Shut us down if you can, 'sex portal' boybastos.com taunts Legarda

Shut us down if you can. This was the dare issued Wednesday night by a Philippine-based Internet pornography site that Sen. Loren Legarda urged authorities earlier in the day to shut down. “Ipasara ninyo kami sa gusto nyo. Sa bawat sulok ng Pilipinas may nakakakilala sa boy bastos [indecent] (Close us down if you want. But in every corner of the Philippines, there is someone who knows boy bastos)," read the message posted by “boy" on the website Boybastos.com . “Sa bawat bahay sa Pilipinas, may boy bastos. Nakakalungkot kung ito'y mapatupad, at hindi po namin kakalimutan kung sino ang may kagagawan(In every Filipino home, there is a boy bastos. It will be sad if Legarda pushes through with her plan to shut us down, but we won’t forget who is responsible for this)," the Web site added. “Hindi pa po ito katapusan ng boy bastos. Hanggang walang batas na nagsasabi kung ano ang pwede at hindi pwede gawin, buhay na buhay po ang ating munting site (This isn’t the end for us. So long as there is no law that says what can and cannot be done, our little site will still be alive)," he added. He also insisted there was nothing wrong in maintaining an online community of like-minded people, adding the Boybastos website is a symbol of Filipino manhood. “Ang boy bastos ay simbulo ng lalakeng Pilipino. Tayong lahat ay mga boy bastos. Ang mga boy bastos ay hindi mamamatay tao, hindi rin nagbebenta ng bawal na gamot, pawang malilibog na tao lamang ... sino ba ang hindi (Boy bastos is a symbol of the Filipino male. We are all boy bastos. But we are not killers or drug pushers. We are just sex addicts. Who isn’t)?" he said. But while “boy" said he would “follow the law" if Legarda’s bill against Internet pornography became law, he insisted his site was not engaged in human trafficking. The site neither promotes escort services nor prostitution, he added. He also said the videos on the site are “contributions" of members. “Hindi po kami nag-hu-human trafficking dito. Hindi ito escort service, hindi ito bentahan ng mga [babaeng] illegal age, ni-wala ngang video dito dahil luma na ang teknolohiya ng boy bastos. Lahat ng laman ng site ay galing sa tao (na) members (We are not into human trafficking. We are not an escort service. We are not selling minors. We don’t even have videos here because this is an old site. All the contents here are contributions of members)," he said. The site, which claimed to be formed in 2004, also urged similar pornographic sites to “stick together." “More power sa mga site na iyan at sana sama-sama tayong makaraos sa isyu na ito (We wish those other sites more power. Let’s hope we can get through this issue)," it said. Free access to lewd material Legarda pushed Wednesday for authorities to shut down an Internet pornographic portal featuring Filipino women, which she scored for giving free access to lewd material. Legarda said in a statement that the website BoyBastos (www.boybastos.com) is "by far the filthiest Internet site we've come across" as it offers obscene videos and photos. "Our biggest worry here is free access. Other adult sites at least require prior user registration and credit cards, which somehow helps screen or discourage minors," she said. As of Wednesday, traffic data website Alexa.com ranks boybastos.com as the 126th most popular website in the Philippines and 9,143rd worldwide. Legarda urged the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (Iacat) and the National Bureau of Investigation to shut down the site, which she called "the premier bastos portal of the Philippines." Legarda asked the NBI to look into the possibility of cyber-sex operators behind the website to "lure potential customers that can be directed to linked paid services." She said administrators of the website "have evidently also been investing large sums, entering paid porn sites abroad, downloading for a fee some of the materials, and then posting them on boybastos.com for all to see." Worse, she said the porn site encourages visitors to freely contribute their own videos, including so-called sex scandal videos. Legarda authored Senate Bill 1375, which seeks to punish peddlers of online porn and indecent materials with up to six years in prison and a fine of P500,000. - GMANews.TV