Another Obscenity arrest.

Fat chance

Half of em would be pissing their frilly panties and talking their mouths off if the FBI knocked on their door - forget the court case. Hell.. they ain't lived or qualified to be in adult till they defended a few obscenity cases

Just bringing this off of the bottom of page 3.

I think atm shouldnt be done also its dangerous for performers.

Dangers aside, legal moral stand point please.

Almost all content can be dangerous to performers, even girl girl oral.

glad their asses got locked up.

Child porn is an easy test -- was one of the performers under 18 at the time the image was taken? That is a simple yes or no question. If the answer is "Yes" then the material is child porn and is contraband. CP is illegal to make, sell, or possess. CP has a victim too -- the child model. This is an objective test and easy to understand. CP is not legal at any level.

Obscene material is different. The producer and distributor can be convicted but the individual that has it in his home cannot. It is legal to possess obscene material.

What is obscene is not an easy test. Hell, we don't even have a static answer key for that test! Is it obscene? We have to take 12 people [after voir dire as earlier mentioned] and then present the material to them and then those people must deliberate to decide if what they saw was so horrible and offensive that the producer should be put into prison for making it. Since this test is so subjective, it turns on the _opinions_ of the jurors. And that makes it unfair in my mind. I would probably give up my stance if obscenity was clearly defined in the law, for example, if depictions of human defecation and ingestion of fecal matter are defined by law to be obscene. That is a bright line that would probably bring the vast majority [probably over 99%] of webmasters and pornographers to the truce table. However, right now what is obscene is defined by "community standards" -- whatever THOSE are. The DOJ likes to pick conservative jurisdictions to file their cases, knowing that the "community standards" in rural Pennsylvania are different from the community standards of urban Los Angeles. Then rural Pennsylvania community standards are applied to a product that is sold all over the US, to all kinds of communities, yet the standards of a community the producer never even visited are applied to his work. I find that patently unfair!

Could we get a jury to decide if your bathwater is too cold to bathe in ? If there was a federal law that mandated bathwater in commercial baths must be of sufficient temperature to bathe, then deciding if J's BathHouse broke the law would be a subjective test. Maybe a jury in Alaska would think that bathwater that is 28F saltwater [just like the water where the Titanic sank ]is not too cold to bathe in but the jury from Miami would be shocked when you had them slip into that icy cold tub. You can get different results from different juries, and thus that subjective test is not fair and does not apply to everyone evenly. If the law is that bathwater in a commercial bath must be at least 75F then the question is presented as "Was John Doe's bathwater at J's BathHouse below the limit of 75F?" That is an objective test and John knows for sure his bathwater is colder than the mandated standard, even if his customers are members of the Polar Bear Club and want it that cold. Then John is clearly breaking the law and deserves punishment that fits the crime.

I don't believe in "anything goes" because I don't believe those under 18, animals or dead bodies can give consent. I do believe that consensual activities among sober adults that is filmed and sold to adults that _want_ to see it [unwanted spam is _not_ going to consenting adults] should not carry a prison sentence.

I personally do not take on criminal defense cases simply because my heart is not in it. I spent too much time as an elected prosecutor to sit at the other table and put forth an argument that my client did not do something when I know damn well they fucked up. I won't try to bullshit anyone that I would want to represent a defendant in one of these cases -- I may take some shit for this but honestly I want someone else to fight that battle.

Juries are funny entities. I have seated a lot of juries, and even after studying their responses to a written questionniare and then questioning each potential juror individually, there can be surprises. Plus, that one holdout that you may have can end up caving in when the other 11 jurors pressure him into voting to convict. It can be that simple -- 11 jurors think the defendant is guilty, the 12th is convinced that the defendant is not guilty, but after 10 hours of deliberations that 12th juror decides to give up and vote to convict so they can all go home. Maybe the defendant gets lucky and gets me as the 12th juror and I convince the other 11 to vote not guilty!
But it could also end up in a hung jury and the whole trial starts over. The defendant then is faced with more damn attorney fees to go through another trial or throw in the towel and take a plea agreement.

