been any studies done that shows that exposure to pornographic images makes a child more likely to engage in sexual activity sooner, or makes them somehow less likely to use protection during intercourse? If not, it seems to me that this isn't about protecting children -- it's about protecting parents from uncomfortable discussions that, frankly, are part of their job as parents.

Personally I wish children were exposed to MORE porn and MORE sexual discussion. It seems to me that the US has become entirely too prudish about sex. It is a natural and necessary part of life and we should stop treating it as a depravity. Sex is what it is. If we, as a society, instill maturity and responsibility in our children, I believe the vast majority of the concern of sex is rendered moot.

and 99% are link farms...

[advocate_one]

seems to be what I encounter when trying to do simple searches on product part numbers...

1% porn. Then why do all internet searches show

[Anonymous Coward]

...porn in the top 10 results?

We don't need no steenking suits...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>Ok, bad phonetic pun, sue me.

We here at the Slashdot Language Police do not use lawsuits for such offenses; we prefer flogging. There is a strong minority opinion that bad anatomical puns should be punished by flaying of the referenced anatomical part. Fortunately for you, the number of Slashdotters able to recognize a pun such as yours playing on rules of spelling and pronunciation is far less than the alleged 1% porn content of the internet, so you're probably safe. This time. You have been warned, however.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Lessee. Seven 100Mb files for a .RAR archive from RapidShare.de certainly "equal" seven pages from PBSkids.org?

The instrument determines the measurement. What is the Pr0n content of this NSFW link? :
http://rapidshare.de/files/35028090/island4_hd.wmv

How can this be?

[MikeTheMan]

This can't be true, because everyone knows The Internet is For Porn.

oblig. quote

[Anonymous Coward]

<y0da> if they took the porn of the internet there would only be one website left and that would be www.bringbackbacktheporn.com

via http://bash.org/?416604

Re:oblig. quote

[Twisted64]

I was going to post that, but as a Dr Cox quote from Scrubs. Which came first, I wonder? Seriously, you could get a lot of good sitcom jokes off bash.

I'm disappointed

[ivow]

there weren't any links in the article... You know... to add to my statistical research.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Real1tyCzech]

Agreed. Since it included only Google and MS Search indices, perhaps the title should read,

"Web only 1% Porn".

But hey, who's counting?

Is this trend really a surprise though?

[snowwrestler]

User-driven content ("Web 2.0") has led to a massive increase in the parallelism of page creation. Every single story submitted to Digg becomes a new Web page, as does every Flickr page, every Wikipedia page, every Match.com profile, every Youtube video, every Myspace page, every Slashdot comment, etc.

Some porn sites allow user-generated content (pun intended, eewww...), but overall the number of people willing to share recordings of themselves having sex is probably pretty small compared to the number willing to share their favorite song or interesting link or thoughts on a subject. (At least I hope to God it is.)

Re:Is this trend really a surprise though?

[T-Ranger]

I suppose there would be a huge market for some automatic facial recognition/pixelization software package. If such a thing existed, in a consumer-friendly package - then user generated content would explode[1].

[1] sorry.

Hunt and peck

[addie macgruer]

That's because you're typing with both hands.

How could this be measured?

[mattwarden]

Most porn sites have one or two teaser (no pun intended) pages, and the rest are behind a login challenge, and thus would not be indexed. How is this accounted for in their results?

Re:How could this be measured?

[Steve B]

Most porn sites have one or two teaser (no pun intended) pages, and the rest are behind a login challenge, and thus would not be indexed. How is this accounted for in their results?

Since the statistics are based on how many sites contain porn, that doesn't matter -- one porn image or a million porn images both make one site containing porn.

Re:How could this be measured?

[mattwarden]

Then what constitutes a site? A second level domain name? What if 99% of the Internet was under one domain name? An extreme example, but it makes the point. These statistics are about as useful as Christmas tree in April, or some other ridiculous analogy.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[JazzLad]

Apparently whatever gives you the result you are looking for.

last i checked...

[fire_missionary]

ANALYSIS SHOWS ABOUT 1 PERCENT OF ALL PAGES HAVE ADULT CONTENT

Last I checked, my pages weren't all made up of 1% porn.

It is more like 82%, but thats beside the point.

Also, this site is not 1% porn either, or if it is, you are pretty ill.

Heh

[iperkins]

Sure. 1% porn and 98% online pharmacies, at least according to my inbox

A relief for those Cum Drenched Teens

[tezza]

Those double fucked College Cuties, horny a$$ Farmers Daughters, and cock craving Housewives can all sigh a collective Sigh of Relief.

