Filtering and Commerce

[John Pearce]

> From: Ronnie Morgan <rmorgan at Harding.edu>
> Something else that was interesting, and the real reason why I'm posting
...  [snip]  ... The
> lady from Enough is Enough suggested that all porn sites have an extension
> of .xxx instead of .com.  That is an EXCELLIENT idea!  You could set your
> software to ignore all .xxx sites, and would effectiving remove 100% of the
> porn on the net. 

Seeing this and the point about filtering ads brought up a
counterpoint to both.  Sites that make their money from sales would
probably accept having advertising content filtered out, even
including their entire sites -- why serve up your pages to someone who
doesn't want to buy?  This holds for porn as much as anything else. 

On the other hand, sites that make their money from advertising would
probably resist this.  Hit counts serve as circulation numbers for
advertisers, so the more hits the better, even if the people don't
look at the material.

John Pearce
My opinions do not reflect my employers'