The jury ruled the films, which include scenes of vomiting, violence and urination, were criminally obscene...

Little apologized to the court and said the videos and DVDs in question were labeled and intended for the more permissive European market, not for sale in the United States.

There's also the fact that his movies "usually feature him engaging in a variety of sexual acts with young women who dress and act like prepubescent girls." What a sleazebag. Also, what a bad ruling. America should be ashamed to lose to Europe in porn freedom. [TBO]

But you can't say it didn't generate any user dialogue:

Citizen journalism, ladies and gentlemen. [Ad Age]

Spotted on the ledge at No Parking, the Dominican gay bar in Washington Heights, on Saturday night. Was in a wifebeater, ridiculous roid muscles, def less hot when one realized he was a fashion-loving porn star rather than some random papi.

Aww. Given that he was once so sad, it's nice to see him back in the saddle again. I guess adoring Latino boys will do that to a fella.

[UPDATE: Commenter Bell County points out the likely dick reference.]
[UPDATE 2: There is an unconfirmed rumor that this particular poster is not by the actual American Apparel spoofer.]

[Stereo Hell via Copyranter at Animal]

"At the focus of Hawes' investigation are pictures he stumbled across in the British Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford of the pornography to which Kafka subscribed while in his twenties. They include images of a hedgehog-style creature performing fellatio, golem-like male creatures grasping women's breasts with their claw-like hands and a picture of a baby emerging from a sliced-open leg."

How delightful! But whatever, it's no secret that Kafka was a weird dude. How cute that certain prudish scholars felt the need to protect his porn from the world.

[Guardian]

“Academics have pretended it did not exist. The Kafka industry doesn’t want to know such things about its idol.

“Of the world’s authors, only Shakespeare generates more PhDs, more biographies, more coffee table books. Everything Kafka wrote, every postcard he ever sent, every page of his diary is regarded as a potential Ark of the Covenant. Yet no one has ever shown his readers Kafka’s porn,” he added.

Some of the author’s erotic material would be published in Excavating Kafka this month. [Hindustan Times]

[Stereohell via Copyranter at Animal]

We thought Australians were all drunken harlots anyhow? We don't follow Aussie pop music but we'd imagine this sort of thing would be almost an imperative. Intoxicated Aussies falling down on the the beach, isn't that how it goes, stereotypically? But since the news broke on Fleshbot, Origliasso's rep has tried to deny the topless photo is her, even though it's part of a set that obviously is her.

More alarming has been the response of the singer's young fans, in an online forum:

The fans on the forum had been planning to send in photos and videos of themselves in bras and bikini tops as a symbolic gesture of support for Jess.

YES GOOD IDEA. Apparently her fans felt that hundreds of photos of female breasts would help cheer up the woman-loving singer (makes sense):

"It isn't fair! We just want Jess to know how "supported" she is and that she has such good fans and like I said before we're all in this together and we just wanna stand by our two favourite girls."

Excellent use of double entendre there, Aussie teenager. Jess herself encouraged her fans not to pursue this boobie picture plan, although I'm sure Fleshbot would be happy to receive the photos in her stead. This seems like a hell of an outcry, though, over what is one pretty tame photo of breasts, that Fleshbot found on a photo service site. Have we in America exported our prudishness to Australia, as part of globalization, in exchange for Fosters beer? It will take many more topless photos to answer this question.

[Fleshbot, Daily Telegraph]

[via Trendhunter]

…We continued to post articles that contained incorrect information about Japan and indecent sexual content. These articles, many of which were not checked, should not have been dispatched to Japan or the world. We apologize deeply for causing many people trouble and for betraying the public’s trust in the Mainichi Shimbun.

The Mainichi Newspapers took punitive measures on July 20 against Managing Director Yoshiyuki Watanabe, who previously served as general manager of the Multimedia Division, and another senior official, to hold them responsible as supervisors, in addition to those who were earlier punished.

We will take the following measures to prevent a recurrence of the problems pointed out to us through the criticism and opinions received from many readers, through our in-house investigation, and as indicated by the Open Newspaper Committee of experts:

On Aug. 1, we will reorganize the MDN Editorial Department, and on Sept. 1, under a new chief editor, the MDN will be transformed into a more news-oriented site. We will translate Mainichi Shimbun editorials and commentaries by prominent figures, such as “Jidai-no-Kaze” (Sign of the Times), and post them on the site in an effort to deepen the understanding of Japan among readers overseas.

