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The hosts of a gossip Web site popular with county high school students temporarily shut down the site twice in the past five months at the request of police as they investigated it for possible illegal activity.

The site, www.peoplesdirt.com, was first shut down in December, after police found a user-posted photo on it of a topless underage teen girl, according to Detective John Reinikka, of the Montgomery County's family crimes division. The site was again shut down for two days in March at the behest of Reinikka, while he searched the site for potentially illegal material, he said, adding that he found none.

County school officials also have problems with the site, which has been blocked from all county school computers. Much of the material on the site skews toward the lewd and sexual and a lot it is untrue, officials said.

"It's rude, obnoxious, and in my opinion pathetic," said Walter Johnson High School Principal Christopher Garran. "… [I]t seems like students go to great lengths to maintain their anonymity, and they're complete cowards about it."

But site founder Alfredo Castillo, 23, said his site is protected by the First Amendment.

"It's freedom of speech, and everyone should be able to speak," he said. "There had to be a way where people could express their feelings and emotions anonymously."

The site was launched in 2008 by Castillo who lived in Montgomery County at the time.

It works like an online bulletin board on which anyone can register and post comments to forums and discussion topics, many of which focus on vulgar and distasteful comments directed at students. The site is broken down geographically, with categories for all 50 states. Each state is also broken down by county and by individual schools.

Some topics listed for Montgomery County schools include "Sophomore hotties," "Hottest white bois (freshmen) at da mill," [sic] and "Your 5 Ugly Schoolmates," while more vulgar topics include threads on sexual positions, promiscuous students, and comments about teachers and school staff. Many of the comments are untrue, school administrators said.

The site has found a niche in Montgomery County. Of the more than 51,000 worldwide posts on the site on Monday, 45,300 were posted in Montgomery County high school categories. High schools with the most posts include Clarksburg (6,800 posts), Gaithersburg (4,200 posts) and Watkins Mill (3,600 posts).

The site and its side effects have not gone unnoticed by school principals. A fight broke out at a Clarksburg-Watkins Mill football game Nov. 7, 2008, over comments posted on the site, police said. Students at Rockville High School have skipped school to avoid seeing peers who posted malicious comments about them on the site, said Rockville Principal Debra Munk.

"The site is completely out of control, and unfortunately all we can do is deal with the after-effects," she said. "It breaks my heart what the kids are doing, and it's the dark side of technology. Unfortunately it's probably not going anywhere and will probably get worse."

MCPS recognized the harmful impact the site has on students and blocked its use on all school computers, said spokeswoman Kate Harrison.

"There were posts on it that were inflammatory, rude and vulgar, and cast aspersions on other students," she said. "We were obliged to block it."

After receiving complaints from school officials and parents, Reinikka began investigating the site late last year, he said. On Dec. 24, 2008, he contacted the site's host, Baltimore-based One on One Internet, and requested that One on One temporarily shut it down after he found the photo of a topless underage teenage girl.

The photo was removed and One on One stopped hosting the site, but it resurfaced in January, hosted by a new provider, www.godaddy.com, Reinikka said.

By late March, Reinikka was receiving so many complaints about the site from parents who were upset about rude and sometimes false information posted about their children, that on March 24 he asked officials at www.godaddy.com to temporarily shut down the site so he could investigate it further.

He found nothing illegal on the site, and Peoples Dirt was back up within two days.

"If anyone could find anything on the site right now that's illegal, I'd love it," Reinikka said. "The site doesn't serve any positive purpose whatsoever."

After the site was shut down in December, Castillo added a feature in which users could report illegal or inappropriate behavior to him, which could then be removed, he said.

He would not say where he is currently based, though he admitted the site launched from Montgomery County. Registry records for Peoples Dirt on godaddy.com indicate a contact address for Castillo in Colorado City, Colo.

"I think it's appalling for the school districts to prevent this and block this," he said.

Despite the outcry from parents, school administrators and county police, Castillo is within the rights established by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230, according to Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota.

"Congress was concerned that if the providers of Internet services could be held liable for all the content that basically they'd be run out of business," Kirtley said. "…It's like saying a telephone company's not liable for illegal speech that takes place over their wires."

There are some exceptions, notably for copyright infringement, or if the provider or creator of the site is actively soliciting illegal content, Kirtley said.

County students fall on both sides of the issue. Nate Sripinyo, a junior at Gaithersburg High School, said he had never visited the site until people started asking him about comments he supposedly posted on it.

Upon visiting the site, Sripinyo, 16, found someone posting comments pretending to be him.

"They started rumors about what I did with my girlfriend," the Gaithersburg resident said. "I wasn't even angry I was just stunned that someone would do this."

Instead of trying to find the students posing as him, Sripinyo just ignored them and the posts stopped.

Leah Zackowitz, a 14-year-old freshman at Walter Johnson, posts humorous comments in response to others, she said.

"We don't really post bad things about other people, but other people do write mean things," the Bethesda resident said. "But most people just see it all as a joke."

Kathie Cowan, director of communications for the National Association of School Psychologists, a Bethesda-based group, and a mother of four Montgomery County students and graduates, said sites like Peoples Dirt are no laughing matter.

"In general kids are pretty resilient, and a lot of young people today know how to slough off what goes on online," she said. "But if you have a child who feels vulnerable and ostracized, and then someone posts something online about them? That can put them at risk for a lot of problems."