FLA censorship?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ridgely Evers <revers () evers org>
Date: October 10, 2005 12:24:31 PM EDT
To: 'David Farber' <dave () farber net>
Subject: FLA censorship?


Dave,

For IP if you wish.  Please w/o attribution.

--Ridge


The Orlando Sentinel
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/southwest/orl- 
porn0905oct09,0,7128
754.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-swest

Lawyer defends Iraq war photos
But the Polk sheriff says a pornographic Web site raised eyebrows  
before,
but is 'horrific' now.
Sandra Mathers
Sentinel Staff Writer

October 9, 2005

A Lakeland man who posted bloody pictures of Iraqi war casualties on his
pornographic Web site was only exercising his First Amendment rights by
displaying them, his attorney said Saturday.

The gory, dismembered bodies of apparent Iraqi and Afghan fighters on  
the
site operated by Christopher Michael Wilson, 27, have generated a media
furor and launched a military investigation.

Wilson remained in Polk County Jail on Saturday night after his arrest
Friday on 301 counts of possessing and distributing obscene material
relating to the site's sexual content. Bail was set at $151,000.

His attorney, Larry Walters of Altamonte Springs, a First Amendment
specialist, said Wilson was merely operating a site where people  
could send
revealing pictures of girlfriends and wives.

But U.S. soldiers in the war zone began e-mailing Wilson that they  
couldn't
use their credit cards to access the site because most card companies  
block
the area, Walters said.

"He wanted to do his part to entertain soldiers, so he said if they  
would
send him pictures proving they were in Iraq, he would give them free  
access
to the site," the lawyer said. "They certainly did prove they were in  
Iraq."

Walters contends that politics, not pornography, has singled out his  
client
for prosecution.

On his Web site, Wilson posted a message about his "explicit images  
of war,"
noting that "whitewashing of the truth is at odds with the First  
Amendment
freedoms this country enjoys."

He includes a quote he attributed to Time magazine when it published the
first images of wartime casualties in New Guinea during World War II:  
"Dead
men have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them."

Wilson separates the "gory" pictures on his site from the casual so that
people who don't want to see "that kind of stuff," as he put it,  
don't have
to.

The Orlando Sentinel is not naming the site.

"There's a reasonable suspicion it's political," Walters said of his
client's arrest. "The site existed for a long time. Shortly after  
he's been
catapulted into the limelight, he's in jail."

Wilson's site has been featured in nearly two dozen newspapers,  
including
The Washington Post and The New York Times, recently.

"Why is this guy being singled out now?" Walters asked.

The answer is simple, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, whose agency
arrested Wilson and confiscated his computer equipment and tapes.  
Wilson has
come under law-enforcement scrutiny in the past, Judd said.

"We first looked at him when he had a [previous Web] site," he said. "It
didn't rise to the level of obscenity."

"What popped him back up," the sheriff said, was a Sept. 28 story in The
Ledger of Lakeland on the new Web site's posting of graphic photos of  
war
dead from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Judd said sheriff's investigators who tapped into the site found 20  
videos
and 80 photos of pornography he termed "horrific."

"The Supreme Court has said for something to be obscene, it must  
shock the
sensibilities of the community," he said. "I can't imagine a normal  
person
not being shocked" by Wilson's material.

But Walters said the sheriff's office has no business prosecuting  
material
available internationally. The servers that run the site are in the
Netherlands, he said.

"They say community standards are different there [Polk County]," he  
said.
"Merely because it is accessible there, they can't apply their  
standards on
what people can see" globally.

Judd said his office has notified military officials of the war  
images but
is not working with them.

Military officials said Saturday that they are investigating whether  
U.S.
soldiers have posted grisly pictures of war dead on Wilson's site.

Viewing or downloading pornography on military computer systems is  
against
regulations and could result in non-judicial charges against any  
soldiers
involved, said Lt. Col. John Robinson, a public-affairs officer at the
Pentagon.

Non-judicial charges do not involve courts-martial, he said. Instead,
commanding officers can dispense discipline, such as garnishing wages,
reducing rank, ordering extra duty or even handing out jail time, he  
said.

"It's much more serious that individuals would find benefit in  
exchanging
pictures of gore from the field of battle," Robinson said. "It causes
concern. . . . We don't want to lose the mind-set of the severity of  
what's
happening there [Iraq]."

Sandra Mathers can be reached at smathers () orlandosentinel com or
407-420-5507.



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