Feds Win "Child Porn" Case

Eric Cordian emc at artifact.psychedelic.net
Sat Dec 9 09:57:15 PST 2000


A Texas couple who ran two very well known and popular age-verification
services for Adult Web content have been convicted over the contents of
two foreign Web sites which were illegal in the United States, one hosted
in Russia, and the other hosted in Indonesia.
 
Age-verification services are a popular method of financing web sites.
Subscribers purchase a code for a small fee on a credit card, which proves
that they are adults, and gives them access to thousands of web sites
which use the particular vendor's codes to admit only adults to
pornographic material.  Part of the money for the subscriptions is used to
make a micropayment to the visited sites

Apparently, age-verification services will now be responsible for
verifying all content which their codes are used to access, a humongous
task.  Apparently, providing an access code for content legally hosted in
another country now makes one subject to US laws as if one had provided
the content from within the US on ones own server.

(Cypherpunks beware, while it is child porn that is being run up the
flagpole to support this interpretation of the law, bomb-making
instructions and seditious speech could easily be next on the list.  I
imagine Eterity Service operators could easily be characterized as
"madams" for their content as well, particularly if they took small
payments for accessing the system.)

When this story first came out, the news reports mentioned the real issues
involved.  Now that a conviction has been obtained, one needs a microscope
to even determine that the couple did not distribute any underage
pornography themselves, that anyone could sign up to use their service,
and that the vast majority of the material their codes could be used to
access was perfectly legal.

Their mistake, it seems, was in allowing revenues from people seeking to
access a couple of popular overseas child porn sites, legal in the host
country, to become a major source of income for their business.  This
destroyed their plausible deniability over the content hosted by their
clients, and in spite of expensive legal opinions they had gotten which
told them they had no legal exposure as mere age-verifiers, permitted the
Feds to convince a jury that they functioned as "madams" for the
"child-porn warehouse."

Of course, because they dared to take the case to trial, and didn't plead,
they will face an extremely harsh toilet-plungering by the judge at their
sentencing.

Here's one article on the case, from something that calls itself the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram.  Note the use of terms like "The Child Pornography
Business" and no mention of age-verification at all.  But then, when
you're "saving the little children," you are permitted to suspend ordinary
journalistic ethics in a very Kirkegaardian way.

-----
   
By Toni Heinzl
Star-Telegram Staff Writer 
   
FORT WORTH -- Thomas Reedy gave himself the email name "Houdini," but even
the legendary escape artist could not have wiggled out of the net of
evidence of child pornography that authorities built against Reedy's Fort
Worth Internet company.
   
After deliberating 6= hours Friday, a federal jury convicted Reedy, 37,
and his company, Landslide, on all 89 counts of an indictment accusing him
of distribution of child pornography, sexual exploitation of minors and
related charges.
   
His wife, Janice Reedy, 32, was convicted on 87 of the 89 counts. The two
counts on which she was acquitted had to do with 70 pornographic images on
two of the couple's home computers, which were used mainly by Thomas
Reedy, according to trial testimony.
   
The Reedys were accused of giving Landslide subscribers access to Internet
sites displaying child pornography for fees ranging from $14.95 to $29.95
per month per site. The sites were maintained by foreign Web masters.

Landslide was the only gateway to the child-porn sites, prosecutors said.
On its Web site a "click here for child porn" link directed customers to
the sites. Landslide gave its subscribers user names and passwords after
verifying their credit cards.
   
The Reedys could face sentences of life in prison based on the number of
counts, the money involved and the violent content of the Web sites they
marketed and provided access to.
   
U.S. District Judge Terry Means will sentence the Reedys. He did not set a
sentencing date, but federal sentencings typically occur a few months
after conviction.
   
The Reedys played a high- stakes gamble taking the case to trial, despite
the self- incriminating statements they gave investigators during a raid
on their home last year and the mountain of evidence gathered.

Thomas Reedy had admitted to a postal inspector that 30-40 percent of his
business came from child pornography.
   
Prosecutors had offered Reedy a plea bargain of 20 years in prison in
exchange for a guilty plea and his wife five years in a package deal, but
the couple refused to take it, prosecutors and defense attorneys said.

Prosecutors and investigators who worked for more than a year on the
Landslide case said they hope the verdict will put other Internet
merchants of child pornography on notice.
   
"I hope this verdict might scare other companies into stopping what
they're doing," Assistant U.S. Attorney Terri Moore said. "Police and
prosecutors get smarter about this stuff and we're going after them."
Dallas Police Detective Steve Nelson, who signed on undercover as a
subscriber to Landslide and bought access to more than 20 child-
pornography sites, said he was relieved after the verdict.

Nelson, a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in
Dallas, had unearthed evidence of child pornography on sites called "Child
Rape," "Children Forced to Porn," "I am 14" and more. He and other
investigators saved and documented images that included scenes of children
being raped by adults.
   
"This was the tip of the iceberg," he said. "Other companies should be put
on notice that they will be dealt with if they exploit children."

[Translation.  We will be fucking with other age-verification services
 in the very near future.]

Attorney Wes Ball, who defended Thomas Reedy and Landslide, said he will
appeal. He reiterated to a reporter what he told the jury in his final
argument: "We don't think the responsibility trickles down this far from
the Web masters. The Web masters are absolutely responsible."
   
The Reedys were charged in a conspiracy with two Indonesian Web
masters, R.W. Kusuma and Hanny Ingganata, and Russian Web master Boris
Greenberg, who have not been arrested.
   
The Reedys netted more than $1 million with their porn business
between 1997 and 1999 and paid about 60 percent to the foreign Web
masters, federal prosecutors said. The child porn business provided a
comfortable lifestyle for the couple. They lived in a $425,000
Lakeside home, and each drove a new Mercedes.
   
That abruptly ended last year when federal agents raided their company
and home. The business was shut down. The cars were seized along with
$130,000 in bank accounts and a few thousand dollars in stocks.
   
Since then, the bank foreclosed on their home.

Moore reminded jurors in her closing argument that the Reedys had
gotten rich off the misery of children.
  
After Ball compared what they did with ticket takers at a movie
theater who are not responsible for the movies, Moore gave jurors
another analogy to think about.
   
"They're not the ticket takers, they're like the madam in a
whorehouse," she said. "You can't see the girls without the madam."
   
[blah blah etc snip]

--- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"





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