From: bx953@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (David R. Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Local Bulletin Board Gets Busted
Date: 21 Jul 92 21:30:52 GMT
Reply-To: bx953@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (David R. Cohen)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


Not knowing where to post the following ... but knowing that it should be
posted somewhere ... I asked the Star Trek newsgroup where to post this.
Someone replied that it should be posted here.

This article is reprinted from the Cleveland [Ohio, USA] Plain Dealer,
Tuesday, July 21, 1992, Page B3 (?).

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POLICE PULL PLUG ON COMPUTER IN MORALS STING

Munroe Falls Police Chief Steve Stahl knows computers are big with kids
these days, byt he never thought he'd see the day when a healthy
15-year-old boy would choose a floppy disk over a playboy centerfold.
	But now that Stahl's seen some of the floppy disks popular with
local youths, he understands the facscination.
	"Give me any kid, I know what he's going to donwload," Stahl said.
	In May, Munroe Falls police received a complaint fromn a resident
who feared that a local computerized community byulletin board containing
sexually explicit material might be accessible to children.  
	Stahl said the resident showed him files called "Alison" and
"Amber," both of which featured naked women.  Stahl told the concerned
resident, "Oh well, geez, I can see how that would be upsetting."
	For the past two months, police conducted an investigation and
sting using a local 15 year old boy.  After the youth was able to hook into
the bulletin board, police arrested Mark Lehrer, 22, owner and operator of
Akron Anomaly, a 1000-member bulletin board.  Police also seized all of
Lehrer's computer equipment.
	Lehrer is accused of distributing graphic sexual material via a
computer modem from his parent's home in Munore Falls.  Lehrer, whose
father is chairman of the village's charter review commission, has been
charged in Cuyahoga Falls municipal court with one count each of
disseminating matter harmful to juveniles and possession of computer tools
-- in this case, his computer.
	A preliminary hearing is scheduled for today.  The case will
probably be turned over to a Summit County grand jury.
	Lehrer did not return a phone call yesterday.
	Stahl said this will be the first case in Northeast Ohio and one
of the first in the state in which an adult is accused of distributing
graphic sexual materials to juveniles via a computer.  
	"There's not a whole lot of case law on this kind of thing," he
said, adding most material comes from books, magazines, or movies.
	According to Stahl, members of Akron Anomaly paid $15 to $30 a year
to link into Lehrer's bulletin board.  For that fee, they had access to
games like chess, basketball, and euchre, compouter programming
instructions, and a series of "gif" -- "graphic interface files" -- that
feature pictures from James Bond to Captain Kirk to Scooby Doo. 
	Some are labeled specifically for adults and are not supposed to be
accessible to those under age 18, while many others are contained in a
general file.  However, when police seized Lehrer's records they found that
even the "clean" files contained images not entirely wholesome.
	"One was Bugs Bunny eating a carrot, one was Bart Simpson riding a
skate board and one was called (a slang term for oral sex) [probably "blow
job" -- drc], and that was in the clean file," Stahl said.
	Stahl said many files not listed in the adult category contained
pictures of naked women and of naked women engaged in sexual acts.  One
file allegedly shows a nude image of Christina Applegate, who plays Peg on
the television show "Married With Children."
	"Parents are happy their kids are upstairs using their computers. 
One parent we talked to was thrilled they weren't finding Playboy magazine.
Well, I've got news for them, this is a rude awakening," Stahl said.
	In addition to the graphic interface images, juveniles were able to
access adult movies, which are transmitted on color monitors.

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A brief editorial comment: this sucks.
Any comments, please send e-mail, as I don't monitor this group.

David
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= THIS MESSAGE IS FROM  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|             David R. Cohen or Tracey L. Ridgeway              |
|                  bx953@cleveland.freenet.edu                  |
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