For the many of you who have probably failed to notice, its "White Ribbon Against Pornography Week", apparently coming to a close tomorrow. This event, sponsored by the ever-wonderful Morality in Media, is designed to spread "awareness" of the harms of pornography and renew the fight for the zealous enforcement of obscenity laws.
Over at Carnal Nation, Marty Klein posts some ideas of his own about spreading awareness of pornography issues this week, or whenever such a "white ribbon" campaign is declared. Interestingly, the anti-porn patrol have descended from the sky even on a sex-positive blog like Carnal Nation to "raise awareness" of the harms of pornography. Some of us on the other side have been countering such propaganda with simple facts, though I'm not so sanguine as to whether this will raise the "awareness" of the antis.
Another thought – perhaps there needs to be a week to raise awareness of the victims of obscenity laws.
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Why the Zicaris Don't Belong in Jail
This summary is not available. Please
click here to view the post.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Weinstein/Lubben Alliance's Response To Getting Stoned By The Courts?? Go Donald Wildmon And Boycott For Condom-Only!!
Gee...you'd think that Michael Weinstein and his newest BGF Shelley Lubben would give up the ghost after their attempt to impose condom-only rules on the porn industry got shot down faster than a bird in a hailstorm...but you would be wrong. Now, they are attempting to use the old efforts of economic coercion to do for them what they couldn't do with the law.
Once again we rely on X-Biz.com for the story.
But then again, one can never underestimate the gravitation force that a microphone has on such a media whore like Michael Weinstein.
If boycotts from far more politically powerful folk like Donald Wildmon's American Family Association and Morality in Media haven't worked in pushing Marriott towards banishing porn, then how in the hell does Weinstein think that his "pressure" will make any similar headway?? Is he that stupid to think that selective censorship is more feasible and will be more accepted by the swarms of consumers of hotel chains than a total ban??
And...even by the slightly less then slim-to-none chance that Weinstein's efforts succeed, that will certainly put about as much a dent into sales of condom-free porn as...well..a popgun would affect a nuke. I mean, what about all those Internet sites and all the porn produced outside of Utah,and all those other firms, Michael...surely they will succumb to your superior progessive wisdom, too??
Yeah, right.
Still, the notion that a corporate entity like Marriott Hotels could surrender to such nonsense is more than just a slight threat, and given how much the adult sexual media is under the rocks due to the recession, this is something that should be taken very seriously by we who favor freedom of choice and performer autonomy...and who think that performers, not bureaucrats or holier-than-thou activists, should decide for themselves how to protect themselves.
Once again we rely on X-Biz.com for the story.
LOS ANGELES — A movement to make porn films condom-only is sure to gain further traction on Wednesday as two groups plan to protest the Marriott hotel chain.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Pink Cross Foundation claim Marriott acts as a “middleman” in selling condom-less porn productions because it makes millions from the pay-per-view lineup it offers in its hotel rooms.
The groups are planning a “Porn In” Wednesday night at the downtown Los Angeles Marriott. They also will announce a viral and print ad campaign for a hotel boycott.
They will protest in front of the Figueroa Street Marriott with banners and three-foot wide condoms. Later, a press conference will be held in a hotel room with streaming porn on the room’s flat screen.
Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said that until he gets a commitment from Marriott officials to block condomless adult films to their hotel guests he will urge a public boycott of the entire Marriott chain, which pencils out to about 3,000.
“We want to highlight the brazen hypocrisy — the Mormon Marriott’s moral masquerade — of such a so-called family oriented hotel chain profiteering off adult films that endanger the lives of the performers acting in them,” Weinstein said.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has taken a stand after an adult performer tested positive for HIV several months ago.
The Los Angeles-based group filed suit against Los Angeles County public health officials, claiming they have not made any moves to require condom use on the porn set, and filed formal complaints against 16 adult entertainment companies with Cal-OSHA in order to push for mandatory condoms at the workplace.
Weinstein said that the viral online component of the ad campaign against Marriott will launch later this week, with the print ad campaign to follow next week in the Salt Lake City area.Now...one of the grandest ironies is that Marriot has been the target of boycotts for their policy of allowing adult films and videos to be shown in their rooms...but usually it is from the Religious Right who wants to ban them outright, not merely to engineer which particular kinds of films appear. And, if I remember right, most of the hotel chains that do allow porn movies or porn channels specifically limit them to the late-night cable channels like Spice and Adam and Eve and Hott Network....which for the most part tend towards the straighter, more couples-oriented genres which tend to include condoms anyway.
“[It’s] home to the Marriott founder’s Mormon religion,” he said. Weinstein was referring to deceased founder J. Willard Marriott, a lifelong Mormon.
But then again, one can never underestimate the gravitation force that a microphone has on such a media whore like Michael Weinstein.
If boycotts from far more politically powerful folk like Donald Wildmon's American Family Association and Morality in Media haven't worked in pushing Marriott towards banishing porn, then how in the hell does Weinstein think that his "pressure" will make any similar headway?? Is he that stupid to think that selective censorship is more feasible and will be more accepted by the swarms of consumers of hotel chains than a total ban??
And...even by the slightly less then slim-to-none chance that Weinstein's efforts succeed, that will certainly put about as much a dent into sales of condom-free porn as...well..a popgun would affect a nuke. I mean, what about all those Internet sites and all the porn produced outside of Utah,and all those other firms, Michael...surely they will succumb to your superior progessive wisdom, too??
Yeah, right.
Still, the notion that a corporate entity like Marriott Hotels could surrender to such nonsense is more than just a slight threat, and given how much the adult sexual media is under the rocks due to the recession, this is something that should be taken very seriously by we who favor freedom of choice and performer autonomy...and who think that performers, not bureaucrats or holier-than-thou activists, should decide for themselves how to protect themselves.
Monday, October 19, 2009
More on the AIM/Cal-OSHA Court Decision
Anthony kind of jumped me on this, but AIM has a more complete press release account I wrote yesterday that I believe went out today. It outlines some of the broader issues at stake, and though it reflects our relief over Judge Smith's wise decision, it addresses the serious problems that remain, particular for small, independent producers, and for AIM itself:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUPERIOR COURT QUASHES CAL-OSHA’S ATTEMPT TO SUBPOENA CONFIDENTIAL AIM MEDICAL RECORDS
AIM’s Financial Woes From Litigation Costs Remain a Threat to Organization’s Continued Operation
On October 15, 2009, California Superior Court Judge Winifred Y. Smith granted a preliminary injunction blocking efforts by Cal-OSHA to force The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation to supply the safety agency with privileged information regarding an adult video performer who tested positive for HIV at one of AIM’s clinics in June 2009.
Concluding sixteen pages of closely-reasoned argument backed by statutory restraints and existing case law, Judge Smith enjoined Cal-OSHA from pursuing access by legal process to AIM’s records regarding this case in crisp, clear, unambiguous language:
“Defendants California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Lee Welsh, and their agents and employees, are restrained from compelling or seeking to compel the disclosure of confidential
medical records, HlV test information, and personal identifying information of Plaintiff and other patients of AIM without the specific written authorization of such patients; and
2. Defendant Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation is restrained from disclosing confidential medical records, HlV test information.”
Judge Smith further held that: “Because CalOSHA appears to have acted beyond its jurisdiction in subpoenaing this information, and because obtaining the information would
impermissibly infringe upon Plaintiffs and other patients' Constitutional privacy rights, Defendant's argument that an injunction cannot be granted, pursuant to CCP 526(b)(4), to prevent execution of a public statute by a public entity for the
benefit of the public fails.”
