For those of us old enough to remember the Reagan years and the fight against pornography led by Ed Meese, this will seem like a time warp story.
But, it's true. The FBI has more or less abandoned the war on terrorism to take on pornography again. And, judging from the quotes out there, some FBI agents are none to pleased.
From the above referenced article:
Last month, the FBI began implementation of an anti-obscenity initiative designed to crack down on those that produce and distribute deviant pornography. According to FBI headquarters, the war against smut is "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Gonazalez and FBI Director Robert Meuller. Although law enforcement agencies have always been aggressive when it comes to prosecuting exploitative child pornographers, this new initiative is unique in that it targets Internet pornography featuring consenting adults.
Now, usually, this story would probably just be of interest to a small group of people - purveyors and distributors of porn - but what is interesting to me is that the FBI has sent a letter off to one of the more popular artistic (it's not really porn, but more art) sites out there, Suicide Girls.
According to a post on Suicide Girls,
I just wanted to let you know that, thanks to the "War on Porn," SG will be taking down a bunch of photosets and individual photos today.
Even the FBI agents paid to surf for porn find this ridiculous, but apparently sending people to jail for pictures of two consenting adults enjoying a little rope bondage is more fucking important than.... I dunno, pick any one of the million of better causes out there that the government could be focusing on.
Couple this with the Bush administrations objection to the .xxx domain - which seems an easy and logical way to block children - you can just smell the intrusion on personal freedoms coming down the pipe.
What does this mean for people in the pornography industry? Well, likely it's back to vanilla porn again. I am supposed to head off to AVN Expo this January, and I wonder how many men in black will be trolling the floors looking for violations of whatever rules and laws the administration has?
I wonder what the laws about original producer and publisher have to do with these laws ... might be some time for some homework and research.
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