Has a porn spammer ever been prosecuted for endangering a minor?

Factual Questions
1

I’m not sure of the exact term. Endangering the welfare of a minor? Corrupting the morals of a minor?

Well, if not, why? If someone sent a pornographic magazine addressed to a minor through the U.S. mail, surely action would be taken against the sender.

Recently, I was helping a friend set the parental controls on a computer her eight year-old daughter uses. I was pretty shocked at some of the sexualy explicit email her daughter had received.

Anyone ever hear of a spammer getting nailed for this?

2

I’m not sure if this is what you’re thinking, but I remember reading of a U.S. case. A man was prosecuted for building websites that would re-direct people to porn sites when they mistyped the url. In fact, he was even doing it with sites kids were likely to search, such as disney. Maybe someone can remember the case and provide more info.

(But thanks to this post, my search history now shows that I searched Google News for disney and porn.)

3

I’ve wondered that myself. I remember when my little sister was 11 and on AOL. My dad had parental controls and Email filter set up, but she still got buckets of porn Email every day. I was horrified at what kind of Email my little sister got with filters on! It was dirtier than any Eamils I’ve ever gotten.

So, I came to the conclusion that I’d never have an AOL Email account for any child. Ug.

4

Not very likely, I’d think. (Only partly because it’s pretty hard to trace them down, in the first place.)

But for web sites, you have to choose to go into their website. And most of them have a front page with disclaimers and “click here if you are over 18 and want to enter” sort of things. It’d be like letting your kid walk into the X-rated part of a video store despite the adults-only sign, and then trying to claim that the owner was endangering them. Not that there aren’t ‘parents’ who’d try to sue over something like this.

Now for Spam, that is sent direct to you, without any action on your part. But I think you would have to somehow be able to prove that they knowingly sent it to a minor. And that’d be pretty hard. How can anyone tell from an email whether it is an adult or minor?
I know of cases where a 17-year-old moved into a college dorm, and soon started getting porn junk mail sent to his address.