Radio station PSA: How not to get busted for child porn

An Arizona radio station is under investigation by the local sheriff and subject to a Change.org petition calling for its broadcast license to be revoked over a long-running public-service announcement advising those possessing child pornography on how to avoid arrest and prosecution.

KAVV 97.7 FM, "The Cave," broadcasts a classic-country format out of the town of Benson and bills itself as "southeast Arizona's most powerful radio station." The station also prides itself on broadcasting PSAs, or public-service announcements.

One of the announcements that ran regularly late at night for the past two years criticized Arizona's tough laws against possession of child pornography and proceeded to tell how to avoid being arrested. An activist captured the audio and posted it to YouTube, bringing it to wider attention.

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"In many cases the penalties for possession of pictures is worse than the penalty for murder. You should understand your Internet service provider could report you to the police if they catch you looking at a website featuring naked juveniles. The police then enter your house and seize your computer," the PSA said.

"If you have such material, you can save yourself and your family a ton of grief and save the taxpayers of Arizona a lot of money by never storing such pictures on the hard drive of your computer. Always use an external drive and hide it where no one will ever find it. Likewise, never keep paper pictures, tapes or films of naked juveniles where anyone else can find them. A public service message from the CAVE 97.7 FM."

Listen to the KAVV PSA:

"It (the PSA) took me by surprise right off the bat," Benson resident Will Edington told KVOA News. "We actually had to stop and listen to the whole thing. Trying to get a grasp on what he's really saying."

The PSA has since been taken off the air, following public comments that ran "99.9 percent" negative and some advertisers receiving threats, the station owner said.

"It's very disturbing to have that type of message go out from a media organization that in essence is providing instruction on how to break a law, specifically something as heinous as any type of child porn," Carol Capas, a Cochise County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman, told the Arizona Republic. "You shouldn't have someone advising you, 'If you're gonna do this, this is how to get away with it.'"

The sheriff's office has launched an investigation to determine if Arizona law has been violated, saying station owner Paul Lotsof "advised that possession of child pornography should not be illegal."

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"Freedom of speech does not include telling people to commit crimes and continuing to pass on this information could lead to judicial action being taken," a statement said.

"We are now seeking legal advice on actions that can be taken for the content that has already been released and to ensure this kind of information is not released again."

Lotsof accused the sheriff's office of promoting prior restraint.

"To do that would infringe on the precious freedom of speech, which includes the right to advocate against the enforcement of laws that are excessively severe," Lotsof said.

Outraged Benson residents have also launched a Change.org petition calling for the Federal Communications Commission to revoke KAVV's broadcast license.

The petition reads:

A member of our community has brought to light a serious issue with our local radio station, CAVE FM 97.7. Once the community heard of this we were outraged. Regardless of how you have felt about this radio station in the past, this has crossed a huge line!

CAVE broadcasted a sickening message (apparently many times over more than one year) about a huge issue that plagues this country, child pornography, There is no excuse for this and they need to be shut down.

Below you will see a link to the recorded broadcast as well as a link to the online complaint form for the FCC. We as a community may not be able to fix the world, but we can keep this garbage out of our community.

We are mothers, fathers, children. We are families that do not have to put up with this garbage. Let's stand together and make sure this never happens again!

Recorded broadcast.

FCC complaint form.

Lotsof is not backing down, insisting there is a difference between viewing pedophile images and committing pedophile acts.

"The difference is one case, you're molesting children and abusing them, causing children to do things that are not natural for children to do, and the other case, they're just possessing pictures," he told News 4 Tucson.

Lotsof said his PSA's were meant "to emphasize that the penalty provisions of the law – calling for 10 years' imprisonment per image – are so extreme that the greater harm is in the enforcement of the law."

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Arizona's "Sexual Exploitation of a Minor" law is among the strictest in the nation. It classifies child pornography as a class 2 felony with 10 to 24 years in prison per violation. Penalties are enhanced if the child is under 15 years old.

A former Phoenix-area high-school teacher was convicted in 2003 of possessing 20 child-pornography images and was given a 200-year sentence.

"Pictures of whatever you want to call them. They're minors, they're pictures of minors and you go to prison for the rest of your life for possessing them," Lotsof told KVOA News. "There's no picture in the world that's that dangerous."

"The real victims are the people serving these incredibly long sentences," he told the Republic, calling the current law "draconian."

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That's not how the Cochise County sheriff sees it.

"It's so sickening to hear people say, 'A picture isn't a crime,'" Capas said. "It is a crime. Those children are victims of a crime."

There's "no such thing as 'just viewing child porn,'" Capas said.

The investigation is unlikely to lead to legal action, noted Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, who said the PSA was protected by the First Amendment's safeguard of free speech.

"This individual just happens to have a platform that maybe others don't and is advocating beliefs that are personally repugnant to me," McIntyre said.

Prior to KAVV's PSA coming to the attention of law enforcement last week, the FCC had been contacted about 100 times, the Republic reported. There is no FCC regulation explicitly stating what can or cannot be aired as a public-service announcement.

"It's up to the station to determine their (community's) public interest," FCC spokeswoman Janice Wise said.