worst states for porn?
 

What US states are the worst for selling porn, the riskiest for obscenity prosecution?

Alabama
Florida?

Good question...

bump for answers

I dunno but I heard a story about how one lady was basically jailed for have a WRITTEN, FICTITIOUS blog about some fantasies, etc in Pennsylvania, no pictures or graphics, just words.

I'd stay away from the deep south but I do know some big players are based out of Florida..

I wouldn't say Florida as a "state" but yea maybe certain counties. Don't forget half the porn industry is based in Florida. Well maybe not half, but there are a shit load of companies in South Florida and quite a few over in Tampa area.

I'd definitely say Florida is the number 2 location for porn companies after Cali.

What other states? Let's name names.

I personally would adopt this tactic:

Go to a recent presidential election map. Any state that is red, I would steer away from unless you know for sure that it is state like Florida where parts of it are nice and liberal.

BTW, what do you have to fear, shouldn't your republican party protect your freedom to peddle porn anywhere you want without trouble?

I would agree about Florida like in Orlando they arrested newspaper ad sales people who took ads from escorts,Pensacola is another no no.
I would say parts of florida, alabama, missouri right off the bat.

Add Oklahoma on that list of places to avoid.

Thats good also another one is if they have lots strip clubs, adult stores,escorts and domme's. There is a good chance you wouldnt have to worry.

Very true. Typically places that are going to crack down on porn attack the shops and strip clubs first.

Oh, and if we are naming states, Utah has to be near the top. they are the only state that actually hired a "porn czar" in an effort to remove porn from the state.

Hasnt Ohio been on the industries and particularly flynts balls for decades now?

Kansas

THIRTY-EIGHT adult outlets and bookstores under investigation for obscenity RIGHT NOW:

http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/09/ka...scenity_ca.php

Well you have to think of Florida as a mini United States. Most of the East Coast of Florida is very liberal and safe and parts of the West Coast of Florida are as well. Take Tampa for instance, however in the middle it's consertive and not so safe take Polk country as an example.

Orlando is a bit of a strange case. You would think that it would be more liberal because it's a big city. However the fact it's a major family related tourist trap makes it more conservative, as they want to protect the family safe image.

I mean hell last I heard in Orlando strippers couldn't touch you in a lap dance and couldn't even go topless. Yet here in Daytona we have full nude full contact sleaze pits. Same as Tampa and South Florida. So it just all depends where you go in the state.

Go to sex store / DVD sites and find their do not ship list, its usually by zip codes. There's your list.
WG

Georgia
Utah
Kentucky
Tenessee
there are 2 more that are the big six cant ship adult material to but I cant remember them

Thats too bad, I am working on launching several gay sites with an Oklahoma theme. Should make me popular with the neighbors. :thumbsup

South Bend, Indiana is a bad place to be - strip clubs, porn shops, you name it, Citizens for Community Values up there will do their very best to put you under.

Actually, thats where CCV has their home base. Cincinnati and Columbus.

http://www.ccv.org/contactus.aspx

Actually, looks like Indiana has gotten much, much worse while I have been away, most of it seems to be centered around South Bend, Elkhart and Mishawaka, which are all within a 50 mile or so radius of each other. CCV seems to really have blossomed, and it looks like they have a Political Action Committee off the ground to buy politicians and influence.

http://www.ccvindiana.com/ccv-victories.html

"March 2007 - Stopped public sale of Playboy Magazines from residence in St. Joseph County."

"July 2006 - Special Rights Ordinance for Homosexuals defeated in South Bend." (It was not special rights - more info on this here, here and here).

http://www.ccvipac.com/ccv-ipac-endorsements.html

Anything in the south......

They should, but they don't.

Republicans don't agree on all matters, and right now the Christian Right has a very big influence in the party; some Republicans don't like their influence, including myself.

Have Democrats really been that friendly to porn? I think not.

Here's the avoid list, so far:

AL
FL --but the East Coast is safe.
GA
MO
KY
TN
KS
OK
UT

That's 9 states.

Any other additions?

Daddy, are you talking about web based or retail locations? I just want to be clear.

I've talked to someone on this board who has a felony arrest for transporting porn in Tennessee. :(

In the 10 plus years I ran adult stores and strip clubs, I can tell you that I have personally been arrested at least 50 times in Ohio, and sadly that is no exaggeration. The humorous thing is that not a one of those arrests resulted in a conviction. Here are some of the offenses I have been arrested for:

Obstructing official business...our arcade areas (the sections that housed our video and dancer booths) were private areas that you had to pay an admission fee to enter. Since we did not have a liquor license I did not have to permit uniformed police officers to enter and inspect without a warrant. That didn't stop them from arresting me at least 10 times for denying them entry, and labeling it obstructing official business.