I am hoping that the current obscenity cases go all the way and we get a new more usuable definition of obscenity. The 1973 Miller Test using community standards just does not work in the internet world. It may have been appropriate in 1973 when porn was sold only in bricks and mortar stores or shown in theaters, and we knew what communities were reasonably safe to sell in and which were a prison sentence waiting to happen. Now that the entire internet world is the community and the most conservative community standards can be applied to any content, that test is no longer reasonable.

While I agree with the rest of your post, I need to highlight this.

The example I gave was a mother taking a picture of her child playing in the bathtub and being charged with CP when the person developing the pictures called police. They were not for distribution. They were for her child's photo album.

There is QUITE a difference between THAT and CP. If THAT can be classed as CP, then I'm sorry, that's not an easy test at all. Even if it IS easy to define simply because they're under 18, that doesn't make it right.

I'm sure I've got a couple of pictures of my children in the bathtub too. Are you saying that my wife and I should be charged with possession of CP, or did you run through and simplify that part, then move on to the obscenity issue because that was the issue at hand? That's fine, but I'd like some clarification on that.

Agree Chad - juries can go *anywhere* - swayed by some irrelevant minor utterance or miss the point of the evidence. It's very hard to say what a jury is thinking and looks can be deceptive - I've had, eg two elderly ladies and a guy who looked like he wanted to see a death sentence come up after an obscenity trial when they returned not guilty verdicts and apologized for the hassle/stress caused by the prosecuting agency. Very strange that people felt the need to do this - but sure appreciated speaking with them and hearing their real thoughts.

Would not have any experience to offer an opinion, but often thought a long and/or complex trial could be better served without a jury and perhaps three judges hearing the evidence.

Totally agree on "community standards" - the net never was so small it could take account of community standards

Anyone warped enough to claim the common baby-in-the-bathtub images are CP, need a few sessions with a shrink. They are sick.

But... hate to say it, there is another side to this and one which does not need to be overlooked. Law enforcement come across some very strange conduct by parents - and sadly this is not uncommon and can be a issue where a law officer with some experience of this field may matter. Forget CP - thats often an offense after the horse has bolted - the real issue is child abuse.

Despite that, can give a good example which happened recently. A friend in law enforcement who happens to be very familiar with situations in the last para wanted to show me pics of her niece (6 months old). Fine - just upload them to a server and I'll pull them down. But - nope And so all the reasons why not emerged - basically along the lines of "even normal pics of children" are a source for weirdos and she never wanted to be the person responsible for having her niece plastered all over the net. This judgement was made thru experience of dealing with the worst of net conduct - sadly that is a reality tho most of us will never know of.

It's very weird that personal websites with images of families can now be thrown into the pot for misuse by others.

ya know there has got to limits!!! even in this business there has got to be a certain respect as to what is really going toooo farrrr!! look if yout husband and wife or whatever and do it to yourselves behind closed doors fine its your poragative but filiming and distributing well theres gotta be a line somewhere!!

and they extremely forbiddin line is people under 18 and way under 18 no way no how should that even be concidered

to be ok!!!!!! were are all adults but somethings are just plain WRONG!!!

Thing is, it is for "political" reasons that most obscenity cases are brought before a jury in the first place.

One of the US political parties in particular is currently pandering to the bible thumpers, it's really as simple as that.

Sure.. it's prob the initial stage of "developing policy" - and also prob a living example of how fucked up things can be when "politics" becomes a playground for idiots with agendas.

Yeah, probably not.

But then again I would guess that chopping up models content might involve some nonconsensual activity. Of course I'm just going by the models I know, your mileage may vary.

bukkake is illegal in the us? fuck me... they should just ban porn...

The lunatic fringe at both ends of the political spectrum have always had far more in common than not and more than anything else it's been their shared belief that they know what's best for the rest of us.

Here's hoping that the next presidential election doesn't come down to a choice between a man hating feminist and a frothing at the mouth bible thumper.

in light of this debate I thought it was worth linking to this thread - http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=654526

That's not consensual "dude"
Animals,young,dead,ra*e

The other ones are legal consenting adults doing it.