This stinging juridical rebuke after weeks of pre-trial maneuvering by Cal-OSHA, including unannounced inspection of of AIM’s Sherman Oaks clinic, the theft of patient release forms from the clinic’s waiting room , and heated courtroom theatrics from Cal-OSHA counsel Amy Martin, slams the door on the agency’s attempt to dragoon AIM into its witch-hunt against adult video producers by overriding state and federal protections of doctor-patient privilege through the use of Cal-OSHA’s highly limited and employment-specific subpoena powers.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this victory for the medical confidentiality rights of adult video performers and for AIM’s ability to provide testing, monitoring and treatment for those performers free of unlawful state intrusion. Cal-OSHA made no secret of its intention to use whatever information it might have obtained through this subpoena to establish connections between AIM patients and the producers who engage them and thus to justify the imposition of potentially ruinous fines on those producers on the dubious grounds of engagement in proximity to the detection of sexually transmitted infections.
This was a heavy-handed attempt by a state agency to write new law expansively reinterpreting its mandate with the intent of punishing adult video producers for misfortunes to which those producers causal relationship cannot be medically or legally established. The court found Cal-OSHA’s claims to such authority entirely meritless and its methods in contravention of existing law.
Thus Cal-OSHA has failed in its attempt to use the Adult Video Industry’s key STD testing and monitoring organization as a weapon against that industry.
But however welcome Judge Smith’s wise ruling may be, it by no means eliminates the threat of Cal-OSHA’s ongoing vendetta against our community of performers and producers, and while it protects AIM from further harassment by Cal-OSHA’s agents and employees, it leaves AIM in dire financial straits that threaten the foundation’s ability to operate as it has with such success over the past dozen years. Litigation of this type is catastrophically expensive for a small, non-profit organization supported by voluntary donations and the at-cost services it provides. AIM has no budget for paying attorney’s fees, travel expenses for repeated trips to Oakland, where the case was heard, research expenses and the other financial burdens imposed by having to defend itself, and the industry at large, against the vastly greater resources of state government.
As of now, AIM has unpaid debts arising out of this case in excess of $170,000 dollars, and if those debts are not paid, AIM’s clinics face the very real possibility of having to close its clinic’s doors for good within before the year is out.
If that happens, AIM’s courtroom victory will look a lot like defeat for everyone involved in the making of adult video. Cal-OSHA and other governmental agencies and certain NGOs do not believe in our ability to regulate ourselves and protect the health of our performers. AIM’s extraordinary record since its inception of doing exactly that is the industry’s most compelling argument against the heavy-handed and most probably ineffective regulations these outsiders wish to impose.
The exact number of HIV-positive Adult Industry performers revealed by AIM testing since 2004 totals five people – four performers infected as a result of a single incident in 2004 and one performer in 2009. In this most recent case, AIM put 19 people under quarantine, including performers and non-performers, and this patient’s case was determined by AIM to have occurred outside of the Adult Industry performer population.
Since 2004, new cases of HIV among the general population of Los Angeles County averaged about 3,000 per year.
Our statistics for other STDs, including gonorrhea, Chlamydia and syphilis, show a steady 2.4% incidence in our client population at any given time, considerably lower than the average for sexually active young people with similar demographics. Indeed, when it comes to the risk of disease, the surrounding population represents a far greater danger to our clients than they to it.
Despite sensational, misleading and often outright fabricated claims to the contrary by various public officials and spokespersons for private organizations, adult video production remains remarkably safe from the risk of disease, largely as a result of AIMs vigilance in keeping infected individuals from entering the talent pool and identifying such individuals immediately if they become infected after entering the industry.
Were AIM to cease operation, those safeguards would be gone and claims that adult video production constitutes a clear and present danger to the health of its participants and to the surrounding community would be much more difficult to refute.
In addition to the wisdom of Judge Smith’s finding in favor of the injunction, she sounds a cautionary note none of us can afford to ignore:
“California law erects strong safeguards to prevent the disclosure of HlV-relatedinformation. Health and Safety Code section 120975, in Chapter 7, applies to HIV testing generally and states:
[t]o protect the privacy of individuals who are the subject of blood testing for antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus (HlV), the following shall apply: Except as provided in Section 1603.1 [disclosure to blood banks], 1603.3 [notification of blood donors], 121022 [report to local health officers], no person shall be compelled in any state, county, city, or other local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings to identify or provide identifying characteristics that would identify any individual who is the subject of a blood test to detect antibodies to HIV.
Section 120980 provides civil penalties for persons who negligently disclose, and criminal penalties for persons who willfully disclose, the results of an HIV test.
Testing is anonymous and, in the absence of a consent to disclosure, results cannot be disclosed to anyone other than the person tested.”
In other words, absent AIM’s voluntary compliance testing program, producers would enjoy no legal right to require HIV testing of performers to insist on the disclosure of any performer’s HIV status. Furthermore, under state anti-discrimination laws, producers could not legally bar performers whose HIV test results are unknown, or even those who are HIV-positive, from performing.
Such is the hellish legal limbo into which this business would be cast if AIM were to shutter its clinics and the 98% compliance with AIM’s voluntary testing program we now enjoy to disappear in the absence of any legally feasible alternative.
AIM has saved this industry from such a calamity through its services for over a decade. Is it too much to ask that the industry in turn martial its financial resources to the utmost to save AIM in return?
We have secured an important victory in one battle. A long campaign lies ahead. The time to demonstrate our collective determination to see that campaign through is now.
____---------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, as AIM struggles to keep its doors open, the swat on the nose Cal-OSHA got from Judge Smith hasn't deterred them from their campaign to drive the lawful porn industry out of California. They have now begun sending inspectors to sets based on lists of filming permits and going over studios and locatioins with a magnifying glass. If they find a loose extension cord or a ladder where it shouldn't be or an improperly mounted fire extinguisher, the inspectors are writing citations on the spot. They're also writing citations on the blood-borne parthogens standards for healtchare facilities, even those said standards have not yet been establishes as applicable to the porn industry. One company was recently cited because a production assitant picked up a used towel without wearing gloves. They've even been inspecting offices where no production goes on in search of minute violations.
If the infractions are small, or even non-existent, the penalties are draconian. The minimum fines start around $15,000 per citation. As you can imagine, it doesn't take many small transgresssions to put a struggling company underwater.
Meanwhile, the LAPD, in the wake of Michael Weinstein and Shelley Lubben putting on their dog-and-pony show for The Board of Supervisors, has formed a special squad to roam the city in search of non-permitted shooting (looking for grip trucks in driveways, etc.) and shutting those shoots down.
All of this comes at a time when production is the lowest it's been in 15 years and talent and crews are struggling to pay their rents.
Meanwhile, both the state, county and city governments are deeply in debt and the most basic services are being drastically cut back. Farm workers are dying from pesticide exposure in the fields of The Central Valley, ER patients are bleeding out in the corridors of county hospitals because there aren't enough personnel to treat them and gang violence is resurgent all over the city.
Yet these taxpayer-funded agencies and organizations continue to find time and money to snoop on porn sets from which no complaints, in a supposedly complaint-driven inspection process, have been made.
This is cruel madness sponsored by a handful of fanatical bureaucrats bent on destroying an industry that pays its taxes, obeys the law and keeps its business very much out of everyone else's way.
And if anyone actually thinks this arises out of something having to do with protecting the health or welfare of performers or others engaged in the making of sexually explicit images needs to be reminded of this little gem of wisdom from Dr. Peter Kerndt of L.A. County Health in his monograph for The Public Library of Science:
"The portrayal of unsafe sex in adult films may also influence viewer behavior. In the same way that images of smoking in films romanticize tobacco use, viewers of these adult films may idealize unprotected sex [16]. The increasingly high-risk sexual behavior viewed by large audiences on television and the Internet could decrease condom use. Requiring condoms may influence viewers to see them as normative or even sexually appealing, and devalue unsafe sex. With the growing accessibility of adult film to mainstream America, portrayals of condom use onscreen could increase condom use among viewers, thereby promoting public health."
