Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
The election of George W. Bush in 2000 caused some in the porn industry to fear a federal crackdown after years of the Clinton years where obscenity trials were relatively rare. It took over two and a half years but such fears are finally becoming reality.
"Today's indictment marks an important step in the Department of Justice's strategy for attacking the proliferation of adult obscenity," U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said in a statement. "The Justice Department will continue to focus our efforts on targeted obscenity prosecutions that will deter others from producing and distributing obscene material."
The federal indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh charges Extreme Associates and its owners with illegally distributing such allegedly obscene films as "Extreme Teen #24" and "Forced Entry - Directors Cut," which depicts the rapes and murders of several women.
It will be interesting to see the prosecution's arguments in this post-sodomy law period. Prosecutors will be hard pressed to argue that materials depicting explicit sex acts are obscene and they will also strain credibility by suggesting that rape can not be depicted so long as Day of the Woman (Meir Zarchi, 1978) is available on dvd. But they could present an argument that depicting explicit sex acts that come about, in the context of the production's story, as a result of rape does amount to obscenity. I don't really buy it but it is the best I could come up to justify this prosecution.
That said, the argument, as expressed by Glenn Reynolds, that the Justice Department shouldn't be doing this because the "war on terror" is still going on doesn't hold up, unless you believe federal prosecutors should only be pursuing cases related to the "war on terror." posted by micah holmquist at 8/11/2003 02:33:00 PM
