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US Couple Gets Prison Time For Internet Obscenity
angry tapir writes "The husband and wife owners of a California company that distributed pornographic materials over the Internet have been each sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet."
In August 2003, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh returned a 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates for violating federal obscenity statutes. In January 2005, a district court judge dismissed the indictment, saying that the federal obscenity statutes were unconstitutional. The government appealed, and Buchanan argued the case in October 2005 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
In December 2005, the appeals court reversed the decision of the district court and held that the federal statutes regulating the distribution of obscenity do not violate any constitutional right to privacy. The case was then remanded back to the district court.
Wow.. just Wow. What the fuck has happened to the US? What happened to free speech? Wasn't all this shit worked out in the 70s? Why the hell was the unconstitutional finding to do with privacy and not freedom of speech?
Please tell me the next stop is to the supreme court where this will be sorted out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Since the summary didnt tell it: "Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable," U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "These prison sentences affirm the need to continue to protect the public from obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy material, the production of which degrades all of us."
It's nice that theres no problems killing people in movies, but once theres some titties you go to jail in usa :)
People are still getting porn delivered in the mail?
I was thinking to myself... why is this any different to any porn site out there? Is porn now prohibited in the US?
I thought there was child porn or something like that, but, after reading TFA, I can't see a problem at all.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner", as for the "most imaginable" part, I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose.. but last I looked that was still protected speech.. thus my shock at the finding.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's nice that theres no problems killing people in movies, but once theres some titties you go to jail in usa :)
'We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene! '
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
So the 1st amendment is dead.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Unfortunately, they came to America.
----- Leghorn "Not responsible for program content"
Is it illegal to distribute pornography in California? I'm not familiar with California state law and I'm genuinly curious. I'm assuming it's not illegal nationwide, considering all the porn I've watc.. ehh.. heard of that's produced in the USA.
If it's not illegla, why were they sentenced? I read the article and it didn't help make me understand.
Slagborr
I saw the documentary "Deep Throat" some time ago, and it said that there were still laws against porn in the US - I couldn't believe it, but it seems to be true. But I am not a lawyer and not from the USA - Can someone with an understanding of the US laws and legal system explain what exactly the crime was? Is producing and distributing porn really a crime for which you can get jail time in the USA?
I'm extremely confused... I don't see anything wrong here.
Is porn illegal in the US?
Did someone forget to tell the multi-billion dollar industry?
So they made kinky porn? Well damn, lock them up and throw away the key guys!
lol America
Apparently several "simulated rape" scenes in their film "Forced Entry" is what led them to be charged with committing a crime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Zicari#Obscenity_prosecution
Zicari asked for help from the rest of the Adult Entertainment industry and they declined- even Larry Flynt declined to help fight the charges.
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-01-2009/0005053905&EDATE=
"different than any porn site out there?" Wikipedia tells me that one of the porno videos involved in this case was about a teenage girl being raped by an older man. Its not really an underage girl and not really rape, of course, but this is hardly just normal porn. While I don't necessarily agree with the ruling in this case, there's no doubt that this was unusually extreme content.
So the 1st amendment is dead.
Gunned down in the street by the 2nd amendment.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What the fuck has happened to the US?
Only vanilla sex as needed for procreation is legal in the US. We only begrudgingly accept homosexuality. The article doesn't say but my guess is that they were distributing videos containing the more extreme types of sexual activity which is still considered "depraved" enough to throw people in jail. It used to be that a lot of these types of acts were difficult to come by in the VHS and DVD era but with the explosion in online video the banned activities are becoming available since the USPS is cut out of the picture. Their mistake was to not keep a low profile to keep the government prudes off their case.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Even more unfortunately, some of them came back.
Nobody else has this sig.
The crackdown on BD/SM websites started in late 2005. It's the same reason that Insex stopped producing clips. See also the following articles:
BD/SM Internet Sites Under Attack
Tortured Logic
Not so much dead as just highly crippled by the past 8 years of having religious zealots in control.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
It seems odd to me that pictures of naked people is censored, but, if I wanted, I could post videos of "zombies" killing mowing each other down with chainsaws with no public outcry whatsoever.
Carlin had it right: I'd rather my kids saw images of two people making love than of two people killing each other.
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?
Meta will eat itself
Thanks for the extra info, though I still have to say it's a stupid law. I can't help but think that if the teenage girl had been graphically murdered they'd be nominated for Oscars rather than put in prison :\
Distributing porn over the internet ... what where they thinking.
Yeah, TFA didn't tell this. Let's get it straight:
Porn = ok
Violence and killing and murdering and torturing and... = ok
Porn + Violence = omg omg not ok.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. "These prison sentences affirm the need to continue to protect the public from obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy material, the production of which degrades all of us."
In what way is this protecting people? Presumably they were only supplying this stuff to people who paid for it, not projecting it onto the side of schools or posting it to small children.
I don't understand this attitude of protecting people from things they want to do, and I don't see why the state should intervene (assuming all the parties involved consented).
It seems to be the same logic as used by opponents of gay marriage, who claim that it will somehow destroy the institution of marriage. How will someone else getting married to someone of the same sex, in any way change yours or anyone else's marriage? In the same way, how does the production of this material (again, assuming consent on all sides) "degrade us all"? It doesn't degrade me, I had nothing to do with it, don't watch it, and am unaffected by it. This whole idea of "someone's doing something I don't like, therefore I can object and stop it" is just narrow minded control-freakery.
Paul Leader
The key factor appears to be the content of the pornography. The feds may have given up on prosecuting the tamest stuff, but they have not given up on prosecuting the most hardcore material. The Extreme Associates Wikipedia article gives you an idea of what they're being prosecuted for:
.
Similarly, Max Hardcore was put in the slammer early this year for similar material:
The short and long of the matter is that vague obscenity laws are still on the books, and technically all porn is still illegal because someone somewhere is going to find it obscene. The Feds know they can't win however, so they are choosing to prosecute whomever makes the stuff that offends them the most. Nothing has really been worked out since the 70s, the Feds just can't keep prosecuting everyone like they used to.
The American Taliban strikes again.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
It's depressing on both sides of the Atlantic ... in the US, you go to prison for publishing it, in the UK, you now go to prison for privately possessing it.
(I wonder if this case follows on from the precedent set by the Max Hardcore cases? I remember there being worry that this would open the floodgates, now that people can be prosecuted for material made with consenting adult actors.)
"Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable,"
I don't know about that. I've got a pretty good imagination.
I see nothing wrong with this.
As long as the actors are legal and the sex (and other acts) are consensual.
Anyone know where I can get the one with Jesus fucking an Angel? That's hilarious.
Who decides what's "normal"? And why should only being an interest of a minority of people make it acceptable to criminalise them? This is the same argument people make of gay material.
If anything, targetting a minority should be seen as worse, not better. I appreciate you don't approve of the ruling, but the sentiment is still worrying - imagine gay material being banned, and someone saying "But it's not like we're talking about anything normal here"?
Hopefully this case will go to the supreme court and this shit will get worked out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If the teenage girl had been graphically murdered they'd be nominated for Oscars rather than put in prison.
And if she had been portrayed as being chained in a dungeon and having various body parts sliced off in slow motion, it'd be pretty much every third dvd now playing at Blockbuster.
So the lesson: Sex porn is illegal but torture porn is perfectly OK. Nice job assholes.
The feds' investigation into net porn began the year after a PBS Frontline documentary on the subject. Now if only we could wrest control of PBS from religious zealots...
I have to agree, someone sitting over top of a female squatting and taking a dump, seems to violate some kind of law, but when a guy does it to another guy, no problem. Pooper films as I call them have been around for so many years, they are just NOW figuring out they exist?
Snuff films, rape, etc...you have all types, but they have been around for sooo many years, are they saying we can't publish them on youtube or are they saying the contents of the film are illegal, this is what I would like
better explained, as well, being so cryptic about what is going on in the movie, does not help the average joe follow any sort of precedent, if you need to tell us taking a dump on someone and filming it is criminal, then say it, stop indirectly saying some sort stuff happened, which should not have happened, but we think it was bad enough to prosecute.....sounds like that bit from Team America for christ's sake....or are we not allowed to swear anymore as well?
When I read the summary I thought that the American couple was arrested while on vacation or on a business trip in a country like Iran or North Korea. Americans (et al) are trying to do their best to be like the countries that they demonize the most.
This case, no matter how vile the porn clips were, was not at all important. In today's cash strapped times where states cannot even afford to pay their police, we've got time for "protecting" people from the stuff they ordered in the mail to watch on their VCR. Amazing. I think these people are sick if they made a movie simulating rape. The people who watch it that is. But the people involved in this "investigation", which no doubt involved purchasing and watching the material over and over again, are part of a larger disease. Can we afford the morality police? Have we put away all the real rapists, pedophiles, killers, and Wall Street cheaters? We've found every missing child? We've fed the hungry? We fixed the federal budget and debt? Now you and I have to pay these idiot investigators, and pay for the 1 year and 1 day of the prison term. We're being punished for this "crime". So if you are proud of this victory make sure you remember it when you pay your taxes and notice what's missing from your paycheck. These people who stole from the federal budget to enjoy their porn and imprison the distributors should be put to work doing something useful. They should pay us back by looking for missing children for the next 1 year and 1 day.
There are three branches of government, which are controlled by a single more important branch of government, The People. We the people in the constitution are the only thing that gives permission to the branches of the federal government to have any power at all. A single overriding branch of government. So, why did you allow your federal government to be so stupid. After all it's only a reflection of your wishes. You need to fix this. We need to fix this. Well, then, back to work.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
What are the implications for rule 34?
It's a touchy subject. I can see how both sides could be argued. I was merely pointing out that it was not the nudity or sex acts themselves that was being prosecuted, but the violence and depravity that crossed the line (according to the courts). Even with all that, it was ruled different ways by 2 different courts.
I think you're missing the very important point. Would you wish your wife or servants to see it?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I saw the documentary "Deep Throat" some time ago.
"Deep Throat" is regarded as a documentary, now ? Shit, Linda Lovelace is now my favourite research scientist !
Squirrel!
Im not very familiar with the laws, but as a US resident I can say:
Yes, laws against porn exist. Basically, its only 'obscene' porn that the laws target. Exactly what that means is very subjective, but since almost everyone looks at porn, 'obscene' porn is usually regarded as porn that most people dont look at. A few decades ago, bondage was obscene and was targeted by the government (not to good effect, however, as afterwords it became more mainstream). A few years after Bush became president a crackdown happened on porn sites, basically things that where overly rough where targeted (and produced by small-ish time porn makers, rather then large companies). This site was just one that was targeted.
So, to wrap up the US laws on porn production/distribution: anything thats popular enough to get noticed, yet niche enough not to cause a backlash if they are targeted, is fair game. If your looking to make porn and want to avoid being targeted: dont do anything that pushes the limits, especially (or perhaps, specifically) in areas that could be regarded as degration/humiliation by whoever happens to be in power.
Don't blame them. A large number of fat, stupid people are now in control of elections (and not just in the US), so we're going to only have more and more support for more and more ridiculous restrictions/obligations on how the rest of us live our lives.
In other words:
Portraying people fucking people = ok
Portraying people fucking people over = ok
Portraying people fucking people that they are fucking over = omg omg not ok.
The creators of "True Blood" should be jailed at once!
The most likely consequence of this sentence is that clips of Jesus having sex with an angel will soar in popularity and previously uncool notions of what to put where, and with whom, dressed how, will become cool and fashionable.
Having one's product banned for being immoral is usually very good for business.
They'll probably earn more by being in jail for a year and a day than if they were found innocent.
My blog
I saw some movies worse than that! This dude keeps kidnapping people and hooking them up to machines that they can't escape from. The only way to survive is to admit something about yourself and sacrifice part of yourself or do some kind of other horrible act like cut the key out of somebody elses stomach. The worst one for me was a reverse bear trap on somebodies head which ripped their head in half when the timer went off. Needless to say I don't think anybody actually ever survived any of it.
Oh yeah these movies were called Saw. And I saw it in the cinema. The realism and gore was extreme. If these people were put away for making similar movies and selling them on the net then how can Amazon and Play.com sell the Saw movies? Surely every horror movie should be illegal and the directors and distributors arrested?
Fortunately, the 3rd amendment came to the rescue when they tried to hide in people's homes.
But the real thing doesn't. Glad we have our priorities straight.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the need to continue to protect the public from obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy material,
Uh, maybe I missed something here. Did they display their simulated rape in a public square? Is it "the public" or isn't it rather voluntary customers of such material?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Remember, guns don't kill people. Amendments kill people.
I was thinking to myself... why is this any different to any porn site out there? Is porn now prohibited in the US?
According to the US Supreme court, yes, *porn* is prohibited and has been for a while now. *Adult material* isn't. ( and they get to define which is which )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Fat lot of good it did. Same with George Carlin. For all of the insight they had, all they did was make people laugh at their own idiocy.
I wonder why they didn't say, half way through the show "Why are you laughing? What's funny about what I'm saying? Here's a petition stating that we want this shit sorted out. Sign it. It's going in this envelope on stage, and that envelope is going to Congress. I'm tired of this shit, and the fact that you're paying to hear me talk about it means you are too! Do something about it! Put your name down."
Instead, he said a few rude words in a sentence and the sheeple giggled.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I remember that Frontline documentary episode. I believe these where the people that made videos of women being kidnapped, beaten, and gang raped. They did not show anything in the documentary, but they did show the Frontline camera crew that was filming the making of video had to stop in the middle because they could not watch anymore. Now, it might have been shocking stuff at the edge of what is possible to do with actors, but it was still within the bounds of the law as far as consenting parties willing to be filmed.
At least it is the kind of thing that is not up to a judge to decide what they find repulsive, otherwise we are on the slippery slope back to the 70's where more conservative taste will make any portrayal of sex illegal.
