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Porn Found On L.A. Obscenity Case Judge's Website
Stanislav_J writes "In a bizarre revelation, the judge who is presiding over the Isaacs obscenity trial in Los Angeles was found to have sexually explicit material on a publicly-accessible website. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged that he had posted the materials, but says he believed the site to be for personal storage only, and not accessible to the public (though he does acknowledge sharing some of the material with friends). The files included images of masturbation, public sex, contortionist sex, a transsexual striptease, a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. The latter two are especially ironic in that the trial involves the distribution of allegedly obscene sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality, among other things, by Ira Isaacs, an L.A. filmmaker."
Stanislav_J continues:
"The judge has blocked public access to the site (putting up a graphic that reads, 'Ain't nothin' here — y'all best be movin' on, compadre').
Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."
Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."
Now with animal acts.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would certainly want judge Kozinski presiding over my case. Just as if the RIAA was on my case I would want a judge who was familiar with and used bittorrent.
Tsk, tsk. Bad submitter. How could you have posted this without the URL? I mean... we need to be able to judge the material for ourselves, right?
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
"a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows"
*blink*
*blinkblink*
*blink*
What?
Live by the ... er ... sword, die by the sword.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you are a judge presiding over a case involving the illegal distribution of fetish porn, you should probably take down your own web site illegally distributing fetish porn first.
I bet the reaction of the community would be much more drastic if
"his long record of defending the First Amendment" was not mentioned.
Where is the irony? I do not see it. Porn-loving judge defends "first amendment". I would call it "integrity".
The wolf was appointed to herd the sheep. Call me back when man bites dog.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This is going to provide great fodder for all the comedy shows and FOX News. Especially considering the judge was telling jurors that there were about 4 hours of video and he'd be watching it with them since it's part of his job.
What better way to become a better judge of obscenity than to immerse yourself in relevant material. Makes sense to me in an admittedly warped way.
- Toby
Don't get too titillated now
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I don't know. Pornography is not illegal. I'm not sure there's any reason to treat the material the judge possessed as any different from a .PDF of Lady Chatterley's Lover or Ulysses.
If the models are all of legal age, then the worst thing you can really accuse him of is copyright infringement.
Uhm, I think you are forgetting the part about where he did nothing illegal.
Was the content viewable by minors? Did it have age verification before showing said content?
Well then...
Contributing to the delinquency of minors, and whatever statutes cover providing pornography to minors as well.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
...a judge will actually be an expert in the specialty area the case deals with.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Nothing from the site was illegal however. (aside from possible copyright infringement if he didn't have the rights to distribute the photos, which I don't think was your idea of illegal)
Should a judge also recuse himself from presiding over auto theft cases if he should happen like cars?
Does liking porn predispose him to favoring the defendant in an illegal porn case? More importantly, does it do so to a greater degree than being a defender of the First Amendment?
Good luck finding a judge who can truthfully say they have never had any interest in pornography.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
The ninth circuit is about to lose a defender of free speech because he had the savvy to run a web site but not enough to know how it really works. His collection of "porn" are things that other people sent him, the kind of crap that clogs email systems everywhere. It is impossible to have an email address and not have it sent to you. Someone you know will send it along. His mistake was putting it where it could be seen by the same kinds of fanatics that are pushing the "war on porn" in the first place. Ignore the fact that they routinely get busted like Jimmy Swaggart did. Kozinski thought people would not find it because there was no link to the directory ... ugh! He's exactly the kind of level headed person the courts need to rule fairly on these kinds of cases.
Like the fine article quotes him saying:
Those were fine sentiments when he was appointed by Ronald Reagan, but it's bad news under a regime that wants to be above the law. There you will find your animals, those who want to live by tooth and claw.
Assumptions and Conjecture don't mean he did anything wrong. A common exercise in law classes is to take a situation and state all the laws that could have been broken.
IE: A guy is walking down a street.
Well really the example doesn't lend itself to any laws being broken but here are the responses you'd get anyways.
1 - Maybe he is walking IN the street in which case he is Jaywalking
2 - He also might be obstructing traffic
3 - If he isn't wearing any clothes then he might be arrested for public indecency
I could go on but I won't.
I fail to see where the conflict of interest is here. So he likes porn. Yeah, he's MALE.
What would be the 'right' judge to preside over this case? A known prude who prays to God at least seven times a week and has publically stated that pornography is a sin?
So he has a life outside the court room. Big fucking deal. There's no money involved in it for him, I'm sure, and he probably doesn't know the defendant either. Where is the conflict of interest?!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The mind of a censor is best described in the following joke/anecdote.
Every day, Joe, a construction worker, would walk to his job singing dirty songs. Mrs. Williams finally got fed up and complained to the police about Joe's singing. They told Joe to cut out the singing. The next day, Mrs. Williams complained again. They asked Joe, and he had stopped singing. So they asked her what the problem was. "He's whistling dirty songs now."
