"Secure Computing Corporation...today announced the release of the first study of the global distribution of pornographic web pages... The study examined pornographic web pages in the Secure Computing SmartFilter(R) v4 Control List by non-U.S. country suffixes, such as .DE for Germany and .JP for Japan, and found over 46 million pages of pornography in the top 100 individual country suffixes... The study was limited to specific country suffixes, and did not include non-country specific domains such as .com and .net.
Region : Pages
Europe : 28,430,600
Pacific : 12,352,600
Asia : 3,193,000
Latin America : 1,048,600
Africa : 389,400
Canada : 283,600
Caribbean : 255,000
Middle East : 77,800
Total : 46,030,600
"While it was expected that most overseas pornography would be in European domains, the study revealed some surprising findings:
- "The .ST domain suffix of the smallest country in Africa, the island nation of Sao Tome, hosts 307,000 pages of pornography - three quarters of all of the 389,000 pages of pornography with African suffixes contained in the SmartFilter v4 database.
- "The only Middle Eastern domain suffix to host pornographic web pages in the SmartFilter database is the Israeli .IL, which hosts 77,800. The only Arab country domain in the database that hosts any pornography is Libyan .LY.
- "The domain suffixes of a number of small islands in the Pacific host a large number of pornographic web pages. The domain of the island nation of Niue hosts an astonishing 3 million pages of pornography on its .NU domain, and other island domains that each host hundreds of thousands of pages of pornography are the suffixes of Tonga, Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu...
"The top ten country suffixes for hosting pornography in the SmartFilter database were:
Germany : 10,030,200
United Kingdom : 8,506,800
Australia : 5,655,800
Niue : 2,947,800
Japan : 2,700,800
Netherlands : 1,883,800
Russia : 1,080,600
Poland : 1,049,600
Spain : 852,800
Tonga : 848,800..."
UPDATE: GrepLaw heard from Seth Finkelstein about a press release from the registrar of the .NU domain: "Numbers in Secure Computing Study on Web Porn Were Fabricated and Defame the Tiny Nation of Niue... The more Web pages it can list in its filter the more protection it can claim to be providing, so in an apparent attempt boost the count, Secure Computing has included thousands of inactive and expired domain names, and the millions of Web pages associated with them, in its SmartFilter v4 Control List. 'The number of pornographic Web pages it has listed as being associated with the .nu domain name is wildly inflated as a result,' said [President of .NU Domain Ltd William Semich]..."