Promoting public indecency...because I "allowed" customers to masturbate in video booths, even though the video booths were not in a public area, but a private area that you had to pay admission to enter, and was covered in signs that told you not to enter if you were offended by depictions of nudity or hardcore sex.

Promoting prostitution...we had the old style dancer booths at our Ohio store, where the dancer was on one side of the glass and the customer on the other, with a phone to communicate. It was like live phone sex. A couple of vice officers offered a dancer $500 to bring another dancer into her booth and do a two girl show. Now the dancers all knew this was prohibited, but if I offered two female Wal Mart cashiers $500 cash in their face they would do the same. That doesn't mean Wal Mart promotes prostitution, it just means money talks. Anyways, they arrested the two girls on prostitution charges, and I got called into the store (I was at my girlfriend at the time daughter's birthday party) and was hit with felony promoting prostitution.

Violating video booth ordinances...this one is a pisser. The head vice cop at the time that I had an excellent relationship with asked us to put mirrors in the corners of the video booths, so he could see that there was only one person per booth, which was a city ordinance. We used to get a lot of gay guys trying to have sex in the booths, as well as guys bringing in prostitutes from the projects next door. We didn't want that either, so we did with no problem. Eventually he got promoted out of vice, and the new crew that came in would use the mirrors to watch customers masturbate and arrest them for public indecency, even though it was a private area. Since the video booth ordinances didn't say anything about mirrors and we did it as a courtesy to the previous vice regime, we pulled the mirrors down. On separate occasions they arrested both my assistant and I for a violation that didn't exist, for removing the mirrors.

More obstructing official business...when they started arresting our customers for public indecency we decided to defend them in court, using our local counsel, famed first amendment attorney Louis Sirkin. Initially when the customers were arrested they would just go to court, bend over and take the fine, since they were too embarrassed to fight, which was potentially fatal to us as we could get shut down as a public nuisance with too many arrests and convictions at our address. When we started to defend them we won every time, using our "it's not public indecency in a private area" argument. So the cops decided to hustle the customers out of our store when they were going to cite them for public indecency, tell them they were banned and were never allowed to come back (which they had ZERO right to do, as we were a private business), and prevented us from speaking to them so we could tell them we would defend them in court. So what did I get arrested for this time? Trying to speak to the customer after the cops were done with their paperwork (they never took them in after arresting them, just cited them and released them) to tell him we would serve as his legal counsel. I was told to go back into the store, I argued that I had the right to speak to the customer since they were done with him, and back to jail I went.

Even more obstructing official business...this particular store was in Dayton, Ohio, right next door to a real shit bag housing project called Parkside Homes. You might recognize this name from the woman who made national news several months back for microwaving her baby, and she was an esteemed resident of Parkside Homes. Gunshots were a normal sound every night, and we had to employ round the clock armed security. Part of their duties was to chase prostitutes from next door off the lot. Well, the vice officers liked to set up shop right in front of our store using female officers to portray prostitutes in a sting operation, and I was arrested several times for obstructing official business for chasing them off our lot, which was private property. I didn't care if they wanted to do a sting, as the way I see it the hookers were our competition for money, but doing it in front of our store, in our private lot, and arresting our customers was bullshit. I was also arrested for coming outside of the store and videotaping them in our lot after we won an injunction stating they had to stay on the public sidealk and couldn't go on our private property.

Yes, this was a very long winded rant, but the moral to this story is Ohio fucking blows for running an adult business...

Both.

Also, the differences between the two --the hard legal differences, backed up by statute or case, not based on webmaster rumor.

OK, I am persuaded to add Ohio:

AL
FL --but the East Coast is safe.
GA
MO
KY
TN
KS
OH
OK
UT

That's 10 states.

I can tell you as a fact on the retail end that you can get a ton of variance in the same state, just from one county to the other. In the above story we were in the city of Dayton, and less than a few blocks away in Harrison Township, on the exact same street, they didn't face a quarter of the problems that we did with their adult businesses (they had a strip club or adult store every fifty feet). They looked at the adult businesses as a great source of revenue, since they were already high crime areas that couldn't attract mainstream businesses. You would be surprised how much leeway local officials have to make your life Hell...

Good advise ........

IMO, the above quote is very meaningful concerning shipping/selling/etc.

