Hockenberry referred to the spam as “an invasion of unwanted porn” by Toronto-based Global Media Resources and its affiliated Python websites, but added that the company did nothing illegal by advertising its “Spunkfarm” site via unsolicited email because the company is based in Toronto and is not subject to U.S. spam laws.
The report was based on a claim by a Texas woman named Julie that she had been bombarded with offensive and unwanted emails linking to a site showing graphic depictions of farm-related pornography. Julie was upset and wanted to find the person or people responsible for the email.
Hockenberry spent the next year finding her an answer.
“We thought the stuff Julie in Texas got was the worst of the worst, so we decided to see if we could figure out, step by step, who pressed the send key,” Hockenberry said.
Along the way, Hockenberry said he and his investigative team hit roadblock after roadblock, beginning with a bogus sender name — Nastassja Kinski — on the email. After being “attacked by pornographic popups,” Hockenberry said, he finally uncovered the site’s Custodian of Records, a man named Judson Rosebud who occupies an office on 7th Avenue in New York City.
Armed with a hidden camera and microphone, Hockenberry attempted to enter Rosebud’s office but was turned away.
“We don’t know who is sending these things, and a lot of those are occurring offshore,” Rosebud offered. “I am not involved in the distribution of this material. I am merely a keeper of records.”
According to the report, Hockenberry found the site was registered to Global Media Resources and set out to visit the address on the registration but found it was “a postal drop — just a little mailbox.” When he dug deeper, he turned up another address, this one for Python, a Global Media Resources subsidiary, but it, too, turned up cold. The address was being turned into a Middle Eastern restaurant.
Hoping to track down some of the human beings behind Global Media Resources and Python, Hockenberry and his crew crashed the January Internext show in Las Vegas. After cornering a Python representative, then following up with a few emails and some phone calls, Hockenberry finally received a fax with the name of an “independent salesperson” hired by Python to drum up subscriptions via email.
Pretending to be a businessman with a proposal to discuss, Hockenberry arranged an undercover meeting with the salesman, Jean Yves Cote.
During the meeting, Cote readily admitted to sending porn emails to millions of people but denied sending the “Spunkfarm” email. When confronted with the fact that Python representatives had confirmed Cote as the sender of the email, however, he reluctantly fessed up and, knowing he’d been caught, apologized.
“Listen, Julie, we don’t do this anymore, OK?” he said. “And [I’m] really sorry about that. OK?”
The general consensus among attendees at last weekend’s Internext gathering is that Hockenberry’s report could not have come at a worse time, between the Federal Trade Commission’s recent crackdown on Can-Spam offenders and the adult entertainment industry’s ongoing battle against the Justice Department and its 2257 amended regulations.
Many say the industry needs to take a long look in the mirror before it begins pointing fingers elsewhere.
As Quentin Boyer comments in an upcoming article for XBiz World, “From 2257 record-keeping law to the specter of obscenity prosecutions and anti-spam measures that culminated in Can-Spam and the Federal Trade Commission’s final rule on sexually explicit email, we were forewarned every step of the way.”