The Pennsylvania Porn Eight

LOS ANGELES—Yesterday, Pennsylvania state officials accused eight former employees of the state attorney general's office of having sent or received internal emails containing porn "Among the ex-employees identified by Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office are two top state officials: Police Commissioner Frank Noonan and Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo," reported the AP, adding, "Hundreds of pornographic inter-office emails, which were and still are against office policy, were discovered during Kane's review of the sex abuse prosecution of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, her office said. A spokeswoman could not immediately say Thursday whether the office found more current or former employees who sent or received such emails." Noonan and Abruzzo are still in their current positions, and when asked whether Governor Tom Corbett would be asking for their esignations, a spokesperson for the governor replied vaguely, "The news accounts raise questions that need to be reviewed further." The spokesperson added that the governor's "expectation of those that work for him is that they conduct themselves in the highest professional manner." Kane, who ordered the release of the names, was a tad defensive about having made that decision. Her office actually released a statement explaining, according to the article, that "she believes it is in the public's best interest to understand how its public servants conduct business." The statement continued, "She also believes transparency on this issue is a very good way to help ensure that the exchanging of sexually explicit material through internal emails on state-owned equipment during official work hours doesn't happen elsewhere." Time will tell if the public shaming tactic works, but another article on the subject suggests that maybe the adult industry could bring such activity to heel by suing the former employees for copyright violations. "If any of these individuals forwarded the material to others, that counts as making a copy and they as individuals can be held accountable for those copyright violations," industry attorney Alan Gelbard told pennlive.com writer, Richard Abowitz. Abowitz also spoke with San Francisco-based industry attorney D. Gill Sperlein, who said that the individuals may indeed be responsible for sharing copyrighted clips, but that holding their employer to account would be a stretch. "For contributory infringement," he said, "the employer would have had knowledge that this was happening and chosen not to stop it." But the idea to sue for copyright in this case is far-fetched anyway. As Abowitx notes at the end of his piece, "Without being able to review and identify the content, no one can say at this time whether anyone might own the rights to the pornographic content found in e-mail of state employees."