Porn Found On L.A. Obscenity Case Judge's Website

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."

The Ninth Circus Court

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Now with animal acts.

Animals.

[Odder]

The ninth circuit is about to lose a defender of free speech because he had the savvy to run a web site but not enough to know how it really works. His collection of "porn" are things that other people sent him, the kind of crap that clogs email systems everywhere. It is impossible to have an email address and not have it sent to you. Someone you know will send it along. His mistake was putting it where it could be seen by the same kinds of fanatics that are pushing the "war on porn" in the first place. Ignore the fact that they routinely get busted like Jimmy Swaggart did. Kozinski thought people would not find it because there was no link to the directory ... ugh! He's exactly the kind of level headed person the courts need to rule fairly on these kinds of cases.

Like the fine article quotes him saying [latimes.com]:

You don't realize how bad it is in a country like that until you live in a free society like ours. People there live in fear of the secret police -- fear that something they say may get them taken away in the middle of the night. I have seen people hauled off in their pajamas. I've seen what a system of government can do when it is not restrained by law.

Those were fine sentiments when he was appointed by Ronald Reagan, but it's bad news under a regime that wants to be above the law. There you will find your animals, those who want to live by tooth and claw.

Re:

[Wandering Wombat]

It is impossible to have an email address and not have it sent to you.

I've never, ever, ever had anything like that sent to any of the 9 e-mail addresses I use for home, work, or family communication. Ever.

Re:Animals.

[Odder]

You don't know enough Republicans.

Re:Animals.

[Aazzkkimm]

I'm sending you some now.

Re:Animals.

[Fex303]

Hey hey, don't be greedy. Share it around, won't you?

Can't you post some links or something?

I'd post my email address, but I'm worried that people might fill up my inbox with something other than beastiality porn.

Re:Animals.

[cduffy]

I once was approached to do some forensic analysis for the defense in a case where a school district's administrator was trying to get a principal much-loved by his community and staff to leave.

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:Animals.

[TheRaven64]

It's a good thing they did drop the case, because his lawyer would have had a hell of a time getting the court to accept evidence from a tool that you wrote yourself and which hadn't been properly certified for use in evidence gathering. Especially if you used it to scan the disk, and not an image extracted using a cable that had the write pins removed - plugging anything capable at the hardware level of writing to the disk into it will taint any evidence you found.

Re:Animals.

[cduffy]

I wasn't running against the original, of course. What kind of idiot do you take me for?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn pictures being sent to your mightyjalapeno gmail account in 3... 2... 1...

Re:Animals.

[NtroP]

I've never, ever, ever had anything like that sent to any of the 9 e-mail addresses I use for home, work, or family communication. Ever.

Hang on... ... ...OK. Go check your GMail account :-)

Re:

[witherstaff]

There are easier ways to get free porn than to post on slashdot and get lots of goatse or who knows what.

So following your example, I've never had anyone send me money out of the blue to my paypal account.

Re:Animals.

[TheP4st]

I've never had anyone send me money out of the blue to my paypal account.

That's because you are not on former Nigerian minister of interior Nuboke Mawari's mailng list.

Re:

[D'Sphitz]

Who said anything about wanting to see them? If nobody has ever forwarded you photos for their humor or shock value you and your associates take themselves way too seriously. Nobody said you have to jerk off to them ffs...

Re:Animals.

[NFN_NLN]

Wow, so not wanting to see pictures of women denigrated by being painted like cows or watching some dude "cavort" about with a farm animal makes someone a prude?

Well, I guess I'm a prude!

I came here hoping someone would post a link to a woman painted like a cow on all fours.

Until I heard about it I had no desire to see this... but now I must.. and I will not rest until I see this bovine sirine. Her tempting moo-call beckons me!

Oh.. and yes, you're a fuckin prude.

FOUND THE PIC

[Alsee]

I know I saw the pic years ago, but I had a bitch of a time Googling it.
This is the picture you want. [hame.ca] It is almost certainly the pic on the judge's computer. Two women on all fours, body-painted like cows. They are completely nude and the camera angle is from behind, so it's extremely NSFW.

And while I'm at it, pictures one [magyver.com] and two [erosblog.com] of individual nude women pained like cows. I suspect the bodyart in all three pics is from a single artist (notice the distinctive black collar on the wrists/ankles/neck, the bare

Re:Animals.

[severoon]

I fail to see the story here at all, and I think the comments in this thread up to this post miss the point.

The point: why should a judge recuse himself from a case due to a supposed conflict of interest when there really is no conflict of interest? Judges are, by definition, asked to compartmentalize their professional opinions and personal opinions, so when the law or a judge's interpretation of the law is in conflict with their personal stance, that is business as usual. We still expect them to rule based on a valid interpretation of the law...regardless of what they think the law ought to be.

A conflict of interest only arises when the judge-in-question has a personal and relevant involvement in the particular proceeding at hand. For example, if the judge regularly does business with a contractor and that contractor comes into his courtroom as a party to a lawsuit, depending on the nature of their relationship, it might be appropriate for the judge to recuse himself. If the judge has financial dealings with anyone involved in a case, then even the appearance of impropriety should be avoided.

