CYBERPORN

      One day over at the Cyber City Cafe on Maryland Parkway, where patrons can get a cup of coffee and a little cheesecake with their Internet, the feds showed up at the door.
      "It was about a year and a half ago," said Joe Kendall, owner of the restaurant, which provides online access to patrons. "They physically came through the cafe ... they took a customer of mine out."
      Kendall said he doesn't know what the government's interest was. But he said the action, while a one-time-only experience at his place, isn't unusual for Internet-related hangouts nationwide.
      With the proliferation of adult-related sites on the World Wide Web, high-profile prosecutions in the area of child pornography and an expanding global phenomenon that seems to morph into something new every few months, those interested in maintaining their privacy online can be excused for being uncertain about what Kendall predicted years ago.
      "I already knew they were watching," he said.
      Federal authorities in the past year have made sweeping arrests in the area of child pornography on the Internet. Two former Las Vegas men found themselves the targets of indictments when an America Online user complained about images of youngsters being sent over online accounts.
      FBI agents served a search warrant on the home of one of the suspects, recovering computer equipment that authorities later examined for files containing child porn. That was part of a two-year investigation called "Innocent Images," which included searches of 125 homes and offices.
      No similar high-profile busts have been made in the year since that investigation was announced, but defenders of privacy on the Internet -- who are quick to decry child pornography -- aren't under the belief that there couldn't possibly be repercussions for surfing in muddied cyberwaters.
      "I think that many people are at risk," said Andre Bacard, author of "The Computer Privacy Handbook," published last year. "They really have no idea how dangerous it is."
      The question to civil libertarians, computer buffs and attorneys is what the future will be for average adults who call up typical X-rated Web sites, engage in racy dialogue in "chat rooms," send erotic e-mail or post sexually explicit material to community bulletin boards that can be accessed via computer.
      At the center of all the speculation lies the Communications Decency Act, a piece of legislation signed into law by President Clinton last year. Four months later it was deemed unconstitutional by a three-judge federal appeals court in Philadelphia.
      The act would have held online services or any other access providers liable for "indecent" or "patently offensive" material posted on the Internet. The CDA, as it became known, was intended to restrict children's access to pornography, but justices ruled the law was overly broad, unenforceable and violated the First Amendment.
      "The issue in the CDA was not the people downloading things," said Scott Bradner, an expert who testified before the appellate court on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The CDA required the individual who sent material on the Net to take effective action to ensure that people who should not see the material would not see it.
      "I was asked whether there was a scenario where it could be controlled and I said yes," Bradner said. "But you would have to require a national identity where everyone's age would be included. You would have to go to a trusted entity who would verify your age through something like a birth certificate, then it would have to be done in a way that you couldn't give it to your kid. That would be invasive in the least."
      Even if that were done, Bradner said, it would only cover online users in the United States, which comprise 40 percent of all Internet users.
      "Any system that would ensure someone in Afghanistan is under 18 is beyond the pale of comprehension," he said.
      Allen Lichtenstein, a Las Vegas lawyer whose clients include X-rated businesses that use the World Wide Web for commercial purposes, said the "real question is the one the Supreme Court is going to visit; how do we characterize the Internet in terms of regulation."
      "The government wants it like broadcasting," he said, "where it would be licensed and censored. Ultimately the court is going to have to decide, and while they're deciding, it will have changed."
      Lichtenstein's clients provide everything from written X-rated material to downloadable images to interactive contact with erotic dancers through the computer. The companies use age verification methods through the use of credit cards. He and others argue that parents, not the government, should bear the ultimate responsibility for what children see.
      Software companies have also capitalized on the need to filter out the blue content by developing programs such as "Cyber Patrol," which helps parents block minors' access to thousands of sites that depict sex, violence, profanity, racism and a host of other noisome categories.
Next Column

Vote on what's best in Las Vegas
Best Of Las Vegas '97