Since several governments seem ready to invest quite a bit of money
in censorship, I thought it might be worthwhile to investigate what
their return has been in hard numbers. I made use of the research
service at http://www.dejanews.com/ in order to examine the total usage
of six words on Usenet for each of the past 12 months. The result, as I
shall present in detail below, is that beginning with the month
preceding passage of the CDA, usage of vulgarity, formerly stable, quite
literally doubled.
Measurements were from the first day to the last day of each month
using the query filter, followed by counts of the matches with the words
"fuck", "sleep", "shit", "eat", "piss", and "drink". The control terms
"sleep", "eat", and "drink" were included to avoid the criticism that
non-technical conversation might simply be increasing; they do, in fact,
increase approximately 20%. Only bodily functions were used to ensure
that religious messages, for instance, would not be mis-scored.
Date Total Fuck Sleep Shit Eat Piss Drink
5/95 118173 272 565 584 962 114 444
6/95 143943 302 743 759 1152 143 613
7/95 105689 269 549 585 808 124 495
8/95 154476 342 770 813 1213 175 643
9/95 120941 191 889 674 872 139 483
10/95 105861 348 489 676 748 116 397
11/95 179479 441 652 841 1025 170 504
12/95 176266 524 725 801 1058 171 598
1/96 260417 1524 1612 2226 2281 380 1343
2/96 268698 1742 1492 2350 2407 425 1235
*3/96 213431 1401 1184 1800 1922 370 1106
4/96 356164 2311 2073 3061 3282 661 1743
*3/96 is a sum of "old" and "current" database entries;
data from 4/96 is exclusively in the "current" database.
The numbers given here are in terms of posts per thousand
indexed with the word indicated:
Date Fuck Shit Piss Sleep Eat Drink
5/95 2.3 4.9 1.0 4.8 8.1 3.8
6/95 2.1 5.3 1.0 5.2 8.0 4.3
7/95 2.5 5.5 1.2 5.2 7.6 4.7
8/95 2.2 5.3 1.1 5.0 7.9 4.2
9/95 1.6 5.6 1.1 7.4 7.2 4.0
10/95 3.3 6.4 1.1 4.6 7.0 3.8
11/95 2.5 4.7 0.9 3.6 5.7 2.8
12/95 3.0 4.5 1.0 4.1 6.0 3.4
1/96 5.9 8.6 1.5 6.2 8.8 5.2
2/96 6.5 8.7 1.6 5.6 9.0 4.6
3/96 6.6 8.4 1.7 5.5 9.0 5.1
4/96 6.5 8.6 1.9 5.8 9.2 4.8
Relative to the 5/95 to 12/95 baseline frequency, usage of
the terms "fuck", "shit" and "piss" (averaged by item) was 76%
higher in January, 88% higher in February, 92% higher in March,
and 97% higher in April. The upward trend of these numbers
suggests that the frequency of vulgarity has not yet peaked.
The CDA was passed, after much acrimonious debate,
on February 1, 1996. Similar laws have been under
consideration elsewhere, so it is difficult to say whether
non-U.S. posters would be expected to flatten the increase.
I have not yet devised a way to reliably measure only U.S.
posters for this period.