At the same time, we will set up an advisory group to the MDN comprised of Megumi Nishikawa, an expert senior writer, and other staff writers specializing in international news coverage. The group will check the MDN’s editorial plans and the content of articles in the MDN.

We are determined to try our utmost to regain the public trust that we have lost as a result of this incident and rehabilitate the English site into one that can dispatch information about Japan to the world in an appropriate manner.

[Mainichi Daily News]

[Stereohell via Copyranter]

[via Copyranter]

First off, AIMRCo's website has existed for less than a month, according to registration records. The phone number for "head research consultant" Kirk Mishkin appears to go to a personal cell phone. And the only two companies named as being affiliated with the company, LSGModels.com and MoreyStudio.com, "look like low-rent adult sites at best... they are not major adult internet powerhouses," Johansmeyer writes.

Then there's the lack of any disclosed methodology:

What is missing from the story is detail. AIMRCo says that “[u]sing a connected network of over 400 paysites and 2000 affiliates/traffic trading sites, we gather the data necessary to make informed market trend assessments.” Yet, it does not indicate the size of the sample for this particular survey. It offers no description of the responding companies. For Fox’s survey, there is no comment as to whether members would have joined anyway.

Johansmeyere also notes that industry publication Adult Video News used to compile an overall report on industry sales but has been able to get reliable statistics. How did AVN not know about AIMRCo, if it is a reputable, lonstanding organization? And if AIMRCo is an upstart, where did it get the stats that AVN couldn't?

It's shocking — shocking! — that anyone connected with the porn industry would artificially inflate the size of something just for some cheap attention. It's obscene, really.

[Migrant Blogger, Migrant Blogger]

(Photo via Migrant Blogger)

"I've now gone through all the boxes and looked at all the books and a surprising number of them have been hollowed out with Polaroids stashed inside. The women depicted are varied (ethnically and size-wise) and the pictures range from softcore to extreme hardcore. Some of the images are very bizarre, at times grotesque.

At this point I'm at a loss as to what I should do with this stuff.

Hello! Send them to us, naturally.

[via Bookninja]

[Copyranter]

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

Well yeah, the people into "apple pies" and "watermelons" are the real sickos. An orgy is harmless family fun compared to that shit.

The whole thing really makes you think, though, because the ACLU is all "yes we shouldn't throw pornographers in jail" but also "oh wait you're giving up search data to subpoenas should we be concerned?" Thankfully the tactic won't work anyway. In a federal obscenity case earlier this month, the defense proved conclusively that porn is more popular than college football but the pornographer was convicted on all counts.

• iPhone Porn Grid
• iPinkVisual
• iPhorne
• iPhoneQuickies
• Fappod

Steve Jobs doesn't really disprove of the alternative uses of his PDA since the Apple lackey he sent to address the issue to Time magazine is named Jennifer Bowcock. The only problem with iPhone porn? The technology hasn't kept apace with the private spank Idahos of certain bloggers like Jason Swifter (another good name): "I wish there was an application that allowed you to undress people by dragging your fingers across the screen and literally dragging it off." Soon, Jason, soon.

About a third of iPhone users watch video on their phone, according to Nielsen Mobile, nearly 10 times the number that watch video on other cell phones. Three out of four iPhone users are men with above-average incomes, and iPhone users spend heavily on entertainment. More than a third of iPhone users shell out more than $100 on phone and data charges every month, as compared with just a fifth of other cell phone users.

That more than half the male owners of the device have had to buy actual cell phones for making calls might have clued in industry analysts.

[Time]

"The fact is, Alex is not into porn — he is into funny — and sometimes funny has a sexual character," the judge's wife said. She faulted the newspaper for using "graphic descriptions that make the material sound like hard-core porn when, in fact, it is more accurately described as raunchy humor."

This is true. The obscene images may be found here, uncensored (NSFW if you work at the L.A. Times). It's a collection of ancient internet macros—so old they rely on the "Priceless" joke—that might be considered titillating to a sheltered 13-year-old.

But this is actually a more important point, and one that seems to maybe demonstrate malice on the part of the Times in their coverage:

Ms. Tiffany noted that her husband did not have a Web site with a graphical interface, but rather a file server that was not secured. "What excuse is there for timing the story with surgical precision so as to do maximum damage to the judicial process?" she asked.

The Times spokesperson called their story "fair and accurate," because she wouldn't have been able to stifle her laughter if she'd said "balanced" outright.