Living in Chile
"* Forced Entry[16]: The film depicts the beating, rape and murder of women by a serial killer, who is eventually killed by a mob of vigilantes.[17] There are three scenes which graphically portray rape and murder, and women are also spat on.[3] Extreme's website called it their "most controversial movie" and "a stunningly disturbing look at a serial killer, satanic rituals, and the depths of human depravity."[18] Forced Entry was directed by Lizzy Borden and released in 2002. Again it was the director's cut version of the film that was cited in the case.[1]"
And, yet, the murder was okay. Everything was okay. If these movies contained no visible sex. It's nothing but the inclusion of sex on camera that causes a problem. Had the sex been off-camera, then we'd be happy with the film content? Wow. America is a sickly weird place. It's okay to cut off a womans head, but don't rape her first? Rape is horrible, and their are many many people who are living with that experience in their past. It's an unimaginable horror. How can it be okay to depict rape one way, but not another. Additionally how is it okay to show a woman's murder, but rape though vile and horrible, is survivable and it's not okay.
In the end we are talking about a film, a fake, nothing more. The real thing is the horror, murder and rape, but not the fake version. We're punishing people here because they made a film which simulates the crimes the federal justice department ignores to go after film makers?
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
I was merely pointing out that it was not the nudity or sex acts themselves that was being prosecuted, but the violence and depravity that crossed the line (according to the courts).
So water-boarding is legal and fictional depictions of (deviant) sex are illegal. The world is upside down.
is this verdict. Between the First Amendment and the Fourth I'm not sure that this is remotely constitutional. I could see the point if the person involved filed rape charges, but then it would be a case about rape, not obscenity. Totally stupid.
[15] Forced Entry was directed by Lizzy Borden and released in 2002. Again it was the director's cut version of the film that was cited in the case.
Well, compared to her real life escapades I think the movies aren't such a big deal.
It was the including Jesus in the porn that made the conservative right-wing at the DOJ go ape shit. Had they just stuck to bin Laden, they likly would have been nominated for an Oscar by the attorney general.
Living in Chile
Can't the public protect themselves by not ordering it? Why does it need help from the government to do that?
Can someone with an understanding of the US laws and legal system explain what exactly the crime was? Is producing and distributing porn really a crime for which you can get jail time in the USA?
You might want to start with a read through of Wikipedia's page on Larry Flynt. I think it's still the case that adult material isn't sold in certain states.
Note that the term obscene has a legal definition. IIRC, bestiality and golden showers, for example, are considered "obscene", whereas Janet Jackson's nipple is considered "indecedent".
And once people start doing that you have a nice chilling effect in .. err.. effect.
These idiots pled guilty. It's their fault. They should have fought it.
You said, "More importantly, are these videos on ThePirateBay?".
From the article:
They forfeited the domain name, Extremeassociates.com, as part of their plea agreement, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The company is now defunct.
Hopely that means that the movies are now in the public domain. I'll be looking for them on the Internet Archive.
While I think the Miller Test replaced "I know it when I see it" at the SCOTUS level, the fact of the matter is that the Miller Test is "I know it when I see it", just applied at a lower level. If this gets appealed, I'm sure the SCOTUS will just say "well, after the most dire of voires, the prosecutors managed to find 12 stuck-up prudes that were offended by your movie, so it's obscene". The real problem is that the government has managed to convince everyone that "obscenity" isn't speech. Since they control the definition of obscenity, they control the definition of speech.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The Extreme Associates Wikipedia article gives you an idea of what they're being prosecuted for
That's filthy, disgusting, meritless, reprehensible, and none of the government's damn business. Two consenting adults filmed scenes that other consenting adults wanted to watch. That should be the end of the story.
I normally mean for my sig to be funny. Sometimes, like now, I don't.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Thanks for the extra info, though I still have to say it's a stupid law. I can't help but think that if the teenage girl had been graphically murdered they'd be nominated for Oscars rather than put in prison :\
If the girl had actually been murdered, I should hope not. Last time I checked, most graphic murder films were fake, so when my son sees someone get killed one way another in a flick (even on primetime or daytime TV) I can at least tell him, "it's not real" and point to six other movies where the same actor/actress is still running around. Seems like an underage girl having sex (raped???) with an older man is potentially evidence of a real crime (sex with a minor is a felony, last time I checked), unless it too was faked. Do people watch fake porn?
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan
That explains it. Buchanan was the zealot who (selectively) prosecuted Tommy Chong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beth_Buchanan#United_States_vs._Tommy_Chong_.282003.29
I'm not an American but I can recognise a genuine American patriot when I see one. Larry Flynt famously admits to being guilty of bad taste but in my book the man is a hero and has the wounds to prove it. Before his landmark case against Falwell there was no protection of parody and you could be sued for "hurting someones feelings".
He was appalled by the hypocricy of the Clinton blow job thing and took out a full page ad in the Washington Post offering a million dollars for anyone who could prove they had an affair with a congressman or senator. The ad produced sex tapes and a scandal that embarased the FBI and forced the speaker of the house to quit. When sentenced to three months for refusing to name his sources he threw an orange at the judge and shouted "You fucking pussy, is that the best you can do".
When facing 25yrs for "organised crime" ( ie: publishing Hustler ), he was asked by the judge if he had anything to say before sentencing, he replied "You haven't made one intelligent decison in this case, I don't expect you to start now".
He also took on the Bush administration for the right to report from the battlefield after they went against 200yrs of journalistic tradition and made it illeagal at the start of the Afghan war, he set another important precedent by winning that one too.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here's the rub, though; while there are certainly women in the porn industry with full knowledge and understanding and even enjoyment of what they are doing, a large amount of porn is nothing like that. A friend recently told me a story about a girl he knew from his hometown, and I will share the anecdote with you now: This girl's girlfriends got her to come down to LA to do "modeling" which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale she wasn't used to, which then became "modeling with titties", then "modeling with a cock out", etc etc. She then wound up having violent sex she wasn't at all in to, then the tape got sold out of gas stations everywhere, and she couldn't show here face in her home town, now she's some kind of shut-in.
Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn. There's nothing happy about that story.
This is by no means the worst casualty of pornography, either. Most of the low-rent, low-pro videos you see which are about degrading women really are degrading women. That is in fact part of their appeal for their particular audience. I have nothing against pornography, but getting off on not-really-consensual sex where women were coerced and/or deliberately tricked into having it is sick, and it's wrong, and it's harmful to society.
Again, I'm not saying porn is bad. The Nixon administration even commissioned a report which was TRYING to find a link between consumption of pornography and harmful behavior, and failed. What I'm saying is that pornography which is designed to be degrading really is degrading in most cases, and furthermore it is often literally a form of rape. I know NOTHING WHATSOEVER about this particular case, but it is not at all impossible that this couple acted reprehensibly. There are numerous institutions producing pornography in California and distributing it over the internet, some of them much larger than this. If the point were to stamp out internet porn, then they would have gone after one of those, and made a larger dent.
With all that said: To see words from "U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan" saying that the public needs to be protected from lasciviousness truly makes me sick. The English kicked the Puritans out, and I think it's time for Americans to do the same.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IANAL, but this does have a legal history in the US and is much better than it used to be. All these doom-and-gloom "what happened to the US" posts ignore that obscenity law used to be much, much stricter.
the porno videos involved in this case was about a teenage girl being raped by an older man.
So, close to 80% of porn made in Japan is illegal in the US then?
There are even several states where non-vaginal sex is prohibited. Now, whether those laws are actually enforced is a different thing.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner", as for the "most imaginable" part, I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose.. but last I looked that was still protected speech.. thus my shock at the finding.
You must not have looked very recently - protected speech does not include anything that falls under a Chaplinksy test(Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568) and while erotic content does not nessessarly fall under that list, obscene material does - and that is what the federal law is dealing with "obscene erotic content"
A PBS documentary isn't federal prosecution in any sense. Lets try using our higher skills and follow logical paths, a prosecution started by religious fanatics because of a documentary doesn't mean the makers of the documentary were religious fanatics.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
The 5th amendment saw nothing.
May the Maths Be with you!
This test is still in use today.
but last I looked that was still protected speech..
If they're doing prison time for it, apparently it's not protected speech... maybe it should be, but it's apparently not.
Read the OP again. She was not under age, and it was not actual rape. So you can point your son to six other movies where she's still, ahem, running around.
I got two words for you: the fif!
there's a documentary "Deep Throat" about the porn movie "Deep Throat" and events that surrounded it.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I was hoping a torrent link to see it for myself
We only begrudgingly accept homosexuality.
Hardly. From the Wiki article
So yes, assuming you live in a liberal Western country, you probably can find gay porn at your local video store, but I'd wager most of the sodomy laws are still on the books. In fact, there was a couple (male/female) a few years back who were charged by an overzealous prosecutor in one of the Southern states.
A curious irony is that most law enforcement officials tend to be heterosexual males, so the shitload of "obscene" or otherwise illegal gay porn continues to remain available. Anyone who has seen something like the Goatse images knows that even a 3 second viewing is 3 seconds too much.
Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn.
No, she was ruined by her own stupidity. Throughout your little anecdote, there's one thing you neglected to point out: she was a free actor who made her own choices. Were they *stupid* choices? Hell yes. But they were her choices to make. Now she gets to live with the consequences.
Now I gotta make my own dirty sanchez flicks...
But it does go against their right to free speech. I'm totally confused by the second court appeal that said it was not covered under the Right to Privacy? What does that have to even do with this? This is obviously a free speech issue. The original decision IMO was the right one. These 'obscenity' laws are not constitutional. You may not like what people have to say, but they still have the right to say it. These harm no one (it's acting, not real life). Yeah they are tasteless, and unacceptable to the vast majority of citizens, but if they don't like it they don't have to look. I can protect my own sensibilities, thank you very much.
We can't really win, though. The current administration is doing the same thing, cutting off freedoms, just doing it in a different way.
Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter, they're all out to fuck us in the ass (just not to make a video of it) and control everyone, with the end result of fueling their own greed.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Throughout your little anecdote, there's one thing you neglected to point out: she was a free actor who made her own choices.
I neglected to point it out because it both goes without saying, and is only part of the story. It's clear that you're an insensitive bastard who has forgotten what peer pressure is like. In this story, numerous persons acted to intentionally deceive the woman in question, and that's what makes you an asshole for your interpretation.
Does the woman in question share the blame for her situation? Of course. Does that mean it's okay to intentionally coerce her into doing something she doesn't want to do through a combination of false pretenses and other lies? I say no. So does the law. A sufficiently intoxicated person cannot make informed consent... but this woman's spirit is already broken (as her users intended) and there will never be a court case.
Don't be so fucking intolerant of human error. You will probably fuck up someday. You have almost certainly fucked up repeatedly, and those with compassion for you have helped you out.
Now she gets to live with the consequences.
Bullshit. Now we all get to live with the consequences. We're all on this planet together.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable
Like, in the back of a Volkswagon?
luckilly it didn't get raped !
Um, I was trying to point out that it is no more correct to assume that the feds acted out of religious zealotry than did Frontline. Sorry. I'll be less subtle next time.
killing has always been acceptable, as long as it's done outside our borders (or in slums). And sex has always been highly suspect. This is nothing new. Our tendency toward mass violence is tightly intertwined with our general sexual repression. If we're all just laying about smoking dope and having sex, who will kill our enemies? And you know, we've got a lot of enemies. They hate us for our freedom.
Bullshit. Now we all get to live with the consequences. We're all on this planet together.
Really ? Because I haven't had any consequences of her drinking and going into porn. That's the point. She made dumb choices, now she lives with the consequences. Legislation should not restrict everyone's freedoms based wrong choices an individual might make that only affects him/her. No where in your story do you attribute any of her downfall to anything but peer pressure. That's too bad for her that she was weak willed and couldn't see what she was getting into until it was too late, and even then, she couldn't get out before it got worse (the modeling with titties should have clued her in if that's not what she wanted to do).
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I'm probably going to burn karma, but I think I'll point something out.
There is a problem with murder scenes in movies, too.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
+1 Insightful
how is babby formed?
I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose.. but last I looked that was still protected speech
The Miller test, established by the Supreme Court in 1973, is that something is obscene if all of the following are true:
Things like Eyes Wide Shut aren't obscene because they have a plot.
I was thinking to myself... why is this any different to any porn site out there? Is porn now prohibited in the US?
I thought there was child porn or something like that, but, after reading TFA, I can't see a problem at all.
That's because TFA didn't bother to tell you that the movies involved depictions of statutory and forcible rape. One was about a journalist being gang-raped by Osama bin Laden and henchmen. Another graphically portrayed the rape and murder of a woman by a serial killer. Yet another depicted a 12-year-old girl being molested by an older man, which in some states constitutes child pornography.
This is shoddy journalism. The article makes it sound like this is just perfectly normal pornography. It is not. These are rape fantasies and snuff films.
Why are you laughing?
I know what you are saying, but Bill Hicks did this in some of his material:
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.
Actually, sodomy laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2001.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Sure they do. Course, here in the States, you can go to jail for 'possession of kiddie porn' for having copies of certain animes laying around, on the theory that some child somewhere was exploited to make it, even though, as anime, no children whatsoever were involved. Talk about victimless crimes, if no kids are involved, how can it be kiddie porn?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
California is now the new protestant ministry! Any ankles showing will be beaten to death by an angry mob of Christians. I expect wichburnings will come shortly.
Why is this flamebait? Is it wrong? I can see an "Inside deep throat" documentary, maybe there's one named "deep throat" as well.
Nixion is no example to live by, the man probably had some form of undiagnosed paranoid schitzophrenia "But the voices told me to bug his home without a warrant really they did!"...
The issue with "Consentual vs. Non-consensual" is this; Because the drugs are illegal your friend would have come forward and charged said person and people with rape however since she faced jail time her right to justice was revoked under the American war on drugs. Now if the drugs were legal, she could have charged them with rape and conspiricy but that's her business not yours, she choose to hang her head in shame.
