Senator Lamar Smith, who gave us SOPA, is at it again.
This time with the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act that is supposedly
meant to make it impossible to spread child porn on the web.
Lamar Smith is not the only politician to claim that there is a lot of child porn on the
internet. It regularly happens that politicians claim that the internet is littered with
websites on things like how to become a suicide terrorist, how to build your own bomb and
child porn. But I never believed that. So a while ago I decided to research it.
Suicide terrorist
It surprised me to find that there is actually a manual on becoming a suicide terrorist
written by Al Qaeda. It surprised me even more to find this manual on the website of the
FBI.
But when I started reading it, it quickly became clear why the FBI would want to publish
this.
It turns out to be the most boring document you’ll ever find. With page up on page filled
with boring rules and regulations a good Muslim should follow before qualifying to become a
suicide bomber.
Then there is the English language Al Qaeda magazine.
Although I can’t speak for other countries. The information they have on terrorism in the
Netherlands is far less then what I can find on any website of a local news paper.
Searching the Google list I found hundreds of news articles about terrorism.
Some videos of children playing to be a terrorist.
I found one video of a stupid Chinese kid who called himself a suicide bomber, put
firecrackers on his tummy and lit them.
But I didn’t find any information on how to become a suicide terrorist.
Building bombs
The same is true for building bombs.
Following the Google list I first found a lot of sites claiming they could tell you how to build
your own atomic weapon. But where would you get your uranium from?
Searching further I found some information on the “Anarchist cooking book”.
That was a pamphlet floated around several American universities in the seventies, which
apparently contained recipes on building bombs.
But the pamphlet lost it’s popularity long before the internet gained popularity. And so
is was lost.
Then I came across a website that issued a warning:
Since there are no countries where it’s legal for civilians to make bombs, you’ll never find
a website written by anyone who has experience building bombs.
You only could find a site written by a wannabe.
And since wannabees don’t know what they’re talking about, and since most chemicals used in
explosives are not only explosive but also toxic. It’s very likely that anyone trying to
build a bomb would end up dead long before finishing the bomb.
Searching further it actually became funny. As I reach the smoke and seed bombs.
I assume that you’ll know what a smoke bomb is. But do you know what a seed bomb is?
I didn’t.
A seed bomb is a small ball of clay filled with a few seeds, a little dirt and a little bit
of water. You throw it over your neighbors fence to plant some flowers in the middle of his
veggie patch. (Beware in the US this might be a felony.)
After that I found a lot of news paper articles, movies about bombs and history on bombs.
I only found one link to a social website titled “how to build a bomb easy” but that page
was deleted by the domain owner.
child porn
If you do a search for child porn you get the same kind of results.
A definition of child porn on Wikipedia.
A lot of sites with the laws on child porn in different countries.
Even more site from anti-child porn organisations.
A few scandals.
But no child porn.
(Disclaimer. Since it is illegal to download child porn, even by accident.
I couldn’t research this subject as thorough as the other two.)
The big list
At first glance it seems a bit strange that you can’t find any information on these three
subjects. Even if the web isn’t littered there should be some information.
But after more thinking it becomes clear that there is a very good reason why I can’t find
anything.
In a sense Google is a big list with the most interesting subjects of the web sorted by
demand. Not by supply.
Of the millions of people searching for suicide terrorist, only a very tiny fraction is
interested in becoming one. The large majority is interested in information on the damage
that is done by terrorism.
So websites with information on how to actually become a terrorist are sorted to the bottom
of the list.
The thing is that Google doesn’t show you the whole list.
Google finds about 53,600,000 links but only shows the first 800.
The most popular sites are shown and the rest disappears in oblivion.
So even if Al Qaeda was able to create thousands of websites on terrorism they would never
show up in the search results. And the same holds true for the other subjects.
Which also explains why the content industry is always complaining that their content is
placed below the illegal downloads instead of at the top of the list.
Of the millions of people searching for Lady Gaga only a fraction is looking for tracks to
buy and the majority are looking for tracks to download.
Ironically this means that if the content industry would ever succeed in banning illegal
content they would end up even lower on the list, because more people would search for stuff
to download.
So just banning illegal content wouldn’t be enough.
Raising the cost of the internet
Which brings me to the question why an US senator would want to sponsor a law that makes it
impossible to find information that is impossible to find.
Is it that he just doesn’t know that much about the internet or does he have alternative
motives.
As it turns out it mostly the latter.
Senator Lamar Smith is payed millions of dollars by the content industry to create laws that
will make it impossible to download music and movies via the internet.
This law will do just that by raising the costs of the internet.
This law compels ISPs to monitor everything their customers do and to save everything they
upload and download and every website they ever visit. And keep that information for at
least a year.
To comply with that law ISPs would have invest tens of millions of dollars in computers and
hard drives to save all this information.
And of course they would charge this to their customers. Thereby raising the price of an
internet subscription with hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.
Which would take it out of reach of most people.
Thereby in effect breaking the internet.