Web Master: There’s Nothing Parents Can Do To Stop Internet Porn

By Diana Keough

A couple years ago, I wrote an article for The Plain Dealer on teenagers who were
addicted to internet pornography. For the article, I interviewed two male teenagers and
their moms.  At the time, I remember thinking two things:  How brave these teens and
their moms were to come forward to talk to me; to share their struggles with the hope to
help others who were going through it and like them, may feel they are all alone.  I was
also struck with how naive I was on the pervasiveness of pornography on the internet.  I
was the mom of four boys--all of whom regularly used the computer.  At the time I was
researching this article, I had no software installed to prevent my boys from surfing the
net freely.  We do now.

The pornography available for free on the internet to our children is nothing like
the Playboy of our youth.  Agree with me or not on the ramifications of porn on a
teenager's life, at least be aware that pornographers are seeking your teenagers as a loyal
customer base.   What you do about it after reading this is up to you. 

 WEB MASTER: There's nothing Parents Can Do To Stop Internet Porn 

Rich likes talking about his work: How much he enjoys doing what he’s doing,
how much money he makes and his hopes for his business’ s growth. Rich and his wife,
Brice, a stage name, produce pornographic videos for their Internet Web site.

But don’t call what they do pornography. “I’d rather you call it art,” said Brice,
who, like her husband, spoke to The Plain Dealer on the condition their last names not be
used. The attractive, 50-something Brice owns a fitness center. She also writes the scripts
and said she prefers to exclude men from her storyboards.

“In most pornographic videos, there’s a point when a woman loses her choice and
becomes someone who is being taken advantage of,” she said, sitting beside her husband
in their spacious Aurora home.

Because of that, their streaming videos have an all -female cast. They recruited
actors by posting classified ads on Kent State University bulletin boards and local
newspapers. They said they were inundated with applicants.

 “All the girls were over 18,” he said. They choose eight girls. In addition to
running two other legitimate virtual businesses that use the same streaming video
technology used to distribute his pornography, Rich serves as producer, director and
handles all marketing for his pornographic Web site. He said he’s been involved in
Internet businesses since 1993 and knows all the tricks of the trade to increase traffic to
his sites.

 Rich said he embeds holiday related words, such as Santa Claus or Easter Bunny
in his meta tag so that his site will pop up when people type those words into the search
engine. Meta tags uses keywords that are embedded in Web sites so they can be indexed
by Internet search engines. And though he said he has not done this, he knows others will
simply misspell popular Web sites viewed by teenage and younger viewers, called mouse
trapping. 

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission prosecuted John Zuccarini, who
registered at least 6,000 domain names that were misspellings of popular Web sites. The
FTC said he registered 15 variations of the popular children’s cartoon site,
www.cartoonnetwork.com (e.g., “cartoon netwok” instead of “cartoon network”) and 41
variations on the name Britney Spears.

Once consumers arrived, Zuccarini’s Web sites were programmed to take control
of their Internet browsers and force the consumers to view explicit advertising for
pornographic Web sites. Consumers often were forced to choose between taking up to 20
minutes to close out all of the Internet windows or turning off their computers.

Rich said he sometimes implants spy ware that automatically dials a 900 number
causing someone to incur charges up to $3.99 per minute when they click on his site.
Broadband, he said, has allowed this technology to be transferable to instant messages,
allowing him to send instant messages using gimmicks like telling customers they won
something. This, he said, he’s done only a few times.

The FTC recently convicted a pornographer who was claiming consumers had
won a free Sony PlayStation 2 or other prize through a promotion supposedly sponsored
by Yahoo. The imitation Yahoo Web site instructed consumers to download a program
that would allow them to connect toll free to a Web site where they could enter their
name and address to claim their PlayStation 2.

“We are always one step ahead and seem to be the first to use the newest
technology,” Rich said. Rich has also used “Jump tos,” also known as redirects that
automatically redirect viewers of their free material to his paid site. The redirect embeds
on consumers’ computers Web site links that are virtually impossible to remove.
 When asked what parents can do to prevent him and others like him from exposing
their children to I-porn, he replied, “Nothing, really.”