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An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

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Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#31

Post by rayiner »

ouid wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws were on the books, and the public's opposition to what the movie-maker was doing seems to fit in with the intent and scope of the laws. Maybe you can blame him for selective enforcement, but I don't think that qualifies as a miscarriage of justice. (That is, of course, assuming we take at face value that his denial that he didn't steal and ship a copy of the movie to Oklahoma.) The prosecutor took measures t…

Selective enforcement is absolutely a miscarriage of justice. Justice is the character of law that makes it fair. If you disagree with this, I would like to hear your defense.

Selective enforcement may or may not be a miscarriage of justice. Here, you have a law where changing standards of morality may have rendered the full scope of the law obsolete. But there is conduct within the scope of the law that the community still considers egregious. I don’t think it is “unfair” to enforce the law against that conduct, but not enforce it against other conduct the community no longer considers wrongful.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#32

Post by cblades »

akvadrako wrote: post #25
vezycash wrote: post #11

Summary: Young man has a passion & dream to make movies. He has a thriving business but it's not enough to fund the movie. His friends agree to fund a movie but with a clause - it must be a porno movie. He researches existing literature and it sucks. He won't make porn. He'll make a real movie that also has explicit sex. He shoots normal scenes first, and sex scenes later. Sex scenes has some issues like the actors u…

Are you implying laws should be ignored after a few years go by? That’s not how laws work. Many of the laws that our important to daily life are hundreds of years old.

After a few decades of no enforcement? I think that would be reasonable.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#33

Post by droidist2 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #4
jseliger wrote: post #3

The '70s seem to have been an interesting time: https://longreads.com/2019/04/29/what-i-learned-from-doing-a... . Link is all text and presumably SFW, but caveat emptor.

I remember in an interview, Henry Miller contended that in the time before there was lot of media portrayals of sex that people actually engaged in sex more. It seems like the 70s were something of the time when the media began honestly representing the social undercurrent of sex. But that representation was perhaps part of it going away.

The 70s were also the last decade before HIV/AIDS, I always thought that had a big impact.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#34

Post by gumby »

A friend of mine looked after his parents' house while they were on sabbatical. He rented it out for porn shoots. His mother was furious when she found out -- because he'd kept all the money himself.

Now they use airBNB.

Also a porn film was shot at the Stanford AI lab (the DC Powers building) in the 1970s. The first image I ever saw transmitted over the arpanet (around 1978) was a (very grainy) frame from this film.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#35

Post by perl4ever »

reallydude wrote: post #23
kgwgk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't classify as "amateur" a commercial movie where the lead roles are played by professional actors, but that may be just me. The downvotes I got agree with you. (Being a bad movie may make it look "amateurish", but that's something different.)

> a commercial movie where the lead roles are played by professional actors, I'm not sure you've gotten anywhere, describing what professional means, when you make it dependent on other entities as an explanation. There are plenty of bad SAG actors. What about just saying "union production"? Although I think that's the minimal bar, there have been non-union successes...which don't look professional to me. eg https://…

The adjective "professional" can mean "performed up to the standards of a profession" or "performed for money". I think it's pretty obvious that you're responding to someone using the latter definition, and I very much doubt you are unaware of its existence. Perhaps you could make your point more explicit?

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#36

Post by bryanrasmussen »

rayiner wrote: post #21
ohashi wrote: post #19

How unapologetic the prosecutor still is offends me. Trying to use anti fornication laws from 1796 and knowing it's a miscarriage of justice? Yet still thinks it's the right decision.

The laws were on the books, and the public's opposition to what the movie-maker was doing seems to fit in with the intent and scope of the laws. Maybe you can blame him for selective enforcement, but I don't think that qualifies as a miscarriage of justice. (That is, of course, assuming we take at face value that his denial that he didn't steal and ship a copy of the movie to Oklahoma.) The prosecutor took measures t…

one of the things that the founders of the American Republic attempted to do was to avoid the tyranny of the majority, that the public is opposed to what someone does and thus, for political purposes, laws are selectively enforced to punish the person the public dislikes seems to be a clear incident of such a tyranny.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#37

Post by lmm »

ohashi wrote: post #19

How unapologetic the prosecutor still is offends me. Trying to use anti fornication laws from 1796 and knowing it's a miscarriage of justice? Yet still thinks it's the right decision.

We have an adversarial system by design. We generally think it's a good thing that defence lawyers will defend even a guilty person as vigorously as they can; shouldn't the same apply to prosecutors?

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#38

Post by rayiner »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws were on the books, and the public's opposition to what the movie-maker was doing seems to fit in with the intent and scope of the laws. Maybe you can blame him for selective enforcement, but I don't think that qualifies as a miscarriage of justice. (That is, of course, assuming we take at face value that his denial that he didn't steal and ship a copy of the movie to Oklahoma.) The prosecutor took measures t…

one of the things that the founders of the American Republic attempted to do was to avoid the tyranny of the majority, that the public is opposed to what someone does and thus, for political purposes, laws are selectively enforced to punish the person the public dislikes seems to be a clear incident of such a tyranny.

The framers did not intend to preclude communities from enforcing laws regulating standards of decency and morality. This person was not prosecuted because people didn’t like him, he was prosecuted because he did something that was illegal and went far beyond the other, perhaps technically illegal, conduct prosecutors otherwise let slide.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#39

Post by 9000 »

lmm wrote: post #37
ohashi wrote: post #19

How unapologetic the prosecutor still is offends me. Trying to use anti fornication laws from 1796 and knowing it's a miscarriage of justice? Yet still thinks it's the right decision.

We have an adversarial system by design. We generally think it's a good thing that defence lawyers will defend even a guilty person as vigorously as they can; shouldn't the same apply to prosecutors?

No, because the point of the value of defending people no matter what is to protect against government overreach. The government has a significant asymmetry of power against its citizens (it can, you know, arrest or kill them), so there are legal limits placed on what the government can do to its citizens. It has to justify to a judge why it needs to infringe a citizen's rights (e.g. warrants for search or seizure), whereas citizens are assumed to be allowed access to information about the government, and the government has to make a case to keep it confidential (see: FOIA, FISA, security clearances, etc.). In addition to these legal limits, we have social norms, like the one you mentioned, to reinforce this adherence to citizens' rights. We must protect all defendants against the government in order to hold the government to proper processes. If we think the government should have been able to get an awful person, we need to change the laws going forward, not retroactively.

Additionally, selective enforcement is primarily a tool of corruption. The law is supposed to apply to everyone. If it doesn't, then those who enforce it get to selectively choose to not enforce it against themselves and only enforce it against their enemies. And, as we've said, the government has very disproportionate power against its citizens, so to give prosecutors, police, or other enforcers of the law very broad, rarely used precedents is extremely dangerous.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#40

Post by reilly3000 »

gumby wrote: post #34

A friend of mine looked after his parents' house while they were on sabbatical. He rented it out for porn shoots. His mother was furious when she found out -- because he'd kept all the money himself. Now they use airBNB. Also a porn film was shot at the Stanford AI lab (the DC Powers building) in the 1970s. The first image I ever saw transmitted over the arpanet (around 1978) was a (very grainy) frame from this film.

There are a million jokes, memes, fake stats, and even an Avenue Q song about how the Internet is for Porn. I just can’t believe it has roots that far back!
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