But of course, none of this is about content or First Amendment-related concerns. Nope. This is all being done from tender concern for those whose lives are directly impacted.
And what is Dr. Kerndt's long-term objective?
"Lacking the will or ability to regulate itself, the adult film industry needs state and federal legislation to enforce health and safety standards for adult film performers. Local officials lack the authority to impose fines and Cal/OSHA's monitoring and enforcement capability is limited. Short of legislation mandating performer protection, restricting distribution of adult movies to condom-only films may be the one way to have an impact on the industry. If there were organized and truly effective advocacy for performers, then large hotel chains, video retailers, and cable networks could be pressured to purchase adult films under a condom-only “seal of approval.” Alternatively and more effectively, legislation could require that the Custodian of Records (already required under Federal law) maintain documentation of screening tests and condom usage in a film's production. Distribution could be restricted to those films produced pursuant to the standard prior to any sale to cable companies or hotel chains, over the Internet, or in other markets."
That's the agenda, as set by the Number One instigator of this whole situation, and it's working.
The chilling effect has set in. Given my outspoken criticisms of these people and institutions, I have no doubt that I'm high on their hit list. The studio Nina and I share is a couple of miles from all their offices.
Until these matters are resolved, I wouldn't even think of shooting so much as a family portrait here. I'm done in video production until the anti-porn pogrom is either halted by official intervention or, quite possibly, forever if these cranks succeed in forcing their personal crusades down all our throats.
Though we won a victory last week of no small importance, I can assure you no champagne will be drunk here tonight.
More to say on what happens when porn is stripped of legal protections and driven underground and/or out of state. It won't be a pretty read.
And for those who don't think what happens here matters all that much to freedom of sexual expression elsewhere, ponder this: if a handful of motivated bureaucrats can inflict this kind of damage in a state where the porn industry has functioned without major interference for three decades, imagine what can happen in places with no such history and no established precedent for legal operation.
Without laying a glove on Miller v. California, it might very well be possible to make porn production illegal everywhere in the U.S. through the abuse of regulatory procedures. If we lose that fight here, we're unlikely to win it elsewhere.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUPERIOR COURT QUASHES CAL-OSHA’S ATTEMPT TO SUBPOENA CONFIDENTIAL AIM MEDICAL RECORDS
AIM’s Financial Woes From Litigation Costs Remain a Threat to Organization’s Continued Operation
On October 15, 2009, California Superior Court Judge Winifred Y. Smith granted a preliminary injunction blocking efforts by Cal-OSHA to force The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation to supply the safety agency with privileged information regarding an adult video performer who tested positive for HIV at one of AIM’s clinics in June 2009.
Concluding sixteen pages of closely-reasoned argument backed by statutory restraints and existing case law, Judge Smith enjoined Cal-OSHA from pursuing access by legal process to AIM’s records regarding this case in crisp, clear, unambiguous language:
“Defendants California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Lee Welsh, and their agents and employees, are restrained from compelling or seeking to compel the disclosure of confidential
medical records, HlV test information, and personal identifying information of Plaintiff and other patients of AIM without the specific written authorization of such patients; and
2. Defendant Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation is restrained from disclosing confidential medical records, HlV test information.”
Judge Smith further held that: “Because CalOSHA appears to have acted beyond its jurisdiction in subpoenaing this information, and because obtaining the information would
impermissibly infringe upon Plaintiffs and other patients' Constitutional privacy rights, Defendant's argument that an injunction cannot be granted, pursuant to CCP 526(b)(4), to prevent execution of a public statute by a public entity for the
benefit of the public fails.”
This stinging juridical rebuke after weeks of pre-trial maneuvering by Cal-OSHA, including unannounced inspection of of AIM’s Sherman Oaks clinic, the theft of patient release forms from the clinic’s waiting room , and heated courtroom theatrics from Cal-OSHA counsel Amy Martin, slams the door on the agency’s attempt to dragoon AIM into its witch-hunt against adult video producers by overriding state and federal protections of doctor-patient privilege through the use of Cal-OSHA’s highly limited and employment-specific subpoena powers.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this victory for the medical confidentiality rights of adult video performers and for AIM’s ability to provide testing, monitoring and treatment for those performers free of unlawful state intrusion. Cal-OSHA made no secret of its intention to use whatever information it might have obtained through this subpoena to establish connections between AIM patients and the producers who engage them and thus to justify the imposition of potentially ruinous fines on those producers on the dubious grounds of engagement in proximity to the detection of sexually transmitted infections.
This was a heavy-handed attempt by a state agency to write new law expansively reinterpreting its mandate with the intent of punishing adult video producers for misfortunes to which those producers causal relationship cannot be medically or legally established. The court found Cal-OSHA’s claims to such authority entirely meritless and its methods in contravention of existing law.
Thus Cal-OSHA has failed in its attempt to use the Adult Video Industry’s key STD testing and monitoring organization as a weapon against that industry.
But however welcome Judge Smith’s wise ruling may be, it by no means eliminates the threat of Cal-OSHA’s ongoing vendetta against our community of performers and producers, and while it protects AIM from further harassment by Cal-OSHA’s agents and employees, it leaves AIM in dire financial straits that threaten the foundation’s ability to operate as it has with such success over the past dozen years. Litigation of this type is catastrophically expensive for a small, non-profit organization supported by voluntary donations and the at-cost services it provides. AIM has no budget for paying attorney’s fees, travel expenses for repeated trips to Oakland, where the case was heard, research expenses and the other financial burdens imposed by having to defend itself, and the industry at large, against the vastly greater resources of state government.
As of now, AIM has unpaid debts arising out of this case in excess of $170,000 dollars, and if those debts are not paid, AIM’s clinics face the very real possibility of having to close its clinic’s doors for good within before the year is out.
If that happens, AIM’s courtroom victory will look a lot like defeat for everyone involved in the making of adult video. Cal-OSHA and other governmental agencies and certain NGOs do not believe in our ability to regulate ourselves and protect the health of our performers. AIM’s extraordinary record since its inception of doing exactly that is the industry’s most compelling argument against the heavy-handed and most probably ineffective regulations these outsiders wish to impose.
The exact number of HIV-positive Adult Industry performers revealed by AIM testing since 2004 totals five people – four performers infected as a result of a single incident in 2004 and one performer in 2009. In this most recent case, AIM put 19 people under quarantine, including performers and non-performers, and this patient’s case was determined by AIM to have occurred outside of the Adult Industry performer population.
Since 2004, new cases of HIV among the general population of Los Angeles County averaged about 3,000 per year.
Our statistics for other STDs, including gonorrhea, Chlamydia and syphilis, show a steady 2.4% incidence in our client population at any given time, considerably lower than the average for sexually active young people with similar demographics. Indeed, when it comes to the risk of disease, the surrounding population represents a far greater danger to our clients than they to it.
Despite sensational, misleading and often outright fabricated claims to the contrary by various public officials and spokespersons for private organizations, adult video production remains remarkably safe from the risk of disease, largely as a result of AIMs vigilance in keeping infected individuals from entering the talent pool and identifying such individuals immediately if they become infected after entering the industry.
Were AIM to cease operation, those safeguards would be gone and claims that adult video production constitutes a clear and present danger to the health of its participants and to the surrounding community would be much more difficult to refute.
In addition to the wisdom of Judge Smith’s finding in favor of the injunction, she sounds a cautionary note none of us can afford to ignore:
“California law erects strong safeguards to prevent the disclosure of HlV-relatedinformation. Health and Safety Code section 120975, in Chapter 7, applies to HIV testing generally and states:
[t]o protect the privacy of individuals who are the subject of blood testing for antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus (HlV), the following shall apply: Except as provided in Section 1603.1 [disclosure to blood banks], 1603.3 [notification of blood donors], 121022 [report to local health officers], no person shall be compelled in any state, county, city, or other local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings to identify or provide identifying characteristics that would identify any individual who is the subject of a blood test to detect antibodies to HIV.
