Holy cow! I read the title as to why are The French cracking down on porn!
Pheeew and Sacre Bleu! Almost fainted.
I mean not exactly hard-core, but one of my all-time favorite films is the Histoire d’O.
Corinne Clery…oh lala!
Question: what’s the legal definition of serious artistic or literary value?
Likewise, can I get a slightly-more-strict definition of ‘average person’? Or ‘contemporary community standards’?
How about ‘prurient’? I’ve heard “sick, morbid, or shameful” for that last one, but that would imply that scat-fetish porn is obscene only when watched by people who weren’t proud of their scat-fetish.
Now, I freely admit that if it came to legal test, it is a near-certainty that Toilet Man 6 would be found to be legally obscene. So what? If the law itself is found to be sufficently ambiguous and contradictory that ‘I know it when I see it’ is applied, then what the fuck does it matter what the courts find, when they have to just be making shit up in the first place?
Moreover, how can you claim that things are ‘clearly’ obscene under such conditions? How is this different than claiming that such-and-such black man brought to trial for assaulting a white woman in certain parts of the antebellum American South is clearly guilty?
In the post-Ashcroft justice department it’s clearly about the sex. Here’s a report about a 13 month FBI investigation in New Orleans. Ten investigators spent over a year in a operation that resulted in the arrest of a dozen prostitutes. I venture to guess that I could go to New Orleans and find more than twelve prostitutes in considerably less time, but maybe I’m more highly motivated. Here’s a quote from a prosecutor involved in the case
“Federal prosecutor Sal Perricone spoke for the Ashcroft Justice Department when he pledged more of such enforcement. “We’ll seek it out, we’ll find it, we’ll grab it by the scruff of the neck and we’re going to prosecute it,” Perricone insisted.”
Bear in mind that this investigation took place in the run-up to 9-11. You can speculate about what an additional ten FBI agents might have accomplished if they were responding to reports that Bin Laden was determined to attack inside the United States, although if it took them over a year to find 12 hookers in The Big Easy they may not have been the sharpest tools in the shed.
I know it’s easy to find fault with police officials who prosecute minor crimes, but prostitution isn’t even a federal crime.
I don’t understand this question. It matters because the law permits the government to criminally punish those that mail obscene materials. The law has withstood attempts to paint it as ambiguous or contradictory. The Miller decision dates from the mid-70s. There have been obscentity prosecutions since then, and the accused have raised the very objections you now raise. And it hasn’t worked. So the law, as it now stands, is solid.
You’ve conceded yourself the clear finding of obscenity in your first paragraph. It’s different from the black-on-white assault in that the juries making those determinations were not following their oaths and finding facts as directed by the law. The verdicts in those cases didn’t arise from a legitimate finding of fact.
In the case of TM6, the jury that finds the average man would reach the necessary conclusions is doing their job – as you have conceded, the average man WOULD feel that way.
If we don’t prosecute prostitutes then the terrorists have won.
Well, that just depends if they’re on the take, like the rest of the robber barons on the hill.
Anyway, I saw a loophole in your rules. I don’t think delivery services count as US mail, therefore, someone should be able to purchase any kind of porn, (except pedo or snuff, of course), and get it delivered privately. I can understand not wanting to support porn, governmentally, but sheesh!!!
You know why this bothers so many people? Because it seems like a first step down what could be a very long road of increased censorship, of all kinds. There are other solutions. I got it! The child-proof DVD box!
You’re probably better off that way, counselor. That was widely regarded as the best-quality “real movie” porno ever.
Some chains still show what the content provider claims claim to be “soft” (which is harder than what they called that 10 years ago), some others have gone full-hardcore.
No, you didn’t see a loophole. Your assumption is wrong.
18 USC § 1462 prohibits the delivery of obscene material by: “[using] any express company or other common carrier or interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) (!1) of the Communications Act of 1934), for carriage in interstate or foreign commerce…”
All the big premium movie channels, most especially Cinemax and Showtime, show softcore porn in the evenings. If your home or hotel carries those, there’s softcore porn in the house.
I think it’s simpler. Repulicans= anti sex without childbearing.
My opinion is that the 1st Ad protects everything, or should. Note that the *making * of some films- such as real kiddie porn- would still be illegal. And, I give gruding allowance to SCOTUS when they say that we need laws to ban the sale and possession of kiddie porn in order to protect kids. But we need no laws to protect those who make “Toilet man 6”- they are consenting adults. We also need no laws to protect those who are sickened by such films as “Toilet man 6” as all those dudes need to do is not watch it. It’s not like those kinds of films are shown in public movie theatres.
Thus, sick or not- “Toilet man 6” should be protected. And thet test being “The question is what the average person feels. That’s the test. That’s the law.” is stupid. Sure, right now at this point in time, the “average person” doesn’t find 'soft core" porn = obsene. But who is to say that a couple generations from now the “average person” won’t consider *any * material other than the King James Bible to be obsene? This isn’t crazy- there are dudes out there that want *Harry Potter * banned. Let them become the “average person” and we are in trouble. It’s a damn stupid definition/law.
