Free Speech Alert - AZ Photographers & Webmasters

McCowen?s arraignment is scheduled for Friday, September 14th; however, as McCowen has already entered his plea, he will not actually appear in court on Friday, Walters says.

The question of whether paying porn performers is tantamount to prostitution is a question that has only been settled in the state of California. In People v. Freeman, the California Supreme Court held that pandering and prostitution laws cannot be employed by the government as a means to suppress the creation of erotic materials that are protected by the First Amendment.

The standard laid forth in People v. Freeman has not been adopted by other states, however, leaving the prostitution question very much open throughout the rest of the country.

?Sexual conduct filmed for a movie is simply not prostitution; where sexual activity is engaged in by paid performers for the purposes of being recorded on camera, and intended for a viewing audience, the legal analysis changes dramatically,? says Weston. ?In such instance, the government is precluded from using the prostitution laws, or similar back door censorship theories as a means of avoiding the First Amendment protection otherwise afforded to the creation of sexually oriented content.?

Specifically, in addition to the allegations of distribution of obscene material, the allegations involved a few of the performers claiming they had been provided controlled substances by one or more of the named defendants, that the use of escorts to make these films was legally prostitution and the mere payment of adult to perform sexual acts was a violation of Florida's prostitution law. Most of these same performers have pending RICO charges alleged against them for their involvement in escorting services in Pensacola that will not be resolved until after the resolution of this case.