I've been held at knife point because somone I knew thought it might be a good idea to deal, because it was home invasion and this is Canada they went to jail / juvie. But you see my point?
I'm of the mind that in a free society, you don't get to decide what other people enjoy, providing whatever they enjoy does not involve minors or other people that cannot provide reasonable consent.
If these people want to drink bodily fluids, I have no problem with it. It's not my business.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
One of the difficulties in dealing with pornography is the ambiguities in the language we use to describe it.
But, yeah, if I hadn't posted already, I'd have modded you insightful.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Throughout your little anecdote, there's one thing you neglected to point out: she was a free actor who made her own choices.
I neglected to point it out because it both goes without saying, and is only part of the story.
Ok...
Does that mean it's okay to intentionally coerce her into doing something she doesn't want to do
Make your mind up. Was she a free actor, or was she coerced?
Your lack of empathy for other humans has been noted, meatbag.
So has yours, meatbag.
They fed her drugs with the intent to impair her judgement, which is illegal; they obtained bogus consent when she was unable to provide informed consent, which is illegal.
Try again, son.
OK, if they commited those crimes, they should be charged for them. Distribution of obscene recordings that were created lawfully should still be legal.
That prosecution has to be about the worst use of government funds ever. It makes the Iraq war look like a responsible use of government money.
Do you think she goes home at night and talks to her family about her tireless sacrifice in the never ending struggle against evildoers?
... And the people laughed. I've seen the whole show.
All these two did was trivialise an important issue. I know why they did it; It was their most powerful medium to get the message across. The trouble is that everybody just moved on. They saw the show, they laughed, they thought about it for 30 seconds, then they went to the bar to get another beer.
Great men with a poignant message, but ultimately totally ineffectual.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
If it's published, unless it's published privately, it's public.
Publishing privately generally does not include offering something for sale to basically just anyone who claims to be over 18.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I think he meant, "Inside Deep Throat." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Deep_Throat). I've seen it as well; it's not pornographic in and of itself and the subject (since it was a little before my time) cast light onto a secretive aspect of our culture. Porn has a long history in the U.S. and with Deep Throat, porn almost became mainstream (as in, your local theater would play shrek, batman, and "Journey to the center of the Bertha" or something). This documentary covers the rise and fall of the 'actors', the government scandal, and the changes it wrough on the industry.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
I personally think all porn is fake.
Faked intimacy, faked excitement, etc.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Not just porn, but all media is considered obscene by some
Governance by the lowest common denominator is far more degrading than anything in any of those movies.
She is actually a deeply conservative Republican.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beth_Buchanan
Is it illegal to perform the acts, record the performing of the acts or distribute the recorded performance of the acts?
I'll assume that performing it is not illegal at least in a private environment. These were not public performances (though if they were what might happen?)
The recording likewise is unlikely to be illegal (excepting recording without permission - inclusive of underage persons - there are no laws covering the recording of anything).
SO it's really down to the distribution of such things. Where does morality, indecency, depravity, etc. come into the equation when we're discussing a law about distribution. We've already skipped past the parts where the content itself is at question - performance and recording are fine, just don't share it? or is it the money changing hands part?
If it is distribution, really, the prosecutor should have to prove that society or some individual was harmed by the distribution, in a concrete example. There needs to be a victim. Prove that the people purchasing the videos are going out and re-enacting the scenes with non-consenting persons or that it is influencing them to harm society in some way.
The length of the sentence underscores these sentiments. A year and 1 day is giving lip service to an overbearing authority figure and yet is still an abuse of the legal system. It's embarrassing really. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You are sooo full of it! Look, I knew a chap once who, driven by peer pressure, shot another person. Would you absolve him from any personal responsibility, too?
Once you get past your high school morose you will figure out that adults need to stand up to 'peer pressure' from time to time.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
So, your traditional porn is still safe in the US. There is porn and then there is sick minded porn.
Thank you for identifying what I should be identifying as morally objectable. Are there any other subjects that you believe I should find morally objectable? And what is the penalty if I do something that you believe I should find morally objectable?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
All these doom-and-gloom "what happened to the US" posts ignore that obscenity law used to be much, much stricter.
Right, but we were hoping that they were gone for good! It's mainly a feeling of "how much progress have we really made if people can still be thrown in a prison cell for hurting people's feelings?"
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Can we *please* stop with this calling-anybody-who-makes-a-bad-choice "stupid" bit? I'm really getting sick Slashdotters' lack of sympathy and contempt for humanity at large.
Property is theft.
A lot of the porn made in Japan is illegal in Japan, too.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
They fed her drugs with the intent to impair her judgement, which is illegal; they obtained bogus consent when she was unable to provide informed consent, which is illegal. So why is it illegal for me to feed a chick booze until she passes out, then fuck her? Same shit, slightly different setting.
You're not seeing this right. All these things you say render her consent null and void and thus would mean that she should head to a Police station and file for rape charges. Not some kind of "distribution of obscene" material charges. Do you get it now ? If like you say she was forced into it, by being forced fed drugs and alcool AGAINST her consent, then the movies that were shot are not the crime itself, the rape is. Since you've changed the story around so much since people have started to call you on it (started out as a stereotypical girl from a rural area gets into the city and into porn) I'm inclined to think you're just full of shit and trying to play Devil's advocate here.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
And then we had no porn, and no one came for me.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Don't be a twat. He shared a sad story with noteworthy points. The lady in question could be anyone you know, or will know.
Sometimes people make bad choices, sometimes others make them for us.
Bigger production and publicity budgets.
Bigger campaign contributions.
It's all about the money. That's all it ever was.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Tell me about it. I destroy a few hundred million lives every time I watch porn.
Exactly what that means is very subjective, but since almost everyone looks at porn, 'obscene' porn is usually regarded as porn that most people dont look at
Wait... wait... so what you're saying is that if we get everyone to look at it, it's not obscene anymore? I think I've found a loophole!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Sounds like you've met my mother. Her argument against gays is entirely the 'it's not normal!' liturgy. Seems strange, since I've introduced her to friends of mine who are gay but they weren't sufficiently abnormal for her to detect.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I find this to be remarkable and unbelievable. I had no idea we had such laws in effect as all sorts of porn if floating freely all over the internet. I would seriously like to see how they define "obscene" as the term itself is VERY subjective.
This needs some supreme court time. I thought most of this stuff was cleared by by Larry Flynt.
Well maybe one should seek conselling, but irrespective of that, if no one is being harmed, if it's not being put on prime time TV, why should it not be permitted? Are you seriously asserting that it's any of your goddamned business what these people do?
Quite frankly, the most disturbing thing here is how much some people ultimately despise liberty. I guess I can put you in that camp as an enemy of freedom.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And even if that's the case, so long as nobody was forced into something, and no minors were actually mollested, what's the problem? Being abnormal isn't inherently bad (hey, geeks aren't normal either folks!). Oh, and 'normal' isn't an immediate stamp of approval, either - I know lots of normal people with serious problems.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
And Justice Frank Murphy is a farking idiot.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Then they threw out the fourth amendment to prosecute the second.
Has the old saint in his forest not yet heard of it? That God is dead?
It is not illegal to fantasize about pedophilia. Nor is it illegal for an adult woman to pretend to be a teenager and role play with her sexual partner. Why, then, is it considered a problem for a porn company to market videos in which adult actors pretend to be underage? How is that any different from any other fantasy porn?
Fat lot of good it did. Same with George Carlin. For all of the insight they had, all they did was make people laugh at their own idiocy.
I wonder why they didn't say, half way through the show "Why are you laughing? What's funny about what I'm saying? Here's a petition stating that we want this shit sorted out. Sign it. It's going in this envelope on stage, and that envelope is going to Congress. I'm tired of this shit, and the fact that you're paying to hear me talk about it means you are too! Do something about it! Put your name down."
There are millions of angry men out there. These particular ones manage to make you laugh at things, which drains your anger of its potency and makes you accepting, and thus makes apathetic about what you were angry about. They made nihilism seem like it really wasn't so bad even as they shoved it in your face.
Because these particular men had that particular quality, they were given a voice that can reach billions where others were not given such a voice.
Does that answer your question?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
So, your traditional porn is still safe in the US. There is porn and then there is sick minded porn. This addresses the more violent side that porn can take.
Just beacuse I don't enjoy something doesn't mean others don't have the right to.
The least popular speech is the speech that needs the most protection. No one's rights here were infringed until the porn producers were sent to prison, and the only offenders are agents of the government.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
there's no difference between being invited to think while you're being turned on and being invited to not think while you're being turned on?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
There you go again, the legal industry in their bizarro universe. Calling something from "erotic" to "obscene" makes all the difference. "Legal logic" makes "Creation science" look bad.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I'll rejoice when those guys that made 2 girls one cup go to prison. When will this happen?
Hungry Bitches (MFX 1209), whose trailer achieved notoriety under the name "2 Girls 1 Cup", was produced by MFX Media, which isn't a U.S. company. Are you referring to law in the country where it was made or to law affecting only the U.S distributor of this film?
The problem with this company isn't just porn. They actually took it to extreme. In one of their films, one of the actresses were forced to have anal sex with 10 men. She had agreed to three, but after hours of it, she was told she had to do 7 more. She broke down on set. Other films have had women performing felatio while being hit in the face and humiliated, and many even threw up. Other films again had women drink vomit and other bodily fluids. This is some sick stuff!
I don't think it's the sex part they were taken in for, but the repugnant degradation of a human being. I don't care if these were women, had they been men, I would have reacted the same way. Initially, like most people reading this story, I reacted with "Wow, free speech and all," but after some research (I read the article and followed a link to Wikipedia), I realised that the verdict was probably correct.
I have ALWAYS wondered why the American society has been so accepting to violence, but not to sex. I'm European, and always thought it was a bit funny that you easily could depict murder on TV, but a nipple is enough to get everybody's panties in a twist. But I must say, these two people were into some sick stuff, and from what I read about them, there weren't always _consenting_ adults around... Sick, sick, sick.
Un paio di scarpe, per favore!
Hear hear. I agree with you, 100%. This is a tragic anecdote and I deplore the behaviour of those who coerced the girl.
I think it's worth highlighting Hicks' caveat, though:
- as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet.
Clearly this girl was harmed by the event. The thing is, what happened to her was not really illegal; just highly immoral. The system has failed her, and will always fail someone if this trend continues, and a reactionary like this Senator will never really understand why.
Legislating against acts which some people find offensive (though not harmful to others) on the grounds that they are thus immoral is frankly disgusting, when the definition of morality revolves principally around the impact of our actions on the lives of others.
Detractors are often given to stating that such acts (and their portrayal) are harmful to society in general as they cause moral decay and encourage degradation among the impressionable, but I have a couple of strong objections to that position.
I think this last point is particularly important in the light of the quote I mentioned. The law is there for protection, to prevent people from doing harm to others and thus maintain equality and order. However, an act can be harmful to one person in one circumstance, and harmless to another in a different situation. This is why children are particularly protected by law - sexual contact is much more likely to cause emotional damage, and they are not considered mature enough to make rational decisions regarding their own welfare.
If that is the purpose of the law, then applying broad-brush bans to prevent fringe cases is a massive imposition on liberty, a fruitful source of repression, and potentially criminalises many people who are acting with appropriate care and consideration for the rights and liberties of others. Isn't that harmful to society?
What is needed is a human, qualitative approach to legal decisions. Until it can be significantly, substantially demonstrated that this sort of material has a net harmful impact on society, legislating against it is, frankly, fascistic and reactionary. "Innocent until proven guilty" is cold comfort when the laws are so absolute and inflexible as to make criminals of considerate people engaging in a harmless act.
To bring it back to your anecdote: even a fresh interpretation of the law in light of this new judgement would not have served to protect this poor girl. The law, in criminalising the act rather than the intent, has been made very easy to interpret, but unfortunately it does not protect the vulnerable, and so it fails in its main duty while simultaneously imposing on the rights of those who would never dream of abusing her in such a way.
Meta will eat itself
I know people who sometimes engage in that. Some people enjoy that sort of thing. As long as they are not going out and actually raping people, it is really not a problem. Are we now going to declare it to be illegal to role play certain sexual acts? Bestiality is also illegal, but there are plenty of people who engage in "pony play" -- is that going to be made illegal in porn as well?
Before you go ahead and note that nobody is trying to invade the bedroom here...keep in mind that these pornos were not being publicly displayed. They were privately distributed to private households for personal, private use.
Palm trees and 8
Since the summary didnt tell it: "Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable," U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
Obviously, this guy has never been to Japan. If this applies to non-real depictions of such situations, then I know a guy who has some "splainin' to do". Just check out this stash!
8==8 Bones 8==8
I don't know one iota more about this girl's plight than the rest of us readers and I'm not defending her actions. However, did it cross anyone's mind that she might have been very scared and acted out the wishes of her captors for fear of her own safety?
That being said, it makes me sick that there are people like that out there taking advantage of someone else because they 'have power' over them.
About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking
One of these is not like the others, one of these does not belong.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
This is the same bitch prosecutor who tried to convict a doctor for prescribing pain medication. She is a holdover from the previous administration who has refused to step down. There is word she is on the way out though, and not soon enough imo.
It's clear that you're an insensitive bastard who has forgotten what peer pressure is like.
Or like a lot of us he's not a weak minded sheep unable to resist negative peer pressure.
It's her fault, don't blame it on anyone or anything but HER OWN DAMN FAULT.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn.
No, she was ruined by her own stupidity. [snip]: she was a free actor who made her own choices.
One has to ask what sort of valid conscious choices can be made while under the influence of drugs and alcohol - and I imagine taking said drugs is not necessarily consentual (something slipped in her drink, etc)
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
The 1st amendment might have had a chance if it had been armed ;)
Lack of empathy has nothing to do with this. We can think it's sad and pity her, but that doesn't mean we're going to tolerate her poor choices being used as an excuse to foist laws and regulations on us.
