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Do you know what your ISP is up to?
YAHOO
SELLS PORN!
US Attorney General John Ashcroft is being urged to prosecute
Yahoo, Inc., one of the world’s largest Internet companies, for its
direct involvement in the sale and distribution of obscene material and
child pornography. In a letter, written by American Family Association
Director of Governmental Affairs Patrick Trueman, former official in the
Reagan and Bush Administrations who was responsible for the prosecution of
illegal pornography, Ashcroft was told that it is urgent that Yahoo be
investigated immediately. “News reports this week indicate that Yahoo
has begun to offer thousands of hardcore pornographic videos and DVDs in
its online store and receives ‘a percentage of each sale’ from
merchants working with Yahoo," Trueman said in the letter.
"Because Yahoo has such a dominant presence on the Internet, it must
not be allowed to flaunt federal law. To allow it to do so will surely
encourage many more mainstream companies with a dot-com presence to also
embrace the obscenity industry.” http://www.latimes.com/business/updates/lat_yahoo010411.htm
“Though Yahoo claims to have 'controls' to keep children from its new
porn video store, trafficking in obscene material is illegal whether it is
to adults or children, he added.” Trueman also urged that Yahoo be
investigated for its trafficking in child pornography. “Yahoo offers a
substantial amount of child pornography, available on its own servers,
through its web hosting service, ‘Yahoo! Geo Cities’,” Trueman said.
"Child pornography is instantly available through this service.
Profiting from the sexual exploitation of children and women by Yahoo is
not only degrading to all children and women but it is patently
illegal," he added. Trueman was chief of the Child Exploitation and
Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, in
Washington from 1988 to 1992. He now serves as legal counsel and director
of governmental affairs for AFA. In a related story, AFA Director of Web
Development Paul Chaney reports how Yahoo has been in the porn business
for some time, only not in such a mercenary fashion. http://www.afa.net/pornography/pc041201.asp
August
7, 2001 - YAHOO! FACILITATES PROSTITUTION THROUGHOUT U.S. AND WORLD
“Yahoo! facilitates prostitution throughout the
U.S. and many other countries. Its involvement is very significant and
potentially illegal,” said Patrick Trueman of American Family
Association.
Yahoo! accepts advertisements from prostitutes and prostitution
enterprises in their Classified and Yellow Pages sections allowing
potential customers to search by city and state. Also, there are numerous
Yahoo! Clubs (both U.S. and foreign) that directly solicit customers and
offer photos of the prostitutes, many engaged in various sex acts.
Information on how to contact the prostitutes is provided. Yahoo! Also
provides a message exchange service on the front page of these Clubs where
potential clients may communicate with the prostitutes. In the Yahoo!
GeoCities and Profiles sites, many prostitutes and prostitution
enterprises display sexually explicit photos along with phone and e-mail
contact information and hourly and nightly charges for the prostitutes.
“Yahoo!’s facilitation of prostitution may violate federal law which
prohibits aiding and abetting interstate or foreign commerce for the
purpose of prostitution,” Trueman said. “All of the prostitution
information is on Yahoo!’s own servers and is available to anyone,
including children. It is impossible to believe that Yahoo! is ignorant of
this or its potential violations of federal law. Yahoo! should stop its
involvement with the despicable and illegal trade of prostitution.”
Patrick Trueman 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.
“Yahoo! is not a safe place for children and families and AFA urges all
Internet users to avoid the site,” Trueman said.
January 9, 2002
Once again, a Yahoo! pornography club has been implicated in a teen
kidnapping/torture incident. The latest incident involves a 13-year-old
girl from Pennsylvania who was lured, via a Yahoo! pornography club, to
the Herndon, Virginia home of 38-year-old Scott Tyree, who billed himself
on Yahoo! pornography clubs as a “slave master for teen girls.” “This
man is every parent’s greatest fear and Yahoo! provided him all the
tools he needed to find child victims,” said Patrick Trueman, AFA
director of Governmental Affairs. “Yahoo! is not a safe place for
families.”
The company has refused to eliminate pornography clubs from its site and
has often defended them. Over the past ten months, AFA has repeatedly
urged the company to eliminate Yahoo! pornography clubs, noting many are
directed to those interested in child pornography, rape, and torture.
According to the Pittsburg
Post Gazette, one of the pornography clubs Tryee frequented is the
Yahoo! “Young Virgin Slave Market.” Photos posted on this club show
women naked, bound and tortured outdoors in the snow. The club also
includes a man offering his 13-year-old stepdaughter for sex. He provides
a description of the girl, the kind of sex she will perform, indicates
that he will deliver her to a home or hotel, and urges those interested to
e-mail him at his Yahoo! e-mail address to discuss price. “This is
the kind of facilitation Yahoo! offers to child molesters,” Trueman
said. “The American public needs to wake up and boycott Yahoo! This
latest kidnapping is the wakeup call!”
Last August, following the
kidnapping and rape of a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl by a man who
subsequently advertised the girl for rent on a Yahoo! club, AFA made a
special plea for Yahoo! to close all its kidnapping, rape, torture and
pornography clubs. AFA also said that the Justice Department should
prosecute Yahoo! if it refused. Neither Yahoo! nor the Justice Department
has responded.
Editor's
note: Since this column was first published, AOL has fully cooperated with
WorldNetDaily to resolve the major issues cited below.
AOL
IS TOO BIG FOR ITS BREECHES
One
of the great things about the Internet is the near-miraculous way it has
leveled the media playing field to allow the WorldNetDailys and the
Drudges to compete head to head with CNN and the New York Times.
But
AOL, now a giant media conglomerate merged with Time Warner (including
CNN) and partnering with outfits like the New York Times, has become too
big. As a natural response to its own growth, it is actively attempting to
squelch and squash upstarts like WorldNetDaily.
One
way it does this is by "caching" WorldNetDaily's site – delivering
only a facsimile of our site to its subscribers. This permits AOL to
charge its subscribers to receive our content while we get no benefit of
it. In my book, that is called "stealing." We can't sell ads to
be viewed by those AOL visitors because we have no record of them visiting
our site. But AOL can sell ads for those visitors. Do you get the
picture?
I
have watched this kind of massive, blatant copyright violation take place for
five years – patiently anticipating the day technology gives us a
solution. It has not. I've hoped in vain that AOL would do the right thing
and stop caching large independent sites like WorldNetDaily's.
Caching
creates another problem for readers. Often we hear from AOL subscribers
who wonder why they are seeing older versions of WorldNetDaily
rather than the current news. That's why. Welcome to the wacky world of
AOL. You may have mail, but you don't have the Internet the way it is
supposed to be viewed.
Let
me tell you about another way AOL is attacking WorldNetDaily's business.
Several
weeks ago, many if not all AOL subscribers to WorldNetDaily e-mail news
alerts stopped getting them. We thought this was a temporary glitch
at first. We went through all the procedures outlined by AOL to correct
the problem – carefully writing letters, responding to customer service
requests for more information.
Still,
AOL refuses to deliver WorldNetDaily's subscribers the product they want.
Many
AOL subscribers have become as frustrated as I am with this do-nothing
attitude by the New Media giant.
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