NBC 6 Investigation Prompts Porn Bust
 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - For years, a Fort Lauderdale Internet company has made money by posting photos showing children in skimpy clothes and teens in adult poses. They call it child modeling, but now an Alabama grand jury is calling it child pornography. It's a story NBC 6 first revealed in November 2001 in the award-winning series "Selling Innocence."
Related Content: Images: Selling Innocence Investigation Leads To Child Porn Bust (Warning: Contains graphic images) | Video

"This was free Web page that viewers could download for free pictures of underage female children," said Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Alabama said Tuesday.

NBC 6 first exposed the Webe Web Corporation in 2001. Police found the photos concerning but said they weren't illegal.

"It's about what's within the law and how much money they can make and how quickly they can make it. That's what this is about," said then Lt. Paul O'Connell.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15949956/


Somebody just got fucked, and will make more problems for us all.

This could change the definition of C P as we know it.

under aged girls modeling in provocative poses is kind of fucked up though.

i doubt this is going to re define the definition of cp, probably just special circumstances for a disturbing and obviously terrible site wrong on many levels.

I hate it when the media says "Joe Blow busted for porn". What it should say is "Joe Blow busted for child porn". BIG difference. Porn is legal, child porn is illegal.

Maybe they should be more vague in all of their stories... "John Doe was arrested for driving a car" or "John Doe was arrested for driving a stolen car". See the difference?

wait....

http://www.nbc6.net/slideshow/news/1...s;p=news;w=400

is nbc hosting "child porn" on their servers?

c'mon now.

fucker doing that shit need put out of business.......

Well good thing they show us 25 samples of those kids or else i wouldnt believe it.

Wtf!!!

Well good thing they show us 25 samples of those kids or else i wouldnt believe it.

Wtf!!!

Exaclty, they are calling it CP, saying they broke the story 5 years ago, but then they host the images of the alleged "child porn" on their servers, and show the images to millions of people. Obviously the pictures are not bad enough for them to show and make money off of (news sells ads).

I don't defend CP one bit, actually the opposite and think the people involved should be shot. But looking at these images, don't you think this is streaching it ? Most of the images looked like this one:

http://www.nbc6.net/2006/1129/10420256.jpg

if the above picture is illegal, then they should just ban taking any type of pictures of anyone under 18 years old.

Oh dont get me wrong, I agree the guys nails should be pulled out with pliers. But if he is being charged with C P then it will change the definition.

That's fucked up

i am not an expert on laws relating to porn, but it seems to me that CP requires not only the genitals to be displayed.. but to be displayed in a sexual manner.

sick fucks think they can bend the law, they'll get what they deserve in the end

From the photos that the news station is posting, they have not really bent the law, or broken it. But that is not the photos that they will be using against them in court.

Of those are the kind of photos they will be using, then a lot of families will be getting in some deep shit soon.

oh cry me a fuckin river....all of you guys syaing oh they should be locked away etc etc and they are bending the law etc etc

get a fuckin clue


this is just another shot over the bow of the adult industry and they will find some way to tie this in with adult

( especialy since the guys they arrested are involved with or own a major program that has a pressence on GFY)

if the images were legal then I stand behind the accused---im sorry

but while I do not condone kitty porn I despise just as much censorship and conservative law bending

the lines for every thing need to be clear cut and visible if its illegal.... then its illegal if its not then its not


Its obvious that this is not CP but an indectment from alabama thats going to waste a lot of taxpayer money and get the republicans back in the spotlight in hopes of maybe gaining some confidence from the american people before they are completely tossed out

dont fall for this smoke and mirrors shit guys

were smarter then that

at least I am

PS dont ICQ me about the program in question

im sure it will come out

Anybody know what program it is? I sure as hell don't want to be supporting these guys.

while you are at it you should not support any tenn sponsor period....hell you should be anti free speech because this is where this is heading

maybe this article will shed some light on all this for you

Federal case may redefine child porn

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Federal+case+may...3-6139524.html

Story last modified Thu Nov 30 05:15:45 PST 2006

Jeff Pierson is a photographer whose action shots of hopped-up American autos laying waste to the asphalt at Alabama dragways have appeared in racing magazines and commercial advertisements.
Pierson's Web site boasted he has the "most wonderful wife in the world and two fantastic daughters." And until recently, he ran a business called Beautiful Super Models that charged $175 for portraits of aspiring models under 18.

In a federal indictment announced this week, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Pierson, 43, of being a child pornographer--even though even prosecutors acknowledge there's no evidence he has ever taken a single photograph of an unclothed minor.

