Nevada company sued over spam e-mails

David Kihara

Friday, July 22, 2005 | 11:11 a.m.

The Justice Department filed a civil suit in federal court on Wednesday against a Nevada company that allegedly operates Internet sex sites without properly labeling its unsolicited e-mails as "sexually explicit."

The Justice Department brought the suit in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas against TJ Web Productions, a Henderson company that operates dozens of X-rated Web sites that sell access to Internet pornography.

The suit alleges that the TJ Web Productions sends out unsolicited e-mails without identifying its e-mails as adult-themed, and the e-mails include "depictions of sexually explicit conduct."

Specifically, the Justice Department is accusing TJ Web Productions of failing to include the phrase "Sexually-Explicit" in the subject line of the spam messages.

The suit is part of a coordinated crackdown on various Web providers across the country that have been allegedly breaking the Federal Trade Commission's regulation requiring unsolicited X-rated e-mail advertisements (spam) to be properly labeled.

The regulations also prohibit the cyberspace solicitations from containing sexually explicit images.

"It's electronic flashing," said Jonathan Kraden, staff attorney with the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in reference to spam e-mails that contain explicit images.

The FTC has charged seven companies with violating the spam regulation and has reached settlements with four companies for $1.1 million in penalties.

The Florida-based Bangbros.com Inc., which provides hardcore sexual content, was fined $650,000 while other companies received smaller fines of between $220,000 to $50,000, according to the FTC.

Kraden said the FTC is not trying to prevent spam, but it is attempting to ensure that the recipients know what it is.

He concedes, however, that it is an uphill battle. He said the FTC has monitored the number of "illegal" spam messages -- upwards of 300,000 a day -- and "the total number of illegal messages (reaching consumers) could be in the hundreds of thousands or possibly millions."

The suit against TJ Web Productions is just one of three suits that have not yet reached settlement. No one from the company could be reached for comment on Wednesday. The address registered for the company is a post office box located in a UPS store in Henderson.

Attorney Lee Drizer, who is listed as TJ Web Production's resident agent, said he is not legally representing the company. His only association with the company is as the resident agent, he said, and therefore could not comment for or about TJ Web Productions.

Some citizens interviewed, however, found any attempts to regulate spam e-mails somewhat pointless

Filipe Perez, 29, said most people are likely to know what kind of content a message contained, and labeling the message as "sexually explicit" wouldn't serve any practical purpose.

"If you don't know it's a sex advertisement by now, you must be new to the Internet," he said.

Perez said that he receives plenty of spam e-mails -- including sexually explicit solicitations -- but he often deletes them before opening the messages.

He said, however, that he didn't mind the content of the e-mails as much as the huge volume that is received into his e-mail account.

"It's been years since I was interested in the dirty stuff," he said. "But I don't like spam e-mails. I don't want them plugging up my in box."