http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44619,00.html Yahoo in Porn Foe's Sights By Declan McCullagh (declanat_private) 2:00 a.m. June 19, 2001 PDT Patrick Trueman wants to see Yahoo's executives imprisoned. It's no joke, but it's not personal, says the 52-year-old chief lobbyist for the American Family Association. Trueman doesn't seem to have any particular animus toward Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who took the job last month, or co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, now members of Yahoo's board of directors. To Trueman, it's entirely political: He says that since images on Yahoo's discussion groups and Geocities area violate state and local pornography laws, prosecutors can send a message to the Internet industry by bringing criminal charges against a high-profile target. After eight years of a Democratic administration with a laissez-faire attitude toward the burgeoning online sex industry, Trueman and his allies in the anti-porn movement are hoping that a conservative Justice Department, led by an attorney general who is open in his religious beliefs, will finally put the fear of God into sextrepreneurs. "Yahoo is involved in something that I maintain is illegal, both on the child side and with respect to obscenity," said Trueman, the former head of the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section under the first Bush administration. "Yahoo should be treated like any other business that trades in this kind of illegal material." [...] --- press release dated 6/18: Yahoo! Still Headquarters for Child Pornography, Obscenity, American Family Assoc. Says; Former Department of Justice Official Continues to Urge Investigation Yahoo! continues to allow child pornography and obscenity to be posted on its servers, according to Patrick A. Trueman, of the American Family Association. Two months ago Yahoo! announced it would remove such material. "A search of Yahoo!'s Clubs and GeoCities sites, which are available to anyone including children, indicates that a seemingly endless number of the sites contain pornography, depicting children in a variety of sexual poses and involved in sex acts, he said. Examples include the "Pic Club of Preteens," the "Preteen Pics up the Wazoo" Club. Links are provided on these sites to other areas on Yahoo! and elsewhere on the Internet where child pornography may be found. One Yahoo! Club offers the "Complete Lolita Hookers Guide." Yahoo! also continues to allow hundreds of Clubs and GeoCities sites that offer obscene pornography to viewers, including sexually explicit depictions of violent rape, torture, group sex, urination, scatology, and sadomasochistic acts. Some of the club names include the "Rape Photos," Club with pictures of women being raped, the "Women In Extreme Distress" Club, which includes a picture of a woman captioned "raped and tortured for three days," and the "Young Virgin Slave Market," Club depicting bondage and torture. "Though Yahoo! seems to have removed many Clubs and GeoCities sites with potentially illegal material and has discontinued sales of hardcore pornographic videos, the company is still a magnet for pedophiles and those seeking all varieties of hardcore pornography," Trueman said. On April 12, 2000 Trueman, wrote Attorney General Ashcroft to investigate Yahoo! for federal child pornography and obscenity violations. Trueman continues to urge an investigation. "Yahoo! should not be allowed to profit from the sexual exploitation of children and women," Trueman said. He is AFA's director of governmental affairs, and was chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, from 1988 to 1992. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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