It was HER POOR CHOICE, IT DOESN'T EFFECT US.
Even if we feel sorry for her.
STFU or learn to not argumentum ad hominem
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
you can call someone an idiot and be sympathetic at the same time
"That was REALLY fucking moronic bro, let me take you to the hospital to get that broken arm taken care of"
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Great men with a poignant message, but ultimately totally ineffectual.
I wouldn't say so. They implanted critical thoughts into peoples minds and connected them to their pleasure centers. I think that's more powerful than signing a petition or going to a political rally. Next time something happens which is in some way connected to that thought, it will pop up again in these peoples minds and will have a major influence on their opinion.
Legislation should not restrict everyone's freedoms based wrong choices an individual might make that only affects him/her.
That wasn't really the point of the guys anecdote, now was it? Nice job skewing the perspective here.
No where in your story do you attribute any of her downfall to anything but peer pressure. That's too bad for her that she was weak willed and couldn't see what she was getting into until it was too late, and even then, she couldn't get out before it got worse (the modeling with titties should have clued her in if that's not what she wanted to do).
A typical reaction of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I know of an ugly example myself of a person being very unable to handle peer pressure. And pressure from a loved one can be very hard to deal with. This form of peer pressure easily leads to abuse - oh yes, and it's all legal, because the ill-treated one didn't complain!
Don't underestimate this kind of peer pressure play. Be glad you've never experienced things like this in your own life. Or seen things like this happen in the lives of people you care about. Oh, and a little compassion with people failing the Strong Will test wouldn't do harm, either. Most of us make bad decisions during some time in life, and only some of us get to suffer the consequences. Doesn't make them complete morons, you know.
There really isn't much on this list that hasn't been seen elsewhere before. This is basically just a list to scare the straights on the jury... triggering the "not in my back yard!" reaction from folks too afraid to have sex on anything other than the socially pre-designated Hallmark holidays.
8==8 Bones 8==8
So why is it illegal for me to feed a chick booze until she passes out, then fuck her? Same shit, slightly different setting.
I think that hits the nail on the head. People do want to justify doing that, or similar. Some of their arguments are right, and some are bogus, but it often comes down to justifying their own desires. I think most of the people who sarcastically say "think of the children" actually don't give a rip about the children, even though many of their points and criticisms are valid. They argue with misdirection and half-truths.
Same thing with greed. Most upper-middle-class people think it should be illegal to break into people's houses and take their stuff, and they make rational arguments supporting their position. But when it comes to effectively stealing from other people by abuse of economic power, such as through actions that support market and currency manipulations, they have all kinds of fancy ways of justifying it and denying what they are doing.
I have no opinion about whether this particular ruling was good or bad, because I haven't dug into it deep enough, and slashdot summaries are almost always misleading. (What's up with that?) And I think porn should be legal. But its ridiculous for people to pretend that what they look at doesn't affect them. Watching a foolish drug user get fucked does hurt you, whether you understand it or not.
With idiots like you running around telling her what to do, and that she was a willing actor in the play, she probably feels like shit for "allowing herself" to get involved in this in the first place, and is too embarrassed to report it. Then again, that's the reason why so many rapes go unreported in the first place. Show some damned compassion already.
The OP's main points seems to be that the money involved in porn is just too much to keep producers honest. And they ruin lives to get it. There is no doubt, as far as I can tell, that real child porn victimises children. Here the point is that often, though not always, regular porn victimises women. (Then there are those who take a further extreme view, like the Catholic Church claiming that it also victimises the viewer, and those that may be married to a viewer of porn, but I don't see that gaining much traction here.) It's something that many people - mostly producers and viewers (and, oddly, some feminists) - want to sweep under the rug. We can't let it be swept out of sight if we want a rational, complete conversation on the topic. There is a human cost here, and too many people want to ignore it.
wouldn't this apply to almost everything on YouTube that reaches "viral" status? (Like monkey's casually drinking their own urine fresh from the tap, etc...)
Most of the "viral" stuff appeals to the comedic interest if anything, not the prurient interest. In addition, there's a bit of a scientific connotation around documenting the behavior of animals in captivity other than hominids.
Sorry, but it's at the fringes where issues like this are decided. There's not a lot of effort directed at shutting down non-controversial speech, so it doesn't need a lot of direct effort to defend.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I totally disagree. If you only stand up for free speech when people are saying things you like or have righteous causes then you don't really believe in free speech. You believe in SOME free speech, which is really not free speech at all.
...no two people are not on fire.
The material found obscene:
Forced Entry: The film depicts the beating, rape and murder of women by a serial killer, who is eventually killed by a mob of vigilantes.
So no, it wasn't the titties, and there were problems with killing people in movies. The court did exactly what you were complaining it didn't do.
(And I deserve your five +1 informatives, not that I'm going to get them on slashdot).
Who is John Cabal?
We can't let it be swept out of sight if we want a rational, complete conversation on the topic. There is a human cost here, and too many people want to ignore it.
Agreed. But it has nothing to do with porn and, as you've already pointed out, everything to do with money and the semi-underground nature of the industry. The simple fact is that if you stigmatize the industry, all you do is push it *further* underground, which is precisely the opposite of what you should be trying to do if your goal is to protect those who participate in the industry.
Look, it's simple: porn exists, has always existed, and always will exist. So you have a choice. You can stigmatize it and push it underground, or you can work to increase societal acceptance and bring it out into the light of day. I prefer the latter approach. Then, if a women is victimized, she can feel free to go to law enforcement and demand justice. Meanwhile, the state can work to regulate the industry more effectively so that these sorts of things don't happen in the first place.
As an aside, I also hold the same beliefs regarding the sex and drug trades. Here, like the more extreme forms of pornography, you have free actors participating in victimless crimes, activities that are driven underground thanks to a society that stigmatizes those that choose to participate. And because they're driven underground, they can no longer be effectively policed and regulated. So, once again, there's two choices: stronger laws and stronger law enforcement, thus pushing these activities further and further underground, or a move toward normalization. I favour the latter, as I believe it would result in reduced crime and better protection for those involved.
You could make that argument about any porn. Heck, you could probably make that argument about child actors too. It's a lame post-hoc attempt to justify an infringement on free speech for which there is no meaningful justification other than "I think it's icky".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I just pointed it out in a more clear way. Killing people in hollywood movie and tv shows is all okay, and noone complaints about it. You wouldn't ever think that someone might be going into jail because of it. Rape and other such is okay in hollywood movies aswell. Now you just see the genitals aswell, but its still acted and simulated. What makes it different?
There's no evidence that any US president ever made that statement. Check your facts.
Spot on sir. Simply spot on. I could not have argued it better, or even as well, myself.
The vast majority of porn distribution on the Internet behaves by the "unspoken rules" about what's ok and what's not ok to show. Long story short, you can't show a porn that implies one or more participants may not have given consent, i.e. it can't be a shot of sex with either party tied up. If you see something like this, watch the camera work and you'll notice that they don't actually show sex and bondage at the same time. If they do... that's what gets busted. So besides real bestiality, incest, or anything that could be characterized as nonconsensual, pretty much anything else goes.
stuff |
Rape isn't legal. And yet, we have problems getting women to report it. Colour me skeptical.
People do stupid things, and there are consequences. I know plenty of people who paid $50 for a tattoo and years later wish they had never done it, and now it will cost them $7,000 to take it off. Should we outlaw tattoos?
Seriously, your entire anecdote completely misses the point. Here you have willing people engaging in pornography. You also have willing people paying these willing people money in order to have a copy of this pornography. Then the government steps in and throws the producers in the slammer.
What?
Your argument is basically that stupid people sometimes willingly and freely decide to do things they don't really want to do. If there is no force, that isn't possible. What you are saying is really a euphemism for people not fully considering the potential consequences of their actions before they do them, and then regretting the actions after they see the full consequences. It is not government's job to protect us from this. Indeed, they can't, without outlawing everything.
Every time the government engages in "protecting" a few stupid people from being stupid, it tramples on the freedom of the majority of us.
Rape isn't legal. And yet, we have problems getting women to report it. Colour me skeptical.
Skeptical of what? That pushing the industry further underground will simply exacerbate that problem? Seems like a no-brainer to me...
I'm all for standing up for free speech and freedom in general but this is not the fight you should take it to. Don't defend some fucked up porn stars for their 'freedom of speech'. If there is a case where free speech really matters, stand up for it then and there.
You don't wait until they come after something you care about. You defend all speech, even if you find it disagreeable. If you sit around and say "it's OK to throw the pornographers in jail, or break up the Illinois Nazis when they try to parade" you leave them too much weasel room. The government must be held to a standard that allows only such specific bans on speech as the classic "fire in a crowded theater". Once you grant them leave to start judging free vs prohibited based on notions like "decency", they'll go all over the fucking place with it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
See the entry on Wikipedia.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
From Wikipedia
Extreme Teen 24: contains a scene of a naive supposed young girl being talked into having sex by an older man. The actress involved was over 18, however dressed and acted like a young girl.
Cocktails 2: various scenes of women drinking vomit, saliva and other bodily fluids. It was the director's cut version of the film that was cited in the case.
Ass Clowns 3: a female journalist is being raped by a gang led by Osama bin Laden; the journalist is freed and the gang members killed. The director's cut version also contains a scene where Jesus steps off the cross and has sex with an angel.
1001 Ways to Eat My Jizz:
Forced Entry: The film depicts the beating, rape and murder of women by a serial killer, who is eventually killed by a mob of vigilantes. There are three scenes which graphically portray rape and murder, and women are also spat on. Extreme's website called it their "most controversial movie" and "a stunningly disturbing look at a serial killer, satanic rituals, and the depths of human depravity." Forced Entry was directed by Lizzy Borden and released in 2002. Again it was the director's cut version of the film that was cited in the case.
Sounds like it doesn't appeal to my prurient interests. But a porn distributor with only four titles isn't much of a distributor, and the imprisonment, forfeiture, and all that other nonsense will surely affect distribution of other, non-"obscene" titles that might well appeal to someone.
"Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable,"
Shouldn't there be a "CONSENTING WOMEN" in there somewhere?
Whats wrong with sexually degrading material? Whats wrong with OBSCENE material?
Some women like to be degraded. Hell most of them like when a men takes charge and tells them what to do in bed. Some women like to dominate men. IS that ok? What the fuck does it matter?
I fucking hate this shit land of oppressive laws known as America. Why is it that my "FREE" country continues to fail its own test at ever fucking opportunity. America is dead.
You know what truly is obscene? THE EVENING NEWS. That is obscene. Its not even news. Its not even real. Its complete bullshit designed to distract you with entertainment while the criminal politicians and corporations run away with murder living off the wealth of this country.
This country is a fucking vampire draining itself financially and ethically and dracula is telling you it will all be ok... just sit back and take it.
The war in iraq is fucking obscene. The politicians are obscene! The state of health care is obscene!
Reboot America please.
You really did stick up for criminals and rapists, repeatedly. It took a lot of detailed explanation before you finally got that you were sticking up for criminals and rapists, in fact I don't think you really get it even now. Even when you finally admit some validity for the other guy's point, you're still throwing back terms like meatbag. You earned it, the person you're throwing it back at didn't. You're being just as bad as those ignorant people on juries who bought the "She was asking for it by the way she was dressed" argument.
I hope I still have some empathy for you. I won't call you names, and I hope you get empathy as painlessly as possible. Here's a hint though. When you really get that you really did all the things people are accusing you of, it's time to get a little humility and figure out how to appologise in a way that proves you learned something, not throw insults back. The insult just says you don't really think you were wrong at all.
Who is John Cabal?
I don't know what "wasn't at all in to" means here. I've done lots of things (admittedly of a much milder nature) that I "wasn't at all in to", because it was part of my job. The question is, was she coerced against her will, e.g. raped? If so, she should have involved law-inforcement immediately after the crime occurred. But I would guess that she agreed to do these things because she wanted the money. Especially if she continued to do them.
"gas stations everywhere"?? I wonder how much of this you're making up.
"Couldn't show her face in her home town"? Sure there going to be prudes who will ostracize her, but if her home town is so backwards that they're going to lynch her for it, she should get out.
I just don't believe that unless that's her own choice. Or maybe she needs psychiatric help. If everyone is snubbing her in her home town - unlikely, but possible I suppose - she should get out. In a big city, employers and people in general don't care that much about her past, assuming she has no criminal record, if she demonstrates her value in the present. (Certainly in the case of countless celebrities, such a sleazy kind of past seems only to enhance their fame.)
Sorry, the BS meter on your story is pointing way up there.
I miss Bill Hicks.
If cancer hadnt killed him, America would have.
In a way i'm glad cancer got him first. This is just fucking sad.
We have succeeded in failing to live up to our "American" ideals and should rid ourselves of the planet as a favor to those who are intelligent to handle mature adult life.
If my chick wants me to piss in her mouth and shit in her cunt... Its our business. I'll extend the same courtesy to Michelle and Barrak Obama, the Clintons, the bushes... etc. Whatever the fuck they do in their fuck games... is they're business.
Im tired of people losing their jobs and lives over "obscenity". Thats not America. That is not what FREEDOM means.
You are referring to an adult woman making her own decisions as "Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn.".
AND THEN you go on arguing about how porn is degrading towards women? Mind bending!
Do you also refer to your mother as Top Shelf Pussy or does she not live up to that quality standard?
I would like to propose that it is not porn or sexist commercials that degrades women. It is our (both mens and womens) attitudes that does. You just gave us a great illustration of this. Women are not body part nor decorations.
Yes there are laws in this country. Apparently its illegal to film porn in any state except California.
Its illegal in NY etc.
This country is fucking dumb. In some states its still illegal to fuck a girl in the ass or eat cum. Lets send the police out to enforce these laws immediately and lets start seeing what America REALLY is about.