This admin made us safe from the horribly obcene Janet Jackson tit. This stupid incident galvinized the right into censorship of tv and huge fines for obsene language on radio. Somewhere a bureaucrat is given the right to make that decision for you.
Sadly the boobie caused no harm to viewers but opened a door to repression.
What happened to the government appropriately having the power to ensure the public airwaves are used for the public good?
YOU say it’s “repression.” Perhaps others disagree, and want the public airwaves used for something that the PUBLIC agrees is proper.
If someone wants to buy toiletman and view it in the privacy of their own home why shouldn’t they be able to?
Who are they hurting? Why should the government be involved in this? Bunch of self righteous twits. Especially considering the levels of adultery in Congress. If it is illegal it’s a dumb law and should be changed. The Republicans are in power so they can change the law, and they should. Free speech in spirit should apply to even unpopular speech. By protecting Toilet Man you strengthen the Constitution. So if it’s the law just being enforced they’re still self righteous twits who don’t care about the Constitution by allowing the law in the first place.
My guess is the porno industry doesn’t include enough campaign contributions.
I don’t think “Toiletman 6” is being broadcast. 
However, if the majority of the citizens want the public airways used in a certain way- or not in a certain way, fine. OTOH, a small but vocal minority is NOT the majority of the citizenry, no matter how many letters they generate.
That the government has the power to do so is simply a fact; if you don’t comply, men with guns will come for you.
That the government appropriately has any such power is an entirely different issue. The airwaves became “public” in the same way the kulaks’ farmland did; the government stole them from their rightful owners (the inventors and investors who originally converted that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum into a useful resource).
It would be interesting to see a year by year breakdown of how many successful prosecutions vs unsuccessful prosecutions there have been of obscenity cases. It’s been my understanding that “community standards” have gotten a lot more raunchier in the past 30 years.
I’m also curious about where they do these prosecutions. Don’t the feds cherry pick where they will try cases, to find the community most likely to be offended by porn? In an era of internet communications, it seems rather problematic that free speech is limited to what the most thin skinned community finds acceptable.
You know, take away your obligatory partisan wank and I mostly agree with you(although I don’t quite understand it, the precedent governing this kind of stuff was decided by the Supremes about 30 years ago, I’m not sure why you’re trying to lay the blame at the feet of Roberts, Alito et al. Oh wait, I forgot, everything is the fault of the current Republican administration, even those things that are not. Silly me.) The feds shouldn’t be concerned with Toilet Man 6. But right now the law is what it is, and it’s up to Congress to change it. If they decide not to, then you can hardly blame the FBI for enforcing the law. I think it’s stupid, and a waste of resources, and that there are much better things for the FBI to do with it’s time and manpower, but it seems silly to blame the organization charged with enforcing the laws of the US for, well, enforcing the laws of the US.
That does not make those inventors/investors the "rightful owners"of the airwaves. That’s like saying all land belongs to the inventor of farming.
I dunno, I mean I know what you’re trying to say but private ownership of land does exist… a closer but still inaccurate simile would be that all airspace should belong either to the owners of the underlying land or to the heirs of Wright, Curtiss and Santos-Dumont, and there should be no FAA telling you where and how you fly your airplane beyond the range of Farmer Bob’s shotgun – but it’s still inaccurate because the airlines are private enterprises.
IN ANY CASE… it has been legally and constitutionally established that the state is going to regulate certain activities and as long as it’s within constitutional parameters, it’s what it does. Intangible philosophical concepts of “it’s just not right for the state to do that” are the sorts of things about which you write letters, lobby, make campaign donations, file lawsuits, stage sit-ins and marches and set yourself on fire on the courthouse square, and hope the tide turns in your favor; but in the meantime, if the legislature wants to pass a law on something, and someone can either find an excuse for it somewhere Constitution, or cannot find anything forbidding it in that same Constitution, the people with guns will enforce it.
Do I think it’s totally boneheaded for the FBI to be getting all gung-ho on scoring big on obscenity, and being extra active in applying a rigid interpretation of the law and enforcing the hell out of it when it comes to consenting-adult fetish porn, at this point in history? Darn tootin’. Heck, I’d *encourage * porn under that circumstance. Every minute the folks ordering vids from PissingInAction spend in downloading their entertainment they are not spending on phishing to scam retirees’ credit cards. Every time someone unsticks the pages of their copy of “Gagged and Gaping” to leaf through it again, they’re not reading a manual on how to make a carbomb out of stuff available at Tru-Value.
It’s still the law, though. We have to try and see how the heck we deal with that until we get to change either the law, the interpretation of what it means, and/or the policy on how it should be enforced (preferrably all three) to something better.
So, do you think the guy who first discovered how to refine oil is the rightful owner of all oil deposits in the world, as he was the one who discovered how to turn it into a “useful resource?”