Section 120980 provides civil penalties for persons who negligently disclose, and criminal penalties for persons who willfully disclose, the results of an HIV test.
Testing is anonymous and, in the absence of a consent to disclosure, results cannot be disclosed to anyone other than the person tested.”
In other words, absent AIM’s voluntary compliance testing program, producers would enjoy no legal right to require HIV testing of performers to insist on the disclosure of any performer’s HIV status. Furthermore, under state anti-discrimination laws, producers could not legally bar performers whose HIV test results are unknown, or even those who are HIV-positive, from performing.
Such is the hellish legal limbo into which this business would be cast if AIM were to shutter its clinics and the 98% compliance with AIM’s voluntary testing program we now enjoy to disappear in the absence of any legally feasible alternative.
AIM has saved this industry from such a calamity through its services for over a decade. Is it too much to ask that the industry in turn martial its financial resources to the utmost to save AIM in return?
We have secured an important victory in one battle. A long campaign lies ahead. The time to demonstrate our collective determination to see that campaign through is now.
____---------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, as AIM struggles to keep its doors open, the swat on the nose Cal-OSHA got from Judge Smith hasn't deterred them from their campaign to drive the lawful porn industry out of California. They have now begun sending inspectors to sets based on lists of filming permits and going over studios and locatioins with a magnifying glass. If they find a loose extension cord or a ladder where it shouldn't be or an improperly mounted fire extinguisher, the inspectors are writing citations on the spot. They're also writing citations on the blood-borne parthogens standards for healtchare facilities, even those said standards have not yet been establishes as applicable to the porn industry. One company was recently cited because a production assitant picked up a used towel without wearing gloves. They've even been inspecting offices where no production goes on in search of minute violations.
If the infractions are small, or even non-existent, the penalties are draconian. The minimum fines start around $15,000 per citation. As you can imagine, it doesn't take many small transgresssions to put a struggling company underwater.
Meanwhile, the LAPD, in the wake of Michael Weinstein and Shelley Lubben putting on their dog-and-pony show for The Board of Supervisors, has formed a special squad to roam the city in search of non-permitted shooting (looking for grip trucks in driveways, etc.) and shutting those shoots down.
All of this comes at a time when production is the lowest it's been in 15 years and talent and crews are struggling to pay their rents.
Meanwhile, both the state, county and city governments are deeply in debt and the most basic services are being drastically cut back. Farm workers are dying from pesticide exposure in the fields of The Central Valley, ER patients are bleeding out in the corridors of county hospitals because there aren't enough personnel to treat them and gang violence is resurgent all over the city.
Yet these taxpayer-funded agencies and organizations continue to find time and money to snoop on porn sets from which no complaints, in a supposedly complaint-driven inspection process, have been made.
This is cruel madness sponsored by a handful of fanatical bureaucrats bent on destroying an industry that pays its taxes, obeys the law and keeps its business very much out of everyone else's way.
And if anyone actually thinks this arises out of something having to do with protecting the health or welfare of performers or others engaged in the making of sexually explicit images needs to be reminded of this little gem of wisdom from Dr. Peter Kerndt of L.A. County Health in his monograph for The Public Library of Science:
"The portrayal of unsafe sex in adult films may also influence viewer behavior. In the same way that images of smoking in films romanticize tobacco use, viewers of these adult films may idealize unprotected sex [16]. The increasingly high-risk sexual behavior viewed by large audiences on television and the Internet could decrease condom use. Requiring condoms may influence viewers to see them as normative or even sexually appealing, and devalue unsafe sex. With the growing accessibility of adult film to mainstream America, portrayals of condom use onscreen could increase condom use among viewers, thereby promoting public health."
But of course, none of this is about content or First Amendment-related concerns. Nope. This is all being done from tender concern for those whose lives are directly impacted.
And what is Dr. Kerndt's long-term objective?
"Lacking the will or ability to regulate itself, the adult film industry needs state and federal legislation to enforce health and safety standards for adult film performers. Local officials lack the authority to impose fines and Cal/OSHA's monitoring and enforcement capability is limited. Short of legislation mandating performer protection, restricting distribution of adult movies to condom-only films may be the one way to have an impact on the industry. If there were organized and truly effective advocacy for performers, then large hotel chains, video retailers, and cable networks could be pressured to purchase adult films under a condom-only “seal of approval.” Alternatively and more effectively, legislation could require that the Custodian of Records (already required under Federal law) maintain documentation of screening tests and condom usage in a film's production. Distribution could be restricted to those films produced pursuant to the standard prior to any sale to cable companies or hotel chains, over the Internet, or in other markets."
That's the agenda, as set by the Number One instigator of this whole situation, and it's working.
The chilling effect has set in. Given my outspoken criticisms of these people and institutions, I have no doubt that I'm high on their hit list. The studio Nina and I share is a couple of miles from all their offices.
Until these matters are resolved, I wouldn't even think of shooting so much as a family portrait here. I'm done in video production until the anti-porn pogrom is either halted by official intervention or, quite possibly, forever if these cranks succeed in forcing their personal crusades down all our throats.
Though we won a victory last week of no small importance, I can assure you no champagne will be drunk here tonight.
More to say on what happens when porn is stripped of legal protections and driven underground and/or out of state. It won't be a pretty read.
And for those who don't think what happens here matters all that much to freedom of sexual expression elsewhere, ponder this: if a handful of motivated bureaucrats can inflict this kind of damage in a state where the porn industry has functioned without major interference for three decades, imagine what can happen in places with no such history and no established precedent for legal operation.
Without laying a glove on Miller v. California, it might very well be possible to make porn production illegal everywhere in the U.S. through the abuse of regulatory procedures. If we lose that fight here, we're unlikely to win it elsewhere.
HIV-Porn "Outbreak" Update: Cal Judge Stones Cal-OSHA, Keeps "Patient Zero" Med Records Private
Well, well, well....it seems that there is respect for privacy regarding medical records after all. Even for porn performers.
This latest from XBiz.com:
Notice especially the graph dealing with Judge Smith's ruling that Cal-OSHA has no jurisdiction over AIM's testing activities of porn performers, since the performers themselves are not employees of AIM. That alone should put an abrupt end to the screeching of Michael Weinstein that Cal-OSHA or the LA County health officials can use this latest "scare" to impose mandatory condom usage or other punitive measures intended to impose their brand of social engineering.
Now...whether that ruling affects Weinstein's ongoing suit against the LA health officials to enforce the mandatory condom rules through local legislation is still up in the air...but considering that it would be Cal-OSHA that would have been responsible for enforcing the rules in the first place, it would seem to be a fatal blow to such efforts.
Of course, that probably won't stop Weinstein from holding one of his pressers condemning Judge Smith as an enabler and a tool of the porn industry who is sacrificing women to their deaths. I wonder if Shelley Lubben or any of the antiporn radicalfems will be accompanying him with the usual horror tales then??
This latest from XBiz.com:
Cal-OSHA Can’t Seek AIM Healthcare Medical Records
OAKLAND, Calif. — A judge last week OK'd a protective order sought by "Patient Zero" over five years’ worth of information from the AIM Healthcare Foundation that Cal-OSHA had been seeking.
Patient Zero, the adult industry performer who was found to be HIV-positive in June, asked the court to seek an injunction against Cal-OSHA and AIM because released patient-identifying information would violate Patient Zero’s right to privacy and give irreparable harm to her, according to a suit filed by ACLU attorneys.
