Yahoo! frightened by email campaign
George at Orwellian.Org
George at Orwellian.Org
Sat Apr 14 00:58:57 PDT 2001
Query Donna Rice: don't drink, don't smoke, what do ya do?
goodie-goodie two-shoes
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[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.
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