Previously they risked being spotted in real life A LOT. But with so much background noise of 'non-filth'[1], there is less chance. How many girls/guys must do their vids::: and later regret it when everyone finds out??

Maybe not all, but at least some.

Most of these guys would have some regrets

---------------
[1] British slang term for porn

1% on the web...

[Anonymous Coward]

99% of my hard drive

Only one thing greater

[StreetStealth]

Only one institution in this world could possibly outweigh porn in terms of sheer volume...

Bureaucracy!

Re:How the definition of "pornography" differs....

[LunaticTippy]

Anything can be porn. When I was in High School, I'd fantasize about girls I'd seen fully clothed. Hell, there's cultures where the sight of a woman's ankle is deeply erotic. I've seen closeups of a mouth that was more erotic than a full nude. Defining porn is a loser's mission.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[CptPicard]

Let me tell you something, son, as you are obviously confused.

The Internet is like a series of tubes. It's certainly not like a truck that you just dump something on...

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[srk2040]

I'd guess warez, movies, mp3, anime. U get the idea.

1% of the worlds internet content

[calumniate]

is actually still a _lot_.. wouldn't you agree?

Heh

[Tarlus]

Notice how they just automatically assume that all of us would be surprised by this figure? As if all of us really know how much porn composes the internet?

Wrong Title

[M1000]

Maybe the web is 1% pr0n, but the Internet is not only the web; How much pr0n in % there is on bittorrent, ftp sites and Usenet ?

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[lymond01]

Yes...I think the original thought was "50% of Internet traffic is pornography".

Re:THE INTERNET IS FOR

[Anonymous Coward]

PORN!

1% pornography

[cgenman]

Only 1% of the internet is porn?

That's not surprising, considering pagerank. After all, every porn page has about 100 randomly titled link pages pointed at it.

Of course, the outlook for % of homework getting done online is rather bleak.

On the plus side :)

[Anonymous Coward]

That leaves room for 99% improvement :)

Listen Newbie...

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm certain that Dr. Cox is correct:

• Dr. Cox: I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be one website left, and it would be called Bring Back The Porn.

And the other 99%

[maharvey]

And the other 99% is largely ignored.

Seriously, who visits the Pepsi web page? The vast majority of web content is boring and pointless, of no interest to anyone, it just exists for the sake of existing.

Internet != Web

[4D6963]

"Internet Only 1% Porn" "only one percent of web pages contain pornography"

Once and for all (if only it could be so), the Internet and the Web are two different things. The web is well I guess anything using the HTTP protocole, which means only web pages, basically (please don't bring up particular cases). The Internet is the network, the whole thing, the web, mail, usenet, P2P, IRC, instant messaging, VoIP, multiplayer games, FTP, VNC, VPN, telnet, anything.

1% is an odd number.

[dilvish_the_damned]

It must be the top 1%.

The Web is ...

[booch]

The Web is the sum of all human knowledge plus porn.

    -- Ron Gilbert

Wrong title?

[manifoldronin]

Doesn't "Internet only 1% Porn" mean "Only 1% of all porn content are published on the Internet", while TFA actually talks about "Only 1% of content published on the Internet are porn," which should have been "Port only 1% Internet?"

Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they forgot to turn off their parental controls when they started looking.

Using the US Supreme Court "community standards"

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The definition of porn depends on where you are, In Saudi Arabia it might be pictures of women without veils.

Hotmail porn is gay

[tepples]

Hotmail? Sounds like "hot male". I don't think most of the men on Slashdot would want to look at gay porn. Hot female, on the other hand...

Re:Hotmail porn is gay

[userlame]

Hah...that reminds me of a few years ago...I decided it would be fun to add a hotmail.com zone to local lookups CNAMEd to hotmale.com. I knew instantly when each of my roommates first tried to check their email. "AHHHHHHHHH OH GOD WTF!%$#!"

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[roguefugu]

DAMN! Just after I get a OC-192 installed in my house so I can use the full potential of the Internet, this article gets posted.

Re:Victory?

[PriceIke]

Good god. Look, I don't agree with this person, but modding him TROLL?? wtf. Mods, if you don't agree with him, fine, but USE OF MODERATION AS AN ARGUMENT is a fscking misuse of moderation. This person's arguments are not abusive, on-topic, and clearly stated. If you don't agree with him make your case in a reply. Modding him "troll" is even more cowardly than replying AC.

If you dont want to be re-directed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a proxy in the US and use it, typing google.com will take you to .com, also works if i site is blocked by isp, or you want different languages, just find a proxy in that area.
most proxy's are just for web traffic, and not anonymous. unless you pay for usage.

There is a disconnect

[SanityInAnarchy]

For instance, how many of you would walk into work, stand up in the middle of the cubicle forest, and shout "FUCK THE WORLD!!!"