For making porn, I understand (I am NOT an attorney) that Freeman v. California which protects legitimate makers porn against charges of pimping/pandering/prostitution has also been tested/adopted in New York
courts. Thus, I believe that only CA and NY are legal porn manufacturing states.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Freeman

dave

Wow, interesting read.

Thanks, and considering I had a few drinks last night I'm surprised in reading it this morning that it made sense :winkwink:

Honestly those incidents are only the tip of the iceberg. I have a lot of different incidents I suffered through over the years in that side of the industry written down and I do plan and putting it all together and writing a book one day. It has sex, drugs, and violence...all of the crucial elements of a bestseller :thumbsup

Ain't that the truth!!

:(

Dave, you are one of the smartest guys in the biz. I have always respected your essays, thoughts and writing.

I hope we see Florida join the list of safe havens next summer. If Ray Guhn is successful in defending cum on her face dot com, the Sunshine State may be wide open. I hope to God he doesn't take a plea deal.

We don't get too much trouble in Tampa or Miami, with the notable exception of Max Hardcore. His stuff, though, is so extreme that is almost defies a category of its own, and I doubt that Max's case will set a business-wrecking precedent for anyone but Max Hardcore in Florida.

Nice to see you chime in Dave!

Thanks for the kind comments.

Max's stuff doesn't make my dick hard, but (unless it's deemed legally obscene under the Miller v. California standards) I totally support his Constitutional right to make it. Porn is legal, obscenity is not.

Regards,

dave

I agree with Max's right to make it, completely.

Let's just hope a jury in Tampa sees it the same way.

Regardless, I run a weekly search with your name just to see your essays and thoughts on the business.

After sorting through hundreds of sites where you fuck women hotter than I can get, I generally find something I haven't read before.

Sad, isn't it?

:helpme

UTAH

I was watching this Doc on TV about porn and how they wanted to ban it in utah

but they found out that People in utah buy more porn than any where else in the USA

What about North Eastern Indiana (at least) for the reasons I mentioned above?

http://www.tlavideo.com/support/supp...=2312&supID=34

Restricted Shipping Policy

Pretty good advice. :2 cents:

Nah, cant go blindly by it. Look at TLA, they state up front that they ban anything where customs seizes their shit, since they'd be out product and have to refund the customer then of face a charge back. Its a place to start, but it shouldn't just be copied, pasted and adopted as policy.

Really, the only thing you can do is what I am doing now: find a reputable attorney who knows his shit and have them find out just what you can and cannot get away with in your local area.

Red states and red counties within Blue states.

:-))). They are full of loud-mouth right-wing religious hypocrites who preach and act against the normalness of sex/porn, yet they fantasize and masturbate to our products in private--grrrrrrrrrr!

dave

FL - Say that in Duval County......

Parts of FL are safe to a degree-

hillsborough, pinellas = Tampa/St. Pete area.

miami-dade, broward, palm beach = South Florida area.

So, after looking at the TLA list, let me update again.

Here's the avoid list, so far:

AL
FL --some cities such as Tampa and Miami may be safe.
GA
KS
KY
MO
MS
NC
OH
OK
TN
TX
UT

That's 13 states.

Any other additions?

Northeastern Ohio (Cleveland Metro Area) will bring you no problems.

thanks for sharing! :thumbsup

This is a very difficult question to answer because it depends on what you are doing exactly and how you are doing it.

There are going to be different laws, regs and codes depending on the method of sale. If you are talking about brick and mortar sales v. online Internet sales v. mail order sales.

There is not only the question of how the sale is made but also whether operating the adult business is legal in that particular state or community.

This is where you will need to spend some money on an attorney.

Do not ship lists are not always up to date. They have to be constantly changed based upon obscenity prosecutions. You have to look at the broad definition of the community in the actual criminal prosecution. It might be as broad as an entire state or as limited as a particular zip code. There isnt a one size fits all do not ship list. It also depends on what you are selling as well.

Surprisingly, there's an obscenity prosecution going on right now in Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is the city with the most obscenity prosecutions of any jurisdiction. But would I stop selling porn in LA, probably not.

So this is really a specific question that has to be broken down and looked at carefully.

Just to let everyone know, from what I am aware of, NY has NOT adopted the Freeman standard of protecting the production of porn. The case Dave is speaking of was a criminal trial of a madame for prostitution related charges, not a prosecution case involving porn production. The Judge did make a statement in his decision of how prostitution is different than porn but that case is not something that can be cited since it was never appealed and its not controlling law.

If there's a different case please let me know cause I am unaware of it.

I don't think Missouri should be on the list unless it's gay porn. Found this an interesting read. http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/missouri/monews13.htm

Gary

i think in iraque is the worst us state for porn