Here you can see a photo of a man whose face was blown off when he bit on a blasting cap. A picture of a Chinese man apparently eating a fried human fetus. The messy expulsions from a Japanese orange juice enema. A bestial image involving a penis and a large fish. Chris Farley's bloated, purple corpse. The charred cadaver of a burn victim. A Filipino man whose body is completely covered with pustulate tumors. Pornographic World War II propaganda.

Rotten.com's sole purpose is to "present the viewer with a truly unpleasant experience," and its proprietor is doing a dandy job of that. If it involves bizarre sex, gruesome death or the sordid side of celebrity, you will find it on this site. "End times are here!" crows Rotten.com, and after a gut-wrenching hour or two perusing the hundreds of images (masturbating monkeys, testicles infected with elephantiasis, bloody gunshot wounds) archived here, it's hard not to agree: We are one screwed-up species.

It's horrible. And yet, the Net is fascinated. About 200,000 visitors come to Rotten.com every day. We are voyeurs at heart, drawn to the macabre and horrific like rubberneckers at a car crash, and even though we can't bear to look we are compelled to click on that headline: "A gallery of severed hands and whatnot." Yuck.

But Rotten.com isn't just a database of the disgusting; it's also a venue for making a point about censorship, at least according to "Soylent," the pseudonymous proprietor of Rotten.com, whose highly graphic content has earned him enemies around the world. The site is currently being investigated by Scotland Yard and the FBI for cannibalism. The German Family Ministry has threatened Soylent with legal action if he doesn't find a way to shield minors from his site. And then there's the endless cease-and-desist letters that flood in from a long list of major corporations that object to the site.

"Rotten dot-com serves as a beacon to demonstrate that censorship of the Internet is impractical, unethical and wrong," Soylent writes in his manifesto, adding that nothing he posts there can't be found elsewhere. "To censor this site, it is necessary to censor medical texts, history texts, evidence rooms, courtrooms, art museums, libraries, and other sources of information vital to functioning of free society."

He's right. Rotten.com isn't the only place to dig up images of disease, sex and violence -- but the site is sure making it easier. And whether the images are authentic or digitally manipulated, they're undeniably provocative. As Internet service providers continue to merge, driving out unsavory sites like this one, as governments look for ways to wield power over overseas-based sites and as the debates over obscenity laws drag on, Rotten.com is a test case for freedom of speech on the Web.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.