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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, there was no way to miss the latest child pornography bust. Last week, Attorney General Ashcroft called a press conference and proudly announced that his troops had rounded up one hundred child porn consumers.HEADLINE NEWS

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, there was no way to miss the latest child pornography bust. Last week, Attorney General Ashcroft called a press conference and proudly announced that his troops had rounded up one hundred child porn consumers. The suspects were arrested after showing up on the customer lists of “Landslide, Inc.”, a Texas-based business run by a suburban couple that earned millions peddling online porn.

As is usually the case with porn busts, the government fed the media plenty of salacious details about how sick and twisted the suspects were. But, despite the massive media attention, not much was said about how the Feds actually carried out their investigation, why it took them over two years to arrest any customers, or why only 100 people got arrested when hundreds of thousands were on the list. Last week, YNOT Bob wrote a great column that raised a few of these questions. In this column, I will try to shed some light on the issues he covered and offer some opinions on what I think this all means for legit adult webmasters.

First off, it’s important to take a close look at exactly how the investigation was carried out. When the operators of “Landslide, Inc.” were busted, the police found themselves in possession of a customer database containing approximately 250,000 email addresses and credit card numbers. The problem for the police, however, was that the list didn’t really provide much detail about how, when, or why it was made. Complicating matters was the fact that “Landslide, Inc.” owned and operated many different types of adult sites, some with regular adult porn and others containing illegal child porn. Thus, there was no reliable way to discern which sites the persons on the list had subscribed to. It is entirely possible that many people on that list got there by simply joining a regular adult site that happened to be operated by “Landslide, Inc.”. Yet another possibility is that the customer list was compiled by some other source and sold to “Landslide, Inc.” for marketing purposes. Anyone who has been in this business for very long knows that email lists are a hot commodity and are often bought and sold.

The government was faced with a massive list of suspicious email addresses, but lacked the type of strong evidence they would need to support a conviction. So, the Feds did what they always do to strengthen a case; they set up a sting operation. Investigators went through that huge email list and started cranking out more spam than a Hormel factory. A government task force was formed and thousands of email messages were sent out to the persons on the list. These email messages contained a slickly worded sales pitch designed to direct the recipient to a special website where his “most bizarre tastes” were promised to be fulfilled.

If the poor slob on the receiving end of this spam attack was foolish enough to visit the listed website, he found himself viewing what amounted to an online child porn store that was set up and maintained by undercover government agents. The site (which was recently taken down) did not contain pictures and never mentioned the words “child pornography”, but even Ray Charles could see what was being sold. The site would repeatedly use child porn buzzwords like “taboo”, “shocking”, “hard to find”, and “bizarre” and warned its viewers that if they were looking for normal adult materials they should look elsewhere. The site went to great lengths to assure viewers that it was 100% authentic and not a rip-off or scam. It also claimed that encryption measures were being taken to ensure that the police could not detect the items that were ordered. The entire page was obviously a trap designed to entice and encourage the ordering of illegal materials.

The site ultimately directed the visitor to a feedback form where requests could be made for the types of materials the visitor was interested in. Of course, once somebody used the form to request underage materials, an undercover investigation of that person would begin and would ultimately lead to an arrest. So, the entire investigation involved a lot more than just rounding up people whose names appeared on a customer list. That’s why it took two years, and that’s why all of the persons on the list weren’t arrested.

So, what does all of this mean for the legitimate adult webmasters out there? Well, the most obvious point is that this operation should serve as another warning to be absolutely vigilant in avoiding even the hint of underage content on your sites. The size and scale of this investigation shows that the Feds mean business when it comes to kid porn and will act very aggressively to fight it. I shouldn’t have to tell you to stay away from this type of content, but it’s a warning that bears repeating. If you operate a TGP, toplist, pic-post, link list, or affiliate program you should have clear rules prohibiting the use of content that are even close to looking underage. It’s probably also a good idea to ban the use of child porn buzzwords (i.e. “lolita”, “father/daughter”, “teen”, etc.). More importantly, you should vigorously enforce these rules by blacklisting any and all violators. You should also watch your reciprocal links and be sure to only link to sites that have similar strict rules.

The wider implications for legit webmasters are a lot less clear and leave more questions than answers. For instance, would the Feds ever consider seizing customer lists during an obscenity bust of an adult porn site? If they did, would they ever go as far as setting up an online store and spamming those customers in an effort to get them to buy illegal or obscene material? The constitutional issues involved in such an effort would be much more pronounced than they are in the child porn context and would provide many more layers of defense. But even if such an operation was attempted, imagine the chilling effect that it could have on the entire industry if consumers had to worry about becoming targets.

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