Alameda Superior Court Judge Judge Winifred Smith, in her ruling said that "once [Patient Zero’s] identifying information is revealed, the disclosure cannot be undone,” and that Cal-OSHA can carry out its probe with a variety of other options.
Smith also said that Cal-OSHA was not acting within its jurisdiction in subpoenaing the data through the years 2004-2009.
“Cal-OSHA is charged with, among other things, investigating 'causes of any employment accident that ... results in a serious injury or illness, or a serious exposure, unless it determines that an investigation is unnecessary.' Smith said in her ruling. “Plaintiff is concededly not an employee of AIM, and Cal-OSHA is admittedly not investigating the safety of AIM's employees, but of adult film industry employers."
Smith further said that Cal-OSHA is limited to investigating employers and their agents.
“There is no apparent need for identifying information of Patient Zero, or of patient-identifying information generally, for the purposes of investigation of AIM as an employer," she said.
The suit over Patient Zero information was put on the fast track after her counsel from the ACLU learned of a meeting slated in July between Cal-OSHA officials and AIM personnel.
The court filing detailed the extent Cal-OSHA used its regulatory power to seek patient medical records at AIM, which provides HIV and STD testing and treatment mostly for adult industry performers.
Cal-OSHA, which conducted a surprise inspection of the AIM facility in Sherman Oaks, Calif., on June 17, later issued a subpoena to AIM but not to Patient Zero, who was informed by AIM on June 6 that results of an HIV test showed her preliminarily testing positive for HIV. (Patient Zero’s identity has never been revealed publicly.)
The subpoena issued by Cal-OSHA included requests for confidential public health records and “personally identifying information of AIM patents who tested positive for HIV that could reasonably be expected to identify or lead to the identification of Patient Zero.”
At the time, AIM personnel refused to produce records.
But Cal-OSHA officials scheduled a follow-up investigatory interview with AIM staff in Oakland, Calif., according to the suit.
Once Patient Zero’s attorneys got wind of the interview with AIM staff, they immediately shot off a request to Cal-OSHA objecting to it.
Patient Zero’s counsel said they never received any response from Cal-OSHA relative to the request; however a receipt of the letter showed that Cal-OSHA special counsel did receive the letter.
Patient Zero's counsel later filed its suit at Alameda Superior Court. Last week, they were successful with the injunction.
Notice especially the graph dealing with Judge Smith's ruling that Cal-OSHA has no jurisdiction over AIM's testing activities of porn performers, since the performers themselves are not employees of AIM. That alone should put an abrupt end to the screeching of Michael Weinstein that Cal-OSHA or the LA County health officials can use this latest "scare" to impose mandatory condom usage or other punitive measures intended to impose their brand of social engineering.
Now...whether that ruling affects Weinstein's ongoing suit against the LA health officials to enforce the mandatory condom rules through local legislation is still up in the air...but considering that it would be Cal-OSHA that would have been responsible for enforcing the rules in the first place, it would seem to be a fatal blow to such efforts.
Of course, that probably won't stop Weinstein from holding one of his pressers condemning Judge Smith as an enabler and a tool of the porn industry who is sacrificing women to their deaths. I wonder if Shelley Lubben or any of the antiporn radicalfems will be accompanying him with the usual horror tales then??
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Graphic Sexual Horror Part Deux
Not at all meaning to steal a bit of IACB's finely-tuned thunder on the subject, I just had to bump this topic up again now that I've seen the movie. Whatever your feelings about InSex or BDSM in general. If you have any business on this blog, you'll see why a graph or two down the road.
So now that I have actually seen this picture, I just can't wait to tell everybody how good it is. It's more than good. It's a fine piece of documentary work on a very difficult subject of which any filmmaker should be proud, whatever the subject may be.
The directors resolutely resist the temptation to oversimplify the contradictions of InSex - its weird visual richness or the sordid circumstances under which it was often created – allowing viewers to make up their own minds.
Certainly, those who were inclined to see InSex's creator, PD, as either a monster or a genius or a mountebank or any combination of the above will find plenty of evidence here to validate their preconceptions. However, they'll also be confronted with plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Special thanks, after the ugly exploitation of sex performers in a tacky hock of agitprop like The Price of Pleasure, to G.S.H.'s co-directors for allowing sex performers to speak for themselves, at length and without manipulative editing. Not surprisingly, they prove perfectly adept at articulating their own experiences without the need for noxious interlocutors explaining that experience for our benefit.
But of all the fascinating topics covered in this riveting film, the one most chillingly relevant to the matters we address here concerns the manner of InSex's sudden demise. PD claims, and it's a claim confirmed not only by other BDSM Web site operators on camera but also by the experiences of others I know personally, that the Bush administration put him out of business by means that make a paper airplane out of The Constitution, set it alight and hurl it in the face of a symbolic target, burning that target to the ground.
Rather than attempting to prosecute InSex for obscenity, which would have been challenging given PD's substantial artistic credentials, agents of The Department of Homeland Security were sent forth to intimidate banks into refusing to process InSex's credit card transactions. A laughable-if-not-so-disturbing charge was leveled to the effect that Internet porn money was being used to finance international terrorism and that banks unwilling to cooperate in putting their clients out of business might have cause to regret their resistance.
Even I might be tempted to dismiss this as grandiose hyperbole, which is entirely consistent with PD's M.O., had I not heard the very same story from several small, independent BDSM site owners who were similarly shut down without warning by banks with whom they had long done business to no ill effect for either party.
This raises a question more disturbing, or at least it should be, to the citizenry at large than any image that ever appeared on InSex. Why would a regime that was torturing people all over the world, often in a sexualized manner but without the williing participation of those being tortured, go to such bizarre lengths to suppress images of people being tortured voluntarily?
Why indeed? What is it about BDSM that inspires such murderous loathing in authoritarian personalities of all stripes? Go anywhere in the world where human rights are routinely abused and what you won't find is any above-ground BDSM cultural representation of any kind. Clearly, in these various dystopias, torture is regarded as a ruling-class monopoly not to be mocked by ordinary folk playing at it for their mutual enjoyment.
Another troubling element of this part of the story is the outsourcing of censorship to the private sector as a way of circumventing legal restrictions on the use of government power.
Strangely, those howling about government involvement in healthcare seem to find nothing troubling about government involvement in mass communications with no public oversight or debate whatsoever.
The triumph of Graphic Sexual Horror, like that of most excellent documentaries, is how many more questions it asks than it answers.
So now that I have actually seen this picture, I just can't wait to tell everybody how good it is. It's more than good. It's a fine piece of documentary work on a very difficult subject of which any filmmaker should be proud, whatever the subject may be.
The directors resolutely resist the temptation to oversimplify the contradictions of InSex - its weird visual richness or the sordid circumstances under which it was often created – allowing viewers to make up their own minds.
Certainly, those who were inclined to see InSex's creator, PD, as either a monster or a genius or a mountebank or any combination of the above will find plenty of evidence here to validate their preconceptions. However, they'll also be confronted with plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Special thanks, after the ugly exploitation of sex performers in a tacky hock of agitprop like The Price of Pleasure, to G.S.H.'s co-directors for allowing sex performers to speak for themselves, at length and without manipulative editing. Not surprisingly, they prove perfectly adept at articulating their own experiences without the need for noxious interlocutors explaining that experience for our benefit.
But of all the fascinating topics covered in this riveting film, the one most chillingly relevant to the matters we address here concerns the manner of InSex's sudden demise. PD claims, and it's a claim confirmed not only by other BDSM Web site operators on camera but also by the experiences of others I know personally, that the Bush administration put him out of business by means that make a paper airplane out of The Constitution, set it alight and hurl it in the face of a symbolic target, burning that target to the ground.
