Yahoo's to Blame?
For years one of the biggest facilitators of the exchange of child pornography on the Internet was a company as American as apple pie, the search engine Yahoo.
When legendary Who rocker Pete Townsend was arrested in Britain on child pornography charges in early January 2003, any lingering public naïveté about this crime vanished. Numerous international child pornography stings, including Operations Candyman, Hamlet, and Ore, and the arrests of actors Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Ruebens and Jeffrey Jones and Grammy winner R. Kelly in 2002 had already demonstrated that the trade in child pornography was worldwide and involved the famous and anonymous alike.
In spite of such high-profile arrests, few understood that child pornography was flourishing online through the combination of new technologies and uncoordinated law enforcement efforts. Much child pornography was being traded openly, seemingly without fear of prosecution. In fact, for years one of the biggest facilitators of the exchange of child pornography on the Internet was a company as American as apple pie, the search engine Yahoo.
But before Yahoo became an integral part of the child pornography trade, it had already entered the dark corners of cyberspace through its sale of hardcore pornography.
Originally appearing in the October 2002 issue of Citizen magazine, this unabridged version chronicles Yahoo’s descent into the sewer and its attempts to pull itself back out again. Included is a link to an update on Yahoo’s efforts seven months after the original story was published.
Warning: content could be disturbing to some readers.
Bright Beginnings
In 1994, Yahoo exploded onto the Internet and grew to become one of the Web’s greatest success stories. Within a few years Yahoo enjoyed a vast and loyal fan base by offering customized web pages catering to a user’s specific interests. According to online tracking company Jupiter Media Metrix, Yahoo drew more than 80 million unique users in April 2002 alone, making it the third most popular web site in the United States.
Unfortunately, the site’s ease of use and its users’ relative anonymity attracted a dark element as well.
Hardcore distributor
Upheld for years as the diamond of online business models, Yahoo lost its luster through an April 14, 2001 Los Angeles Times article detailing the web giant’s introduction of hardcore pornographic videos and DVDs to its online store. Despite profitability of sex on the Internet, the Times noted, no large mainstream company had dared venture into that realm.
Business analysts were baffled by Yahoo’s shocking move into adult products. Some ascribed the change to Yahoo’s earlier announcement of lower revenues and a twelve-percent workforce reduction.
The Times article generated immediate condemnation across the country. Industry leaders denounced the company for seeking profits in the gutter and predicted Yahoo’s impending demise. Others called for investigations of obscenity law violation.
Robert W. Peters, president of Morality in Media, said, “Yahoo’s new venture may carry the risk of Federal prosecutions. The United States Code…makes distributing obscene materials via ‘an interactive computing device’ a felony.”
Industry leaders weren’t the only ones surprised by the move.
“I’m a bit surprised that Yahoo’s doing this, to be honest,” Larry Lux, president of Playboy.com, told the Times. “Clearly, having a Yahoo in this space furthers the trend of mainstream acceptance of adult content.”
Attempting to downplay the negative publicity, a Yahoo spokesperson claimed the company received “little negative feedback” about the movies and, contrary to the Times article, the company had been selling them quietly for years.
Within hours the “little negative feedback” snowballed into a deluge. The New York Times reported that Yahoo eventually received 100,000 complaints about its policy. The resulting uproar convinced the company to change course. Within two days of the Los Angeles Times article Yahoo announced it would remove all X-rated content from its online store.
A larger problem
Even as Yahoo announced its decision to remove adult products from its stores, Patrick Trueman and the American Family Association (AFA) began a much deeper investigation into Yahoo’s site. As former chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in George Bush Sr.’s Justice Department, Trueman had a clear idea what distinguished protected speech from illegal material.
According to Trueman, Yahoo was hosting hundreds of online web sites called Clubs that offered “sexually explicit depictions of violent rape, torture, group sex, urination, scatology, and sadomasochistic acts” as well as child pornography found in clubs with names like “Pic Club of Preteens.” Many of these sites required no age verification and featured links to child pornography web sites located outside of Yahoo’s servers.
According to Trueman, one club, “Schoolgirls in Bondage,” posted a photo entitled “The Younger The Better.” It showed a young naked girl in chains with cigarette burns all over her body engaging in apparently forced sexual activity. Another Club, “Rape Stories Fantasy,” billed itself as a place to exchange rape stories and pictures of rape. One post detailed the user’s fantasy of killing a woman as she fumbled with her car keys and carrying her lifeless body inside to be carved up.
In at least one known case, fantasy gave way to reality. The New York Post reported that James Warren and Beth Loschin kidnapped, raped, and tortured a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl and then offered her to others through Warrens’ Yahoo sex club.
Such content spurred Trueman to action. Beginning in April 2001, the AFA issued nearly two dozen press releases over the next year highlighting the extremely violent and graphic Clubs housed on Yahoo’s servers. The statements directly implicated Yahoo in the dissemination of child and other violent and illegal pornography.