Cynical Idealist
The bad news: the site is down. "Safari can't open the page 'http://alex.kozinski.com/' because it could not connect to the server 'alex.kozinski.com'"
The good news: it's in the Wayback machine.
The bad news: the Wayback machine just shows "Ain't nothin' here. Y'all best be movin' on, compadre" on the main page, from 2004 through the last snapshot in 2005. (The news story saying that this is a recent change is apparently wrong).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I bet 100% of the material on the website is the same material that moves around the "have you seen this" emails forwarded on by every unknowing idiot new to the Internet. I recognize the description of the animal video as the one where the drunk guy is trying to get away from the donkey that is trying to mount him. I also know the woman wearing the cow body paint circulated in a similar email. The vague descriptions on the others also sound as if they are the same type of material that gets forwarded around. I wouldn't be surprised if every adult who has ever used the Internet has seen the material in question, that the judge has some online storage with the material in question isn't surprising to me, and certainly not a reason to dismiss him from the case.
At the bare minimum I would suggest the material in question makes him much more applicable to judge a case involving bestiality because he should be able to recognize the difference between protected speech and images (those emails classify as such) and obscene material.
Uhm, I think you are forgetting the part about where he did nothing illegal.
Actually I would say if it fails the Miller Test and he was publicly distributing it he should be charged like anyone else. I have not seen the pictures, but I think it feasible to launch an investigation as to whether or not he broke the law with pictures that possibly do not pass a Miller Test. Remember ignorance is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
...the Aristocrats
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Perhaps the porn was there as a benchmark (no pun intended). Anything freakier than what the judge had is obscene, anything less exotic is simply porn. Even if that wasn't it's intended purpose, it would make an interesting point to argue. After all as a judge, Kozinski is a moral compass, and he is sharing this material with his friends whom we can also assume are pillars of the community, so by them accepting this material,we can conclude that it is not "Offensive to accepted standards of decency or modesty." because the standard-bearers of our society have already show to find it acceptable.
We are all just people.
I don't get how a government can even try to 'standardize' on something like sex. Isn't that what's so great about sex, that it's *not* like a lunch line, where everyone gets the same food? Variety is the spice of life.
P.S. Before you judge my own sexual desires and fetishes, I ask you to let it go and ask yourself if it's even necessary. It's not my point to try and "legalize" beastiality or anything of the sort - I just think it's kind of lame to try and tell someone what is "ok" sexually, and what isn't (as long as nobody/nothing gets hurt or is forced to do something against their will - that's a completely different story). It reminds me of the "old days" when certain sex positions were illegal.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The case itself would provide a precedence for the judge's own defense in his ensuing criminal public obscenity trial.
Where does the article even imply the judge is going to be criminally prosecuted for the content that was on his website? From the description, the content on his site may be seen as embarrassing and in poor taste, but you have to do far more than post nudie pictures your site to be brought up on obscenity charges.
By your logic, a judge who drinks and enjoys alcoholic beverages must recuse himself from a DUI trial because of conflict of interest.
Remember ignorance is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.
IANAL... but that said, AFAIK:
Ignorance *of the law* is not a valid excuse for breaking it. I doubt he was ignorant of the law. Ignorance of the ramifications of your actions is a variety of excuse. It still leaves you open to anything that is negligence related (I won't even try to speculate as to his potential degree of exposure in that realm). A very large number of statutes have the words 'knowingly and willingly' or other words to that effect in them. He's off the hook for any of those.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I find that America will be better off when we soon realize that we as adults are children afraid of our own sexual fantasies and the most important action we must take is to simply act as if the naughty naughty doesnt happen. That way we can legally penalize anyone that dares enjoy sex in ways we ourselves wished we could. This judge clearly has a sexual organ, and i move to have him removed from the bench and the legal justice system as we know it. What will the world think of us, when they find out this judge enjoys sex! WHAT i ask you?
Oh yeah... and dont forget... We do not wipe our own asses... that is dirty.
Probably.
Doesn't sound like it. Not that it matters. Not even commercial* porn providers require age verification.
The only major problem with that is, you'd have to actually show (a) the actual minors whose delinquency was contributed to (the "making available" argument doesn't fly) and (b) almost certainly show there was good reason to believe that the judge new he was distributing said content to minors (otherwise most porn mags would be shut down, since obviously if the porn mags weren't printed, you couldn't find minors with them).
In short, you have to consider the judge's position as if he were any other major publisher. Given the repeated attempts to try to "protect" minors on the internet in the past involving porn and how few laws have stood up to Constitutional scrutiny (the only one that comes to mind as accepted is ones involving libraries accpeting federal funds in exchange for having to include anti-porn filters; and assumedly that has to do with it being voluntary to accept funds), it just doesn't seem likely that yet another contorted attempt would work. But, obviously, it's all a matter of taking the judge to court and spending several years until the Supreme Court decides.