So—now Kozinski, a dude whose appreciation for borderline R-rated juvenile humor might've made him a decent barometer for what the "community" might reasonably find acceptable, will not be presiding over that obscenity case against the extreme porn dude. The case is basically the front in the current Justice Department's War on Pornography, so we hope none of you like jerking off.

This is apparently the first time these ISPs have agreed to censor certain web content. (AOL, whose user base is shrinking, has already blocked certain content, according to the Times.) And once that line is crossed, theoretically it could be pushed to block more and more porn. The first iteration of this filter will probably block just this universally illegal and dangerous content. But with this tool in place nationwide, another federal A.G. like Alberto Gonzales would find it much easier to enforce draconian obscenity laws. (A relevant concern: Just last week a federal jury convicted pornographer Max Hardcore of criminal obscenity for his consensual of-age extreme pornography.)

A filter doesn't stop child porn; it just moves the problem somewhere else. The distributors will just find new ways to pass the porn along, new ways to disguise it, ways to get around the cataloging system that Cuomo's office uses to search for child porn. (Since only law enforcement is allowed to view child porn so they can make sure no one else ever does, one can only speculate what leads a person to land a job on the child porn task force and how much Cuomo's description of child porn — "These are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, assault victims, there are animals in the pictures" — comes from direct experience.)

The decision also turns the country into Cuomo's de facto jurisdiction. If the content is coming from inside New York, why hasn't Cuomo's office shut down and prosecuted the source? If it's not from New York, how does Cuomo have authority? He argues that ISPs are responsible, and it is hard to refute the logic that no one should knowingly allow someone else to view child pornography. But isn't stopping it his job in the first place?

Photo of Andrew Cuomo by Getty

UPDATE: A Time Warner spokesperson says the Times was wrong, and the company does not plan to block any web sites, but it will access to all newsgroups.

• I would change the age of consent.

  Two who were kicked off offered this philosophy, one going so far as to suggest that "nature already had an age of [sexual] consent: puberty."

• I (heart) R. Kelly.

  Nothing gets prospective jurors booted faster than telling the prosecution they are a fan of Kelly's. Just ask the woman who called him a "musical genius." When prodded to say something negative about Kelly, the best she could come up with was: "He and [rapper] Jay-Z don't get along?" Prosecutors bounced her soon after.

• I'll change my vacation plans.

  Overeagerness to serve on the jury is a definite red flag to attorneys. When one man offered to rearrange a trip to see his parents, the prosecution bounced him for being star-struck.

• Please call my mom.

  When one juror failed to show up for service, deputies called his house and his mother answered. She told the court that she didn't know where her son was and that he hadn't been "right" since he was shot in the head a while back. The judge and attorneys agreed to let him off the hook.

• I blame R. Kelly for Sept. 11.

  When the judge asked one prospective juror about his feelings regarding Kelly, he cryptically answered: "R. Kelly may have led the Taliban in attacking us on 9-11, but you can't prove it." You're right, we can't. In fact, we're fairly certain that no one has ever tried.

[Times]

Both sides of the debate sound valid. After all, it made it into German record stores, so in at least one country it's legal. But in America, it's illegal to capture, transmit or possess an image of a prepubescent in a sexual pose (and it could easily be argued that this girl is in a sexual pose). It's still unclear whether knowingly clicking a link to view child porn online counts as possession (after all, the image is now on the viewer's hard drive, at least in their automatically created browser cache).

The Feds are looking into it, according to World Net Daily, as well as plenty of adult pornography, since it all could be viewed by minors (Wikipedia doesn't require registration to view articles or images). So theoretically it's up to them, not the Wikipedia editors.

Jeez, I mean I'm not turned on by this photo, but it's not ludicrous to imagine that someone is supposed to be. And how does that not obviously violate U.S. child porn laws? On the other hand, it's an album cover of some historical note and artistic merit. So is it child porn? And is anyone who argues otherwise a perv?

"We all read 'em," said Pfc. Paul Rubio, 31, of Bakersfield, Calif. "There are times we just read 'em for the technological parts like the new gadgets that come out. They have good stories sometimes too."

Sgt. Simon Brown, 34, of Daytona Beach, Fla., said men's magazines build morale. "It's not all about the pictures, although 80 percent of it is," he said.

Pfc. Greg Smith, 21, of Northboro, Mass., a regular Playboy reader, said soldiers should be allowed to buy nudie magazines at the exchange.

"Playboy is good entertainment while you are on the can. They have jokes and good stories," he said...

