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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

#51

Post by ceejayoz »

craftinator wrote: post #46
akvadrako wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Laws should have a given lifespawn, and be re-evaluted at the end of that lifespan for relevancy and effectiveness given the current culture. Too many laws remove freedom and power from the average citizen, and are actually dangerous if left un-audited. We have so many laws, you can't know them to follow them, thus making people criminals without knowledge of wrongdoing.

This process itself might be as dangerous as the one it replaces, though. I suspect things like civil rights, social security, Medicare, etc. would be difficult to renew in today's political climate despite public support for them.

Look how hard it is to do stuff like raise the debt ceiling, which wasn't a partisan football until just a few years ago.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#52

Post by Jedd »

> So he shot all the non-sex scenes first, then went back to film the required sex.

This sounds a lot like the film Caligula, from 1979.

They got Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner, John Gielgud etc - but re-shot a bunch of pornographic scenes long after principle photography had wrapped, and then edited the whole thing into what's now a bit of a cult classic, but at the time was banned by most countries censorship boards, disavowed by many who were involved in the production, and the subject of a swathe of legal attacks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film)

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#53

Post by mindcrime »

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.

Are you implying laws should be ignored after a few years go by?

Most of them should be ignored from the day they're enacted.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#54

Post by mikeash »

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?

The system is not symmetric and it's not supposed to be. For example, the prosecution is required to disclose all of their evidence to the defense, but the defense has almost no requirements to disclose evidence to the prosecution.

A defense attorney who has proof that their client is 100% guilty must still defend their client to the best of their ability. A prosecutor who believes that the accused is innocent is ethically required to dismiss the case. (Obviously, this doesn't always happen, but it's supposed to.)

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#55

Post by mikeash »

rayiner wrote: post #38
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people broke the law but weren't prosecuted because they didn't go far enough to justify it. This person broke the law and was prosecuted because he went further. Sounds to me like he was, in fact, prosecuted because people didn't like him.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#56

Post by rayiner »

mikeash wrote: post #55
rayiner wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people broke the law but weren't prosecuted because they didn't go far enough to justify it. This person broke the law and was prosecuted because he went further. Sounds to me like he was, in fact, prosecuted because people didn't like him.

Sure, in a sense they prosecuted him because they didn’t like him, but it’s because he went too far. It’s like prosecuting someone doing 30 over the speed limit but looking the other way when someone does 5 over. Yeah, we don’t like reckless drivers so we prosecute the first guy. But it’s not arbitrary, and it’s not improper.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#57

Post by mikeash »

rayiner wrote: post #56
mikeash wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people broke the law but weren't prosecuted because they didn't go far enough to justify it. This person broke the law and was prosecuted because he went further. Sounds to me like he was, in fact, prosecuted because people didn't like him.

Sure, in a sense they prosecuted him because they didn’t like him, but it’s because he went too far. It’s like prosecuting someone doing 30 over the speed limit but looking the other way when someone does 5 over. Yeah, we don’t like reckless drivers so we prosecute the first guy. But it’s not arbitrary, and it’s not improper.

Not that this is particularly important to your point, but 30 over vs 5 over is usually a different law.

I'd argue that there's a qualitative difference between selective enforcement that involves informal standards that evolve over time (e.g. police ignoring anyone who breaks the speed limit by less than 10MPH) and selective enforcement that involves a law that hasn't been enforced for centuries being pulled out of retirement and aimed at a single individual.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#58

Post by ineedasername »

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.

Laws that have been unenforced for a long time, like the 100 years cited here, can absolutely be struck down and ignored by the court. The word for it is desuetude [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desuetude

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

barry-cotter wrote: post #44
akvadrako wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Many of the laws that our important to daily life are hundreds of years old. Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly. The incentives of the modern bureaucratic state mean that any law that is used regularly will eventually be superseded by a more specific law that covers the circumstances more specifically; that’s why there are laws for mail fraud, computer fraud,, wire fraud etc. instead of just…

> Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly

The third amendment is an important law, but active enforcement is...rare. Even in criminal law, arguably, the ideal is that the existence of the law itself acts as a deterrent—an infrequently enforced law isn't necessarily unimportant, it may just be successful.

Re: An Amateur Porno Set Off a Federal Witch Hunt

#60

Post by aetherson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #59
barry-cotter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of the laws that our important to daily life are hundreds of years old. Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly. The incentives of the modern bureaucratic state mean that any law that is used regularly will eventually be superseded by a more specific law that covers the circumstances more specifically; that’s why there are laws for mail fraud, computer fraud,, wire fraud etc. instead of just…

> Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly The third amendment is an important law, but active enforcement is...rare. Even in criminal law, arguably, the ideal is that the existence of the law itself acts as a deterrent—an infrequently enforced law isn't necessarily unimportant, it may just be successful.

You can at least in principle distinguish between "no cases because it is never violated" and "no cases because it is routinely violated but never enforced."
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