Rather than attempting to prosecute InSex for obscenity, which would have been challenging given PD's substantial artistic credentials, agents of The Department of Homeland Security were sent forth to intimidate banks into refusing to process InSex's credit card transactions. A laughable-if-not-so-disturbing charge was leveled to the effect that Internet porn money was being used to finance international terrorism and that banks unwilling to cooperate in putting their clients out of business might have cause to regret their resistance.
Even I might be tempted to dismiss this as grandiose hyperbole, which is entirely consistent with PD's M.O., had I not heard the very same story from several small, independent BDSM site owners who were similarly shut down without warning by banks with whom they had long done business to no ill effect for either party.
This raises a question more disturbing, or at least it should be, to the citizenry at large than any image that ever appeared on InSex. Why would a regime that was torturing people all over the world, often in a sexualized manner but without the williing participation of those being tortured, go to such bizarre lengths to suppress images of people being tortured voluntarily?
Why indeed? What is it about BDSM that inspires such murderous loathing in authoritarian personalities of all stripes? Go anywhere in the world where human rights are routinely abused and what you won't find is any above-ground BDSM cultural representation of any kind. Clearly, in these various dystopias, torture is regarded as a ruling-class monopoly not to be mocked by ordinary folk playing at it for their mutual enjoyment.
Another troubling element of this part of the story is the outsourcing of censorship to the private sector as a way of circumventing legal restrictions on the use of government power.
Strangely, those howling about government involvement in healthcare seem to find nothing troubling about government involvement in mass communications with no public oversight or debate whatsoever.
The triumph of Graphic Sexual Horror, like that of most excellent documentaries, is how many more questions it asks than it answers.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Shelley Lubben's latest
Anybody seen this yet?:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&channelID=42789016
Shelley Lubben packs the LA AIDS Commission meeting. And, yep, if you watch to the very end, the Tim Samuels BBC story is prominently mentioned.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&channelID=42789016
Shelley Lubben packs the LA AIDS Commission meeting. And, yep, if you watch to the very end, the Tim Samuels BBC story is prominently mentioned.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Child Porn Menace as Propaganda Tool
Courtesy of our friends at X-Biz, First Amendment attorney Lawrence Walters calls out the "All Porn = Child Porn Brigade" and dispatches them cleanly:
"A favorite trick of the censors in this country is to blur the lines between protected speech, in the form of adult erotica on the one hand, with patently illegal material, in the form of child pornography on the other, by mixing the two at every opportunity.
Family Values groups and other opponents of free speech routinely use the terms "pornography," "obscenity" and "child pornography," interchangeably, in the attempt to cause confusion in the mind of the public, and intentionally link perfectly legal content with evidence of a horrific crime. The media often plays along, whether through ignorance or complicity, and refers to the new child porn arrest as a "Pornography Bust."
All of this helps convince the public through confusion, that pornography has something to do with abuse of children, and that all of it is probably illegal somehow. In some jurisdictions, law enforcement investigators seize every chance to mix these concepts in a blender, by charging defendants with obscenity as well as child pornography, no matter how remote the connection, or how strong the evidence. Some evidence of this can be found in a couple recent cases initiated by the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd. This is the same Sheriff made famous by declaring that he had jurisdiction to regulate anything online, so long as it was available for download in Polk County, Florida. According to Judd:
"But it makes no difference, because if you fed that server or you could receive information off that server in this county, then it gives us jurisdiction. ... Technically I could charge someone in Kansas, if I received child pornography here, obtained a warrant and had him extradited from Kansas and tried here."
Note the stray reference to "child pornography" there. That particular case had nothing to do with children, but was an adult obscenity case against Chris Wilson, arising from his operation of a user-generated content site. This quote provides a unique glimpse into the strategy of many law enforcement agencies and anti-porn groups, who constantly mention child pornography whenever discussing adult erotica.
Judd's office recently investigated an antique store owner by the name of John Denitto, who engaged in some adult content production on the side. Sheriff's Deputies raided the business based on the claim of a "confidential informant" that a teenager was being photographed there. Leaving aside the fact that a teenager can be 18 or 19 and still legally participate in adult photography, this unconfirmed statement gave law enforcement the hook they needed to raid the modeling studio, under the guise of a child pornography investigation. However, no evidence of child pornography was ever found, and the "confidential informant" turned out to be a former "model" herself, who was trying to buy her way out of her own criminal problems by turning informant for the state. Not the most reliable informant, to put things mildly.
But what does a good Deputy do when his information results in the seizure of nothing more than a bunch of video tapes of adults having sex? File obscenity charges, of course! Not much is required to arrest someone for alleged obscenity. A charging document needs to be filed saying that a prosecutor believes in good faith that there is probable cause that the material is obscene. Polk County usually goes the extra step of getting a local judge to sign off on a confirmation that such probable cause exists, but that is all smoke and mirrors. Any erotic work might be obscene, simply based on its sexually-explicit nature. The question of obscenity is left for the judge or jury. Until that ultimate determination is made, it is presumed to be non-obscene under the First Amendment.
Nonetheless, despite such a presumption, just about anybody involved in the commercial production or distribution of adult material can be prosecuted for obscenity. That is one of the (many) reasons the obscenity laws are unfair, unconstitutional and inhumane in modern society. There is no fair warning as to what material might result in serious felony charges, with implications and innuendo of child pornography to boot. Denitto's felony obscenity case remains pending, and no proof of child pornography ever came to light.
Law enforcement and prosecutors know that as soon as the specter of child pornography is raised, the defendant loses public sympathy, support of friends, and jury appeal. So they try to throw it in any time they can.
In another recent case from Polk County, Sheriff Deputies arrested Timothy Keck for numerous counts of obscenity depicting a minor. This sounds like a valid offense, until the facts get in the way. Keck was a former Sheriff's Deputy himself, until he had a falling out with the agency. Oddly enough, he found himself targeted for some Internet surveillance by that same agency, and a warrant was issued for offenses involving child pornography. Keck allegedly used Limewire, a popular file sharing service, to download various images, including numerous drawings of underage individuals engaged in sexual activity. That's right, drawings. Oh, and the investigators apparently also dug up a single image from a temporary cache file allegedly depicting only the genitals of an underage couple in the act of intercourse. It has not been explained how one divines the age of models based solely on a depiction of their genitals engaged in a sex act. But Keck faces one count of possession of child pornography (for the temp file) and 26 counts of distribution of obscenity, for the drawings. This arrest has been described by Judd as the "largest roundup in the county," and "horrific."
Given that Keck was lumped in with 45 other suspects, all of whom are referred to as a group despite the lack of any apparent connection; some of the other images involved in the other cases may well have been horrifying. Child pornography is a heinous, inexcusable crime, and legitimate cases should be vigorously prosecuted. But when politicians or special interest groups start mixing in allegations of child porn with adult pornography, both children and adults become the losers. Trying to force a tenuous charge of child pornography just to tarnish the reputation of a suspect in an adult obscenity case dilutes and reduces the importance — and indeed the 'horror' — of real child pornography cases. Future child pornography investigations will not be taken as seriously by prosecutors, judges and juries, as a result. Adults also lose, when important constitutional safeguards are dismissed or glossed over as a result of the forced connection with child pornography allegations in these cases. Sexually-oriented media is entitled to full First Amendment protection and protecting the most controversial and indecent speech is essential so that all other speech remains securely within the coverage of the First Amendment.
The tactic of mixing child pornography with adult obscenity has been used in countless other cases in the past, including the highly-publicized obscenity case against Mike Jones in Chicago, and the federal obscenity case against certain written stories involving children by Karen Fletcher, a/k/a Red Rose. Child pornography was not the focus of either of these cases, but the concepts were thrown around by the prosecutors in court and in the public, in an effort to tarnish the reputation of the defendant, and make the obscenity charge more likely to stick.