"It would suck if they ban it," he said. "It's bad enough we are down there to begin with. Taking that away would be like a knife in the chest. I'm not saying I'm depending on Maxim to keep me alive over there, but it helps."

[Military.com via Dan Savage]

Do you have what it takes to be an adult star??? Niki Wilder production studio, has moved to bushwick. We are now casting for the film *Niki gets lost in Bushdick* A gang bang scene in the climax of the film, when Niki is lost in Busdick "and stumbles upon a band playing with instruments, wanting them used on her by the band, and audience. If you can perform in front of camera, and people, and have a large penis, than we are looking for you!!! Sign up, and send us video to show us what you can do.

Despite his frequent porn viewing, none of his colleagues noticed his activities, which he apparently conducted throughout the workday.

"Each desk is set apart from each other," Waki said, adding that the man logged 170,000 hits on porn sites in July alone.

[AP]

Each desk is set apart from each other...THANK GOD.

The Times Square area and its pockets of vice is a world familiar to me and my early days in the city (two whole years ago.) Says a former Show World girl of the trannie stage, where pre-op shemales would dance:

"They didn't like the 'regular' peepshow girls coming in and staring at them, but one day I was like, 'Fuck it, I'm going in there.' We work with them, you know? I went in there and watched—-ooh, the looks they were giving us... They were actually able to make money like that—you know, save up for their operations. I think they actually made more money like that. After their operation they were never so popular again."

Show World, owned by Richard Basciano (who never gives interviews!) scaled down considerably around 2000, eschewing the live girls—too many expensive vice busts—but maintaining a smaller version of its porn and video store on 8th Avenue near 42nd Street.

In the words of another peepshow girl who worked at Show World in the late nineties:

"Imagine, hustling against 32 girls every night. Somehow I made my money. I guess there was enough to go around... I did drugs, partied... some girls bought houses. At least I can say I had a few years of really good times, though. You didn't need to go out! Everything was right there: drugs, booze, your girlfriends, you'd be up in there acting crazy—all the while making money."

The equally notorious Playpen Theater, a live-girl and porn emporium, closed at the end of July 2007, another victim—or winner, depending on your view—of redevelopment.

11. YouTube

At risk: Daredevils, fictional characters
Case 1: While trying to perform a stunt for YouTube, four teens crashed their Ford Explorer, injuring three and killing one. No details on how awesome the clip would have been, but hopefully it'd be more exciting than "ghost riding," the 2005-07 fad of rolling an idling car down the street while dancing beside it. The result of that fad, besides a few lame videos, was two deaths. Other stupid deadly stunts include subway surfing and fake stunts that end up in banner ads.
Case 2: A man who explained on YouTube how to tie a hangman's noose has been accused of inciting suicide. A few days after the news reported it, someone else posted instructions (though this user has posted plenty of other knot-tying videos, and who could hang themselves with the festive purple and yellow rope he uses?).
Case 3: Of course fictional characters die often and violently: Lonelygirl15, Harry Potter, and the radio star.


10. Myspace

At risk: The lonely
Case 1: Remarkably, no charges were filed in the case of the family who carried on a hoax relationship with 13-year-old depression sufferer Megan Meier over MySpace, then "broke up" with her and thus driving her to suicide. But this is only our first glimpse at two themes of Internet-caused deaths: Tragic romance and preying on the lonely.
Case 2: In this case, MySpace technically saved lives. Cops investigated a 12-year-old boy's MySpace death list, warned everyone who was on it, and searched his home. They didn't find weapons and he said he was just fooling around, so he was just charged with juvenile delinquency. Other death threat cases include a dog and another empty threat against high school students. But just to be safe I make my little sister keep a Google alert on her name, cause she''d be the first to go if some trenchcoated freak started shooting up the cool kids in her school.
Case 3: Of course while stupid people may reveal their murder plans on MySpace, they may be inspired by the site too. Heather Kane saw another girl on her boyfriend's profile and hired a hitman to kill her. Good thing she bumped into an undercover cop instead.


