Tech Law Advisor

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....

update: Randy Dotinga (Wired) on the Legal Threats that Stalk Adult Sites

While Extreme Associates is based in Southern California, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh is prosecuting the obscenity case over Forced Entry and several other videos whose names livened up a court filing (PDF) but won't be repeated here. She has jurisdiction because prosecutors were able to order the videos by mail and download them over the Internet. Porn industry attorneys suspect that federal prosecutors decided to pursue the case in Pittsburgh because they think it's more likely to cough up conservative jurors.

see also: Reynolds and Jarvis on Misplaced Priorities | John Ashcroft portrait made up of tiny naked people | Reason article, Xtreme Measures, on Rob Zicari, the man, in Larry Flynt's words, responsible for bringing the heat on the porn industry. | PBS on Zicari | Cambria List