You do know that the law lets us charge the shooter, and then charge the people who pressured him to do it too? I mean that's basic to English and American common law, and if you're arguing that standard law somehow isn't treating personal responsibility properly, I've got to ask just what you want to substitute. In court, the 'coerced into porn' cases usually involve assigning personal responsibility to everyone, and it's quite possible for a jury to hold the young woman responsible for her own decisions, and the film producers for theirs, at the same time.
You might also want to be careful about the 'so full of it's and 'high school's. You're in the extreme minority position if you want to argue that personal responsibility overrides all related common law. When you're defending an unusual or unpopular viewpoint, with possibly extreme consequences, is no time to descend to personal attacks.
Who is John Cabal?
Wow.. just Wow. What the fuck has happened to the US? What happened to free speech? Wasn't all this shit worked out in the 70s? Why the hell was the unconstitutional finding to do with privacy and not freedom of speech?
Privacy is a bit of a catch all doctrine-- the government has no business interfering in our personal and private lives, absent a compelling concrete interest. Hence, birth Control, abortion, various sexual positions, private schools, and so on are all protected from government meddling. While it's possible to read erotica for intellectual stimulation, most people "use porn" (to quote Coupling) for stimulation of a different kind. A 14th amendment argument asks why the government is even involved in regulating porn, while a 1st amendment argument attempts to justify the porn as substantive speech. A bit of a gamble, and galling to 1st amendment absolutists, but given the legal doctrine surrounding "obscenity", worth a try.
If that were the case, she should testify to that effect. The producers could be charged with aassault, rape, etc, etc. She could find a lawyer who'd work for a percentage and sue them for millions. At a minimum, she could get the videos off the market.
No, what we have there is fourth hand hearsay, a friend of a friend of a friend, none of them named, posted anonymously to the internet. Try again, this time with sources.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Max Hardcore featured women who WANTED to be in those films.
He was railroaded by our "free society"
True, it's a presumption that prosecution of "pornographers" begun under Bush43 has a religious component to it.... but you have to admit that it's not statistically likely that it's an incorrect assumption.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Let's assume there was nothing actually slipped into her drink. Professional filmmakers, including a lot of XXX, don't get a model's release signed by anyone who has used drugs or alcohol in the hours before. They don't allow booze or drugs actually on the set. They take the time to check proof of age and consent, because they have to take the time to check a current HIV test anyways. They are regulated by laws, not just ones for the adult industry, but ones that apply to all film studios or professional photographers. The laws that say you check HIV status are part of workplace safety laws that affect, for another case, any stuntperson who might get a bleeding injury. The laws about booze and drugs are film industry wide, although I recall Nina Hartley once explaining that the adult industry had more incentive to stay squeaky clean on them than anyone, so nobody used them as an excuse to shut a production down. This isn't just about a few people conducting a normal private transaction (like me taking a date out to a bar). On one side, we have a business, bound by special regulations that affect all such businesses and not just the adult subset.
Who is John Cabal?
But how about an official categorization of porn? I'm not much into the rape and other violence stuff, or the, well, crap. Apparently these guys know what kind of porn is what, so how about we get a government run porn search engine, with each image, video, story, and whatever else, clearly labeled? Then we can all search for the stuff we want to see, and not risk being offended by what we don't want to see.
We are all God's parents.
AMERICA is about freedom, you stupid cunt.
Simulated RAPE, is not RAPE.
Is it wrong to rape your girlfriend if she enjoys to be fucked that way? If she is a consenting adult who enjoys rape fantasies and rape play.... is that obscene?
Wall Street does far more obscene things than any CONSENTING ADULT IN PORNO.
Mary Beth Buchanan's pussy must be so precious that we're all in awe of her majesty.
Be sure to buy your hot dogs and illegal fireworks so that you too can celebrate Independence Day!
Lets all get out there and eat our dick shaped shitty meat tubes and pretend we have freedom. GOD BLESS AMERICA... May she fucking die soon.
You can go to jail now for making a video?! That's censorship plain and simple. I though that the government didn't do that here (at least not for private citizens). I can see sending someone to jail for crimes they committed which happened to be videotaped, but not for producing and distributing the videos themselves. This is insane.
Nah, the OP is sad he doesn't get any Creampie/Cumshot pics anymore.
Don't defend some fucked up porn stars for their 'freedom of speech'. If there is a case where free speech really matters, stand up for it then and there. (for example, the events in Iran, btw what's going in there now?).
I bet that quite a few people in Iran similarly believe that they shouldn't defend some "fucked up faggots" for their "freedom of speech".
Dang! Why is it that I only hear about these bitchen sites after they've been shut down?
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I'm going to give some quick information on the kind of material Mr. Black was selling (aside from DVDs for his crappy wrestling promotion). The DVD's contained material depicting simulated rape that was billed as actual rapes, participants who were advertised as being minors (with the DVDs and web pages not containing the legally mandated text that said that they confirmed that the participants were of legal age to take part in the video), along with your standard 2 Girls 1 Cup level scatological stuff.
Oh and apparently there were some problems with how they were storing it as well (they were storing it in the building they'd leased for their promotion - the former ECW Arena/Viking Hall, then called the New Alhambra Arena). Apparently there was something wrong with that as well (aside from possibly being a violation of their lease).
As it is, Rob Black is a giant inflamed asshole, and I have no sympathy for him at all.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
I wonder how many of these stories are true though? I've only been in one gas station that sold porn, but I don't think its all that common.
You sir, are hilarious in the extreme :). In the words of the Farkers: I lol'd !
You're not seeing this right.
Except for this, I don't disagree with anything you've said, including that I'm trying to play the devil's advocate. At the very same time, I am not willing to say something that I don't believe at all in order to do so.
Since you've changed the story around so much since people have started to call you on it (started out as a stereotypical girl from a rural area gets into the city and into porn) I'm inclined to think you're just full of shit and trying to play Devil's advocate here.
As far as I know, the story is true; it comes from a reputable source who has no particular reason to lie to me about it that I know of. We were sitting around sucking down Broken Halo and he came out with this story as something of a non sequitur. No part of the story is contradictory; I didn't see a need to give every particular detail initially, because sometimes I forget that this is Slashdot and there is always someone willing to crawl up your ass about every little thing. Sometimes that person is me, so I don't feel particularly irate about that fact.
In summary, I don't think that it's appropriate to violate the first amendment to the constitution of the United States in order to prevent abuse of women; I agree with you that someone should be doing something about the (in many cases) outright criminal activities involved in the production of pornography. I was telling a [so far as I know] true story about how the production of pornography can be harmful, and if you don't believe that real cultural problems result if you repeat this story enough times (again, assuming for the moment please that it is true - it doesn't seem particularly difficult to believe to me but I'm one of those people that people tell their stories to, so I've heard some pretty fucked up things) then I don't think we have anything more to say to one another.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Err...they plead guilty to crimes and went to prison. That doesn't mean it doesn't truly fall under protected speech, but in their case they sort of forfeited their ability to challenge this at the highest level.
Sodomy laws in the US got tossed 6 years ago as a result of Lawrence v. Texas.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You do have to admit your story is very stereotypical. We've all heard it dozens of times before. Naive country girl from a small hometown moves into LA to get into acting and along the way, flirts with drugs/alcool/porn because of peer pressure and gets in over her head. If you really expected empathy for this kind of story, which is posted all over the Internet all the time, then tough because if I had to stop and feel empathy and compassion for every SOB story ever posted on the Internet I'd probably have slit my wrists by now.
The facts remain, the crime you describe here is not Porn itself, it's not the distribution of said Porn, nor is it the production of the porn. If your story (and every other story about those poor naive country girls) is true, then the crime here is rape. There's a very big difference between your story and the sentence being discussed here, and in no way does your story say anything about the porn industry, only some individual's abuse of naive country girls.
And we come full circle back to your comment that porn that is degrading degrades all women. This is patently false. First what is degrading to you or this naive country girl might not be to someone else. Who are you to decide what is degrading to others ? Your generalisation that came from an anecdote makes your post sound more trollish than someone that actually wants to discuss the state of the porn industry, its consumers and its actors.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Wow.. just Wow. What the fuck has happened to the US? What happened to free speech?
Nothing.
Free speech in American law is rooted in a tradition of unconstrained political debate without fear of government interference.
That is why Norman Rockwell in his "Four Freedoms" series chose the New England town meeting as his model. Freedom of Speech [1943]
The notion that all speech is protected speech has never taken hold.
"Contemporary community standards" is shorthand for saying that society as a whole has the right and the power to set limits.
To decide what it chooses to be and where it chooses to go.
While I don't agree with it in many respects, I don't think that the public policy justification is that difficult to understand, and thus more effectively discuss. This as crime reflects the belief that (1) this material can and will condition people to being erotically stimulated by sexual violence, and (2) doing so would decrease public safety, apparently by increasing violent crime.
Obscenity laws, right or wrong, are intended to address the vague border where speech turns into actions that damage others. By analogue, if someone claims that it their religious belief compels them to kill strangers on the street, it seems reasonable to confine them for public safety reasons, regardless of their right to religious freedom. As for free speech, people who support these laws have found some difference between a movie plot, part of which depicts a person successfully inciting a group to violently attack someone, and actually inciting violence in public (itself an extreme example of free speech).
The underlying aesthetic points to a puritan religious sensibility that treats sexuality as something utterly lacking of value, if not downright sinful. Thus, if something is intended primarily as wank material, it has little redeeming social or artistic value. I suspect that this influence is one reason why publicly-distributed pornography ~20 years older or more seems often to have more in the way of a plot line; many of the 1970s films are essentially bad movies with lots of gratuitious, extended, often looped sex scenes. The idea was that even some minimal plot would turn porn from pure wank material of zero value or worse to at least some story, however poorly told, of which a good part was wank material.
So you're basically agreeing with him. Like you said, and like he said, the fact that she was pressured into it doesn't absolve her of her own responsability. The fact that the pressure might have been too much, and in the end she might not have consented with full rationnal understanding doesn't change the fact that she is ultimately responsable for what happened to her. Exactly like the shooter in the analogy, that doesn't say anything about other's responsability in this. Like everyone you disagreed with here said, she is responsable for what happened to her and the consequences are hers to live with.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
She then wound up having violent sex she wasn't at all in to, then the tape got sold out of gas stations everywhere
Nice, what's the title?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A friend recently told me a story about a girl he knew from his hometown, and I will share the anecdote with you now: This girl's girlfriends got her to come down to LA to do "modeling" which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale she wasn't used to, which then became "modeling with titties", then "modeling with a cock out", etc etc. She then wound up having violent sex she wasn't at all in to, then the tape got sold out of gas stations everywhere, and she couldn't show here face in her home town, now she's some kind of shut-in.
Funny, a friend recently told me a story about a guy his cousin grew up with, whose friends got him to go to university to do "computing science", which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale he wasn't used to, which then became "programming", which then became "programming with VB" etc etc. He then wound up writing Word Macro viruses he wasn't at all into, then the virus infected documents in corporate offices everywhere, and he couldn't show his face in his home town, and now he's some kind of shut-in.
Top-shelf developer, ruined by university.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Fact is we live in (USA) one of the most diverse communities on the planet.
And juries should reflect such diversity.
You don't find it the least bit hypocritical that you talk about how degrading and dehumanizing porn can be, yet you refer to this woman as ruined "top shelf pussy"?
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
It's quite possible that some of them killed themselves!
Does that mean it's okay to intentionally coerce her into doing something she doesn't want to do through a combination of false pretenses and other lies?
So we can ban advertising now? Last I checked a huge part of our economy works on the same principles.
Bullshit. Now we all get to live with the consequences. We're all on this planet together.
The second someone tries to protect me from making stupid decisions, is the second I bash them in the face. I say this because its based on your idea of what a stupid decision is, and not some universal, a priori truth of what actually consists of a stupid decision. YOU are not the arbiter of morality, common sense, or anything else, there is nothing that elevates you to this position. You are just as dumb as the rest of us. Your version of morality is no better than mine, and your common sense is just as oxymoronical as mine.
This is what pisses me off, self righteous morons trying to tell me how to live.
Sure, its a sad story, thats fine. We all have those, even if they aren't as dramatic. But the lady made her own choices.
Banning and censoring things is a negative action, since we remove freedoms from people. This is wrong, unless you can prove the basis of your higher authority. What is needed is POSITIVE action, meaning equipping people with the proper tools to make "proper" choices, this means knowledge and education, not telling them arbitrarily what they may or may not do, or what they may or may not enjoy.
I'm sure you have some foible I find absolutely idiotic, would you mind stopping it? No? Then you wouldn't mind if I passed laws legislating my opinions, forcing them on you? Right?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Jesus, you're an ass. He hasn't changed his story a bit. And he never said that porn should be banned; in fact, if you re-read his original post, the last sentence was something to the effect of, all that said, the statement of the US Attorney made him sick.
What he said was, in a lot of the porn that portrays degradation and exploitation of women, those women really ARE being degraded and exploited. The fact is, US obscenity law doesn't care about that -- it is based on puritan morality standards that the poster rightly rejected. However his point that the porn industry is a messed up industry with a lot of casualties is quite true. (Same is probably true of the tobacco industry or the oil industry, for example). Yes the girl should have had her wits and her self esteem about her enough to call in rape charges when things first went to far. But the fact that she didn't does not mean that the people who did this to her are without blame or that they are simply exercising their free speech. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
They plead guilty to the ACT, they were arguing that it was NOT a crime.
If you were arrested for looking at someone, then asked in court if you indeed committed an "act of observation", would you lie and say you never looked or say you looked but that you had every right to do so?
Did you even actually read his story or his comments, or did you just trot out your all-too-stereotypical knee-jerk response to any story you hear about porn and abuse? For fuck's sake, the guy never said "porn degrades all women." He told a story about a girl who got in the porn industry - a story that is indeed all too typical - and pointed out that parts of the industry really are abusive to real people. Yes the crime here is rape, among other things -- I don't think the original poster has denied this at all. And I think it's possible to see this without saying "all porn should be banned."
