A representative of Soft Media told XBIZ that the software “basically scans every file on the hard drive and targets anything that’s pornographic,” and scans the browser history and Internet cache in search of adult materials, as well.
Soft Media stated in its press release that “the law assumes that as a computer owner you know what’s on your computer … if your computer has illegal pornography on its hard drive, you could end up in jail, even if it was one of your friends or employees who inadvertently put it there.”
While the primary concern cited by Soft Media is the potential for liability on the part of companies for the actions of their employees, as well as the possibility of a guest user on any computer putting the computer’s owner in harm’s way from a legal perspective, it is also clear that the company takes a dim view of adult entertainment content, generally.
“There’s a direct link between Internet pornography and sexual predators,” said Soft Media founder Grey McKenzie.
Asked about the basis for Soft Media’s claim that computer owners could find themselves being held liable for the materials downloaded by a third party, adult industry attorney Larry Walters told XBIZ that the claim has “just enough of a basis in law that it doesn’t constitute an outright falsehood.”
“In a worst-case scenario, certainly anybody with an ownership share in the computer could be held responsible for illegal materials, like child pornography, that have been downloaded to that computer,” Walters said. “In the real world, though, is the owner of General Motors going to be indicted because an employee somewhere down the chain in his company downloaded illegal material? Of course not.”
Walters said that, hypothetically, if a company owner had “constructive knowledge” of the presence of the illegal material, it would be an entirely different matter than a situation in which the owner had no knowledge of the material.
“The [eXXXTerminator] marketing claim does sound like a scare tactic that goes beyond what computer owners reasonably need to be concerned about,” Walters said. “But these issues do come up all the time; who really ‘owns’ what in the digital environment? It’s a complicated question.”