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Suit: CEN Hired Minors To Spam
2002-11-15 10:53:00

Patrick Danner writes for the Miami Herald 4/4/02: A Fort Lauderdale Internet porn company recruited minors to send bulk e-mails with links to its adult websites, according to a federal lawsuit.

Netvision Audiotext, which has done business as Cyber Entertainment Network, relied on more than 40 webmasters -- including about a dozen minors -- to send unsolicited e-mails to computer users to drive traffic to its various pornographic websites.

Details of Cyber Entertainment's efforts to generate business for its porn sites emerged in a federal lawsuit in Virginia brought by America Online against the Fort Lauderdale company and its webmasters.

Under terms of a settlement reached last month, Cyber Entertainment agreed to stop ''spamming'' AOL members and pay AOL ''substantial'' damages, according to AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham.

AOL also was awarded damages of as much as $30,000 each from webmasters -- including a Hollywood teenager -- who worked on behalf of Cyber Entertainment, according to the case docket in U.S. District Court in Virginia.

''Cyber was recruiting minors and not checking out their ages,'' said Denise Tassi, an Alexandria, Va., lawyer who was appointed by the court to represented the underage webmasters. ``That was the whole problem.''

''I know nothing about that,'' Stephen Workman, a spokesman for Cyber Entertainment, when asked about the company recruiting minors.

State corporate records show Cyber Entertainment's parent company Netvision is inactive. Principals John Bennett Jr. and Joseph Elkind now operate Net Management Services, which also recruits webmasters to generate business for pornographic websites.

Tassi said the minors' parents she dealt with were unaware their children were earning money in such fashion.

''The ones I dealt with were stunned,'' Tassi said. A confidentiality agreement barred her from discussing details of the settlement agreement, but how much the webmasters earned was a factor in how much they had to pay AOL.

According to a posting on a Cyber Entertainment website last year, webmasters could earn 20 cents per visitor to one of its websites or $35 for each visitor who signed up as a member to the site.

The Hollywood teenager who worked as a webmaster was accused in the AOL suit of sending at least 255,000 unsolicited e-mails in a two-month period in 1999 while he was a minor. He couldn't be reached for comment.

AOL's Graham proclaimed the case against Cyber Entertainment as ``landmark settlement.''

''Essentially, what we did was we brought down a network of spammers,'' Graham said. ``AOL went after a specific egregious business model that is being used by porn spammers, and broke it apart.''

Netvision lawyers in Virginia declined to comment beyond confirming the lawsuit has been settled.

AOL filed suit in December 1999, accusing Cyber Entertainment and its officials of violating the Federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.

''To me, the significant aspect of this case is it's restraining a company that incited others to spam, rather than spamming by [itself],'' said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp., an anti-spam organization in Green Brook, N.J. ``Spammers have often used tactics to try to get others to do their dirty work for them. This is a clear example of how that ruse can be brought to justice.''

According to the settlement, Cyber Entertainment agreed to adopt a policy that states the advertisement of its ``websites through the transmission of unsolicited bulk e-mail is strictly prohibited.''

The bane of many computer users, unsolicited e-mail clogs computer systems and often contains content that many find offensive.

In a July 2000 story on the online porn industry, The Herald described Cyber Entertainment as one of the biggest operators of adult-oriented sites on the Internet. At the time, the company was said to have taken in $30 million or more a year.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/2992717.htm