Or maybe talking about, and making light of a situation has the potential to create greater engagement. History seems to bear that even without a letter to congress.
Are you kidding? As anime, at least a dozen young korean children chained to radiators were exploited in the creation of the work. Someone's gotta animate that shit.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data" FYI.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
If you were arrested for looking at someone, then asked in court if you indeed committed an "act of observation", would you lie and say you never looked or say you looked but that you had every right to do so?
Straw man aside, here's the exact article and summary wording
...pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet
Note that if they claimed the material was not obscene they could have pleaded not guilty...what they did instead was concede some material as obscene, non-protected speech and take a plea deal for a reduced sentence. Without seeing the videos I can't say for sure if what they were doing was truly criminal (the article is a little vague) and that they made the best decision for themselves, though I highly doubt that I would agree with the DOJ on this one.
Male feminists like you really piss me off. Like most feminists, your well meant, if naive, emotive rhetoric ignores the fact that WOMEN ARE THE EQUALS OF MEN. They are just as capable of decision making as men, and your line of reasoning robs women of agency. If you believe in equality, anything that you say about the women in porn would have to apply equally to the men. Are you telling us that most of the men in porn are innocent angels who were coerced into it? No, because you think that every woman is a bimbo. Sure, sure - a few of them, when they get into trouble will play up to cultural superstitions and say "Yeah, it was the evil MEN who made me, the innocent victim, do it." But those women are in a tiny minority. If the story about the girl from your home town is true, the people who caused her problems were the feminists who perpetuated the daft idea that porn is evil, thus re-enforcing the stigma of participating in it. I say, what did the woman do that was wrong?
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
one of the actresses were forced to have anal sex with 10 men.
So there was a gun to her head? Someone was physically keeping her from walking off set? If the answer to those questions is "no", then this isn't an issue, as there was no force involved.
Other films have had women performing felatio while being hit in the face and humiliated, and many even threw up. Other films again had women drink vomit and other bodily fluids. This is some sick stuff!
Again; gun? physical force? No? No issue still.
Some people actually enjoy this stuff. Sure, I find it disturbing, but that's my business, just as what gets other off is theirs, and only theirs (as long as it consensual between all parties). I have a couple friends who are into "swinging", and bondage. I don't personally agree with either of these things, but it is wholly their business. It doesn't affect me in the slightest. Some people like rough sex, and copraphilia, this is also fine, it doesn't affect me in the slightest.
You might be suprised at what the people around you are actually into, and what they fantasize about. There is actually an successful industry based around women degrading powerful men, the men ENJOY it apparently. A lot of porn is bizarre, because that is what we want. We are bizarre.
I don't think it's the sex part they were taken in for, but the repugnant degradation of a human being.
But what if that is what they want? Have they actually proven that these actresses were forced to act this way? That they didn't enjoy it? That it was rape?
But I must say, these two people were into some sick stuff, and from what I read about them, there weren't always _consenting_ adults around... Sick, sick, sick.
[citation needed]
Whatever your neighbors do in their bedroom might shock the hell out of you, if you knew.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Hmmm, I don't really see where he called her stupid. Let me re-read it...
Nope, still don't see it.
Can you help me out by pointing out where that is?
since almost everyone looks at porn
Umm, maybe on slashdot, but not in the real world.
In any case, to answer the original question, "porn" is not illegal, but "obscenity" is. And "obscenity" is currently defined in US common law according to the standard set forth in Miller v. California (1973); there's a halfway decent summary of the standard on Wikipedia. It's ultimately a pretty subjective determination and it's based on puritan standards of morality rather than on things like actual harm to participants and/or viewers.
I'm not so sure about that. The Supreme Court has consistently held that obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment. This rule stretches back to the 1800s.
The test that they use is three-part (the Miller test):
Note that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment because it is, as a matter of law, obscenity.
I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. This is not legal advice.
Sure they do. Course, here in the States, you can go to jail for 'possession of kiddie porn' for having copies of certain animes laying around, on the theory that some child somewhere was exploited to make it, even though, as anime, no children whatsoever were involved. Talk about victimless crimes, if no kids are involved, how can it be kiddie porn?
That's just not true. I mean, you can be arrested for any sort of nonsense, but the current common law thinking in the US is quite the opposite -- the most recent case I'm aware of is Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition which held that in order to be not protected by the first amendment, the material must involve the actual exploitation of children. (Or be held "obscene" but that is a totally different issue). In fact, the City of LA even dropped the case it had against Paul Little for "virtual child porn" - involving over-18 actresses portrayed as under age - after the Ashcroft case was decided. The idea that anime porn would not be protected speech is really off base.
I doubt they'll do prison time. I suspect this because they copped a plea to get their sentence down to a year and a day, and a sentence of a year and a day is typically imposed (rather than something shorter) because this is the minimum sentence that makes the defendant still qualify for alternative punishment (I forget the federal term of art, but it something evocative of the more famous "parole"--there is no parole for federal law, however).
Can you defend why you think it's OK to infringe on the freedom of speech when it affects minors and those who cannot provide effective consent? It sounds like you're cherrypicking, too.
My point is that everyone cherrypicks. Unrestrained freedom of speech would permit murder and child rape. The founding fathers obviously did not intend this meaning, despite writing that the freedom of speech shall not be infringed.
You see, here in America we dont actually have those freedoms that you may have heard about in your country. Its not real. Its all an act to make us feel better about ourselves. Here in America we always think we're the best country because we have freedom and the best of everything. We're very arrogant like that.
We dont like to learn that we're not really free, or that our country isnt as good to its citizens as many other nations are.... so we close our eyes and say we're the best country there is. Its just easier that way.
Its easier to feel better about yourself by lying to yourself.
America is a corrupt nation. We have no freedom of the press, no real health care, and we're being bled dry financially by corporations that being capitalism is supposed to kill a country.
Our history books are full of lies to make us feel better about ourselves. Even this weekend we will be celebrating our "Independence Day" (4th of July) which is supposed to stand for freedom. We will be having our 4th of July parties and eating our food and never think once about what real independence means. What real freedom means...
It will never even cross our minds. We will be too busy eating hamburgers and hot dogs and goofing off with friends and family. We dont like to deal with reality much here in America. That is why we have slowly let the America that you learned about, die.
While I think the Miller Test replaced "I know it when I see it" at the SCOTUS level, the fact of the matter is that the Miller Test is "I know it when I see it", just applied at a lower level. If this gets appealed, I'm sure the SCOTUS will just say "well, after the most dire of voires, the prosecutors managed to find 12 stuck-up prudes that were offended by your movie, so it's obscene". The real problem is that the government has managed to convince everyone that "obscenity" isn't speech. Since they control the definition of obscenity, they control the definition of speech.
As I noted above it won't get appealed - they pleaded guilty. But what you say here is spot on: "The real problem is that the government has managed to convince everyone that 'obscenity' isn't speech." There is a state Supreme Court that held otherwise -- Oregon v. Henry -- effectively decriminalizing "obscenity" in the state. Their rationale was that the notion of a sexual "obscenity" exemption didn't exist at the time the first amendment was crafted. It would be interesting to see if the Sup Court ever dealt with this question but I don't expect any member of the current Court to be willing to reconsider whether obscenity could be protected speech.
But this wasn't obscene, as in "I know it when I see it"! Now if there'd been some boobies in it...
First amendment: You have the right to free speech, unless I (or rather somebody with extreme moral views in a position of power) see it differently.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Be careful pointing out the double standard because the powers that be will simply put an end to films like SAW rather than realize the hypocrisy of their holy war.
When have you EVER heard of the people voting back the strip clubs into a neighborhood?
Those who have power will use it to destroy our country for personal gain and they will succeed.
Soon films like SAW will be banned as well. Just wait.
Thank you for the summaries of the movies, but you left out an explanation of "1001 Ways to Eat My Jizz." Can you please tell us what this film is about? kthxbye
According to the Miller Test, it passes because it does not depict sex or disposal of waste in an offensive manner, its not intended for sexual arousal, and it has a serious plot.
OR it has a serious plot. Not "and." Big difference.
What the fuck has happened to the US? What happened to free speech?
Californians don't bother to learn who their politicians are and vote based on name recognition alone, hence we got Ronald Reagan as a president. This same idiot actor is the one who gave birth to Reaganomics and neoconservatism, both are ideas whose time came and went sometime before society was invented.
Furries make the internet go.
Someone please mod this up. Everyone in this discussion seems to have missed that they pleaded guilty. They granted the prosecutors' argument that the material was "obscene." They could have challenged it -- I think on at least one of the films involved they would have had a strong case -- but they chose not to. They probably made the right choice given the resources they had to fight this, but that's neither here nor there - the point is, the Court really wasn't asked to determine whether or not this material was "obscene." A huge majority of the comments on this page assume it made a decision about that.
George Carlin did engage in several court cases relating to his comedy that helped protect free speech. In the Milwaukee Seven case his work was ruled to be protected, because while it was indecent it was not obscene. The same speech was deemed to fall under the FCC's control in the Pacifica case. He probably did more to protect free speech in this country by just doing his bit than he ever would have been able to by turning it into a purely political effort.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
I mod you +1 Interesting. I did not know that. But that's tangential to my real (glib) point which is that their speech was not actually protected.
Ok, sure, and to be honest I was being somewhat glib about it. The OP clearly meant that it was "protected speech" in the sense that it "should be protected." I'm just saying that, for whatever ultimate reason, it wasn't actually protected by anyone.
Personally, I think it's distasteful that there are laws on the books such that they can be put in a position to plead guilty without it being clearly shown that either a substantive crime was committed in the production of the material (e.g., rape) or that the material was distributed in such a way as to cause actual harm (e.g., something other than transmitted/shipped to adults, and I'm aware that I'm using "actual harm" in a funny way here, there could be a whole 'nother debate about whether seeing something unpleasant causes actual harm to anyone). Basically, I don't see much legitimate reason for "A and B decide to film some act and then C sends them $59.95 plus S&H to get a copy of that tape" to generate even the threat of prison time for A, B, or C.
No one said unrestrained freedoms. There is no freedom where anyone's actions are unrestrained. Is it a paradox, to a point yes. But saying "I don't think you should be allowed to eat shit on video and then sell that video because it's against community standards" is an absurd limitation. If they want to eat shit and sell it, and if someone wants to buy it, then who the hell are you? No one's making you buy those videos. It's not like those videos are playing on network TV. In fact, you pretty much have to go out of your way to even find those videos.
You're just being idiotic, and I think you know it. "Community standards" is just a euphamism for widely-held prejudices.
I wouldn't watch a shit eating video if my life depended on it, but it's none of my business whether you do or not, or whether you decide to make those videos. Why do you care so much about other peoples' business? Are you secretly afraid that you might decide you like to eat shit after watching a shit-eating video? Do you feel some inner weakness here that causes you to respond in this way to the thought of someone profiting from shit-eating videos? Perhaps the problem isn't with the shit-eaters, but with you. If that's the case, see a shrink, and quit harassing the shit-eaters.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Mary Beth Buchanan has a long history of politically motivated prosecutions. A real heroine of the Bush years.
You haven't been at your wits end, have you? I've been in a mentally abusing relationship as a young woman. No-one held a gun at my head, but I could not leave. The point is this: sometimes you do things you don't want to, because you think you have no options.
I have NO problem with people who like to do these things, BUT there is a GREAT possibility that the people who are IN the films don't want it to happen. To them it's a job, and it's probably pretty degrading to THEM. But they may feel they have no options but to do them, whether they like it or not. Note that I am not talking about normal porn here. I am talking about things that really has nothing to do with sex, but humiliation. This is what they say about themselves: "Extreme Associates bills itself as having the hardest hardcore pornography on the Internet. The studio's content has been described as "extremely violent", "shocking", "slasher porn" and "patently offensive". In an interview with Salon.com Borden said of Extreme's content, "It's disgusting but I like to watch it because it's shocking"."
As I said, when I read the article, I thought exactly like you. "This is ridiculous." Then I did my research, and I realised this wasn't normal porn. If you need more citations, read the article, and follow the link to Wikipedia about Extreme Associates. Here, let me give you the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Associates
And let me quote: "Kristi Myst broke down during the filming of In The Days of Whore. After having had anal sex for several hours with three men she was told that she had to do anal with another seven men, although she had not agreed to this before the shoot. At this point Myst began crying and wanted to walk off the set and quit the business rather than complete her scene. She eventually relented after being consoled by Tom Byron. Brandon Iron who was present has said the incident was "the foulest thing I have ever witnessed" on a porn shoot." Iron is the guy who tried to sell his slap happy series to 34 companies before this brand of people came along; the guy I talked about with the vomiting during oral sex.
Other quotes: "The filming of Lizzy Borden's movie Forced Entry, which included several simulated rapes, was covered in the PBS Frontline documentary American Porn which aired on February 7, 2002; the makers of the documentary were repulsed and walked off the set."
I will also say this: I have NO problem with people doing whatever they want to behind closed door, as long as they are consenting adults. Heck, I don't mind them filming it and selling it. But where do you draw the line? THAT is what the court has done.
And btw, how do you know that what _I_ do in my bedroom doesn't shock you?
Un paio di scarpe, per favore!
You haven't been at your wits end, have you? I've been in a mentally abusing relationship as a young woman. No-one held a gun at my head, but I could not leave. The point is this: sometimes you do things you don't want to, because you think you have no options.
To belay the fact that I'm not some inhuman troll, I agree with this. But, legislating from this is a slippery slope type problem. Tragedy happens, but I don't think its the place of government to legislate it away. It, to use a weak, non-car-based analogy, is like trying to ban alcohol because we know that some people can't handle it; or banning video games because a small bunch of kids have problems distinguishing reality from fantasy. I can understand the human part of this, but I have something against attacking people for the sake of the lowest common denominator.
