Three Sex Crime Arrests Among Stickam.com Users So Far This Year

Policy and Law

Two years ago, I wrote about Stickam.com, a live video start-up that former employees and public documents said was owned by a Japanese pornography operator.

The article asked if a company with that unusual pedigree could keep a live-video site free from smut and keep its large community of teenage users safe from all the potential abuses.

This year, three arrests have underscored why that question needs to be asked.

Earlier this week, Dan Goodin of The Register wrote about Lawrence Joseph Silipigni Jr., who was recently indicted on nine felony counts on charges of using Stickam to trick underage girls into removing their clothes and performing sexual acts live on the Web.

Mr. Silipigni video-recorded at least one such session and later posted the video to the Web. Two other teenage Stickam users subsequently came forward to say Mr. Silipigni tricked them as well, according to court documents. Mr. Silipigni told the F.B.I. he collected more than 100 webcam videos of girls he met on Stickam by posing as a teenage boy. In Stickam’s defense, Kate Sowell, from the agency Lewis PR, said it was Stickam itself that reported the incident to authorities.

But this was not the first time sex crimes involving minors had been committed live on Stickam.

In February, a popular Stickam user named Jonathan Hock, age 20, was said to have sexually assaulted his unconscious girlfriend while broadcasting it live on his Stickam feed. Mr. Hock ended the broadcast himself, according to Christopher Stone, who runs the gossip site StickyDrama and recorded video of the event, because he said he recognized a crime was being committed. Stickam terminated Mr. Hock’s account when it later learned of the incident. Mr. Hock has been held without bond in Arizona since his arrest and is awaiting trial.

Finally, in June, a multiagency sexual crimes task force arrested Richard Allen Chaney, 23, from Costa Mesa, Calif., for persuading a 14-year-old girl to engage in live-video sex acts on Stickam. Mr. Chaney is also accused of arranging an in-person meeting with this minor on Stickam and having sex with her.

To be sure, monitoring the activities of 30,000 online members at the same time is daunting (although other live-video sites like Justin.TV don’t seem to have this kind of problem). But Stickam has never addressed its connections to pornography, nor is it transparent about the critical issue of its monitoring procedures.

Over the summer, I e-mailed a few questions about Stickam’s safety practices to Steven Fruchter, its chief executive. (Mr. Fruchter was formerly director of information security at Hypermedia Systems, another in the same family of firms owned by the Japanese pornography company). I asked Mr. Fruchter via e-mail what the standard was for monitoring live feeds on Stickam, what actions the company takes to prevent crimes or stop them once they are in progress and how many staff members they have devoted to policing content.

After a back-and-forth exchange with Lewis PR, representatives of Stickam reported that Mr. Fruchter did not want to answer those questions.

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And these children’s parents are where? And they bear what responsibility? And the provenance of the ownership is a red herring. Are you implying that porn is not mainstream these days? If so, you are not being honest. Kids were playing doctor to various degrees long before the Internet came into being. Crimes are crimes, but you don’t blame the camera maker when a pedophile takes a picture of his victim. I don’t know why this post annoys me so much, but it does.

“You don’t blame the camera maker when a pedophile takes a picture of his victim.”

A still image camera is a poor analogy to a live streaming service. It’s an online playground, and if that playground is mostly filled with 14- to 18-year-old kids then it requires professional supervision and well-thought-out safeguards against perverts and bullies.

Remember, this service is provided by a porn company, not a corporate videoconferencing company. The network is designed primarily around the concept of voyeurism, not security. For an adult site, it’s brilliant; for a site mostly populated by minors, it’s asking for trouble. I think Stickam is an amazing service and very entertaining, but it’s not a place for minors. They should allow adults to have adult fun there and keep out minors, just like minors are kept out of bars, nightclubs and sex clubs.

To the extent that the existence of sites such as this may encourage such behavior by providing a forum for displaying it, it is harmful, one could say that they “encourage” such crimes. However, we will probably never know what percentage of these crimes was committed at least in part due to the availability of the medium. We do know, however, that crimes very like these take place all the time without being recorded, or if they are recorded they are recorded privately and not broadcast.

