The lawsuit was filed in the
US
District Court for
the Eastern District of Texas on Monday. According to Reuters, it
also targets an individual, Mark Bates, the creator of what was
known as the Candyman Group.
Yahoo! Groups allow users to correspond with like-minded persons
via e-mail, chat, bulletin boards, and file transfers. They cover a
multitude of topics chosen by users, from aquariums to space
exploration, but some are inevitably used for less wholesome
subjects.
The Candyman Group allowed collectors and distributors of child
pornography to use on-line resources to retrieve and distribute
child pornography and was the target of a one-year undercover
FBI
investigation, which led to the site being shut
down in 2002.
At the time the
FBI
estimated that there were over
7,000 group members with around 2,400 residing outside the
US
.
Bates, the group administrator, was eventually sentenced to 30
years in prison. He now faces more court appearances, according to
Reuters, following the filing of the civil action.
The suit also accuses Yahoo! of breaching its responsibilities
by allowing the group to distribute child pornography. The company
is accused of knowing what the group was doing, but doing nothing
to stop the distribution of the illegal images, reports
Reuters.
Yahoo! has made no comment on the case.
