Remember that
new law in Indiana which required adult stores to register with the government and pay a fee to stay in business? Unsurprisingly—or surprisingly, depending how optimistic you are about such things—a federal judge has
ruled against it, citing that it was broad enough to effect "unquestionably lawful, nonobscene, nonpornographic materials being sold to adults." Which is good news for anyone trying to buy a copy of, say, Juggs anywhere in Indiana—you
are just reading it for the articles, right? (suntimes.com)
Obscenity A La Mode?
Max Hardcore might have been getting
all the attention lately, but
another obscenity trial in Florida is currently underway where the defense is
using Google search stats to prove that "community standards" are a lot broader than some people might think: apparently, searching for the term "orgy" is just as all-American as searching for "apple pie". (No word on people who search for
"apple pie orgy", though—maybe even community standards have their limits.) (freespeechcoalition.com + nytimes.com)
So yeah, that judge's
not-so-secret porn stash the media has been all a-flutter about the past few days?
Totally lame—even those painted cow babes were not nearly as interesting as we'd hoped they would be. Then again, we'd much rather look at tboring stuff like this that the material he was supposed to be sitting on that upcoming trial about. We're not
that blasé about smut, you know. (10zenmonkeys.com)
The Attorney General of New York admirably wants to put a stop to child porn online. His less-than-admirable solution? Order ISPs to effectively
turn off all 100,000+ Usenet discussion groups, even though only a small handful of them ever engage in any illegal activity. Why not nuke the entire internet while you're at it? It's the only way to really be sure. (cnet.com, via
Valleywag)
but what about the children?
As you may be aware, Wikipedia is a free online
encyclopedia that is written and edited by
nerds who do all the work for
free in an attempt to gather all human knowledge into one comprehensive database. But according to the conservative bulldog World Net Daily, it is also a repository for salacious, hardcore pornographic material. Like strippers! Gay homosexual sex! And titty fucking! In fact, they might as well start selling monthly subscriptions and buying ads in AVN Online! Check out their list of moral-destroying smut that's totally accessible to everyone ...
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Wondering how that
latest obscenity indictment is going to affect your porn viewing habits? Well, no one really knows at this point since apparently it's just the tip of a very messy iceberg: one First Amendment lawyer consulted by AVN on the matter says there could be
"a titanic battle over two major constitutional issues" in the making. There's also a lot of information about various statutes that have been passed and rewritten over the years, but we're already getting a little nervous just considering all the possible repercussions: a world without dirtpipe milkshakes is just too awful to think about. (avn.com)
obscenity
Stores like Adult DVD Empire may have already pulled our gal Belladonna's newly federally indicted "Fetish Fanatic 5" from their online inventory, but as of this afternoon you can still see the trailer for it on Evil Angel's site. Frankly, after watching it two or three or a dozen times we can't see what all the brouhaha is about; after all, things like enemas, squirting, and inserting dildos with one's (or someone else's) feet are hardly rare in porn these days—and as Evil Angel's Karen Stagliano told AVN today, "Maybe you don't always do (these things) in your normal bedroom, but that's kind of the point of porn." Even if the case doesn't lead to a prosecution, the indictment is bound to have a chilling effect on the adult industry, not to mention on our collective rights to free expression in general. After all, if you can't watch Belladonna and her pals stick various brightly colored liquids and foreign objects up each other's asses, the terrorists will so totally have won.
· "Fetish Fanatic 5" (2006) (DVD info + trailers @ evilangel.com)
· Belladonna Entertainment LLC (enterbelladonna.com)
· "FEDERAL GRAND JURY CHARGES TWO COMPANIES AND OWNER JOHN STAGLIANO WITH OBSCENITY VIOLATIONS" (.pdf press release @ usdoj.gov)
· "John Stagliano, Evil Angel Indicted On Federal Obscenity Charges" (AVN) + "John Stagliano, Evil Angel Charged With 7 Obscenity Violations" (Xbiz)
After failing to get JM Productions on obscenity charges last year, the Justice Department is now
targeting Evil Angel and its owner John Stagliano; the feds handed down a
grand jury indictment against the company earlier this week. You wouldn't
think a film with a nice wholesome title like "Milk Nymphos" would get anyone in trouble, would you? (avn.com + xbiz.com)
While we're happy to hear that the federal government has
dropped its obscenity charges against hardcore purveyor
JM Productions (for now, anyway), we're finding it hard to believe that they did so due to a lack of evidence. Our copy of "American Bukakke 13" didn't just materialize our of nowhere, you know. (Or maybe we dreamt it?) (AVN)
democracy in action
If you think we have a pretty good job—surfing the internet for porn 19 hours a day—you'd be right. But we recently learned about two retired police officers who are also paid to look at smut online, only instead of blogging about it, they have to decide if the website owners should be prosecuted by the federal government for obscenity. Best of all ... you're paying for it! How does that work, you ask?
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breaking
Somehow, the 10-count indictment against
Max Hardcore (nee Paul Little) issued from the U.S. District Court, Tampa Division, this week seems conventional. The indictment is for obscenity, not 2257 recordkeeping infringements or, like what befell Al Capone, tax evasion. Hardcore has beaten obscenity charges before during G.W. Bush's first administration, but that was in porn-friendly Los Angeles. This time the 10-count cocktail includes several instances of two-minute clips from Hardcore's websites as well as the European versions of "Fists of Fury" and "Golden Guzzlers".
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Fleshbot
