Child Pornography on AOL Is Investigated in Germany
March 29, 2011
In the latest on-line controversy, the Hamburg prosecutor's office is investigating the dissemination of child pornography on AOL Bertelsmann Online, the joint venture between America Online Inc. of the U.S. and Bertelsmann AG of Germany. AOL officials said they are cooperating with the authorities but insisted that they can't control the content of messages being sent through their service. The investigation also is aimed at unknown users who actually sent the photos. Prosecutors were tipped off by an article in Focus, a German news weekly, that described how electronic mail containing pornographic pictures of children was being sent through AOL after subscribers made contact in unauthorized electronic chat rooms. Child pornography is a criminal offense in Germany. Previous Investigations It is at least the third investigation by German authorities of on-line services. In November, the Munich-based subsidiary of CompuServe Inc. was raided and authorities later handed CompuServe a list of 200 news groups suspected of disseminating child pornography. And in January, the Mannheim prosecutor's office investigated both CompuServe and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Online service because users could access a Canadian neo-Nazi's site on the World Wide Web. In all three cases, the issue is essentially the same: just who is responsible for what is being transmitted across telephone lines? It's a question authorities around the globe are struggling with and one where German officials have yet to propose their own regulations. AOL contends that it should be treated just like the telephone company or the postal service and that it can't be asked to monitor private conversations. According to Germany's communications law and constitution, ``controls or censure can't happen in this area,'' said AOL spokesman Ma Strickland. ``It could be that people misuse this protection, but they also could do it by (traditional) mail.'' Monitoring Behavior Mr. Strickland couldn't say whether AOL has closed subscribers' accounts over this, but the company employs people who regularly monitor chat rooms to ensure that general behavior rules are followed. But Hamburg officials also are reviewing whether AOL officials knew that child pornography was being distributed through their network and did nothing to stop it, said Dryer Carrol, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office. If that's the case, AOL could have broken the law. ``The issue isn't that something happens in the network,'' he said. ``It's if the network operator knows that customers are doing this, what options does he have to intervene, to throw people out.''
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