http://www.wcnc.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/nationprint/041704ccdrnatporn....
WCNC.com | News for Charlotte, N.C. | Nation/World
Saturday April 17, 2004 8:09 p.m.
Seized Web servers raise freedom concerns
By DAVID B. CARUSO / Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - For $9.95 a month, a small company offered access to a
search tool that would scour electronic bulletin boards for millions of
"uncensored" movies and photographs and serve up "an all-you-can-eat taste
of 'the Internet gone wild!"'
Voicenet Communications executives said they didn't know users also were
using their system to access child pornography until January, when
authorities seized the computer servers that ran their "QuikVue" search
program, a lawyer for the company said.
Despite a burgeoning amount of online child pornography, prosecutors have
been cautious in their handling of Internet companies that don't
manufacture or distribute illegal content themselves, but do make it easier
for customers to see material posted by others.
The seizure of Voicenet's servers in suburban Ivyland was the first time a
Pennsylvania law enforcement agency has stopped an Internet firm from
facilitating access to child porn, lawyers said.
No criminal charges have been filed but investigators said in court
filings that they want to examine lists of QuikVue subscribers.
It also was a rarity nationwide. Some free speech advocates have accused
prosecutors of ignoring a federal law that generally protects Internet
service providers from criminal liability when their systems are used to
disseminate child pornography without their knowledge.
Voicenet claimed in a federal lawsuit filed last month that QuikVue merely
allowed customers to easily access files posted in discussion groups on
Usenet, an enormous system of electronic bulletin boards.
The company's attorney, Mark Sheppard, said the company had no control
over what people posted to the groups, and was no more criminally liable
for their actions than other hosts of Usenet material.
"This case has very important implications, from a First Amendment
standpoint and from a privacy standpoint," Sheppard said. "If Internet
service providers are going to have to worry about getting their servers
seized, then you have to wonder whether they can continue to offer access
to Usenet."
The firm asked a federal judge last week to order the government to return
its equipment.
Lawyers for Pennsylvania Attorney General Gerald Pappert and two county
district attorneys involved in the investigation argued that the court
should not intervene in an active criminal probe.
The judge did not indicate when she would rule.
The case has few precedents.
Investigators in New York pressed criminal charges against a pair of
Internet service providers in 1998 for allegedly failing to block access to
Usenet groups that contained child pornography. One firm, Buffalo-based
BuffNet, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal facilitation in
2001 and paid a $5,000 fine.
"The case helped establish that when an Internet service provider becomes
aware of child pornography being on its system, it has an obligation to do
something about it," said Paul Larrabee, a spokesman for New York Attorney
General Eliot Spitzer.
A federal judge imposed a tougher penalty on a Texas couple convicted in
2000 of operating a service that gave subscribers passwords to overseas Web
sites containing child pornography. A judge sentenced Thomas Reedy to life
in prison. His wife, who helped run the business, got 14 years.
Prosecutors said that even though the couple didn't post child pornography
themselves, they knowingly facilitated access to it and shared their
profits with the Web sites responsible for the illegal material.
John Morris, an attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a
civil liberties group, said companies like Voicenet can block access to
improper Usenet content, but don't always know what people are posting on
their system.
"It's one thing to seize a server that is being used for a single Web site
that is illegally serving up child pornography," Morris said. "But to go
into an ISP and seize servers that have millions of postings on them that
are perfectly lawful, with no real evidence that the ISP was intentionally
doing anything criminal, is a much more questionable situation."
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On the Net:
Voicenet Communications: http://www.voicenet.com
Center for Democracy and Technology: http://www.cdt.org
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R. A. Hettinga