So here we have one of the world’s leading pornographers lecturing Google & Yahoo about doing more to protect kids for online porn. Just bizarre. Next thing you know, Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner will be lecturing pay TV operators for not doing enough to stop people from viewing adult VOD channels!
But before Mr. Hirsch makes silly statements like “None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps” to keep children from viewing online pornography, perhaps he should click on the “Safe Search” buttons on each of those sites to see what each search provider already offers. As I pointed out in my book on “Parental Controls & Online Child Protection,” those safe search tools are surprisingly effective in rooting out most of that porn that Mr. Hirsch and his colleagues produce.
Update: Harold Feld and I often clash on issues, but he’s an incredibly gifted writer and it shows in this absolutely hilarious response to the Hirsch episode. The first paragraph is just priceless:
Every now and then, hypocrisy reaches a level of such cognitive dissonance that it approaches the level of art — or perhaps really low humor. Such is the case of Vivid Entertainment co-founder Steven Hirsch, who recently expressed his deep concern that Google, Yahoo! and other search engines may expose children to porn. Hirsch called on search engines to “erect strong barriers” to children finding pornography. No doubt he also offered to “increase the size of their filtering package” so that their defenses against “naked porn stars and exxxplicit sex acts” could be “rock hard.” Sadly, his personal emails to Eric Schmidt and Jerry Yang on the subject keep getting caught in their spam filters.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.