Yahoo! frightened by email campaign

[George at Orwellian.Org]

Query Donna Rice: don't drink, don't smoke, what do ya do?
                  goodie-goodie two-shoes

----

[snipped]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/14/technology/14YAHO.html

April 14, 2001

After Complaints, Yahoo to Close Access to Pornographic Sites

Faced with a flood of criticism from users, Yahoo, the vast 
Internet service, reversed a longstanding policy and said 
yesterday that it would remove a wide range of pornographic 
material from its site and make other such information harder 
to find.

The company also said it was moving to restrict what it termed 
"inappropriate material" from home pages created by its members 
of its Geocities service. Yahoo said it would make it more 
difficult to use its popular search engine to find listings for 
pornographic Web sites.

Yahoo's online shopping area had links to about 100 Internet 
stores selling pornographic videotapes and DVD's. As in all 
sections of Yahoo's shopping area, merchants pay a commission 
of 2 percent of their sales. To get to the adult area, users 
needed to verify that they were above 18 by entering a valid 
credit card number.


Many of the e-mail messages complaining about Yahoo were prompted 
by a campaign by a coalition of anti- pornography groups led 
by the American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., according 
to Donna Rice Hughes, an anti-pornography advocate and member 
of the coalition. Yesterday, Ms. Hughes praised Yahoo's move.

"The good news is that after the backlash they received that 
they have chosen to reverse their decision to sell pornography," 
Ms. Hughes said. "But I would like to see them go further." She 
pointed to home pages and chat rooms that have pornographic 
information.

Jeffery Douglas, the chairman of the Free Speech Coalition, the 
trade association of the pornography industry, called Yahoo's 
move an "overreaction."

"There is nothing illegal, wrong or fattening about purchasing 
routine adult material made for and by consenting adults," he 
said.

He said that the Internet was a particularly appropriate medium 
for the distribution of sexually related material as consumers 
risk neither offending nor being embarrassed by others who might 
otherwise observe, say, rentals of pornographic tapes in a local 
video store.

"The Internet allows people to explore their own sexuality and 
their own fantasies without hurting or intruding on anyone," 
he said.