Rather, they argue, his models struck poses that were illegally provocative. "The images charged are not legitimate child modeling, but rather lascivious poses one would expect to see in an adult magazine," Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Alabama, said in a statement.

Pierson's child pornography indictment arises out of an FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigation of so-called child modeling sites, which have been the subject of a series of critical congressional hearings and news reports in the last few years. An August article in The New York Times, for instance, called the modeling Web sites "the latest trend in child exploitation."

In addition to Pierson, the U.S. attorney also announced indictments against Marc Greenberg, 42, Jeffrey Libman, 39, partners in a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., business called Webe Web, which in turn ran the now-defunct ChildSuperModels.com site. It was one of the larger sites that featured photographs of child models, allegedly from Pierson, and became the target of a report on Florida's NBC6 affiliate suggesting that it was a magnet for pedophiles.

First Amendment scholars interviewed Wednesday raised questions about the Justice Department's attack on Internet child modeling. They warned that any legal precedent might endanger the mainstream use of child models in advertising and suggested that prosecutors' budgets might be better spent investigating actual cases of child molestation.

"I don't know what the DOJ's trying," said Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. "The best I can say is that it's puzzling that they would devote investigative and law enforcement resources to something (like this). This is a far cry from what folks normally think of as child pornography."

The Web sites that prompted the indictments are now offline. But copies saved in Google's cache and through Archive.org show the photographs in question depicted girls wearing everything from sweaters to, more frequently, swimsuits and midriff-baring attire. Parents appear to have given their consent.

Richard Jaffe, Pierson's attorney, said he could not immediately comment because he was in court on Wednesday. Jill Ellis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the northern district of Alabama, confirmed to CNET News.com that no nudity was involved. An arraignment for Pierson has been scheduled for December 14 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Armstrong.

No sex, no nudity
Because no sex or nudity is involved, the prosecutions raise unusual First Amendment concerns that stretch beyond mere modeling-related Web sites: children and teens in various degrees of undress appear in everything from newspaper underwear advertisements to the covers of Seventeen and Vogue.

When actress and model Brooke Shields was 15 years old, for instance, she appeared in a racy Calvin Klein jean advertisement featuring the memorable line, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." Shields also appeared nude at 12 years old in an Oscar-nominated movie called Pretty Baby that was set in a New Orleans brothel. Similarly, 14-year-old Jodie Foster, wearing revealing clothing, played a pre-teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Sally Mann, named Time magazine's "photographer of the year" in 2001, was attacked by critics for featuring nude images of her own children in a book called Immediate Family. Famed photographer Jock Sturges' photos often feature nude boys and girls on the beaches of California and France--images that are far more revealing than those of swimsuit-clad youths.

All of that makes the distinction between legal child photography and illegal child pornography a particularly subjective one. It may come down to, as the Justice Department's Alice Martin put it, seemingly ephemeral factors such as the poses the model strikes and the camera angles the photographer chooses.

"Prosecuting cases on this borderline presents difficult First Amendment problems," said Amy Adler, a New York University law professor who has written about pornography, culture and the law. "The sexy teenager is sort of a mainstream trope. It's very different from babies being molested, and child pornography law doesn't make a distinction."

That's no exaggeration: The same section of federal law punishes a pedophile who makes a video recording of a baby being molested, as well as someone who possesses an image of a 17-year-old striking an unlawfully racy pose.

The explanation for that lies in a criminal statute called 18 USC 2252A, which Pierson is accused of violating. Child pornography is defined as the "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person" under 18 years old.

Until a 1994 case called U.S. v. Knox, judges interpreted that language to mean either images of nude minors or of minors having sex. In that case, however, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extended that definition to include videotapes of girls in leotards, and upheld Stephen Knox's conviction on child pornography charges.

"The genitals and pubic area of the young girls...were certainly 'on display' as the camera focused for prolonged time intervals on close-up views of these body parts through their thin but opaque clothing. Additionally, the obvious purpose and inevitable effect of the videotape was to 'attract notice' specifically to the genitalia and pubic area. Applying the plain meaning of the term 'lascivious exhibition' leads to the conclusion that nudity or discernibility are not prerequisites for the occurrence of an exhibition within the meaning of the federal child pornography statute," the 3rd Circuit wrote.

A crackdown's mixed results
Prosecutors have tried to target child modeling Web sites before, with mixed results.

