WASHINGTON, DC -- The FCC, looking increasingly like a runaway agency, has been accused of destroying a report after the research did not match the desired conclusions. SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t miss this hilarious video called FCC-FU.

BRAZILIAN FETISH PRODUCER BUSTED

ORLANDO, FL -- Danilo Simoes Croce, 42, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, owner of a fetish film production company, Lex Multimedia, and a series of websites known collectively as Dragon Films, has been arrested here after a three-year investigation on federal charges of using the mails and the Internet to distribute obscene materials. The websites involved were hosted on servers in Texas. The videos were delivered to U.S. customers by mail and common carriers from Orlando.

The allegedly obscene videos and downloads featured bukkake, fisting, scat, piss, and vomiting in conjunction with sex. The Criminal Complaint used as a basis for the charges, written by a perhaps overly dedicated Postal Inspector, Linda J. Walker, (viewable at SmokingGun.com) goes into each video in great detail, scene by scene, as she builds a case for how gross-out the videos are. Consumers of fetish scat videos are not the only folks fascinated by gross images these days, of course. People eat worms on reality TV shows during prime time. (For an analysis of modern trends towards shocking and disgusting entertainment, see Anneli Rufus in Alternet, 9/15/06)

Information is from a DOJ press release, 9/6/06
See also, Ken Knox, AVNonline.com, 9/11/06

ORAL ARGUMENTS IN APPEAL OF STATE LAW

JEFFERSON CITY, MO -- Oral arguments have been heard by the Missouri Supreme Court in the state’s appeal of a decision last August by Cole County Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan, who threw out adult entertainment amendments to an anti-drug law because the Missouri Constitution stipulates that bills cannot be amended during passage to change their original purpose. Callahan also ruled that provisions of the adult entertainment amendments prohibiting customers and employees younger than 21 at adult-oriented establishments were unconstitutional.

“Eighteen, nineteen and twenty-year-olds are not minors,” said Judge Callahan in his opinion, “and the state may not limit persons of majority age from engaging in lawful expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution without a substantial and direct connection to adverse secondary effects, a showing that has not been made.”

In the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Assistant Attorney General John Clubb argued that both the anti-drug law and the subsequent adult entertainment amendments were aimed at the same “purpose,” namely to deal with “crime,” and that purpose was reflected in the final title of the bill, which was changed to deal with “crime.” When Chief Justice Michael Wolff asked how restrictions on adult businesses related to crime, Clubb said the law imposed and defined new criminal penalties, those aimed at enforcing the new regulations. He also said the measure was aimed at preventing the so-called adverse secondary effects of adult businesses - crime, prostitution and harm to minors.

Tom Rynard, an attorney for the adult entertainment businesses, said the title of “crime” on the bill was overly broad. The purpose of the bill was to enact new restrictions on adult businesses, not to address crime, he said.

As regards Callahan’s ruling requiring that only persons 21 or over could be employed by or be customers of adult entertainment establishments, Judge Stephen Limbaugh asked why, if that was so, states could bar those under 21 from drinking. Another adult industry attorney, Richard Bryant, said those restrictions are allowed under the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed Prohibition. The law in question dealt with the First Amendment, he said.

The stakes are high in this appeal. Among other provisions, the law in question would ban full nudity and lap dances in exotic dance clubs and require that semi-nude dancers refrain from touching customers and stay10 feet away from them, behind 2-foot-high railings.

Some information is from Tim Hoover, Kansas City Star, 9/13/06
See also, Lauren Foreman, The Man Eater, 9/12/06

DANCE CLUB ATTORNEY CONFRONTS COUNCIL

PASADENA, CA -- The City Council has placed a temporary moratorium on new live adult entertainment while it considers changes to its zoning code. A city planning commission has recommended implementing the “most restrictive zoning laws possible,” including a 500-foot distance from residential areas for adult entertainment businesses, a rule which is transparently intended to make a proposed exotic dance club along Foothill Boulevard at a former Shakey’s Pizza location no longer possible. Online and paper petitions have been gathered urging more restrictive zoning laws and the City Council meeting in which the moratorium was decided was packed with 240 residents mostly in opposition to the club at the Shakey’s location, according to Courtney Fielding’s report in the Pasadena Star News.

The only speaker in support of the dance club was the intrepid Roger Jon Diamond, attorney for the owner of the proposed dance club, whose seven-minute rebuttal was interrupted by heckles and boos, according to Fielding’s account. Diamond told the council it would be treading on thin constitutional ice by further restricting clubs and reminded the council of an awkward truth for them: During a case in 2003, Pasadena told a federal judge it had locations open to adult businesses, and pointed to the former Shakey's site as an example. Whoops. Diamond said he would file for a business license despite the moratorium, and "force the city to review the application." If it doesn't comply, "we will file a lawsuit against the city," he said.