In the wake of a man being sentenced to life for killing a teacher after he visited Websites featuring necrophilia and "other extreme sexual activity," law enforcement in Great Britain and the United States plan a joint crackdown on such Websites – and a few players in the U.S. adult Internet are not exactly unhappy about it.
"I think it's a good thing, if they're truly going to target the really extreme sites like necrophilia," RatedHot owner Marsha Youngs told AVN.com. "I've never seen what value it holds on the Web. It's sick, gross, and tasteless, to say the least."
Detour Interactive chief Danielle Simons was more emphatic. "Not being one who is afraid to piss off the industry where I make my living, I think it is about damn time," she said. "I think that the Webmasters of these sites as well as the choking blowjob, rape, and brutality sites have gone too far to make a buck. People have not only been hurt, but surfers are getting a personal 'lesson' on how to abuse others."
British Home Secretary David Blunkett and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey met at Comey's Justice Department office in Washington recently to discuss the issue, a week Blunkett met the family of murder victim Jane Longhurst.
Longhurst, a 35-year-old special needs teacher, was killed by musician Graham Coutts, who kept her body in a storage facility for 35 days and visited it 10 times during that period. Coutts reportedly killed Longhurst within hours of his visiting Websites known as Necrobabes and Hangingbitches. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.
Blunkett and Comey reportedly agreed on initial steps to begin the crackdown, according to British news reports, but few details of those steps were disclosed at this writing. Some, however, are said to include working with Internet service providers and credit card companies whose services allow users to buy adult Internet access.
"The department of justice was very interested in what we had to say and we agreed it was a significant problem, not in terms of numbers but in terms of the evil of these sites," an unidentified spokesman for Blunkett told the London Guardian March 10. "We agreed a specific group of officials would meet jointly to work out what the next stage would be. We also agreed we would put our heads together to get some action on the issue. [Comey] said it was something they had been increasingly concerned about."
But Youngs cautioned against making any such crackdown so broad that it includes "other sites that are just porn in general," as opposed to necrophilia and other violent and extreme acts. "People that are involved in necrophilia aren't trying to express anything but how low down they truly are. Sure, I work in [the adult] industry. But even I think there are some things that just aren't right. Necrophilia just happens to be one of them."
Youngs isn't the only one urging prudence. "I guess The Catcher In The Rye should be banned, too, on the same criteria," said Chicago-based attorney J.D. Obenberger, alluding to the long-controversial J.D. Salinger novel often targeted by censorship supporters and, most notoriously, in the possession of the man who murdered former Beatle John Lennon in 1980. "I guess the thinking goes, any sensory stimulation that is received within a couple of hours before some criminal commits a crime should be banned," he said. "And, then, we'd have no crime. Of course, we'd have no literature, either."
"I think it is sad that Webmasters of 'tasteful' porn sites will suffer because of [the coming crackdown]," Simons added.
