Reuters (www.reuters.com) announced on May 16 that a 10 million dollar lawsuit has been filed by the parents of a minor against the search engine giant Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and a man who founded a Yahoo! Group for the purposes of trading child pornography.
The lawsuit claims that Yahoo neglected its responsibilities by providing the defendant Mark Bates and others with a forum to share and distribute child pornography on a Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) site called "Candyman." The site operated for two months and garnered thousands of visitors before Yahoo shut it down in February 2001.
The minor in question, who is using the name Johnny Doe, was featured on the site in pornographic photos taken by a neighbor, said the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. The plaintiffs claimed that Yahoo was aware of the site’s content, and that it still neglected to block or remove the pornographic images of Doe and other children.
