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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Parents looking online for information on home schooling in Utah got a dose of adult education instead.
The ownership of the Utah Home Education Association's Web site had expired and a new owner bought it and put up radically different content. People logging on to the old address were led to a page with graphic, sexual images.
"I'm not a fan or an advocate of much government or global regulation of anything," said Jon Yarrington, president of the volunteer group that provides resources to more than 7,000 home-school families in the state. "But when people refuse to be moral and decent and do what society expects them to do, then somebody has to step in and smack them."
That may not be an option.
"If (UHEA) let it expire, it's not a crime," said Ken Wallentine, an investigator for the Utah attorney general's office. "There's nothing for us to do. Unfortunately, there is no requirement that porn sites label their sites."
UHEA can petition the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to have the domain name returned. Another option would be filing a complaint through federal court.
Yarrington is upset that the organization has to go through this at all.
"Freedom is a double-edged sword," Yarrington said. "It can be used for much good and it can be used for much evil."
Yarrington said the association would try to inform as many people as it can of the current, accurate Web address and explain that the old address would have something they probably weren't intending to see.
The correct Utah Home Education Association Web site is: www.uhea.org or www.uhea.com
Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune,
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
