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Baseball seeks halt to porn, indecency on MLB.com

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NEW YORK | Fri Jun 4, 2010 3:24pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major League Baseball has asked a judge for a subpoena to help it identify people using Internet services provided by Charter Communications Inc to post pornography and other indecent material on the MLB.com website.

According to papers filed Thursday in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, one or more people have since July 2009 posted dozens of "threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, demeaning, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit, indecent and inappropriate" messages and images on MLB.com message boards.

Some postings threatened a person named "McCabe" with unwanted sexual acts, while others included images of what the users described as their genitalia, the court papers show.

Saying the objectionable postings violate "all reasonable standards of decency," Major League Baseball said it has several times tried and failed to ban them, and traced the Internet protocol addresses used to post them to Charter.

It is seeking a court order requiring Charter to disclose the identities of people associated with these addresses, so it can pursue appropriate action.

A Charter spokeswoman had no immediate comment, saying the St. Louis-based company had not been served with the court papers. A lawyer for Major League Baseball did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The case is In re: Application of MLB Advanced Media LP to Compel Disclosure of Charter Communications Inc, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 107256/2010.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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Comments (7)
Black.Knight wrote:
Basically what Selig said was, I will do nothing, nothing changes, and too bad kid you did a great job but just wasn’t your night.

Thanks Selig, for nothing.

Jun 04, 2010 6:30pm EDT  --  Report as abuse
lisakaz wrote:
Jason, s private business is not the government, so I doubt the First Amendment applies. I’m guessing you have never had the “pleasure” of viewing this person’s attacks specifically targeted here by the subpoena request. There must be thousands of threats and ugly comments or images.

Do you really think the “First Amendment” applies to putting images of two men engaging in f—-tio on a forum that can be seen by kids? I don’t. MLBAM is probably concerned that ITS liability and reputation is on the hook because of this person’s misguided “crusade” (there really is a McCabe btw; he’s practically a celebrity now).

I was recently one of this person’s targets and the verbiage is nasty but the images nastier. MLBAM would ban hundreds of signatures of this person, then banned avatars of everyone on the site to avoid these pictures. We the posters on this site have been begging MLBAM for MONTHS to ban this person via his IP address. And indeed, the harassment and the p-rn are most likely crimes. We’re very glad that MLB’s lawyers saw things our way.

This person does not deserve to hide behind the “First Amendment” and I for one will be glad when even the trash talk is about baseball and the avatars of innocent posters are given back.

Jun 05, 2010 1:38am EDT  --  Report as abuse
bxnative wrote:
Jason: Freedom of speech does not allow anyone to attack specific individuals directly with vile combativeness. Nor does it protect the spamming, by means of impersonating another individual’s identity, with the sole purpose of attempting to damage a person’s reputation. Nor is the relentless engaging of direct threats of violence. And as if that isn’t enough: let’s not forget about the enticement to get youngsters to commit suicide.

Still think it’s a freedom of speech issue?

Jun 05, 2010 2:07am EDT  --  Report as abuse
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