Perhaps it is a good thing that some perpetrators choose to “broadcast” their crimes on Stickam, as their decision provides ample evidence to prosecute the perpetrators.

When are they going to charge and arrest the girls or their parents/guardians for producing the pornography? I seem to recall that the individuals responsible for ‘sexting’ earlier this year were arrested, or threatened with arrest. Surely the law hasn’t changed since then…

lets outlaw magazines, scissors and glue. that way we can keep kidnappers from cutting and pasting ransoms notes.
that that tool away and kindnapping will go away

Ok lets get this straight, the ONLY reason Stickam gets so much flack is because they have essentially brought an underlying problem to the foreground. Stickam would never have had a problem if they didnt introduce the private feature on the profiles. Private lives introduces an aura of suspicion, jealousy and a ‘feeling’ of privacy that allowed exhibitionists to be just that. They have since dismissed the private feature entirely.

Do people just breeze over the fact that services such as aim, msn, yahoo all have LIVE video. You can go live on Skype with a person in very HQ.

The stickam service itself is amazing and in fact even the site navigation and utility is freaking ingeniously designed.

Stickam is simply a condensation of multiple services and features.

To paraphrase Obama… dont use a hatchet where a scalpel is much more appropriate. Stickam is amazing. There are crimes on every site. This is typical American sweeping paranoia and overreacting. Grow up.

Does the author imply that i.e. Skype should also hire staff to monitor my online interaction with my girlfriend?
And intervene when things get heated up?
Could this entire scenario not have happened at any video chat site?
This article is completely ridiculous and to me feels more like some kind of personal vendetta between the author and Stickam.
This is a good example of bad journalism.

PS:
Both me and my girlfriend are of legal age!

I am 15, F and i see my friends get nude on cam all the time. There are no laws to stop them or punish them for it. My parents are not home, Not to mentiion i only have one parent anyway. she can’t watch me all the time..And i doubt she really cares. My 14 year old friend sara gets a kick out of looking for older men to show to, if anything she is the oldiphile, a young girl who goes and activly looks for older men to seduce. But it is the men who will pay. and the law will do nothing to her.

So we want people who work for the company watching all of our live feeds? Why would someone who’s legitimately using the service need to have all of their live feeds monitored. First, that would be nearly impossible because having the number of people necessary to make that happen would be impossible financially speaking. Second, there is no easiliy discernible method for actually accomplishing that. It’s insane.

It also amazes me that the same people who want companies like this held responsible for how people use the service then turn around and say we shouldn’t hold gun manufacturers or stores responsible for being negligent in monitoring how people purchase their weapons.

If teenage girls don’t know by now that not every person who claims to be a teenage boy may, in fact, not be one, then they probably should stay away from video sites altogether. This site shouldn’t have to police users as they have willingly logged on and created a user account. Whenever anyone posts video of themselves or participates in online chats it should be assumed that not all parties are who they claim to be. User beware…the cyber police have already gone too far.

AOL provides video chat through the AOL Internet Messenger service (AIM). AOL’s parent company, Time Warner has broadcast some pretty sexy stuff over its cable subsidiary. Time Warner doesn’t monitor AIM video chats (we sure hope).
Scandal! Scandal! Scandal! Has the Times counted the number of sex crime arrests among Time Warner users this year?

Come on, Mr. Stone and NY Times — this is one of the single most absurd articles I have ever read in a “reputable” publication. And on top of everything else it is self defeating — it provides free advertising for a service that few people have even heard of — I sure hadn’t.

On a more serious note video chat, that extension of voice chat known as the telephone will be ubiquitous in the future, and it will be used by everyone, children included. Soon enough every cell phone will have that capability. Luddites are never happy about the changes technology bring, but like it or not they are here. The only thing that keeps children safe is good parenting and good schools — not trying to turn back the clock on progress.

Some have suggested Stickam should limit access to users over the age of eighteen. While this might protect a company of whom the responsibility belongs to of monitoring content and activities of its users to an extent, it certainly won’t keep underage users from using the service.

How do we protect underage users of the internet? Educate. Tell them exhibitionism on the internet via web cam or otherwise is not appropriate and if given access to a computer with internet access – parents should actively monitor their children while using it while in an open, non-private area of the house.

