63 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
63 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
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The Marquis de Cyberspace
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By: WENDY COLE SPRINGFIELD
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Four months into his three tear sentence for transmitting obscene
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images by computer, the man the Carnegie Mellon report calls a
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modern-day Marquis de Sade hardly looks like a political cause
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celebre. Robert Thomas spends his day like any other inmate at
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the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield,
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Missouri: cleaning the prison kitchen and laundry room and
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waiting to hear whether his lawyers win get him out on appeal.
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Thomas's case could well end up in the Supreme Court, where it
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would set legal precedent for all of cyberspace.
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Thomas, 39, operator of the Amateur Action BBS in
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Milpitas, California, made headlines last year when he and his
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wife Carleen, 40, were indicted for transmitting pornographic
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material to a government agent in Tennessee. A jury in Memphis
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wasted little time ruling that the images, which included
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pictures of women having sex with animals-were obscene. But his
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case raised the tricky constitutional question of which locale's
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or community standards should have been used to make that
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judgment: Tennessee's Bible Belt, California's Bay Area or the
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virtual community of cyberspace?
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Though he concedes that many might find his stockpile of
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25,000 photos featuring S&M and hard-core sex distasteful, Thomas
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insists he violated no laws. "I don't feel I committed a crime
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because I didn't offend anybody but a postal inspector in
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Memphis," he says, referring to the government official who
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launched the investigation. Thomas also faces charges in Salt
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Lake City of distributing images of naked children, but he insists
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those images aren't sexually explicit. "They are from nudist
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colonies," he says. "Many of them are family snapshots."
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On-line porn certainly pays, Thomas' income last year topped
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$800,000, enabling the slight, shaggy-haired Californian to indulge
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in his two extracurricular passions: expensive cars and exotic birds.
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Subscriptions have more than doubled (to 7,000) since his arrest.
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Some of the newcomers aren't even bothering to download the dirty
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pictures; they seem to be offering their $99-per-year subscription
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fees as donations to the cause. The extra income will come in handy,
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since the Thomas's legal bills are approaching $250,000.
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Thomas didn't set out to make headlines or case law.
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A former furniture mover with an interest in computers, he opened
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his BBS in 1991 with 12 photos and a single phone line. He
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worked hard. He regularly put in 16-hour days, sometimes staying
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up all night to scan new, hard-to-find photos for his collection.
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At the time of his indictment he was spending $500 a week on fresh
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material, much of it sent by scouts as far away as Denmark and
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Brazil. The slogan for his bulletin board came from closer to
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home, however. He was inspired by a visit to Disneyland, where a
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sign outside proclaims it THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH. His
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computer system came to be known as "the nastiest place on earth."
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Whatever else might be said about him, Thomas does seem to
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have a flair for marketing. The trick, he says, is in how you
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write the pitch lines that describe your pictures. "You want to
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make the descriptions like a menu," he explains. "If your
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selling a dry, tough steak, you want to make it sound as juicy as
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you can." Among his favorite come-ons (and one of the few
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suitable for publication): "Peek into the bathroom and see this
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cutie sitting on the toilet!" A subscriber who chose to
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download that photo would get a digitized picture of a 15-lb.
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lobster.
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