The Feds Are Freaking Over Porn Again, And Two Clevelanders Are Caught In The Vice

Dirty
The Feds Are Freaking Over Porn Again, And Two Clevelanders Are Caught In The Vice.
By Dan Harkins

Mid-June. A dozen agents amassed just after dawn in the grid-like industrial park off Berea Rd. in West Cleveland. They'd been logging the man hours for months making sure the right charges went to the right people, both suspects and jurors. An agent had cased out the property for days, watching all who came and went under the warehouse's dirty-brick shadow. Others pored over hours of incriminating video. In all, 683 suspect packages had been sent last year from this warehouse to Utah alone between January 3 and December 11, 2006. What more did they need? They moved in.

They'd come for Sami and Michael Harb, first-generation Palestinians. But they weren't here as the front line in the War on Terror (battlefield: our hearts), as far as Sami and Michael know; they were here as emissaries in the War on Values (battlefield: our bedroom). The Harbs weren't expecting them, but they weren't exactly shocked either. Sami met them at the door, did a lot of head-shaking, and sent his workers home after each was screened for past mistakes. The Harbs were handed their federal indictments, secured after months of investigation by the FBI's fledgling Adult Obscenity Task Force and the Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force: three counts each for distributing obscene materials through the mail. The raiding agents were after three titles from two rough-sex series under indictment in separate cases: Max Hardcore's Pure Max 18 and Extreme 12, and Extreme Associates' Cocktails 5.

Two of the three were out of stock, so they took a few copies of the one that wasn't. They also confiscated sales receipts from the year in question and made copies of all hard drives that pertained to the operation of the Harbs' smut-cluttered MoviesbyMail porn-distribution clearinghouse.

http://www.freetimes.com/stories/15/15/dirty

So they got in trouble for doing something illegal, yes?

I fail to see the issue.

Of course, I should qualify that by saying that I do not believe the production and distribution of pornography to be a first amendment issue.

Just wondering.

This is religious prosecution, based on a Christian belief system.

This is unconstitutional. In case you care.


That's the issue.

The 1st Amendment protects ALL speech, not just speech that doesn't make you insecure or uncomfortable.

If she's saying obscenity isn't covered under the First Amendment she's technically right...The Supreme Court has never extended First Amendment rights to pornographers or else there wouldn't be obscenity trials every now and then in different venues..



Here's a discussion and case law:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity


That being said, it is awful difficult to get twelve people to say somethings so "dirty" you should go to the hooskow for producing, distributing, or owning it...


As an aside, there are pornographers who push the envelope even further than Max Hardcore though he is a misogynistic bastard...

The cordial agents spent eight hours poring over the joint, the cousins say. Sami recalls asking the agent in charge whether there was some kind of list the government had compiled to let shippers know just what types of content crossed the line. <snip> Or how about a list of municipalities where shipment would constitute a crime? "No such list," the agent (and later a DOJ spokesman) replied.



This is a law which it is impossible to know how to obey.

If there is no list of what is prohibited and where, how is the person to know whether they are committing a crime or not?

Mens rea I think the term is..

They usually fail because it's difficult to get twelve people to decide a pornographic film is obscene...

Sorry, but it doesn't.

And pornography isn't just some sort of artsy self-expression -- it's a multi-billion dollar industry that exploits women.

And no, sometimes I don't think I'm on the right site, but that's no secret.

and if you believe that pornography is anti-woman propaganda...
well...

What we see from the government here is that their priority with our limited resources is to go after porn distributors. I am sure just about every company is breaking the law in some way or other :)

Was the effect of the crime enough to warrant a long undercover operation or would those doing the operation be more effective in stopping more serious crimes?

If the porn was illegally made (ie via rape/blackmail/etc) then ebbing the flow can help kill the market and less would hopefully be made - a worthwhile investment. If everyone is consenting then the issue becomes one of; do we use our people to stop consenting adults from viewing porn or do we use our people to go after gangs, terrorists (home grown/foreign), etc and so on.

We can do more than one thing at a time, but we can do all things all the time and have to choose our battles.

For example, I don't want our police dept to hire a ton of new officers so we can have one on every corner with a radar gun to stop people from driving too fast. Put them out there for the bigger issues.

The cordial agents spent eight hours poring over the joint, the cousins say. Sami recalls asking the agent in charge whether there was some kind of list the government had compiled to let shippers know just what types of content crossed the line. Ass to mouth? Pregnant girls peeing? Or how about a list of municipalities where shipment would constitute a crime? "No such list," the agent (and later a DOJ spokesman) replied. The Harbs were told to be in Utah for arraignment on June 29.

"Name one industry that's not regulated in some fashion," Sami says. "Fishermen, petroleum, tobacco, alcohol, weapons, housing - they set the guidelines that tell you, the business owner, the do's and don'ts. But they'd rather use my industry as a punching bag for politics."

Adds Michael, 33, in his quiet voice, "If we knew what we couldn't send, maybe we would have avoided all this."

Well, I guess it's a good thing that what you believe and what the courts know are two separate things, eh?

I oppose an industry that oppresses and exploits women and in return I am assumed to be some sort of rightwing nutjob asshole.

Try this: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/pornography&cruelty.htm

An illuminating look at pornography and our pornafied culture.

Starting with republicon pervert Sen. David Vitter...

and recently. Will they ever learn?

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/LegalCenter/story?id=433956

"On the same day that President Bush was inaugurated for his second term, a federal court in Pittsburgh was handing him a major legal defeat on one of those "moral value" issues that helped return him to office. In what could be a crushing blow to his administration's stated goal of ramping up prosecutions of those who traffic in extreme pornography, a federal judge declared the government's anti-obscenity laws unconstitutional"

have anything to do.
:dunce:

Oy vey, everyone's an editor!

Oh and by the way -- no I'm not stalking you -- just happened to respond to two of your posts on different threads.

:silly:

:eyes: