COPA in court again

The Web is actually not teeming with X-rated content, according to research by a University of California-Berkeley statistics professor. "A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Micrsoft's giant Internet indexes showed that only about 1% of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material," the San Jose Mercury News reports. The findings were presented in a Philadelphia federal court last week, where COPA - the Child Online Protection Act passed and almost immediately blocked by a federal judge in 1998) - is again on trial. On the surface the case is about online porn, but it's really a long, drawn-out case about free speech, and its latest arguments – between the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union - are being heard in a federal court in Philadelphia. [A federal appeals court and the Supreme Court both upheld the original injunction, but the latter sent the case back to the Philly federal court in 2004, ordering a new trial to determine whether less-restrictive ways to protect kids than those provided in COPA can be found, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.] As for the study of online porn, according to the Mercury News it "found that only 6% of all queries returned a sexually explicit Web site, despite the consistent popularity of queries related to sex. It also found that the filters that did the best job blocking sexually explicit content also inadvertently blocked lots of content that was not explicit [and the study also concluded that a lot of adult content got through the filters]. Government witnesses argued that while the percent of sexually explicit Web pages was small, it still amounted to a huge number." In related coverage, the two sides of the debate are clearly represented in this Wall Street Journal discussion, "Are More Laws Needed to Protect Online Kids." For views on parents' role, see BlogSafety.com co-director Larry Magid's "What Can Parents Do about Web Safety?" at CBSNEWS.com and "Parents are kids' best protection from online porn" in South Florida's Sun-Sentinel.