In 2002, Colorado prosecutors charged James Grady with more than 719 felony charges--ranging from sexual exploitation of children to contributing to the delinquency of minors--for operating TrueTeenBabes.com. The Web site bills itself as "America's premier teen glamour publication" and sells subscriptions for access to nonnude shots of models between 13 and 17 years old.

TrueTeenBabes.com drew the attention of local television reporters, whose reporting sparked a police investigation. But a jury acquitted Grady, and he subsequently filed a lawsuit asking for $10 million in damages for wrongful arrest, according to the Rocky Mountain News. TrueTeenBabes.com is back online today.

In an unrelated prosecution of two Utah men, Matthew Duhamel and Charles Granere currently are facing federal criminal charges of child pornography. They're accused (click for PDF) of running a child modeling site--again, no nudity is alleged--that featured minors in lingerie.

They filed a joint motion in July, which was rejected, asking that the case be dismissed in part on First Amendment grounds. "It seems clear," the motion said, "that the genitals or pubic area of the person must be actually exposed or visible to fall within the proscription against exhibition."

The U.S. Congress tried to clear up some of the ambiguity around what is and what isn't legal but never actually enacted legislation.

In 2002, Rep. Mark Foley announced a bill called the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act that would effectively ban the sale of photographs of minors. But under opposition from civil libertarians and commercial stock photo houses like Corbis, it never left committee. (Foley, of course, is the same politician who resigned in September after disclosures of inappropriate conversations with a teenage page.)

That leaves judges and juries faced with the difficult task of making distinctions between lawful and unlawful camera angles and facial expressions--an exercise that proves to be impossible to do without running afoul of the First Amendment.

"How do we distinguish pictures like these (on child modeling sites) from the everyday photos that our culture tolerates and even prizes?" said Adler, the NYU law professor. "For instance, who's modeling in Vogue? A lot of those people are 15 and in scantily clad or suggestive photos."



http://news.com.com/Federal+case+may...3-6139524.html


once again let me make this clear I do not condone CP or anything that will have a negative effect on children but I truly despise censorship and bible thumping BS laws and politicians


next they will attack my bondage site...oh wait they already did

You can defend it if you like. I don't agree with it so I don't want to support it. The girls are under 18 and aren't making their own choices, some misguided adults are. If their models were 18, they wouldn't have to worry about all this.

Do you believe that the guys behind these sites are really interested in furthering the careers of child models? Or is it more likely that as adult webmasters they realized that there was a loophole and they could make money off CP-seeking surfers?

Those sites have always made me a little uneasy. The law is not black and white and people who dabble in that area are really complicating things for all of us.

The people who allow their young girls to do that type of modeling are pathetic. Legal or not it is very questionable judgement.

honestly I dont know what the webmasters were thinking

nor do I care, my point is this, if it is legal then it is legal no matter what or anyone else fins moraly wrong with it

racial slurs flag burning gay marrige etc etc are all moraly un -acceptible to some person or another just like scat and or bondage

but if its legal

then its legal

there cannot exist an area where the law can go either way depending on the moral standpoint of a prosecutor or investigator

case in point the ray guhn case down here in FL, well the community decided what they were doing was moraly unacceptible and so the charges were filed.....what if I happen to like bondage and IT IS LEGAL

should the local politician use me for a scapegoat whenever he needs a fall guy?? I dont think so

again while I do not support theese guys at all as im sure the ACLU etc dosent either we must support and protect free speech and our personal freedoms

like the news.com article mentioned above magazines like vouge and elle etc etc feature younger girls wearing less........I dont understand the diffrence


and I shut down my slave site for fear of prosecution

If you pander to the lowest common denominator, then you have to expect prosecution. CP is as low as it gets. If they want to walk that line, this is what they get. Let them pay their attorney huge sums of money and maybe they'll get out of it. Maybe not.

They knew what they were messing with but apparently they decided it was worth the risk. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it.

i find it awfully strange nbc thinks its ok to GIVE the suspected photos to MILLIONS of people worldwide, yet they are exposing a company who does the exact same thing.. both make money from showing questionable material to people..

and this added beneath each one..

"Email Slide To a Friend"

I agree I see a busted for web porn article I think omg and then read it and its some pedo scumbag .

YAY for the FSC stepping up to the plate and getting involved in important industry issues that can directly impact the entire industry!!!!!



....oops! my bad. they don't.

sorry. join anyway... they'll appreciate it... they need the money. lots of mouths to feed. attorneys gotta eat too!

i thought the same thing. very disturbing to say the least.