Posted on 10/10/2005 1:05:39 PM PDT by Drew68
By Gretchen Gallen
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
ALTA DENA, Calif. – The offices of Max Hardcore’s Max World Entertainment were raided Wednesday under the authority of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department. The FBI seized five video titles, Hardcore’s attorney Jeffrey Douglas told XBiz, including (ed. movie titles ommitted)
Additionally, the FBI seized all servers belonging to Hardcore with the purpose of copying and returning them, Douglas said. It is not yet known what other office items have been taken as the investigation is ongoing.
By Thursday afternoon, Hardcore's servers had been returned and the website was active.
Hardcore was not present at the time of the raid, and according to Douglas, is presently attending a trade show in Barcelona, Spain.
Douglas said this is the first federal obscenity investigation involving Hardcore and is in any way related to 2257 record-keeping enforcement.
“Once again the government is wasting tax dollars and otherwise invaluable law enforcement resources to try to force a minority view of morality on all of America,” Hardcore said in a statement. “Five of my movies have been targeted by the federal ‘prude’ patrol. There is no indication of any crime to be alleged except obscenity. If indicted, I will fight to protect my liberty as well as the liberty of consenting adults to watch other adults engage in lawful, consensual, pleasurable sexual action. Shame on the Department of Justice. I am proud of my movies and of those who sell them.”
In 2001, Hardcore was prosecuted by the city of Los Angeles for obscenity, which was not resolved until 2004 with a company plea to a public nuisance.
Born Paul Little in 1956, Hardcore’s films have long been considered some of the most controversial in the industry.
Me too! I had to read the headline twice as I thought that they were talking about M-M-Max Headroom.
Me too, although it would seem that some FBI agents don't really want that duty. They'd rather be fighting the War on Terror, which has consumed so much of the FBI's time since 9/11 that new criminal cases are down 70% from the 2000 level.
Other agencies are having to pick up the slack, according to news reports.
Maybe we'll eventually have a porn control agency along the lines of the DEA or the BATF so the FBI can get back to its primary mission, whatever that is. Oh, yeah -- to investigate certain crimes after they've been committed. I think that was what J. Edgar Hoover always advocated as the purpose of the FBI; he was adamantly opposed to a "national police force." Nobody in authority at the FBI apparently shares that view these days.
Interesting comment, madprof.
Maybe you'd prefer, as someone suggested, that characters like him be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail? Is that the kind of justice you'd like to see?
Now that the Taliban's gone, supposedly, from Afghanistan, which country would be receptive to your idea of justice for pornographers? Would you want to live there?
Often said but seldom understood. Too often ignored, especially when adrenalin-charged arguments revolve around such things as "protecting the children" and "fighting terrorism."
And, just when you think the opponents of free speech are starting to come around, they invariably throw a curve ball like, "Well, pornography is not really speech!"
Read this part again:
"Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
-- Edmund Burke
Burke, from what I have read, had a great influence on many of the founding fathers. A republic such as ours can only exist if the people in general have a modicum of self control, which thoughtful people understand must be informed by universal religious principles.
"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments." --G. K. Chesterton
Feral humans cannot control themselves, and if the society has enough of them, such anarchy will ensue that people will be begging for martial law. This isn't theory, it will happen. Unless something changes. The road we're on now inevitably leads to the ultimate in jack booted thugism.
"Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality -- that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes, and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion." ---Will and Ariel Durant
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Obscenity should be a state/local issue, as judged by community standards. The only Constitutional justification for the feds to be involved is under interstate commerce -- i.e., if some localities ban this guy's stuff, and he's shipping to those localities anyway; or if it's a multi-state child porn ring.
Maybe that's what's happening here, but I don't see that specified in the article. If the FBI is prosecuting plain obscenity alone, then they're out of bounds -- that should be handled by the state of California.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
In other words, if you object to the idea that the feds can force your locality to accept obscenity that exceeds your particular community standards, then you should fight against instances where the feds force a given locality to forgo gross things that are acceptable by its particular community standards.
I say all this with the caveat that the FBI does have Constitutional power to get involved in porn-related interstate commerce issues -- it's not clear whether that is the case here.
I don't disagree with this statement -- I disagree with the means so many social conservatives ( and big government leftists) use to try turn things around. By all means fight porn, etc. -- through private organizations, churches, the bully pulpit, grassroots communications, personal persuasion, by creating an unwelcome atmostphere for pornographers in your community, and on and on!