Nowhere is the misuse of child pornography charges more apparent than in the case of 'sexting.' Countless articles, blogs and Op-Ed pieces have come out recently, decrying the use of harsh child pornography statutes against teenagers accused of sending racy photos of themselves. Several states are currently considering legislation to decriminalize the behavior, or reduce its severity to nothing more than a misdemeanor. This is a step in the right direction. Children convicted of child pornography are forced by a federal law, the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act, to register as sex offenders — a label that can deal damage for the rest of their lives. Teens impacted by this registration requirement cannot go to school, find jobs, or lead normal lives. Oddly, this is the only instance where the child porn victim is also the perpetrator.
The end game for the activists and politicians here is to cause the public to immediately associate any incident involving pornography with the rape and abuse of children. If they can somehow work the word "child" into any sentence referencing "pornography" they have achieved a victory. But the misuse, and overuse, of child pornography statutes to prosecute these tangential cases involving cache files, young-looking adults, and sexting behavior, undermines the core policies of the child pornography laws for a cheap political purpose. Children will suffer when these cases are passed over by prosecutors, or dismissed by judges flooded with dubious claims of child exploitation. The censors may gain minor ground with these tactics, but the voices opposing distortion of constitutional freedoms under the guise of protecting children are getting louder."
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Go Lawrence. I have yet to engage in a single discussion with a porn basher in which the subject of kiddie porn didn't come up within the first three minutes.
I have also, as I've said here before, never been shown a single piece of child pornography by anyone other than an anti-porn crusader.
It would seem child pornography is of use to others in addition to pedophiles. Unlike pedophiles, however, censors are without shame.
"A favorite trick of the censors in this country is to blur the lines between protected speech, in the form of adult erotica on the one hand, with patently illegal material, in the form of child pornography on the other, by mixing the two at every opportunity.
Family Values groups and other opponents of free speech routinely use the terms "pornography," "obscenity" and "child pornography," interchangeably, in the attempt to cause confusion in the mind of the public, and intentionally link perfectly legal content with evidence of a horrific crime. The media often plays along, whether through ignorance or complicity, and refers to the new child porn arrest as a "Pornography Bust."
All of this helps convince the public through confusion, that pornography has something to do with abuse of children, and that all of it is probably illegal somehow. In some jurisdictions, law enforcement investigators seize every chance to mix these concepts in a blender, by charging defendants with obscenity as well as child pornography, no matter how remote the connection, or how strong the evidence. Some evidence of this can be found in a couple recent cases initiated by the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd. This is the same Sheriff made famous by declaring that he had jurisdiction to regulate anything online, so long as it was available for download in Polk County, Florida. According to Judd:
"But it makes no difference, because if you fed that server or you could receive information off that server in this county, then it gives us jurisdiction. ... Technically I could charge someone in Kansas, if I received child pornography here, obtained a warrant and had him extradited from Kansas and tried here."
Note the stray reference to "child pornography" there. That particular case had nothing to do with children, but was an adult obscenity case against Chris Wilson, arising from his operation of a user-generated content site. This quote provides a unique glimpse into the strategy of many law enforcement agencies and anti-porn groups, who constantly mention child pornography whenever discussing adult erotica.
Judd's office recently investigated an antique store owner by the name of John Denitto, who engaged in some adult content production on the side. Sheriff's Deputies raided the business based on the claim of a "confidential informant" that a teenager was being photographed there. Leaving aside the fact that a teenager can be 18 or 19 and still legally participate in adult photography, this unconfirmed statement gave law enforcement the hook they needed to raid the modeling studio, under the guise of a child pornography investigation. However, no evidence of child pornography was ever found, and the "confidential informant" turned out to be a former "model" herself, who was trying to buy her way out of her own criminal problems by turning informant for the state. Not the most reliable informant, to put things mildly.
But what does a good Deputy do when his information results in the seizure of nothing more than a bunch of video tapes of adults having sex? File obscenity charges, of course! Not much is required to arrest someone for alleged obscenity. A charging document needs to be filed saying that a prosecutor believes in good faith that there is probable cause that the material is obscene. Polk County usually goes the extra step of getting a local judge to sign off on a confirmation that such probable cause exists, but that is all smoke and mirrors. Any erotic work might be obscene, simply based on its sexually-explicit nature. The question of obscenity is left for the judge or jury. Until that ultimate determination is made, it is presumed to be non-obscene under the First Amendment.
Nonetheless, despite such a presumption, just about anybody involved in the commercial production or distribution of adult material can be prosecuted for obscenity. That is one of the (many) reasons the obscenity laws are unfair, unconstitutional and inhumane in modern society. There is no fair warning as to what material might result in serious felony charges, with implications and innuendo of child pornography to boot. Denitto's felony obscenity case remains pending, and no proof of child pornography ever came to light.
Law enforcement and prosecutors know that as soon as the specter of child pornography is raised, the defendant loses public sympathy, support of friends, and jury appeal. So they try to throw it in any time they can.
In another recent case from Polk County, Sheriff Deputies arrested Timothy Keck for numerous counts of obscenity depicting a minor. This sounds like a valid offense, until the facts get in the way. Keck was a former Sheriff's Deputy himself, until he had a falling out with the agency. Oddly enough, he found himself targeted for some Internet surveillance by that same agency, and a warrant was issued for offenses involving child pornography. Keck allegedly used Limewire, a popular file sharing service, to download various images, including numerous drawings of underage individuals engaged in sexual activity. That's right, drawings. Oh, and the investigators apparently also dug up a single image from a temporary cache file allegedly depicting only the genitals of an underage couple in the act of intercourse. It has not been explained how one divines the age of models based solely on a depiction of their genitals engaged in a sex act. But Keck faces one count of possession of child pornography (for the temp file) and 26 counts of distribution of obscenity, for the drawings. This arrest has been described by Judd as the "largest roundup in the county," and "horrific."
Given that Keck was lumped in with 45 other suspects, all of whom are referred to as a group despite the lack of any apparent connection; some of the other images involved in the other cases may well have been horrifying. Child pornography is a heinous, inexcusable crime, and legitimate cases should be vigorously prosecuted. But when politicians or special interest groups start mixing in allegations of child porn with adult pornography, both children and adults become the losers. Trying to force a tenuous charge of child pornography just to tarnish the reputation of a suspect in an adult obscenity case dilutes and reduces the importance — and indeed the 'horror' — of real child pornography cases. Future child pornography investigations will not be taken as seriously by prosecutors, judges and juries, as a result. Adults also lose, when important constitutional safeguards are dismissed or glossed over as a result of the forced connection with child pornography allegations in these cases. Sexually-oriented media is entitled to full First Amendment protection and protecting the most controversial and indecent speech is essential so that all other speech remains securely within the coverage of the First Amendment.
The tactic of mixing child pornography with adult obscenity has been used in countless other cases in the past, including the highly-publicized obscenity case against Mike Jones in Chicago, and the federal obscenity case against certain written stories involving children by Karen Fletcher, a/k/a Red Rose. Child pornography was not the focus of either of these cases, but the concepts were thrown around by the prosecutors in court and in the public, in an effort to tarnish the reputation of the defendant, and make the obscenity charge more likely to stick.
Nowhere is the misuse of child pornography charges more apparent than in the case of 'sexting.' Countless articles, blogs and Op-Ed pieces have come out recently, decrying the use of harsh child pornography statutes against teenagers accused of sending racy photos of themselves. Several states are currently considering legislation to decriminalize the behavior, or reduce its severity to nothing more than a misdemeanor. This is a step in the right direction. Children convicted of child pornography are forced by a federal law, the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act, to register as sex offenders — a label that can deal damage for the rest of their lives. Teens impacted by this registration requirement cannot go to school, find jobs, or lead normal lives. Oddly, this is the only instance where the child porn victim is also the perpetrator.
