Will the Department of Justice Get its Fair Share?

[Andrew Qunice]

Some estimates say that 25 per cent of websites available through Google.com are pornographic. Given that, it will be interesting to see what share of the random 50,000 URLs Google hands over to the Department Of Justice (DoJ) following last week’s ruling, link to pornographic sites.

After all, wasn’t the US Government’s objective in bringing this action to prevent minors being exposed to unsuitable material on the Internet? In the light of this, the key question is: How will the DoJ ensure that the sample provided by Google is representative and that the whole issue isn’t fudged?

[Marcia]

After all, wasn’t the US Government’s objective in bringing this action to prevent minors being exposed to unsuitable material on the Internet? I don't believe so, personally. I believe that there's a long-range political agenda behind this whole COPPA thing, but I'd rather not get any more political than that.

Realistically, there is no way possible for the Government to control what sites minors go to on computers they have access to, and any attempts would be about as ineffective as Prohibition was.

There's no way other than legislating that search engines can't include any unsuitable sites in their index. But they can't do that, not without pushing through a constitutional amendment.