(From The Los Angeles Times, Dec. 25, 1987/Page 47, Part I) THERE'S AN X-RATED SIDE TO HOM

          (From The Los Angeles Times, Dec. 25, 1987/Page 47, Part I)

     

     THERE'S AN X-RATED SIDE TO HOME COMPUTERS, PARENTS WARNED

     

          (From Associated Press)

     

          That personal computer your kid got for Christmas may be more 

     educational than you think.  Animated nudes, sexy bulletin boards and 

     files filled with dirty jokes are now accessable to most PC's.

     

          "If parents are going to have a child use a $1,000 computer, 

     they have to know what it's being used for," said UCLA communications 

     law professor Dan Brenner.  "If parents let their children use a 

     computer and modem without supervision, it's not a lot different from 

     allowing them to watch cable TV or the VCR."

     

          In recent years more sexually oriented materials have been 

     showing up for home computers--some on floppy disks with X-rated 

     artwork and games, and others accessed by phone lines from electronic 

     bulletin boards.

     

          Usually operated by computer aficionados out of their homes, the 

     boards can provide off-color jokes, adult pictures, formats for 

     trading sexual messages and dating services.  All this, just by 

     dialing up the right numbers.

     

          Computers also are used by pedophiles, adults with sexual 

     interest in children, said Robert Showers, executive director of the 

     Justice Department's national obscenity enforcement unit.  "The 

     computer was the one device that was coming up and they linked onto 

     it,"  he said.

     

          While declining to mention specific cases, Showers said 

     pedophiles now use floppy disks and electronic bulletin boards to 

     send messages and pictures with child pornography from computer to 

     computer.

     

     

     

     

          "You can actually reproduce a picture on the computer.  You can 

     produce the child pornography and send it from one computer terminal 

     to the other,"  Showers said.  "I think law enforcement is just 

     beginning to get the intelligence information on the use of computers 

     in child pornography."

     

          Many computer porn materials do not exploit children, but bring 

     content already available by telephone, magazines, movies or videos 

     into the high-tech age.

     

          "A lot of people meet each other through it," said Devin Woods, 

     who runs the Affection Connection, a computer bulletin board in the 

     San Fernando Valley.  "I've got a long distance love affair going 

     between Chatsworth, Calif., and Melbourne, Fla., with two people 

     who've never met each other."

     

          Besides a message board where long distance lovers can leave 

     notes for each other, the Affection Connection offers games, computer 

     utilities, listings of computer equipment for sale and sexually 

     oriented pictures.

     

          "Some [pictures] are X-rated and some are clean," Woods said.  

     "I don't do that stuff.  People send them to me."

     

          The computer art is created by electronically scanning magazine 

     photos and be generating original drawings, some of them animated.  

     They are sent to computer bulletin boards via phone lines to be 

     included for viewing and future use.

     

          Adult materials carry warning messages and Woods said he phones 

     potential users before allowing access to ensure that they are older 

     than 18.  Some bulletin boards offer a free look around the system to 

     help computer buffs decide whether they want to pay the access 

     charge.

     

     

     

     

          In a random test fro the Associated Press, the Adult 

     Entertainment Directory of another Southern California bulletin board 

     was accessed by simply dialing the board from a computer modem.  No 

     verification of age was required for a free look at the contents, 

     although the directory carried an "Adults Only" warning.

     

          The directory listed more than 50 features with names like 

     "Cucumber," "F-Word," "Intersex," "Orgy," "Nudepics," "Porno," 

     "Xpics" and "Slave."  Other names are too graphic to mention.

     

          Once a feature was chosen for the AP random test, nude stills, 

     animated pictures of couples making love, files of crude jokes, adult 

     games and a nude picture of an actress appeared on the computer 

     screen.  From there, they could be printed out on paper or moved to 

     storage on floppy disks for future playback.

     

          Computer pornography programs are also available from mail-order 

     software outlets.  Some outlets warn purchasers that they must be 

     over 18 to order adult materials.

     

          Pornographic software includes comic strip-type stories that 

     start with a still drawing, then move to animated pictures of people 

     having sex with animals or performing unusual sexual acts with each 

     other.

     

          Sextex is a New York-based electronic bulletin board system that 

     a brochure says offers "Eroticomm party line," an "Open X-Change" for 

     erotic stories, a Sexshop/Personals service to sell and swap 

     merchandise and "X-mail to exchange lusty messages."

     

          Computer pornography is so new that legal issures, such as how 

     computer communication is covered by First Amendment protections of 

     free speech and press, have yet to be resolved, legal experts say.

     

          

     

     

          In November, President Reagan proposed legislation "making 

     illegal the computerized network that child molesters and collectors 

     of child pornography have developed."

     

          "Technology generally outstrips the law.  When technology moves 

     faster, the law tries to catch up with it,"  Showers said.

     

          "Looking at it as classic freedom of speech, people do have the 

     right to look at what they want in the privacy of their home," said 

     UCLA's Brenner.  But he notes that "criminal activity is not 

     protected, no matter where it happens."

     

          Brenner does see a "copyright issue" in computer copying of nude 

     magazine photgraphs and said that computer porn purveyors must make a 

     "good-faith effort" to bar under-age users.

     

          In early December, the Federal Communications Commission began 

     an enforcement actioon against two Los Angeles "dial-a-porn" services 

     for allegedly not taking precautions to keep pornographic telephone 

     messages from children.

     

          But it is not clear if the same rules apply to the telephone 

     lines used for computer communication.  Greg Vogt, a FCC enforcement 

     official, said computer bulletin boards may not fall under the 

     agency's jurisdiction because the signal is altered by a device, such 

     as a computer program.

     

          "We haven't had to rule on it," said FCC special counsel Anne 

     Siegel, referring to rules on telephone-computer pornography.  The 

     law "has focused on traditional dial-a-porn messages.  The statute 

     would arguably apply whether it's telephone or electronic bulletin 

     board."