The end game for the activists and politicians here is to cause the public to immediately associate any incident involving pornography with the rape and abuse of children. If they can somehow work the word "child" into any sentence referencing "pornography" they have achieved a victory. But the misuse, and overuse, of child pornography statutes to prosecute these tangential cases involving cache files, young-looking adults, and sexting behavior, undermines the core policies of the child pornography laws for a cheap political purpose. Children will suffer when these cases are passed over by prosecutors, or dismissed by judges flooded with dubious claims of child exploitation. The censors may gain minor ground with these tactics, but the voices opposing distortion of constitutional freedoms under the guise of protecting children are getting louder."
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Go Lawrence. I have yet to engage in a single discussion with a porn basher in which the subject of kiddie porn didn't come up within the first three minutes.
I have also, as I've said here before, never been shown a single piece of child pornography by anyone other than an anti-porn crusader.
It would seem child pornography is of use to others in addition to pedophiles. Unlike pedophiles, however, censors are without shame.
Nina in the Economist!
That's right. The staid and serious biz journal from London, reporting on the sad economic state of the U.S porn industry actually asked the right person what's up and get some straight answers. Journalism lives!
Hard times
Sep 10th 2009 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition
A big industry in northern Los Angeles is among the worst hit by the recession
EVEN Nina Hartley, who became a pornographic actress in 1984 and continues to be one of its most sought-after performers at the age of 50, is feeling the recession. “Last year I did a scene a week, this year I do a scene a month,” she says. As a sex celebrity, she has not dropped her fees, charging about $1,200 for a “straight boy-girl” scene. But production has collapsed, and for younger performers so have prices.
The adult-film industry is concentrated in the San Fernando Valley—“the Valley” to Angelenos—on the northern edge of Los Angeles, so the slump in porn is yet another factor depressing the local economy. Pornography had been immune to previous recessions, so the current downturn has come as a shock.
Most of the industry consists of small private production companies whose numbers are secret, but Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine, estimates that the American industry had some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, before the recession, mostly in DVD sales and rentals and some in internet subscriptions. Diane Duke, the director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s trade group, thinks that revenues have fallen 30-50% during the past year. “One producer told me his revenue was down 80%,” she says.
If the Valley used to make 5,000-6,000 films a year, says Mr Kernes, it now makes perhaps 3,000-4,000. Some firms have shut down, others are consolidating or scraping by. For the 1,200 active performers in the Valley this means less action and more hardship. A young woman without Ms Hartley’s name-recognition might have charged $1,000 for a straight scene before the crisis, but gets $800 or less now. Men are worse hit. If they averaged $500 for a straight scene in 2007, they are now lucky to get $300. For every performer there are several people in support, from sound-tech to catering and (yes) wardrobe, says Ms Duke, so the overall effect on the Valley economy is large.
The recession, moreover, has exacerbated a previous crisis. Piracy is the main problem. And the internet, with its copious free clips, is an increasingly viable alternative to the paid stuff. Pornography in general has become “like potato chips, everywhere and cheap, to be consumed and tossed,” says Ms Hartley. It’s not the same as in the golden age when she joined. “The industry will shrink and stay shrunken,” she reckons.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Alas, I wish she could have been the bearer of better news, but Nina calls 'em like she sees 'em, and right now the view is not pretty. Nor is likely to get prettier soon, as the so-called "industry leaders" have responded to the multiple problems besetting the business like the captain of The Exxon Valdez, or maybe The Titanic.
Some people, includling some readers here, really don't care much what happens at the core of the commercial industry located out here, but if they think having it collapse will provide openings for something better in the hinterlands, they should pause to consider that probability that the economics afflicting Big Porn with its deeper pockets will probably hit even harder among those trying to start new enterprises and find audiences. Mom and Pop porn sites and non-L.A. based production companies are dying like flies at the moment, and the picture isn't likely to brighten for them until it does so for bigger, more robust entities with greater market access.
Still, it's good to see Nina taken seriously by a serious publication somewhere. Maybe it will start a trend.
Hard times
Sep 10th 2009 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition
A big industry in northern Los Angeles is among the worst hit by the recession
EVEN Nina Hartley, who became a pornographic actress in 1984 and continues to be one of its most sought-after performers at the age of 50, is feeling the recession. “Last year I did a scene a week, this year I do a scene a month,” she says. As a sex celebrity, she has not dropped her fees, charging about $1,200 for a “straight boy-girl” scene. But production has collapsed, and for younger performers so have prices.
The adult-film industry is concentrated in the San Fernando Valley—“the Valley” to Angelenos—on the northern edge of Los Angeles, so the slump in porn is yet another factor depressing the local economy. Pornography had been immune to previous recessions, so the current downturn has come as a shock.
Most of the industry consists of small private production companies whose numbers are secret, but Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine, estimates that the American industry had some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, before the recession, mostly in DVD sales and rentals and some in internet subscriptions. Diane Duke, the director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s trade group, thinks that revenues have fallen 30-50% during the past year. “One producer told me his revenue was down 80%,” she says.
If the Valley used to make 5,000-6,000 films a year, says Mr Kernes, it now makes perhaps 3,000-4,000. Some firms have shut down, others are consolidating or scraping by. For the 1,200 active performers in the Valley this means less action and more hardship. A young woman without Ms Hartley’s name-recognition might have charged $1,000 for a straight scene before the crisis, but gets $800 or less now. Men are worse hit. If they averaged $500 for a straight scene in 2007, they are now lucky to get $300. For every performer there are several people in support, from sound-tech to catering and (yes) wardrobe, says Ms Duke, so the overall effect on the Valley economy is large.
The recession, moreover, has exacerbated a previous crisis. Piracy is the main problem. And the internet, with its copious free clips, is an increasingly viable alternative to the paid stuff. Pornography in general has become “like potato chips, everywhere and cheap, to be consumed and tossed,” says Ms Hartley. It’s not the same as in the golden age when she joined. “The industry will shrink and stay shrunken,” she reckons.
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Alas, I wish she could have been the bearer of better news, but Nina calls 'em like she sees 'em, and right now the view is not pretty. Nor is likely to get prettier soon, as the so-called "industry leaders" have responded to the multiple problems besetting the business like the captain of The Exxon Valdez, or maybe The Titanic.
Some people, includling some readers here, really don't care much what happens at the core of the commercial industry located out here, but if they think having it collapse will provide openings for something better in the hinterlands, they should pause to consider that probability that the economics afflicting Big Porn with its deeper pockets will probably hit even harder among those trying to start new enterprises and find audiences. Mom and Pop porn sites and non-L.A. based production companies are dying like flies at the moment, and the picture isn't likely to brighten for them until it does so for bigger, more robust entities with greater market access.
Still, it's good to see Nina taken seriously by a serious publication somewhere. Maybe it will start a trend.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Sweden's schizoid sex policies
Sweden's policies around sex work took a turn for the even more nonsensical recently with government funding of a series of experimental feminist porn DVDs and a website by filmmaker Mia Engberg. Story here, here, and here, via Swedish English-language website The Local.
Keep in mind that this is the same country that bans government employees from staying in hotels where porn is available, and actively prosecutes the purchase of sex. Which makes me wonder about these films – were the performers paid out of this government funding? If so, congratulations, Kingdom of Sweden, you're now a purchaser of sexual services. So will you be remanding any of your officials to custody? Or is that only for regular punters.
Keep in mind that this is the same country that bans government employees from staying in hotels where porn is available, and actively prosecutes the purchase of sex. Which makes me wonder about these films – were the performers paid out of this government funding? If so, congratulations, Kingdom of Sweden, you're now a purchaser of sexual services. So will you be remanding any of your officials to custody? Or is that only for regular punters.
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