How many of you would type something similar into Slashdot?

The disconnect is perhaps not about our real sexuality, but how it's expressed. Most people would feel a hell of a lot safer talking about sex here, behind some perceived anonymity, than in life, especially at the office, in front of that cute brunette at reception... or in front of your fat, aging, pointy-haired boss...

The same could be said for a lot of other things, though. Personally, I'd feel a lot more comfortable talking to the cute brunette about sex than trying to explain system administration to her. The admin talk is a lot more likely to be boring. But on the Internet, no one cares if you're boring -- they can easily ignore you, and find something more interesting -- whereas in life, she's stuck at that desk, so it's actually rude to be boring to her.

Thus, the Internet is more sexual than life in general, but perhaps more closely represents how sexual people are in general. This could skew it both ways, but I stand by that point, certainly if we look at browsing histories, not just web pages that exist.

Stupid calculations.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Porn still beats your stupid calculations.

Sex easily beats porn, though. Make love, not porn!

I call BS

[Dunkirk]

http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/

If the internets were only 1%, you'd almost never see anything pornographic there, right? Just watch that for a few minutes. You'll see something exciting. I just went there, and saw an image of a hard-core 3-way.

Re:I call BS

[Dunkirk]

Just checked it again, and about half the images were porn. VERY explicit. Someone's SERIOUSLY bagging this report for some sort of ulterior motive. I mean, we could get into a discussion about how "random" jwz has made his application, but I think his point was to be truely random.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Anonymous Coward]

Al gore made up the internet.

I'm pretty sure porn makes up the internet.

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[l0b0]

"+9, Funny" on your own? Respect!

I don't understand...

[superiority]

There's internet that's not porn?

Language is ambiguous

[tepples]

The word you're looking for is "milliard".

Nothing to do with President Fillmore, I take it.

Billion is ambiguous since it can be used to mean 1 000 000 000 or 1 000 000 000 000.

So if 10^12 is a (long) billion, then isn't 10^15 a billiard?

Language is ambiguous because it is used by humans.

Re:Language is ambiguous

[91degrees]

So if 10^12 is a (long) billion, then isn't 10^15 a billiard?

According to the comment at the bottom of this page, it's valid. Although it hardly matters. 10^15 rarely comes up, even when talking about the US national debt.

should information like this keep us calm?

[frietbsd]

Ow wow, the law inforcement used the data they stole from the search engines for something that they can allow to get public.
Is this why they had to have this data?
What i see is that the west is moving to simular internet controls already in place in china.
Once upon a time people needed more justification then porn to do stuff like this.

The report is flawed (with quote)

[scwizard]

5. These random samples of websites and queries were given to CRA International, which, I understand, performed the following steps. CRA International viewed random samples of 11,100 of the Google websites and 39,999 of the MSN websites and categorized their content. Sexually explicit adult entertainment websites belong to category 5f. Websites with no nudity or sexual content belong to category 1a. Websites with sexual content belong to other categories if the context is educational, medical or artistic.

Only 1.1% of websites belong in category 5f. However I bet you that less than 1.1% of all websites belong in category 1a.

Re:How the definition of "pornography" differs....

[Harry Coin]

I'm from Alabama, and I don't consider it "pornography" unless the midget slaps the donkey around a little.

internet porn? whats that?

[Supreme_101]

hmm, all fine and well to say that but im sure most people could think of 10 porn sites off the top of their head, but only one slashdot ;)

So which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Slashdot full of porn whores or cuckold degenerates? You people defend scum and you will soon pay the price.

Your mothers are whores. Iran sends it's regards.

This is the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, we saw it anyways.

Obligatory Question

[gbobeck]

Since Al Gore "invented" the internet, does this mean he is comprised of 1% porn too?

Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume

[Matthew Bafford]

U get the idea.

Dude, you're not helping the "Make the Internet Look Clean" cause. You just sacrificed 2 bytes to the porn side of the equation. Imagine what would happen if EVERYONE did that...

wow

[sentientbrendan]

That's a very intelligent way to put it.

I usually just say that strippers do what they do because they are ho-bags.

In any case, you sound like a prick.

well the problem with user generated content

[sentientbrendan]

in porn, is that there would be nothing but a lot of one man shows.

From Africa

[Tablizer]

We have a special pill that can boost the percentage to 4%.

AWESOME!!!!

[StormKrow]

....so that means there's room for expansion!

What percent of pages actually visited have porn?

[wprowe]

Let's assume it is true that only 1 percent of all web pages in existence contain porn. What percent of all web pages actually visited contain porn? I bet that is higher than 1 percent.