“When John Ashcroft testified before Congress during his confirmation hearings, he left no doubt that he believed the Internet was replete with pornographers who needed to be imprisoned, preferably for a very long time. ‘I am concerned about obscenity,’ Ashcroft told the House Judiciary committee in June 2001, adding that prosecutions of Web pornographers ‘would be an objective of ours in this respect.’ Then jets slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Ashcroft unexpectedly had real problems on his hands. Nearly three years later, as far as I can tell, the number of federal Internet obscenity prosecutions is precisely zero. Look for that to change. Ashcroft appears ready to make an example of online porn purveyors who specialise in hardcore raunch and ribaldry. In an election year, it’s also an easy way to rally conservatives, who are otherwise lukewarm toward a president who spends like a drunken Democrat…” — ZDNet.com (Australia)

Looks like things could get chilly ’round here…

This article makes a convincing case that the U.S. is going to launch a wave of obscenity prosecutions in the coming year. Early warning signs include: (1) In 2002 the Justice Department held a training session for obscenity prosecutors; (2) In 2003 the Senate unanimously approved a resolution warning that the “Internet has become a conduit for hardcore pornography that now reaches directly into tens of millions of American homes.” (3) In 2004 attorney general Ashcroft hired Bruce Taylor, “probably the most aggressive antiporn advocate,” to initiate an antiporn offensive. Apparently this guy Taylor is a real character who tosses off blunt commentary such as, “Nothing protects pictures of a woman’s genitalia being nailed to a board!”

From that statement alone you can see that this antiporn assault could be extremely tendentious. After all, there are a lot of people these days who think of nailing genitalia to a board as good clean fun — er, an expression of their First Amendment rights. If anyone exhibiting a picture of a pierced clitoris is liable to an obscenity lawsuit, there are going to be a tidal wave of prosecutions.

The irony, of course, is that the internet is one giant Pandora’s Box. You can prosecute people in America for accepting credit card numbers in return for sadomasochistic pornography — but what can you really do about fly-by-night operators in the Ukraine? What can you really do about the five thousand people who obtain the hardcore smut and then swap it around using free web servers and internet newsgroups and email lists? Pandora’s Box is open. You can shuffle the contents around a little, but you’ll never jam them all back in the box.

VideoBox

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