STEVEN LANDSBURG: “Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems. . . . The bottom line on these experiments is, ‘More Net access, less rape.’ A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.”

Can’t say I’m surprised.

UPDATE: Hey, this is certainly an argument against Harold Ford Jr.’s proposed Internet porn tax!