Trueman also sent a copy of every press release to Yahoo and tried to speak to its representatives directly about the problem.
“Yahoo would typically look at the sites mentioned in the press releases and remove them—or sometimes not,” Trueman told Citizen. “It was more a PR thing by Yahoo than a move to protect children.”
The search engine’s defense relied upon its posted terms of service, which tells users “that you, and not Yahoo, are entirely responsible for all Content that you upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available via the Service. …Under no circumstances will Yahoo be liable in any way for any Content….”
Convinced the problem was with illegal content—not merely indecent or objectionable material—Trueman took his fight directly to the Department of Justice throughout the summer of 2001. Despite personally meeting with the Attorney General John Ashcroft, he failed to generate any action against the online giant.
“I feel I’ve done everything I could think of to motivate the Justice Department to prosecute Yahoo and other organizations,” Trueman told Citizen. “Yahoo allows [its users] so much freedom. Unless there’s any prosecution effort there is no penalty for Yahoo.”
Positive changes
Trueman’s campaign against Yahoo ended when he left the AFA—shortly before the FBI’s “Candyman” bust in March 2002. But there are signs that his and the AFA’s efforts are paying off.
Following “Operation Candyman,” Yahoo eliminated its entire Clubs section. Numerous pedophile sites in the Groups section (similar to Clubs) have also been removed. One such group now features a message indicating Yahoo was investigating the group in cooperation with the FBI.
A May 2002 article in the legal newspaper The Recorder also described Yahoo’s willingness to assist law enforcement. The company joined a suit to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling that invalidated a search of Yahoo’s servers. The court ruled that the police violated the defendant’s rights because the warrant was not served in person. Yahoo was concerned that requiring an officer to always be present would complicate and slow the search process—to the detriment of law enforcement. [An appellate court has since overturned the ruling, allowing Yahoo and other Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to comply with warrants not served in person.]
John Rabun, Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), spoke with Citizen about the issue and admitted that Yahoo has significantly increased its voluntary reporting of illegal content encountered on its site as required by law.
“They do a pretty good job of reporting [offending sites]. They send us a lot of content and a lot of sites,” Rabun said.
Although he believed Yahoo could still do a lot more, Rabun stated that no legal requirement exists for ISPs to monitor the content posted on its sites by others. They are only required to report content once they are made aware of it.
The Long Road Ahead
Despite these positive moves, however, Yahoo still has much moral culpability in the spread of obscenity and child pornography. In July and August of 2002 Citizen researched the Groups and GeoCities sections of Yahoo’s site and found volumes of disturbing and possibly illegal content.
One GeoCities member page was titled, “RAPESTORIES, RAPE PICTURES, RAPE XXX TGP.” The description included the phrases “raped schoolgirl” and “forced sex.”
In addition, thousands of GeoCities member profiles contain graphic nudity and photos of sexual acts, frequently without any age verification or warning. Many are found on profiles of children claiming to be younger than eighteen.
Similarly disturbing content is readily accessible in Yahoo’s Groups section. Many of these groups post images of graphic nudity and sexual acts on their home pages where anyone can view them—including children.
Countless groups have names such as “Preteen Paradise,” “girlsnaked12,” and “childlovers3221,” and promote themselves as a “place to post naked pics [sic] of young boys and girls between 5-17 years old…”
Other groups are even worse. One of the most disturbing groups Citizen found marketed itself as a place where men could rent girls for sex. A photo on the homepage showed a young woman in a subservient position engaging a man in oral sex. The site’s description is too lurid to be published.
Citizen made repeated attempts to contact Yahoo about these and other sites but requests for an interview were declined. Spokesperson Mary Osako instead e-mailed the following statement: “The Yahoo! Groups guidelines explicitly state that members may not post content that is in violation of federal or state law. When notified of such content, Yahoo! takes appropriate action swiftly. Yahoo! supports law enforcement’s efforts to combat illegal content on the Internet.”
Citizen also contacted the Justice Department about Yahoo’s role in disseminating child pornography and obscenity but officials stated they were unable to comment on any specific company or to reveal any information about ongoing investigations.
Although Yahoo’s Groups still play a significant role in the exchange of child pornography, they are by no means the only culprits. As of July 2002, only ninety-four of the more than seven thousand ISPs in the United States had registered with the NCMEC and were reporting child pornography as required by law.
John Rabun hopes to see more corporate responsibility but he isn’t holding his breath. Like Trueman, he believes prosecution may be the only motivation for Internet companies to obey the law. And that will most likely only come from increasing public pressure.
What has Yahoo done since this article was orginally published? There are signs that the search engine is cleaning itself up. Read Citizen's web extra "Yahoo! Cleans Up."
If you enjoy reading stories like this one, sign up for the free CitizenLink Daily Update e-mail. You'll get news and commentary from Focus on the Family Action delivered right to your computer.
