Presume 1% of the Web is porn: Is that a lot?
How much porn is really out there on the Internet? The answer is that about 1% of Web pages “contain sexually explicit material,” according to a “confidential” analysis of Google and Microsoft search data done at the behest of the Department of Justice, which wants to reactivate the law that the ACLU successfully blocked.
But that 1% figure begs a second, apparently more significant question: Is 1% a lot — or not?
One newspaper headline from last week proclaims: “Study finds Web isn’t teeming with sex.” Another asserts that “99% of the Internet is porn free.” So at least two headline writers believe that 1% is not a lot when the subject is Internet porn.
That’s the ACLU’s position, too. The civil liberties group argues that the study results do not bolster the government’s attempt to revive the challenged law.
“One of the things we think came out of the government’s study is that the chance of running into graphic content on the Web when filters are on is extremely low,” ACLU attorney Catherine Crump told the San Jose Mercury News.
Hey, I’m as glad to see that law go as the next civil libertarian, but I can’t help but notice the importance of “when filters are on” in that sentence.
But back to the number: What does 1% of Web pages really mean? The answer is truly a “go figure,” and one would think you’d start with the total number of Web pages. Good luck. You can find all kinds of guesses out there on that figure, ranging from tens of billions to hundreds of billions. Take your pick.
Whatever you choose, though, you’re talking a mighty big number, a number so big that 1% of it will leave you with a mighty big number.
So the question seems a bit silly. Of course, 1% is a lot. Of course, the Web is teeming with sex. There’s a lot of smut on the Internet, and children, left to their own devices, will find it, and it will find children.
And it strikes me that we didn’t need a taxpayer-funded study to reach any of these conclusions. Nor do they justify ham-handed legislation.
A bad report card for Bank of America
Bank of America, which boasts of having more than 20 million active online customers, ranked dead last among 43 U.S. banks in terms of Web site availability for September and October, according to figures released last week by Pingdom, a service in Sweden that monitors uptime.
“The biggest is not always the best, at least not when it comes to Web site availability,” said Pingdom in a press release. “Out of the sites surveyed, the Bank of America Web site was by far the worst. During September and October, their Web site was unavailable for a total of more than two days and three hours. This is almost twice as much as the First Bank Web site, the second worst.”
A number of banks did very well by the Pingdom report, with a pair — KeyBank and Comerica — logging 100% uptime over the two-month period.
A Bank of America spokeswoman said she was “not familiar” with Pingdom or its methods and pointed to a number of awards the bank has won for its online efforts.
A reader of my blog, who left only Meg for a name and an acknowledgment that she does work for the bank, offered a more spirited defense: “I think Pingdom is ignoring the fact that over September and October, Bank of America just completed the largest customer conversion in the history of the financial-services industry when it brought MBNA customers and accounts onto the [Bank of America Corp.] systems. Two days and three hours of downtime to convert 40-million-plus credit card accounts is pretty damn amazing.”
Hope she’s right, since I recently opened an account with Bank of America.
