WASHINGTON ?A Justice Department program to fight obscenity on the Internet, funded by a $150,000-a-year earmark in a spending bill and operated by an antiporn group, has resulted in no prosecutions for obscenity.
The Justice Department website routes citizen complaints about obscenity to ObscenityCrimes.org, a website run by antiporn group Morality in Media, which receives the grant money.
Two retired law enforcement officers check the reported sites for legally definable obscenity. A reported 67,000 complaints have been forwarded to the Justice Department and federal prosecutors through this program.
None has been prosecuted.
"Any program that fields public complaints on a matter as complex as obscenity can never be expected to play a meaningful role in the decisions of what is to be prosecuted and where," 1st Amendment attorney Jeffrey Douglas told XBIZ. "Lay people will simply call in about something that they are offended by. Individuals' offense could hardly be less relevant to the criteria for obscenity as def
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The Justice Department website routes citizen complaints about obscenity to ObscenityCrimes.org, a website run by antiporn group Morality in Media, which receives the grant money.
Two retired law enforcement officers check the reported sites for legally definable obscenity. A reported 67,000 complaints have been forwarded to the Justice Department and federal prosecutors through this program.
None has been prosecuted.
"Any program that fields public complaints on a matter as complex as obscenity can never be expected to play a meaningful role in the decisions of what is to be prosecuted and where," 1st Amendment attorney Jeffrey Douglas told XBIZ. "Lay people will simply call in about something that they are offended by. Individuals' offense could hardly be less relevant to the criteria for obscenity as def
View the full story
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