Originally Posted by Quentin

Depending on the community and how the legal argument is handled, you might be surprised by the conclusions that "regular peeps" come to with respect to BDSM porn. Check out the case U.S. v. Marcus some time (AKA "the slavespace.com case") and you'll see what I mean.

In that case, the defendant (Glenn Marcus) ran a site that featured some particularly brutal BDSM depictions, including things like:



And:



While the jury convicted Marcus of violating sex trafficking and labor laws (in what was considered a pretty novel application of those laws), it actually acquitted him on the obscenity charges, even after being exposed to the most severe and explicit depictions the site had to offer.

Granted, the fact that he was going to serve significant time on the labor and sex trafficking charges might have helped some, because it gave the jury the option of acquitting on the obscenity charges without setting the man free entirely, but it's still a hell of a precedent to be staring at if you're a prosecutor considering bringing obscenity charges against a BDSM producer in a community as metropolitan and porn-tolerant as NYC -- and San Fran might not be that different from NYC in terms of having a large local BDSM scene.

I don't mean to suggest that Kink could never be convicted on obscenity charges, just that it might not be as much of a slam dunk for the prosecution as people think.