But when we start giving the federal government, especially, ever-increasing power to ban things by force (whether from the right or the left), we open the door and invite totalitarianism in. As citizens, we should take direct, personal action to create the kind of society we want -- instead of relying on more and more laws and courts to do it for us.
I have never heard of this guy! Guess I am glad I haven't.
The problem is that since the ACLU and Larry Flynt got in front of the SCOTUS, it is now forced upon local communities and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do. Porn is now mandatory, at least in the western states I've lived in. Local communities can say little or nothing. And some states - Oregon, for instance, has just about the most liberal laws (like, practically none) regarding obscenity/sex shows. They just made it legal for "shows" to have actual live sex acts. Suppose a small community wanted to have more local restriction?
Too effing bad, they can't. Somebody with money can go to any little conservative community, buy a building, hire some whores, and set up shop.
What we have now is the antithesis of local control. Thanks to porn producers, the ACLU, and the SCOTUS.
You mention that people should take direct personal action, not relying on courts. Personally, i would love to burn down a bunch of "adult" shops - especially the one on the main street of the small town I live near, that high school and grade school students walk past every day.
But laws are the only way to take care of this kind of stuff, other than vigilanteism. Are you advocating that?
BTW, the mayor didn't want the porn shop there, most citizens didn't want it there, letters to the editor were written, all kinds of stuff - but, no go. Lawyers said that it had to be allowed. So every school day all kinds of kids walk right past it. Often with the proprieter hanging out by the open door.
(It's a very small rural town, just a couple of thousand souls in the town proper.)
Not just NO, but HELL NO! When has one been held accountable for their misdeeds? We managed just fine through 1908 without them, it's just another fed pig trough to feed from, and as corrupt as any fed agency you care to mention. Make them accountable to those that pay them (US), and I'll reconsider. Blackbird.
Isn't the answer, though, to fight for a Constitutional return to local control (including the right for localities, not the state, to define obscenity? Otherwise you're conceding their argument that the feds have the legitimate power to define obscenity for all of us, and in the process, selling out the Constitution in the process. I think it's a bad, unprincipled and ultimately futile tactic.
All internet nude pics, magazines, and video streams can be loosly defined as interstate. According to the Adult Industry, the 2257 law cited in this article will very likely shut down the entire industry. Max Hardcore is the first test of the law. Moving the industry out of the country is rapidly becoming the school of thought as the only solution to avoiding liability and severe imprisonment. Looks like people will be watching Disney movies in late night hotel rooms.
Laws are not the only way to take care of this kind of stuff! That is exactly the problem -- socialism has so infected this country that even conservatives have begun to believe that government is the answer to all our problems.
And no, I'm not advocating violence. There are lots of examples of citizens effectively taking matters into our own hands -- for example, the citizen border patrols in Texas and Arizona. Another example is the proposal to use eminent domain to seize Souter's New Hampshire house -- it's certainly generating a ton of outrage and concern among elites who would like to seize our homes to give to developers. How about that guy (I think in Texas) who was photographing license plates at strip clubs? I may or may not agree with that approach, but I do believe that it's valid civil disobedience...and I am sure it scared a heck of a lot of people away from that club and created an unfriendly environment for the owner. I imagine peaceful protests outside porn shops would have an impact -- people may be much less likely to go in and shop if they were going to be publicly heckled first.
Again, I wouldn't do any of this personally -- but I would strongly defend YOUR right to do it! All it takes is some creativity and activism...and the principle of citizen self-sufficiency (vs. citizen dependence on government) would be upheld.
My honest answer is that both options are too late. The fedgov is already strangulating all of us. It's like an octopus with thousands of poisonous arms. Meanwhile, citizenry have little recourse locally, since state gov'ts are often notorious for being worse blackguards than federal equivalents, and municipal and county boards have very little power to undo, mainly power to tax and further strangulate the people.
It's fast becoming "Whatever is not prohibited is mandatory."
Entertainment Tonight years ago did a spot on him and it showed him getting a daily blood test. Something tells me that blood tests arent going to be enough to prevent AIDS from spreading among them. The reporter asked him what he thought of the girls in his "business": "Whore..nothing but whores, the whole lot of them" he said.
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