Porn Found On L.A. Obscenity Case Judge's Website 393
Stanislav_J writes "In a bizarre revelation, the judge who is presiding over the Isaacs obscenity trial in Los Angeles was found to have sexually explicit material on a publicly-accessible website. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged that he had posted the materials, but says he believed the site to be for personal storage only, and not accessible to the public (though he does acknowledge sharing some of the material with friends). The files included images of masturbation, public sex, contortionist sex, a transsexual striptease, a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. The latter two are especially ironic in that the trial involves the distribution of allegedly obscene sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality, among other things, by Ira Isaacs, an L.A. filmmaker."
Stanislav_J continues:
"The judge has blocked public access to the site (putting up a graphic that reads, 'Ain't nothin' here — y'all best be movin' on, compadre').Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."
Re:Ignorance is no defense... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I would say if it fails the Miller Test and he was publicly distributing it he should be charged like anyone else. I have not seen the pictures, but I think it feasible to launch an investigation as to whether or not he broke the law with pictures that possibly do not pass a Miller Test. Remember ignorance is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.
Re:Can you say (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Animals. (Score:5, Interesting)
Said principal used a Mac, while the school was primarily PC-based. They seized his computer, and returned it over a month later, claiming that they'd found porn (and releasing some supposedly-recovered photos).
I did a full analysis -- wrote my own tools to analyze HFS+, scanned the raw disk for image headers, etc -- and found (1) that the system had files and directories with mtimes during the period in which it was in the district's possession (and thus that they'd failed to follow accepted digital forensics practices), (2) that there were in fact a small number of pornographic images on the hard drive... and (3) that every one of those images was autodownloaded by Eudora Pro, a mail client (written back before spam was a serious issue) which saved every attachment to a specific folder on the disk without prompting. However, not one of these images matched those the school district claimed to have recovered.
The district dropped their case -- and "promoted" the principal to an administrative position he hated, working directly under the man who tried to fire him. Sigh.
Re:Ignorance is no defense... (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably.
Doesn't sound like it. Not that it matters. Not even commercial* porn providers require age verification.
The only major problem with that is, you'd have to actually show (a) the actual minors whose delinquency was contributed to (the "making available" argument doesn't fly) and (b) almost certainly show there was good reason to believe that the judge new he was distributing said content to minors (otherwise most porn mags would be shut down, since obviously if the porn mags weren't printed, you couldn't find minors with them).
In short, you have to consider the judge's position as if he were any other major publisher. Given the repeated attempts to try to "protect" minors on the internet in the past involving porn and how few laws have stood up to Constitutional scrutiny (the only one that comes to mind as accepted is ones involving libraries accpeting federal funds in exchange for having to include anti-porn filters; and assumedly that has to do with it being voluntary to accept funds), it just doesn't seem likely that yet another contorted attempt would work. But, obviously, it's all a matter of taking the judge to court and spending several years until the Supreme Court decides.
*Commercial in this context doesn't just mean "and we want your credit card number". The second one starts receiving money as a result of ads on one's website, one can be called commercial (just like broadcast TV). Assumedly this was a major reason that the age verification laws were discarded, as it would be very unreasonable to have every last website showing a nipple with an ad on it to request a credit card number. And odds are, most people *wouldn't* give a credit card number to the site. The last part, then, severely cripples freedom of speech by abridging the legitimate right of the vast majority to access a site without undue burden. Now, if there were some way to age verify someone in a more trivial fashion on the internet, the courts would probably have a much different interpretation on things.
Obscenity wtf (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I get offended when people back off and hide things or pause to hold back words in the middle of a sentence while they do a quick replacement. I never say anything because it's futile and the world is a threatening place in that context anyway.
I once knew a girl that could curse really well. Like, she didn't hold shit back, she didn't throw "fuck" or "ass" or "shit" in every third word; but when she had something to say, she threw every emphasis in right where it belongs, actually using those words as intensifiers, creating interesting and amusing combination and even in some cases short streams of nonsense that still conveyed the proper emotion. It's like someone actually turned streams of obscenities into a fine art; I've never seen anyone else communicate so comfortably or so clearly.
We live in a world where sending an e-mail to your boss stating you "don't know what's wrong yet because there's too much shit to wade through" can instantly get you fired. We just use euphamisms to indicate obscene concepts rather than single "obscene" words. The concept of isolated obscenity is obscene; preventing people from sharing shit you don't like is an aberration and we should be ashamed as a people for supporting this sort of behavior.
Re:Animals. (Score:2, Interesting)
Its a typical political game. Anyway who wants to impose their morality on others, is almost by definition seeking the power to impose their will and opinions on others. They are therefore power seekers and to some power seekers, there is no trick too underhanded to undermine their opponents. So some of the people who oppose him would go out of their way to appear to humiliate him, thereby attempting to undermining his position. In a country where a wardrobe malfunction is considered so morally wrong, his actions make him an easy target. People against him could even send him stuff and urge him to show the world what sort of images are around simply to hope he'll fall for it and then they have a way to undermine him.
The so called moral ones usually end up showing how unmoral they are in achieving their goals and therefore end up showing its not morality at all, its simply their idology. The idological domineering ones should look at some of the ancient statues in europe. But I guess the way the world is going, in time they will get around to wanting them covered up as well.
Judge must have pretty good influence (Score:3, Interesting)
Ain't nothin' here.
Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.
so....... isn't this like..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course not. Only if the judge's website had illegal porn should he be considered to have a conflict of interest.
Re:The Ninth Circus Court (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically what I'm saying is that Kozinski is a superstar in the legal community. This is why it's truly funny. It's probably the closest we'll ever come to a judicial sex tape.
EWWW
Re:Slashdotted, darn it! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/alex.kozinski.com/underneathmyrobe/
Although, these are
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://alex.kozinski.com/underneathmyrobe/datinggame.rm
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/alex.kozinski.com/stuff/jump.avi
and this
http://alex.kozinski.com/jurist-l/
was blocked from the archive
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/alex.kozinski.com/robots.txt
That said, after digging throught the site, it looks like:
A. He's actually human, and has a life outside being a judge (shock horror).
B. The site apears to be a dump for random stuff rather than anything organised, I suspect these allegations are likley a smear campaign.
'nothing to see here' not new (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:psychologically (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Animals. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Animals. (Score:3, Interesting)