But in all reality – this problem will continue to exist and like drug wars, will never end.

How many times do we have to explain to the bozos. Web site providers are not responsible for the content that users post through their service. Period!

Stop looking for someone else to protect little princess and protect your own daughter.

Editor, please take a close look at post # 8 contextually. I believe it to be clearly an adult writing in the voice of a teen girl, attempting to blame (or wish) precocious teen sexual behavior to be at fault for these episodes, rather than pedophiles and criminals. Please remove.

Parents protect your children What happened to familial responsibility? If you can’t protect your child find someone who can. There is ample technology available to lock underage child out of sites on home computers. Attempting to control social behavior, inappropriate, illegal, or otherwise… by blaming the technology, is misguided and an abandonment of personal responsibility. Predators should be tracked down and prosecuted under current laws. The comparison to gun control is quite a stretch.

The drinking age is 21 y/o. Those underage can’t go into bars and liquor stores w/o valid IDs (at least, in theory). Some bars look the other way. Some are very strict. Some parents don’t pay attention to where their children go. Some don’t let them leave the house.

There’s got to be a balance of responsibility here between parents, children, and service providers. As my children grow older, I will carefully monitor their on-line activity. Like a teen who stays out too late or doesn’t fill the tank after using the car, my kids will lose privileges and pay consequences for breaking boundaries on-line. I will also work on building trusting relationships with them so when these times come, we can talk it out and work through those challenges. There is no quick fix. Nothing substitutes for time and compassion with your kids.

For what it’s worth, more power to folks pointing out sites that make it very easy for children (or imposters) to break those boundaries.

Scummy Japanese old guys with kinky tastes are promoting this stuff. Unfortunately, teenagers thinking they are ‘flashing’ their peer group are just providing free porn to pedophile geezers. Suckers, do you really want some 50 year old guy watching you? Uggggh….

Oh yeah, post #1 complains that porn is ‘mainstream’ today. Well, maybe for you, I can’t find any on the nytimes.com website so will have to say the jury is still out on your fantasy.

And these children’s parents are where? And they bear what responsibility?
——————————————————————————–

Don’t know and no, they don’t. It’s ridiculous to think that any parent can be with their children 24/7, especially teenagers, and if you ever have children you’ll find this out. I hope that will stop you from posting self-righteous and ignorant comments on the internet.

#1, Dawny

Are you a parent? If not let’s see how you do when and if; if so, where are you?

At least this kind of online nudity is safer than old-fashioned physical pedophilia. In an age of increasing sexual precocity, I’m not sure that this is a battle that we can win. I would encourage America to revisit its sex laws and to reconsider the virtues of a puritanism blind to its own consequences. Our sex laws are so strict in this nation that we convict so many people for relatively minor crimes that it is difficult for law enforcement to keep track of truly dangerous sexual predators. Perhaps Stickam is not where the focus of our courts – or of the New York Times (he says pointedly) – really ought to be.

None of this has any relationship to Stickam.com’s ownership. Any 20 year old can sexually assault his unconscious girlfriend and post the results to any number of online video sharing sites. With most teenagers having webcams (they cost $15, and are available at any electronics store), just how does it matter whether a Web site is owned by an adult film company or whether it’s owned by a church or social service agency? The sex offender can enter any chat room, pose as someone underage, and induce the boy or girl to perform a sex act. It’s far more common on non-porn sites (where youth don’t expect to be solicited) than on Stickam.com.

If we are to assume Stickam.com is at fault, we should also consider AOL.com at fault — which this occurs with far more frequence.

Sloppy reporting and guilt-by-association.

— r0uter ;

“ How do we protect underage users of the Internet? Educate. Tell them exhibitionism on the Internet, via Webcam or otherwise, is not appropriate.”

You hit the nail right on the head but left out that we have to educate the parents as well.

This has little to do with Stickam being a problem, and more to do with the fact that we’re raising a generation of idiots.

I had the same reaction to post #8 and then a few minutes later read post #14. I, too, believe post #8 should be removed.

June Severino Feldman
nyc