New to 'Net: A Way to Report Obscene E-Mails

KATONAH, N.Y. — It seemed like such an innocent quest: find a Spider-Man photo for his 10-year-old son's Cub Scout project.

But still, David Petrillo was careful. After logging onto the Internet with his son looking on, he accessed the Google search engine, clicked on “images” and selected “strict filtering.” Several minutes later, he noticed a thumbnail image that looked like Spider-Man but was definitely not acting like any Spider-Man he had ever seen.

His son didn't seem to notice the image and soon found a photo to his liking on another page. Petrillo later clicked back to the page where he had seen the thumbnail to see if the filtering system was as strict as he had hoped.

The image, which was like a cartoon and extremely artistic, showed Spider-Man having sex with a woman, said Petrillo, headmaster of the Montfort Academy, a private Catholic high school for boys in Katonah, N.Y. There were other thumbnails that he didn't open, but a quick glance showed other Superheroes also having sex.

Seeing the images concerned and dismayed Petrillo, not only because they were pornographic but also because he, as a father, couldn't trust the Internet and its “filtering” system to protect his son's innocence.

If the Internet can be looked at as the 21st century's version of the Wild West, its vastness and anonymity and the lure of easy money breeds a ruthless kind of outlaw — the pornographer.

And like the days of the Gold Rush, business is booming. Forrester Research, a technology research group, estimates that the online porn industry, with its low labor and advertising costs, generates more than $1 billion in income for pornographers.

“I feel there are demons lurking out there on the Internet, and I have limited control over keeping them out of my house through that portal,” Petrillo said. “Even with strict filtering on, I was very conscious of paging through those thumb-nail images on Google. You want access to the Internet in your home for all the good it can do, but it's a portal for evil to enter the house.”

Realizing many Internet users often feel defenseless and outraged by these outlaws, Morality in Media, a New York-based organization that fights to uphold media decency standards and combat obscenity, created a Web site called ObscenityCrimes.org.

The organization hopes the site will turn the concerned citizen into a member of a posse. The site provides a report form that requests an attorney from the U.S. Attorney General's office to investigate possible violations of Internet obscenity laws, either in their adult hard-core sites or spam (unsolicited e-mail sent in bulk).

Accessible from Morality in Media's main Web page, Ob scenityCrimes.org was inspired by Cybertipline.com, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Web site, which allows citizens to report the sexual exploitation of children, said Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media.

“We've always believed that obscenity laws will not be enforced unless citizens complain,” Peters said. “On one level, that shouldn't be necessary. But for various reasons, many prosecutors choose not to enforce obscenity laws, whether at the federal or state level. One way to change that is to give citizens a convenient means online to make a report of a possible violation of Internet obscenity laws to their federal prosecutor.”

The U.S. Supreme Court defines obscenity this way: When judged by contemporary community standards, the material appeals to a prurient interest; describes or depicts sexual conduct in an offensive way; and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2354) states that pornography “offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act. … [It] immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.”

U.S. law prohibits the distribution of obscene materials over the In ternet or any other medium. In addition, any illegal distribution of obscene material is also in violation of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. If convicted under this statute, pornographers could receive a jail sentence and have all the assets of their illegal site seized by the government.

What Peters hopes for is that by receiving the reports, law-enforcement officials are motivated to take the Internet obscenity problem seriously.

Here's how ObscenityCrimes .org works: If a person comes across a site he considers obscene or receives spam promoting such a site, he can file a report by noting the Web site address, also known as the URL.

It's important not to type the e-mail address of the spammer because almost all porn spammers provide fake e-mail addresses, said Patrick McGrath, Morality in Media's director of media relations. Providing the URL, however, is a solid lead since it's an easy way to track down who registered the site, he added.

Morality in Media then submits the reports to the Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity unit and also to the 93 U.S. attorneys throughout the country. Since last June, more than 10,000 reports have been filed through the site, and “the hits keep on coming,” McGrath said.

Law enforcement officials say they appreciate the input by vigilant citizens, but a Justice Department spokeswoman was vague when asked what the department does with the reports submitted by Morality in Media.

“The Justice Department has been receiving referrals from this Web site, and it has proved helpful to our investigators,” said Monica Goodling, the spokeswoman. “The information provided is reviewed and used, as appropriate, by the child exploitation and obscenity section of our criminal division.”

Still, parents seem to appreciate the site for encouraging moral people to take positive action. And Petrillo, who stumbled across the pornographic Spider-Man image, is grateful for his Catholic roots, which he is passing on to his children.

“The only reason I remain hopeful in a world gone mad is because my faith tells me the bad guys can't win in the end,” said the father of four young children. “And yet it's scary going through it.”

Another parent, Karen Hanley from White Plains, N.Y., automatically deletes any spam she receives almost out of habit now. But one spam in particular incensed her.

It was sent to her son's America Online e-mail address. To have control over the 11-year-old's access, she doesn't allow him to know the password to his account. One day he wanted to check his e-mail, so she logged on and there on the subject line was an ad with an inappropriate reference to anatomy.

“The concept … isn't even something I want his mind to be poisoned with,” she said. “People say, ‘What's the big deal? He didn't see anything.’ No. You're introducing a concept to him that his innocent mind never would have dreamed of before, so you're feeding this poison into his childlike mind and you're stealing his childhood, and you're taking away a little small piece of his innocence that I feel you have no right to do.”

Her faith plays the “No. 1 part” in the way she views the Internet and in what her children have access to.

“My faith is ultimately about eternal truth — all that is true, good and eternally beautiful,” she said. “That is what the Catholic faith is all about, and that's what we should turn our faces toward. We're weak, and we forget that that's how we need to orient our life. We need to orient every single thing we do toward that goodness, toward that light.”

Carlos Briceno writes from Seminole, Florida.