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As owner of ReportChildPorn, I received this today in my emal, I thought I would share it with you all.....
From 1st-ammendment.com
Newsletter
August 2001
A couple in Texas has proved to the world
that the saying about letting the buyer beware is truer than ever
today. After the Reedy?s were sentenced on Monday, the news came out
that authorities were using the couple?s business, Landslide Inc., as
the basis of their sting operation to discover and criminally pursue
purchasers of child pornography. In this unprecedented action,
Landslide Inc. was kept up and running after the Reedy?s arrest so the
State Attorney?s office could track usage and send e-mails to members
seeking sales of additional illegal child pornography purchases.
Landslide?s credit verification service has provided law enforcement
with an important tool to pursue charges not only against the
webmasters involved with the Reedy?s abroad but also to reach into the
homes of users and prosecute them as well.
Beginning with President
Clinton?s administration, a focus was placed on protecting minors from
the harms child pornography may cause. From statutes dealing with
material that is harmful to minors to cases dealing with the evolution
of the child pornography industry, Washington seems to have focused
like a laser beam on this industry. Now, with the new administration,
Bush and his Attorney General, John Ash*****, have taken an equally
strong stand against child pornography. His administration wants to
reduce and eventually eliminate this industry in order to protect
children from sexual exploitation and emotional harm.
Landslide was
the perfect vehicle to help to reach these goals particularly because
the company made the bulk of its over one million dollars through child
pornography. Not only did the sites they ran credit verifications
contain child pornography, but they were dealing with explicit,
hard-core content featuring minors. This content drew the government?s
attention and their response reached well beyond Landslide. The
government is also pursuing the webmasters who ran Landslide?s links
and has now reached into the homes of users and has begun pursuing
individual subscribers.
In the United States, child pornography
receives no right to privacy or First Amendment protection. Therefore,
not only can producers, distributors, retailers, and webmasters be
prosecuted, but officers may also pursue individuals who buy
pornographic materials featuring minors. Under federal law, ordering
child pornography is a felony because the government views purchasers
to be just as guilty of exploiting children as those who make the
material.
On the other hand, pornography featuring adults is handled
differently than the same material featuring minors. Typically, if
adult pornography has inappropriate content, prosecutions are limited
to producers, distributors, retailers and webmasters alone unless the
material is obscene. Neither the First Amendment nor the right to
privacy will protect material that is obscene. However, if the
material is not obscene and does not contain minors under the age of
eighteen, there is a legal right to privacy to possess it within the
user or consumer?s home.
In addition to convicting the owner?s of
Landslide and pursuing related webmasters and consumers, another issue
has arisen in the past year that deals with child pornography. Circuit
courts are split as to whether computer-created children qualify for
regulation and prosecution as child pornography. The current standard
is that, if the image or person in the photograph or film resembles a
minor, the material will not be protected and anyone, from the producer
to the consumer, may be charged.
So, as I said before, let the buyer
beware when it comes to pornography involving underage models or
simulations that resemble minors. The government has highlighted this
Texas couple and has brought this issue to the forefront in an effort
to decrease the production and consumption of child pornography in this
country. These recent occurrences appear to be another step in the
Bush administration?s goal to stomp out child pornography.
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Thank you.
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