We must watch out for hurting the majority for a minority.
As I stated before, we should be providing opportunities for these people, and not taking away anything. If your stuck in the bottom, we should provide escape, and not carpet bomb the bottom. Yes, I'm mangling metaphors, I need more coffee.
I went to college in a rather small town, so small it only had one strip club. Most of the strippers were college students trying to pay their way through school. Some of these girls were demeaned by their jobs, heavily so. I knew a couple though who LOVED it, and this isn't hyperbole.
I'm sure we could read deeper into this, I personally think there is something strange about people who like heavy torture sex, find bodily fluids a turn on. I think these spring from deeper psychological problems. But this should have no bearing on the practice being allowed or not. The sexual quirks are a symptom of a deeper issue, we must address that before we can address anything else.
Sorry for jumping on you, I'm sick of people legislating morality, or people who use the term "know better". My girlfriend has lesbian neighbors, and I always want to invite our more conservative friends over, and tell them that there are gay people doing gay things next door, and the world hasn't collapsed yet.
And btw, how do you know that what _I_ do in my bedroom doesn't shock you?
I'm sure it might, especially if there is battery clamps involved. Seriously, though, as long as its in your bedroom, I don't much care what you do, or do to whom. And I think we need to watch out, because there are people who do, and we don't want to give them more power to restrict this.
I'm sure it might.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Because the Miller test is only about sexual content. There is no similar standard for violence. So, according to the law, speech can be restricted when it deals with sex (obscenity) or hate, but no amount of graphic violence can render a movie or book unprotected.
So, because we fail to regulate abuse x and abuse y by law, we should quit trying to regulate abuse z by law?
That's another slippery slope.
Hazing can get pretty abusive. Should we allow all forms of hazing just because we allow mild forms of hazing? Should illegal acts of violence committed during hazing be allowed because it's "just hazing" and (theoretically) the initiates asked to be hazed by signing up for the fraternity/sorority?
Should such such violent hazing (ergo, done without stunts and special effects) that is recorded on film be allowed because it's an expression of free speech?
In fact, there are all sorts of slippery slopes here.
Should we allow people to maim themselves on film in the name of art? How about committing suicide?
Should we allow films in which the actors are hired (in other words, it's in the script and in their contracts) to actually maim themselves, or commit suicide, or be murdered on film?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner",
:)
The thing the prosecutors appear to have missed is that video porn is acting. There's plenty of degrading scenes in non porn (including big budget) movies. But you don't see these people going after Hollywood...
I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose..
Considering that quite a few "family values" types have turned out to be perverts and/or rapists you never know
That you go to prison for porn or nudity, in a supposedly modern, first-world state.
I'm sorry, but that is purest theocratic behavior!
And by the way: So they were forbidden to do it, because God forbid there might get any porn on the Internet?!?
Were they (the plaintiff, the judge, the jury) ever in their whole life on the Internet, or did they ever heard about it?
This is really sick and perverse... what religious schizophrenia can make people do to other people. I hope religion dies in its own hell!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
1st, 2nd, 3rd person.
There is no 4th person, everything neither you nor your interlocutor have direct knowledge of is hearsay.
That means that pretty much everything on the 'net is hearsay.
Therefore, even if I were to claim first person knowledge, you have an excuse to ignore what I say.
Or you could consider the locker-room logic of pornography.
You have first-hand knowledge. You chose to call it entertaining because the "cool" crowd called it entertaining.
I choose to call it abusive and leave. I have seen occasions where, had I not intervened, someone would not have been allowed to leave.
There have been other occasions where I failed to intervene, and the person who was the target was coerced into something they didn't really want to do. And then they were stuck. Do they admit they let themselves be taken advantage of, or do they claim to "enjoy it" after all?
And that's one question that I don't see treated properly in these discussions -- how many of us do it because someone says it's cool? We know that there will be people who get coerced or fooled into participating.
How abusive does it have to be before the law has to step in and say, no, cool doesn't cover some things when we know that there will be some participants who get coerced or fooled into participating?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
You have to consider the definition of "harm" though.
If you consume something that's bad for you, it may cause you to be more likely to die earlier, thus increasing my taxes or my insurance premiums, or maybe leaving your kids with nobody to take care of them. If you're using offensive language in front of young children, you may be causing them or their parents emotional harm.
If you really aren't hurting anyone else, I've got no problems with it...but that scenario is pretty rare.
we don't know that the production is actually consensual in every case. We do hear about those who supposedly enjoy about it, but we often only hear about those who don't after they commit suicide or OD or end up afraid to leave the house or something.
These sorts of things also happen to people involved in other parts of the entertainments industry. Wikipedia lists 249 (regular) actors who have committed suicide, but only 12 porn actors. As well as 98 popular musicians.
The point of free speech is not to protect what you agree with, but what you don't agree with. If free speech didn't offend someone, you wouldn't need the amendment .
Sure, accidents happen in every industry.
Too much regulation. Too little regulation.
Right now, the "entertainment industry" is not regulating itself. Too many envelopes being pushed at once. That's going to invite regulation.
However, 12 of 249 is what? 5%? Does the porn industry account for 5% of actors overall? Is one in 20 actors working in porn?
To tell the truth, I'm inclined to think it's time to dissolve the RIAA and MPAA, not just because they are screwing with the copyright law, but because they've enabled the entertainment industry to become too big, too centralized. When things get that big, the government has to watch their activities much more closely. Minor abuses in big industries quickly become major abuse, where similar things in small industry will not become so much a part of the momentum of the industry that society has to do something.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Well, I was just playing devil's advocate.
I took a free speech class in law school, and I argued for the most liberating interpretation of the Free Speech Clause. I still came down against true threats as unprotected speech (burning crosses across the street from a black family, making a webpage "KILL THESE PEOPLE" with a list of abortion doctors and their children's schools, etc.), but I did argue that public nudity ought to be protected as expression save for public health concerns.
I think obscenity ought also to be protected; I never heard a good argument against it in law school that didn't resort to "society shouldn't have to support things it finds morally objectionable," which, as you are aware, is completely antithetical to what the First Amendment is all about.
Of course, some people think the Free Speech Clause is all about prior restraint and nothing else, but I think that's bunk.
The English kicked the Puritans out, and I think it's time for Americans to do the same.
Noone kicked the Puritans out, they simply decided to sail across the sea to America to found Jesusland. And, as the topic at hand clearly demonstrates, they were successful.
You're staring at one of the reasons for regulating the obscene and you can't even see it.
Maybe it's her fault she trusted the wrong friends. Maybe it's her fault she thought that any kind of modeling might be in some sense legit.
Maybe it's your fault your stupid, too.
Or, maybe you're one of those friends she shouldn't have trusted.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Government is not the only institution that can take people's freedoms away.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
We are talking about some of the victims, here. If we even admit that sometimes people are induced into it through improper influences, it's not victimless.
Yeah, social and economic activities tend more to abuse when driven underground, but I don't want to invite government regulation, either. We should, as a society, be able to regulate ourselves. (Or, maybe, I should say, learn to regulate ourselves.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Just to add, here is what they plead guilty too: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1465.html Now, if any one could help me out on this, what does the DOJ mean by obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy. I could say Playboy was that, but that's just my moral beliefs. Anyone have a DOJ dictionary or some/such?
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
We don't know whether the sex you're having with your wife is consensual. Maybe you keep her locked up in the basement and then force her to have sex. Or maybe she was destitute and your marriage was her ticket to a warm meal every day. So, obviously, we should eliminate marriage, right?
As long as people are alive, they have to go to the toilet regularly. Cleaning up after that is not exactly the safest job, but it is honorable, even though society doesn't always recognize that it is.
Janitors are necessary in any society that maintains infrastructures.
Sex is not as necessary as some want to say it is, but it isn't exactly something the race can live without, either.
Porn is not exactly necessary. In fact, for most people, porn is either superfluous or actually offensive.
It is a necessary fact (different meaning of necessary, here) that porn exists.
What some people view and use as physiological diagrams, others (or even some of the same) will view and use pornographically. That's going to happen in a society of free, imperfect people. We don't want to regulate that because regulating it will require judging too many people's intent too regularly basis.
It's better when people will keep their behavior within reasonable limits, so as not to cause problems for others.
We know about endorphins. They are natural, but they do cloud judgement. Inducing them with pornography is somewhat similar to pushing opiates, even though a lot of people don't want to admit it.
I'm going to go out on a limb, here. I think there are some people who have personal issues that (temporarily) viewing pornography may help them work out. If I'm thinking this way, I'm thinking that we would want them to be consulting some sort of psychiatrist or spiritual leader as long as they are doing this. I'm not sure we have any specialty field capable of handling it, however. The porn industry and the sex industry at this point in time are too biased towards making money.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This girl's girlfriends got her to come down to LA to do "modeling" which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale she wasn't used to, ... Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn. There's nothing happy about that story.
She's an adult? Then she's responsible for her actions. She wasn't ruined by porn, she was ruined by being irresponsible. It's not the law's purpose to protect adults from doing stupid, irresponsible things with their lives.
One, maybe if this kind of story is posted all the time it is because it happens all the time.
Two, if you can't have sympathy for people who get sucked into this kind of thing, then I suppose you can't have sympathy for people who get pushed into buying vacuum cleaners from door-to-door salespersons or drugs laced with cyanide on the streetcorner.
Or for the shy kid in the locker room who gets pushed into giving the jock head, or for the scared and not-quite-innocent jokers on the sidelines who watched it play out. Or for the guy who might have been able to stop it but left because he could see what was happening and didn't want to risk getting his head beat in again.
Or for the (pregnant, no less) woman whose husband, for his own supposed glory, berates her and otherwise uses bad logic on her, and finally, when all else fails, drugs her up, wraps her up in explosives, and sends her out on a suicide mission to show them damn yanks a thing or two.
Degrading? Yeah, pornography degrades, but when you've degraded yourself, it's easy to pretend it doesn't.
It may be a sin to let a bleeding heart move you to make bad laws, but a bleeding heart is not a sin. And it isn't a sin to try to help people who get caught in these kinds of traps.
Or maybe you're one of those who think you profit from catching people in traps?
But if the industry can't regulate itself, bad laws are going to end up being made. So get off your high horse and listen to reason.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Yeah, but you're not watching me have sex with my wife.
(I assume.)
There are better things to do than watch people have sex, you know.
Things like living with your sex partner.
And, if she thought you were her ticket out of poverty or something else bad, treating her as well as you can so she can believe she is free after all.
So, no, we shouldn't eliminate marriage, neither from society nor from the discussion of morals.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
He diddn't say that porn degrades all women, but he implied that porn was what ruined her life. Not being raped or taken advantage of but rather the fact that she was in a porno and people knew it.
Hmm. I suppose we don't want to make laws against deliberately maiming oneself. Not that we think it's a good idea, but that it would be hard to enforce.
We really don't want to make laws that would prevent contracts where there is a possibility of one party to the contract ending up getting maimed in fulfillment of the contract. That would put professional stunt actors and professional sports and firefighting and all sorts of other things outside the realm of contract. (At least, with the current legal definition of contract, we wouldn't want that.)
And if you can't see a difference between, say, contracting a motorcycle stuntman to make a dangerous jump with plenty of preperation and contracting an inexperienced young motorcyclist to crash a motorcycle into a wall at high speeds, for the express purpose of filming the injury processes, well, it's going to be hard to talk with you.
Legal or otherwise, there are some potential acts of business that should not be engaged in, and, sometimes the difference is in fact a matter of intent.
And a camera rolling implies something about the intent, too.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Maybe she needs time to heal the wounds of being betrayed by friends before she allows herself to be put _back_ in the limelight by taking this to trial.
Maybe she never quite ends up healing enough to dare.
Being sensitive is not necessarily a sin.
And you are not her psychiatrist.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
No, my final defense will be this, when I get to it:
You have to face the consequences of your own blindness. I can't do that for you.
But I can try to tell you that you are blind. Which I have done several times unsuccessfully.
But how many of your friends would consume human waste for money and fame? Could I tell you how I think money and fame aren't worth the health risk of consuming human waste?
How many of your friends would consume human waste for the indirect sexual thrill? Could I tell you how I think sexual thrills can be had with much less danger?
Yeah, I can defend this conviction under quite a few different theoretical frameworks of liberty, and some notions of liberty as well. So far, you don't seem to be willing to listen. You don't seem to understand that freedom cannot be absolute if you want to do anything.
Physics -- Friction restricts freedom, but can you get any traction without friction? Can you move at all without any restrictions?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Noone kicked the Puritans out, they simply decided to sail across the sea to America to found Jesusland. And, as the topic at hand clearly demonstrates, they were successful.
The Puritans were persecuted right onto those leaky boats. Unfortunately, they were neither persecuted hard enough, nor were the boats sufficiently leaky.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't forget their little legal litmus tests and stuff. It's like a religion, it's like shamanism, the average person can get nailed on something because we have so many obscure laws.
This is what you get when a country is overrun by truly obscene parasites called "lawyers" and eventually virtually becomes run by them, to their own benefit. Also note that the witch-hunter-in-chief, Beth Buchanan has a long history of ideologically-motivated abuses of her office and is probably the most obscene individual in this whole fucking sorry affair.
As to "rebooting" America, good luck with that. History teaches us that these things do not happen. And pretty much everyone who paid any attention whatsoever over the last few decades can see that in fact all the parts of Western civilization that were born in the Enlightenment, when reason and humanism triumphed over the superstitions and blind acceptance of societal "oder" of the Dark Ages, are now in decline. The "America" that you bemoan being lost was a part of that progress, its Founding Fathers' ideas being born in that Enlightenment. And so we get the misfortune to live our days in this long twilight of yet another era, to be replaced by an epoch of authoritarianism, fascist-like ideologies and ruled by limitless greed. A new Dark Age is upon us.