9. Facebook

At risk: Anyone who pisses off a muslim
Case 1: A Saudi Arabian father beat and shot his daughter earlier this year for chatting on Facebook. A preacher in the Islamic country called the site a "door to lust;" many Saudi women use aliases on the site and post drawings instead of photos. But there are still plenty of photos of hookups in the Facebook group "Single and Looking in Saudi Arabia."
Case 2: After a Jewish woman in Melbourne rejected a friend offer from one Ibrahim Dirani, he allegedly wrote to her, "I am Hezbollah and I am going to kill you and all of your family — promise you."
Aw,


8. Pornography

At risk: Viewers of extreme or illegal porn and the people who know them
Case 1: It's hard to feel too sorry for those who kill themselves after they're implicated in child porn rings, like these four suicides in 1998 and these six in 2004.
Case 2: Porn doesn't only kill the depraved. The story of Jane Longhurst, an English woman killed by "a man obsessed with violent sexual pornography," was tragic enough to encourage many UK lawmakers to ban extreme porn.


7. Spam

At risk: The terribly gullible
Case 1: Spammers and scammers can easily take your money if you're dumb enough to give them your passwords and financial info. But some Nigerian scams go far beyond online fraud; many scammers lure their victims to Nigeria to continue paying money in person; fifteen victims were killed after they got suspicious.


6. Blogging

At risk: Those already at risk of dying
Case 1: There's a trick to making listicles like this: Put the weakest item in the middle. Unfortunately the New York Times spent an entire trend piece on the bogus idea of "death by blogging." But Gizmodo editor Brian Lam tells me, "Only bogus to lazy bloggers. I did 75 hours this week and anyone over fifty would die doing that."


5. Ebay

At risk: The already dead
Case 1: Seung-Hui Cho bought empty clips and holsters on Ebay before his Virginia Tech rampage. He got his guns and ammo elsewhere, though Ebay notes that the sale of ammunition on Ebay is legal.
Case 2: Ebay's death profits tend to come from the memorabilia. Celebrity deaths bring predictable results, like sales of Pope tchotchkes and autographed Heath Ledger posters. But Ebay has also hosted auctions for supposed Columbia shuttle pieces, video of insurgents shooting down planes in Iraq, the car used in a murder, and O.J. Simpson's book.


4. Drugs

At risk: Druggies
Case 1: Internet drug sales are ridiculously easy (see "spam" above), so easy that every decent men's magazine did an "I ordered Viagra off the Internet" story by 2005. But that means irresponsible doctors can prescribe dangerous drugs, such as this 2002 case of deadly drugs sold online, or this case of a doctor whose patients sometimes became addicted or were hospitalized, or a 2007 case where a 57-year-old Canadian woman died after taking an illegal sedative she ordered online.


3. Webcams

At risk: Suicides
Case 1: Webcam suicide is one of the darkest modern phenomena, an example of loneliness and despair in a supposed age of connection and hope. Those who have fallen that far and recovered may want to forget it ever happened. Webcammer Stacy Pershall has long insisted that despite reports, she did not try to kill herself on camera in 2001 by overdosing on pills but merely took some Advil "to get a few hours sleep" — on her bathroom floor.
Case 2: While Pershall's viewers worried about her and called the cops to save her, those watching Brandon Vedas in 2003 egged him on. He OD'd on five drugs and died a room away from his unsuspecting mother.
Case 3: A father named Kevin Whitrick hanged himself after the apparent encouragement of people watching his webcam; viewers later said they thought it was a joke, and indeed they'd acted worried after seeing him die. After all, he was in an insult chat room, which brings us to another cause of death:


2. Chat rooms

At risk: Hopeless romantics
Case 1: A man rejected in real life by his chat room lover in 1999 cut his own head off with a chainsaw in her front yard. Enough said.
Case 2: Plenty of innocents have been killed by online predators like the man who killed an altar girl, the Texas A&M killer, and this guy in a rural North Carolina trailer.


1. World of Warcraft

At risk: 10 million players, particularly the already crazy ones
Case 1: World of Warcraft addiction may not necessarily be deadly for the player, but it can be hell on their family life. Of course, Kim Trenor was probably crazy long before she moved cross-country with her 2-year-old to see a guy she met on the game, and definitely before she and Royce Zeigler beat "Baby Grace" to death. But if it weren't for that damned game she never would have met the allegedly abusive Zeigler.
Case 2: WoW isn't the first game to drive addicts mad. At least one Everquest player allegedly shot herself after getting hooked on the game.
Case 3: And of course any time you put a beautiful bit of fantasy in the world, some kid will try to imitate it. Happened with Superman, happened with WoW when a Chinese boy jumped off a 24-story building. His parents sued game maker Blizzard saying he was imitating the game, in which some players like to platform-jump, an activity totally unrelated to actually playing. Again, totally not WoW's fault, but something had to convince that boy he could leap off a tower.