IP: More on PBS will air special "American Porn" show on Feb. 7

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 14:43:37 -0800 (PST)
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
>
> [Naturally I'll give Bruce the chance to reply. --Declan]
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 14:51:56 EST
> From: MarkKernes () aol com
> To: declan () well com
> Subject: Re: FC: PBS will air special "American Porn" show on Feb. 7
>
>
> In a message dated 2/2/02 2:46:29 AM, declan () well com writes:
>
> << Former Justice Department attorney Bruce Taylor concurs.  "If there had
> been continued federal prosecutions [for obscenity], you wouldn't see the
> Internet presence of the porn syndicate as big as it is today," says Taylor,
> who maintains he has prosecuted more obscenity cases than anyone in U.S.
> history.  "The combination of the industry's willingness to go on the Web in
> a big way and the prosecutors not indicting them for it allowed it to explode
> beyond anybody's imagination." >>
>
> "Porn syndicate," my ass! If this guy knew ANYTHING about porn, he'd know
> it's one of the most DISorganized enterprises ever to turn a profit. If porn
> dealt with anything other than sex -- which everybody seems to crave, no
> matter how poorly it's done; perhaps even Taylor in his more secret moments
> -- most of the guys that make it would have been out of business long ago.
>
> And of course, his proposal is that cities across the country should have
> spent essentially billions of dollars prosecuting something that the vast
> majority of Americans use in the comfort and privacy of their own homes,
> without even their next-door neighbors even having a clue what's playing on
> the monitor or TV next door. Now THERE'S a policy the general public is just
> waiting to jump on the bandwagon of!
>
> I am moved to attach the section on Taylor that will appear as part of my
> article, "The Enemies List" in the March issue of AVN Online, the magazine of
> adult webmasters:
>
> << 1) The Attorneys: Ayn Rand, in Atlas Shrugged, said of some of the
> characters she depicts that if they could get real jobs, they wouldn't be
> working for the government. Whether there's any validity to that concept is
> open for debate, but the fact is that some of the more visible legal
> personalities in the censorship movement arrived on the scene fresh from
> government service.
>
> One breeding ground for warped attitudes toward speech has been the U.S.
> Department of Justice (DOJ). Bruce A. Taylor and J. Robert Flores, for
> example, were both prosecutors, during the Reagan/Bush years, in the National
> Obscenity Enforcement Unit (NOEU), which changed its name in the early '90s
> to the more euphemistic Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).
>
> Best known for having been the main prosecutor of early porn mogul Reuben
> Sturman, Taylor began his public career as an assistant prosecutor in
> Cleveland, Ohio, where one of his first assignments was to digest what have
> become known as the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller decisions on obscenity, and
> to formulate a plan to prosecute purveyors of sexually explicit material that
> would withstand Supreme Court scrutiny. It may have been his anti-porn zeal
> that earned him his Justice Department position, but it certainly led him,
> after leaving the DOJ, to form the National Law Center for Children and
> Families, of which he is currently president and chief counsel.
>
> Though the National Law Center (NLC) claims to be a "specialized resource to
> those who enforce state and federal obscenity and child exploitation laws,"
> Taylor himself has often been ineffective when it comes to the nitty-gritty.
> Last November, after the city of South Bend, Indiana brought Taylor in as a
> special prosecutor for the first of three scheduled bookstore trials, a
> 12-person jury took just six hours to find Little Denmark owner Robert
> Henderson not guilty on all counts of trafficking obscenity, money laundering
> and conspiracy. Several attorneys who actively defend adult businesses have
> expressed the opinion that Taylor is both a lacklustre legal writer and an
> unimpressive advocate in the courtroom. That, however, hasn't stopped Taylor
> from being a favored speaker at anti-porn events, and a commentator on
> various newscasts regarding the adult industry.>>
>
> My advice? Give it up, Bruce; the American people better understand their
> First Amendment freedoms than you do.
>
> Mark Kernes, Sr. Editor
> Adult Video News

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