*Commercial in this context doesn't just mean "and we want your credit card number". The second one starts receiving money as a result of ads on one's website, one can be called commercial (just like broadcast TV). Assumedly this was a major reason that the age verification laws were discarded, as it would be very unreasonable to have every last website showing a nipple with an ad on it to request a credit card number. And odds are, most people *wouldn't* give a credit card number to the site. The last part, then, severely cripples freedom of speech by abridging the legitimate right of the vast majority to access a site without undue burden. Now, if there were some way to age verify someone in a more trivial fashion on the internet, the courts would probably have a much different interpretation on things.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Let the FCC control broadcast obscenity. Anything subscribed or unicasted on demand is fine.
Seriously, I get offended when people back off and hide things or pause to hold back words in the middle of a sentence while they do a quick replacement. I never say anything because it's futile and the world is a threatening place in that context anyway.
I once knew a girl that could curse really well. Like, she didn't hold shit back, she didn't throw "fuck" or "ass" or "shit" in every third word; but when she had something to say, she threw every emphasis in right where it belongs, actually using those words as intensifiers, creating interesting and amusing combination and even in some cases short streams of nonsense that still conveyed the proper emotion. It's like someone actually turned streams of obscenities into a fine art; I've never seen anyone else communicate so comfortably or so clearly.
We live in a world where sending an e-mail to your boss stating you "don't know what's wrong yet because there's too much shit to wade through" can instantly get you fired. We just use euphamisms to indicate obscene concepts rather than single "obscene" words. The concept of isolated obscenity is obscene; preventing people from sharing shit you don't like is an aberration and we should be ashamed as a people for supporting this sort of behavior.
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Y'know... every time I come across the acronym IANAL, I have the same thought. It's particularly apt in a thread about pornography.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
"Everyone that has pr0n less nasty than mine is a prude. Everyone that has nastier pr0n than me is a freak." - Based on that driving quote.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
For every case the Supreme Court hears, how many do they allow to stand?-- http://mediamatters.org/items/200511090012
If 16 of 19 cases that were taken were overturned in 04/05, how many cases did the Supreme Court decline to hear, allowing the 9th Circuit decision to stand? I can't find statistics on the numbers of appeals where the Supreme Court essentially "agreed" with the Circuit court, but I did find this neat doohickey that lets me generate reports on case information for each Circuit, and it tells me that for 2005, the number of "on the merits" decisions (as opposed to decisions about procedural error, etc) was:
1st) 986
2nd) 2121
3rd) 2329
4th) 2590
5th) 3608
6th) 2903
7th) 1480
8th) 2078
9th) 6197
10th) 1524
11th) 3579
DCth
If every one of those 6197 decisions was appealed and the Supreme Court only disagreed 16 times, that's a pretty damn good percentage in my opinion.
Finally, California has money out the wazoo. That money is required in order to appeal cases in the first place, and doubly so to appeal to the Supreme Court. Coupled with the fact that the government is more or less required to let the people try to appeal (something about a right to petition for redress of grievances), you can see those dollars at work in this Circuit.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I mostly agree, except for judges as moral compasses. Morals and laws are very different things.
Laws are meant to prevent a person from infringing another person's rights. Morals are meant to tell a person what's right or wrong. The confusion comes from all the situations where the two overlap, such as murder, rape, robbery, and fraud.
I would expect a judge to be lawful. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to agree with my morals.
Maybe not
since all archive.org has for all the archives of alex.kozinski.com is pages saying
Ain't nothin' here.
Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Of course not. Only if the judge's website had illegal porn should he be considered to have a conflict of interest.
Almost anyone can be gotten for a felony on a daily basis for nearly any action or inaction.
We have IIRC over 40,000 Federal felony statutes, and hundreds of thousands of regulations. Combine that with prosecutors and cops who take an "expansive view" of the definitions of the words in the code and someone committed a felony last night in their sleep.
That's a really retarded and overused argument. Are you saying that the decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are examples of that bullshit known called "judicial activism"? According to the 2000 census, the states within its jurisdiction comprise 20% of the country's population. And they also see a fifth of the federal appellate workload. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit probably has the most cases upheld by the Supreme Court.
... naive. What do you know?
Your lawyer buddies probably also know that Judge Kozinski tends to be conservative/libertarian, not "liberal" (as the court is often characterized), and is a highly respect jurist. I'm not defending him or his actions, but I'm saying that dismissing an entire court due to some stupid belief is just
No, why would he have to recuse himself?
One could make the argument that a judge that refused to ever look at porn in their life is equally biased and should recuse themselves.