The good news, although not for our generation, is that history is a never ending cycle of booms and busts, and so after these Dark Ages, another Enlightenment will come. Although this knowledge will be of little comfort to those who are yet to die in Iraq-style wars of Imperial Conquest, or as victims of never-ending "wars" on "drugs", "porn", "ill manners", "religious views incompatible with the state religion" and whatever other calamities are to come during the thrashing of dying throes of this epoch's Enlightenment.
It is enough to get one quite depressed.
The government must be held to a standard that allows only such specific bans on speech as the classic "fire in a crowded theater".
Sure, make it illegal to intentionally cause panic in a theater, but don't make it illegal to yell "fire" anywhere, otherwise the next thing in line is any other speech that someone believes causes a problem. It's really the causing of the panic that is the problem anyway. No one cares when yelling "fire" is one of the lines in the play, nor would anyone really care as much if the yelling of "fire" simply failed to cause a panic.
There just isn't a legitimate reason to limit the freedom of speech. You can make it illegal to cause panic, you can make it illegal to harass people, but there's just no reason at all to ever limit speech that fails to cause any harm, let alone speech between two consenting adults.
I think the simple test is to ask whether or not anyone could cause the same problem without saying anything. Surely the same panic in a theater can be caused without saying anything. People can certainly harass one another without saying anything. If it can be done without saying anything, then clearly speech isn't the problem, but merely the chosen method.
If pornography is illegal simply because it is "obscene" then we're fucked since you can't argue that no one finds it offensive, but if it's illegal because it is harmful, then there's room to argue that it isn't harmful at all, or at least not harmful enough to matter. (We allow the sale of tobacco, after all.)
It's simply dumb that pornography be limited because some people have declared that it doesn't say anything worthwhile. At the very least, all pornography communicates to people that they're not as alone as they thought, since they're not the only person in the world with a particular interest.
Beautifully put.
First they came for the porn stars, but I did nothing because I was not a porn star. Then they came for the dirty magazine publishers, but I did nothing because I am not a dirty magazine publisher. Then they came for the pin-up girls, but I did nothing because I am not a pin-up girl...
...and then we had no porn, and no one came.
There, fixed that for ya.
And for most of those years, it was believed that masturbation was sinful and lead to disease, and that sodomy was something so immoral that it needed to be criminalised. (The arguments against sodomy were basically identical to the arguments against obscenity, and were once upheld in 1986 (Bowers v. Hardwick) only to be reversed in 2003.) We know better now, about all of these things, including the effects of "obscene" material -- and the Supreme Court ought to, too, if it ever finally gets back to them.
[insert witty comment here]
No, there are a lot of old-fashioned porn laws still in effect around the country. Here in Utah, for example, there are so many regulations about where and how you can sell porn, that it's close to impossible to buy explicit porn from a physical store. There are also laws on the books that make it illegal to receive porn through the mail and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to view porn online, but since those are such small crimes and impossible to enforce they're never prosecuted.
I'm pretty sure there are other places across the country where the situation is similar.
Yeah, that's actually what the law states w.r.t. obscenity in the US. There is a pretty famous court case against a porn distributor where a lawyer subpoenaed pay-per-view records from hotels in the area, which proved that watching porn was very common in the community.
I believe the term I've heard used is "I'll know it when I see it."
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Nobody from your "side" has addressed the point. You keep calling them rapists, but if they were rapists why weren't they charged with rape?
If the girl was raped, don't you think the government would go after that (extremely serious) crime before charging them with the relatively minor crime of distributing obscenity?
Rape fantasy is actually pretty common. Percentage-wise it's probably a very small portion of porn, but I wouldn't say it's any more extreme than BSDM, snuff films, hentai, or other niche movies that most people find weird and/or disturbing.
I'm not the one "putting this in the limelight". Appatrntyl it;s already so.
And you are not her psychiatrist.
Who is the one pontificating about "healing wounds", etc, etc?
YOU are not her psychiatrist.
According to what we have heard of the story, she has secluded herself.
One doesn't have to play psychiatrist to guess that she may not be emotionally ready for court. One only needs to guess that there may be a reason for her not pressing a case to shrug and say, "Maybe there is a reason for her not pressing a case."
On the other hand, one does have to take the position that one knows more about what's best for her than she herself does to demand that she should go to court and face those who attacked her.
Do you think you know that much more about what is good for her than she herself does? Do you really want to assume that she hasn't already been in contact with lawyers, psychiatric help or psychological counseling, and maybe even the police?
Maybe you want to be her psychiatrist? or her lawyer, or priest, social therapist, police liaison or whatever? Just so you can spout your artificial ideologies at whim?
Do you really think you know more about what about what she should do than she does?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Let the healing begin. Or fuck off, I don't care.
My point is that everyone cherrypicks. Unrestrained freedom of speech would permit murder and child rape. The founding fathers obviously did not intend this meaning, despite writing that the freedom of speech shall not be infringed.
No, unrestrained freedom of speech would permit MATERIAL THAT DEPICTED these acts being distributed. I say that's fair enough. Thing is, THE ACTS THEMSELVES would still be illegal. Do you really have such a hard time distinguishing a piece of video and an actual raping of a child?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I see nobody's answered your original question - where's Larry in all this. Extreme Associates actually asked for his help, and he declined. He sees this kind of porn as a threat to the industry. He said "It's cutting your own throat. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment, it takes an idiot to create a product that he knows he can't defend in court that's going to send him to prison." So Larry's not going to come bail these guys out.
Perhaps, but you should really respond to what he actually wrote rather than what you believe he implied. In any case, I think your inference is mistaken.
I saw the documentary "Deep Throat" some time ago, and it said that there were still laws against porn in the US - I couldn't believe it, but it seems to be true.
But wait. I thought the idea was that if the laws were unconstitutional and passed by the federal government, *they didn't apply* and your defense would simply be that the law was unconstitutional and therefore you've broken no law that applied. Any anti-porn law would seem to violate amendment 1. Could someone tell me how those laws being existance (because of boneheaded prudes) changes things?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
It may not be your taste, but that sounds like "high art" to me.
Oh, didn't various Supreme Courts rule on that a few years ago. Something about photos of Robert Mapelthorpe buggering himself with a bull-whip? One of my colleagues has a photo of that on his living room ceiling, above the dining table.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
By that logic....
Drinking = good
Driving = great
Drinking and Driving = Horrible
Above system of equations = travesty of justice
The 5th amendment said it saw nothing.
Fixed that for ya.
First, I don't think you're an inhuman troll :) I just think that like most, you (and I) read the article, which seems like "what are they talking about" and jumped on the assumption that they were trying to legislate porn. I honestly do not think that was what the case was about. I think it was a case about drawing the line. How depraved is our porn going to get before we say no? We have (fortunately!) said no to child porn. This band of people had films were overage actors were dressed to look younger than 18 to have sex with older men. I believe that is not allowed, they HAVE to look older than 18, if I remember correctly (I may be wrong).
As for porn, I am ambivalent. As you said, some do it because they don't have any other options, while others love it. I am of the strong opinion that whatever two consenting adults do, is THEIR option, and we should not meddle. I am European, as I mentioned, where nakedness is very normal, where sex isn't legislated as it is here. Most of Europe let 16 year old (and some younger, I think Iceland it's 14) have sex legally. We don't have laws that ban oral sex (like my state, VA, does). I think a lot of what is wrong with the US is the "moral" people. I probably should say Christian (right), because that's really who we're talking about. As a Christian it pains me that we have forgotten the lessons of Jesus to turn the other cheek, but that's a discussion for another time.
Oh, well, no to go look for a new battery ;) (I _am_ joking!)
Un paio di scarpe, per favore!
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance". When's the last time you saw the average american really being vigilant about threats to their here-on-the-doorstep freedom (as opposed to sucking in the crap about tiny barely surviving third-world terrorist groups wanting to destroy a superpower)?
Not just titties.
Hundreds of comments and no one has brought up the specifics of the porn they were making and convicted of.
Lizzie Borden and her husband caught the attention of the feds because of a documentary called American Porn, being filmed by PBS Frontline. Borden directs the movies, and for this particular film (a rape movie) Borden had hired her friend as the rape victim. Borden never told her friend exactly what was going to happen to her and Frontline didn't know either.
After the actress is thrown into the back of the van she was taken to a deserted building where 2 male "actors" proceed to actually beat the actress with fists while having sex with her. That's when the Frontline producer ordered his crew to stop filming and leave the premises. The film ends with the actors fakingly slitting the actress's throat and leaving her in a pool of blood.
I'm not giving my opinion as to whether this constitutes "obscene" speech, but these are the facts.
Now, I know a lot of folks will say that we see "depictions" like this on TV, but is that the same as someone actually being pummeled by fists while having sex? Discus...
I suspect this is the real reason they went to prison. You can enjoy your odd habits, as long as you keep them out of sight. Its telling other people about it that is the real crime.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I don't understand how a video is speech but the underlying acts are not speech.
Does a theatrical production not qualify as speech until it is videotaped?
It would qualify as speech, because the actors would be expressing themselves in a nonviolent way. Part of raping a child also probably qualifies as speech, but obviously there's the rather important fact that a large part of it also qualifies as causing all sorts of harm to the child, which is the illegal part.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The question is, however, whether "something bad happened to one person" is a valid reason to ban porn. People get coaxed into doing stupid things with guns and end up dead - yet guns are very much legal in the United States. A few rotten apples don't justify the extinction of Malus domestica.
Besides, not even all degrading porn is nonconsensual. I'm just thinking of John Thompson, who makes the "GGG" movies which are about nothing but women being degraded - yet the man has a good reputation (well, in certain circles) and employs only women who are aware of what's going to happen, as detailed by the women themselves. Of course starring in such a flick is still a good way to ruin your reputation but apparently a number of women don't mind that.
I think that legalization of porn would be beneficial. Legalization allows regulation; criminalization not only ensures that the creators are criminals, it also encourages the criminals become peroducers.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Yeah it quite depressing. Its more depressing than the economy. Lets hope it burns down to the ground faster so it can rise from the ashes sooner.
What they apply is what's called community standards"; basically whether you've committed a crime depends on the whims of an otherwise uninvolved third parties too stupid to get out of jury duty.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What do you expect from the /. crowd?
The majority are men.
The majority of these men are more comfortable with machines than people, let alone women.
I'd say it's pretty clear from this thread that the majority have little experience with empathy, let alone sympathy.
This anecdotal story of a woman being abused by pornographers sounds like it might have happened. If there is any basis in fact that this did happen then she should be encourage to contact the police regarding the matter. IANAL, but this sounds like like a variation of date rape.
It has been argued here by some very insensitive clods that this woman acted foolishly and gets what she deserves.
I'd like to put out for your cloddish consideration a thought experiment:
Let's say you actually get out of your mother's basement for a night on the town... you laugh.... bear with me for a moment.
You go out and take your trusty laptop to a old-school coffee shop or a tavern or whatever roost suits your tastes and meet a nice girl.... your laughing again....
You talk for a bit and seem to be getting along.... and you find that she's single, and you both have enough in common that you finally decide to ask her for her phone number..... so you do.
And then suddenly.... there's a not so subtle shift in her demeanor and with a bear minimum of pleasantries she's gone. AND SHE DIDN"T GIVE YOU HER PHONE NUMBER.
Why? Because the odds are that she or a close girl-friend of her's has been raped, it was never reported, and she now has issues trusting men she meets casually in public. It doesn't matter what the specific scenario was in her case( or her girl-friend's), that kind of fear paints all men with the same brush. It makes it far less likely that any random single girl you meet in public is going to give you enough information to follow up with her. The reason has nothing to do with how charming you might be (now I'm laughing ) or anything about you specifically. She might even be quite interested in you. *Ahem*.....
In an environment where 4 out of 5 women have either been raped(I'm using the broadest definition for rape here) or know someone who has, this nice girl's fear is going to check her initial impulse to trust you on any level beyond a casual convo in a public space.
There's a lot more harm done by this combination of fear and remembered pain, and shame. It impacts the good guys because an otherwise attractive an interesting potential date is likely to have a big scary monster hiding under her bed. Trust me on this: you do not want to meet that monster. /soapbox
So, in other words, speech is not completely protected because it can do harm; the harmful parts of speech are not protected. Thus, speech is not completely protected by the First Amendment. We have no quarrel.
Wow. You surprise me.
Are you saying that you don't believe these things happen to real people, or are you saying that, because I gave only general details, you aren't moved by them?
If the former, how far removed from reality are you?
If the latter, let me ask you again, do you have no sympathy for people who, whether through no fault of their own, or perhaps through some minor indiscretion on their part, get caught in the middle of some greedy people's plans to make lots of many in a way that is neither moral nor ethical, but not against some letter of some law, or perhaps (as in this case) somehow defended under some extreme interpretation of extreme concepts of freedom in some artificial world that ought to allow them?
No, even if the latter, how far removed from reality are you?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
So, let me see if I understand what you're saying.
One, you are asserting that pornography is not a crime. I don't see any good argument to support that assertion, but you do seem to assert it.
Two, you are asserting that pornography, as a thing, can be separated from things that often happen during the production or consumption of pornography which are crimes, therefore pornography is not a crime. I don't see you presenting a good argument that all the crimes you have declared separable are all the crimes concurrent with pornography, or a good argument that any others which may be concurrent must also be separable.
Three, you cannot be induced to think about the consequences concurrent to pornography except by means of examples of which you personally are aware, therefore, the fact that there are crimes which may be concurrent with pornography is, to you, irrelevant.
Four, anything which I say which invokes an emotional response in you is an example of me using emotional, rather than rational, argument, and that makes me an emotional, irrational hypocrite, and therefore anything I say is irrelevant to you.
Is that last one because it offends you to hear such arguments, as if I were raping you, or is it because I said it is not my intent to move you?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.