And now for something completely different:

Today, while reading the October 2001 issue of VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates), a professional publication for youth services librarians, I came across a press release from Nancy Garden, a well-known author of fiction for young adults. I will copy part of it here manually, because I couldn't find it posted anywhere on the 'Net, except possibly through ProQuest (I didn't look because that's a subscription service), and will trust that, since this is an issue concerning the safety of children, posting it here in part with a citation will suffice.

In early August, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) discovered that when one clicked on some members' names from the SCBWI home page, one got a particularly raunchy child porn site, showing, on its first page, big letters saying THIS SITE IS FOR SALE, or words to that effect. The sites involved were those built for SCBWI members by a web host and marketer whose own site, through which the others went, was grabbed by a porn merchant with an address in Russia and a tech address in California -- and put up for sale in the hope that legitimate owners would pay big money to buy their sites back. Similar scams have victimized religious organizations' sites and other sites involving children.



SCBWI quickly closed off their links to the stolen sites.

[Note from MA: I tried the link from SCBWI to Nancy Garden's site tonight, and it still took me to a porn site.] But at least one member heard from a reader of one of her books that the porn site still appeared when one tried to reach her site via the URL on her book jacket. Of course this meant that the book jacket had to be reprinted and as many readers, librarians, wholesalers, and booksellers as possible notified. It also meant that this had to be done by any other SCBWI member involved whose URL appeared on book jackets and promotional materials, and that anyone -- other authors, librarians, booklist developers, organizations -- with links to the sites in question had to be asked to destroy those links.



The original site developer is pursuing legal action. To protect children in the meantime, anyone -- librarians, booksellers, etc. -- who has access to a book showing a URL that includes the word

bergenstein in it should obliterate that URL. And it is also vital for anyone with a domain name to make sure that it is renewed promptly every year.

[Garden, Nancy. From a press release reproduced in VOYA (October 2001), p. 243.]

Please pass this on to any neighbors, teachers, PTAs, PTOs, church groups, and librarians (we don't all have access to VOYA) that you all can think of. Children and teens are often assigned author studies as part of their reading curriculum, and an increasing number of them seek information about their author from the author's web site. Not all web sites are compromised, but those with "bergenstein" in the URL are a serious risk.

None of us want children needlessly exposed to pornography. I also don't want very good writers to lose their readers because some scuzzbucket stole their sites.

Thanks.

Mary Anne