From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:18:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Pro-censorship lobbyist calls for AOL boycott
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970911200353.26032A-100000@well.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly was abducted from
her bedroom and killed in 1993, is calling for a boycott of American
Online until it stops allowing access to a Florida woman who posts writing
and art by serial killers on the Internet.
	Klaas particularly objects to the work of Keith Hunter Jesperson,
who is serving three life sentences in Oregon for killings in the
Northwest and is charged with one murder in Wyoming.
	"America Online is hiding behind freedom of speech in allowing
this monster to have a public forum," said Klaas, who was in Wyoming this
week to promote the Klaas Foundation for Children, which he established
after his daughter's slaying.
	Officials for the nation's largest Internet access provider said
Thursday that some material from the home page of Sondra London of
Jacksonville, Fla., would be removed within 24 hours.
	"We find the information that is in this site and in some of the
(associated AOL sites) offensive and objectionable and we did not wish to
have our name associated with it," said AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.
	London said she had removed from her home page one part of
Jesperson's material - the "self-start serial killer kit" - on the urging
of an AOL attorney who said he was investigating the site.
	In a letter to Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer, AOL Senior Vice
President and general counsel George Vradenburg III said the material was
removed and that none of it was "authored, sponsored or condoned by AOL."
	"They missed the point," Geringer said. "They failed to
acknowledge the remaining material, such as Jesperson referring to his
victims as piles of garbage."
	Geringer, who has asked Oregon officials to extradite Jesperson to
Wyoming so he can stand trial in a 1995 slaying, said he supports Klaas'
call for a boycott. He also asked AOL on Thursday to remove the rest of
Jerperson's material.
	He called London's Web page "a direct pipeline for his rantings
and ravings and advocacy of serial killing."
	London has said she feels it is important to post such information
to gain insight into how serial killers think.
	Polly Klaas' killer, Richard Allen Davis, is on death row in
California. None of his work has appeared on London's Web page.