If anything, I think this makes him more likely to be able to be impartial.
http://notanumber.net/
So, I see that not one amongst our libertarian crowd has yet taken you to task for your kmee-jerk 'think of the blinkin' children' response. Perhaps because they know better than to feed the stinkin' trolls. Regardless, I'm just dumb enough to bite.
Here goes: Are you frackin' stupid? It's illegal to show someone speeding? Or running a red light? It's illegal to show OJ failing to pull over? Or to show Martha Stewart committing perjury?
Those were all 'silly' examples. More seriously, the crime in child pornography resides in the person abusing the child. It does not reside in the viewer. Next you'll tell me that I'm guilty of terrorism for having read about how to manufacture a bomb? Or guilty of illegal immigration for having learned some Spanish? Look, if a crime was committed, go after the perpetrator, not everyone to whom you can draw a line with your purple crayon.
Cryptome posted a Yahoo cache of Kozinski's directory on its site.
Some of the more interesting file names include:
a.day.without.jews.wmv
BBCCopsUndies.wmv
Colo-rectalSurgeon.wav
isitmanisitwoman.pps
jewsdontcamp.mp3
piss_diver.wmv
Sheep_guy.jpg
show.them.to.me.wmv
testicle.interview.wmv
Looks like Jewish groups may not appreciate his sense of humor as well as the anti-porn crowd. At any rate, I don't see much of anything there that looks from the file names alone to be hardcore. It really does look like a directory of miscellaneous stuff that came in "Look at this!" and "Check THIS out!" e-mails from friends that he just stored on the site for easy access.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I think he could have gotten away with it, when I first read it, my immediate assumption was that maybe he was doing some "investigating", as in seeing what exactly the material was, which I would see necissary, aslong as the material was the same material in question.
I would be very concerned if a judge decided to go conduct his own investigation of the facts in a case before him.
What?
A judge who drinks and drives, with pending charges, would not have to excuse himself from a DUI trial. He would have to excuse himself from a trial aimed at determining if DUIs were illegal. Similarly, if he was deciding where between 0.08 and 0.09 the limit should be - and he'd been caught with a limit of 0.086 - then he would have a conflict of interest.
In this case, the judge is being asked, in the courtcase, to define a similar limit about obscenity. Arguably, at least some of the images & video he's being asked to judge is tamer than material he has been discovered to posses. If he rules that they are obscene, he's making himself liable - therefore, he has an interest in ruling that they are not obscene, hence the conflict of interest.
Lawmakers can and do get away with these conflicts of interest all the time; judges are not meant to.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Is it a market if the distribution is free, as in this case? And as for the rest, it's thought crime, entirely conjectural "may discover", etc., are what you imagine might be consequences. Exactly the same argument would lead to banning almost all news reporting.
A while ago I picked up American Psycho and read a few chapters. It turned my stomach (it's full of extreme sexual violence, in case you haven't heard of it). But while I wouldn't want my 10-year-old daughter to read it, I wouldn't want it prevented from being distributed. And despite reading about it, personally, I haven't felt the urge to cut off womens' heads and use them as masturbation toys. I really doubt you can suddenly have perverse urges switched on by being exposed to depictions of it. We'd all be in very deep shit if that were the case. By all means, punish the people who actually DO these things. The rest is just expressing your disapproval without helping anyone, the children least of all.
Looking back at the archive, it's said that for several years: http://web.archive.org/web/20050122134257/http://alex.kozinski.com/
In an updated version of the story, the L.A. Times now reporting that the trial has been suspended:
Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."
One new wrinkle is that the good judge is at least partially trying to shift blame to his own son!
After publication of an latimes.com article about his website Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale. ["Yale??"]
"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."
Or maybe it was one of his brothers, Harvard and Princeton....
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
You laugh, but this actually happened. Frank Zappa's completely instrumental album Jazz From Hell was marked with one of the first "Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics" warnings. I repeat: the album has no lyrics. But it had an explicit lyrics warning from the RIAA. The likely reason? His vocal opposition to the Tipper Gore-led Parent's Music Resource Center, whose bludgeoning pressured the RIAA to start putting those warnings on albums in the first place. See http://ericnuzum.com/banned/incidents/80s.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_From_Hell
I know I saw the pic years ago, but I had a bitch of a time Googling it.
This is the picture you want. It is almost certainly the pic on the judge's computer. Two women on all fours, body-painted like cows. They are completely nude and the camera angle is from behind, so it's extremely NSFW.
And while I'm at it, pictures one and two of individual nude women pained like cows. I suspect the bodyart in all three pics is from a single artist (notice the distinctive black collar on the wrists/ankles/neck, the bare-nipple holes, and the similar spot patterning).
And what the hell while I'm at it... during the cow search I came across a collection of 12 photos of women from PETA protesting the treatment of circus animals - the women are all caged, nearly nude, and painted like tigers. I think I'm going to have to start attending PETA rallies - apparently almost all PETA women are either really hot or really cute.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.