No Politics Are Local

In No Politics Are Local (NYT Mag, Apr. 18), Christopher Caldwell provides a more detailed analysis of the recent announcement that the DOJ will be launching a "prosecutorial assault on America's $10 billion pornography industry."

As readers of Adult Video News and the 2005 federal budget will be aware, Attorney General John Ashcroft is staffing up the Justice Department for a prosecutorial assault on America's $10 billion pornography industry ... While a local community can make its own rules, they say, prosecuting smut at the federal level is Orwellian overkill. But this localist view makes less sense in the Internet age ... One Ashcroft target is a company near Los Angeles whose films show simulated rapes and murders. You would think that would pass muster as obscene in any setting -- at least according to the Supreme Court's ''Miller test,'' which defines as obscenity anything that disgusts ''the average person, applying contemporary community standards.'' But Ashcroft isn't taking any chances. The Justice Department placed an order for the offending videos in Pittsburgh and will prosecute the company before a jury there. Now, suddenly, porn executives are changing their tune on localism. Pittsburgh is not the real community under which the Miller test should be enforced, they argue. The real community is the broader ''community'' of Internet users....

As well as broadening the discussion to local v. national politics and the role of the internet in McLuhan's global village.

1/27/05: Legal Reader reports that a federal judge has dismissed obscenity charges Friday against California pornography business Extreme Associates, who were featured in the PBS frontline special American Porn (which is now available for viewing online), finding obscenity statutes unconstitutional in the case. [order]