Major League Baseball has asked a judge for a subpoena to help it identify people using Internet services provided by Charter Communications Inc to post pornography and other indecent material on the MLB.com website.

According to papers filed Thursday in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, one or more people have since July 2009 posted dozens of threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, demeaning, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit, indecent and inappropriate messages and images on MLB.com message boards.

Some postings threatened a person named McCabe with unwanted sexual acts, while others included images of what the users described as their genitalia, the court papers show.

Saying the objectionable postings violate all reasonable standards of decency, Major League Baseball said it has several times tried and failed to ban them, and traced the Internet protocol addresses used to post them to Charter.

It is seeking a court order requiring Charter to disclose the identities of people associated with these addresses, so it can pursue appropriate action.

A Charter spokeswoman had no immediate comment, saying the St. Louis-based company had not been served with the court papers. A lawyer for Major League Baseball did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The case is In re: Application of MLB Advanced Media LP to Compel Disclosure of Charter Communications Inc, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 107256/2010.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Major league baseball MLB