However, to say that any judge that's viewed porn should not be able to rule in pornography cases is kind of stupid (even if it's fetish porn). Actually, even if it's child porn, there's no conflict of interest—rather, the commission of a felony is grounds for having that judge removed from the bench, but it wouldn't be a conflict of interest any more than a judge who's an alcoholic ruling on a drunk driving case.

So there's just no conflict of interest here. If we say there is, we have to accept that any judge who's had or had a significant other that's had an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. And we also have to accept that any judge that's refused to have or be party to an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. Basically, we're saying that they cannot have taken a position on anything in their personal lives if they're to form a legal interpretation on that thing from the bench. Stupid.

Re:Animals.

[lazlo]

So there's just no conflict of interest here. If we say there is, we have to accept that any judge who's had or had a significant other that's had an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. And we also have to accept that any judge that's refused to have or be party to an abortion cannot rule on abortion cases. Basically, we're saying that they cannot have taken a position on anything in their personal lives if they're to form a legal interpretation on that thing from the bench. Stupid.

That's not the half of it. If this is a conflict of interest, then I would posit that a judge would have a conflict of interest on a child molestation case if he has a child himself. Or has ever been a child himself. Good luck finding judges that don't meet that criterion.

Now, if this particular porn happened to come from the defendant in this case, then I could see a possible grounds for viewing it as a conflict of interest. If it is specifically from the material that the defendant is in trouble for distributing, then it probably is a conflict of interest. But from my reading, it's just random mostly-unrelated porn.

Re:

[kalirion]

Would you say the same thing if this was a gay rights case and the judge had "Jesus hates fags" posters in his flat?

Re:

[eggnoglatte]

Why is the parent a troll, but all the other posts making the same joke are +5 funny?

Re:

[JebusIsLord]

I thought it was because everyone had simply seen everything, but I was apparently wrong. Can someone please forward me the cow-woman?

Re:The Ninth Circus Court

[dunng808]

Although I consider myself liberal, sex with ducks is fowl play.
(Ducking behind a cow painted to look like a woman in a blue silk dress.)

Re:The Ninth Circus Court

[geekoid]

You quack me up.

Re:The Ninth Circus Court

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kinky" is when you use a feather. "Perverted" is when you use the entire duck!

Re:The Ninth Circus Court

[clickety6]

Obscene is when you use half a duck...

Re:

[lysse]

...er, ducking? Are we witnessing the birth of a euphemism here? Do you think it's applicable to all bestiality, or only acts of avian depravity?

Re:

[TheoMurpse]

What I find interesting about this is that Kozinski is one of the main "feeder judges" for the US Supreme Court. Along with Richard Posner, a great many of his clerks go clerk for SCOTUS justices afterward, and that job is one of the most prestigious jobs in the legal community (i.e., $300K signing bonuses after you clerk for the Supreme Court with the most prestigious firms in the country).

Basically what I'm saying is that Kozinski is a superstar in the legal community. This is why it's truly funny. It's p

Heh

[digitrev]

Well, this will be interesting. I wonder if this will get used against him (i.e. he gets called a hypocrite), or if it'll affect his judgment regarding the case he has right now.

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Surely he'll have to recuse himself from hearing the case.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. Pornography is not illegal. I'm not sure there's any reason to treat the material the judge possessed as any different from a .PDF of Lady Chatterley's Lover or Ulysses.

If the models are all of legal age, then the worst thing you can really accuse him of is copyright infringement.

Re:

[John Meacham]

No, why would he have to recuse himself?

One could make the argument that a judge that refused to ever look at porn in their life is equally biased and should recuse themselves.

If anything, I think this makes him more likely to be able to be impartial.

Re:

[Vectronic]

I think he could have gotten away with it, when I first read it, my immediate assumption was that maybe he was doing some "investigating", as in seeing what exactly the material was, which I would see necissary, aslong as the material was the same material in question.

But, reading further into "storage and distribution"...he failed... unless of course, he was sharing it with other judges, but I think that "isnt in the book" as far as I know, a Judge isnt supposed to take advice from other Judges in a case (

If was up for such charges...

[mpthompson]

I would certainly want judge Kozinski presiding over my case. Just as if the RIAA was on my case I would want a judge who was familiar with and used bittorrent.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Foresight, perhaps

[mpthompson]

The case itself would provide a precedence for the judge's own defense in his ensuing criminal public obscenity trial.

Where does the article even imply the judge is going to be criminally prosecuted for the content that was on his website? From the description, the content on his site may be seen as embarrassing and in poor taste, but you have to do far more than post nudie pictures your site to be brought up on obscenity charges.

By your logic, a judge who drinks and enjoys alcoholic beverages must recuse himself from a DUI trial because of conflict of interest.

Re:

[RodgerDodger]

A judge who drinks and drives, with pending charges, would not have to excuse himself from a DUI trial. He would have to excuse himself from a trial aimed at determining if DUIs were illegal. Similarly, if he was deciding where between 0.08 and 0.09 the limit should be - and he'd been caught with a limit of 0.086 - then he would have a conflict of interest.

In this case, the judge is being asked, in the courtcase, to define a similar limit about obscenity. Arguably, at least some of the images & video he

Hyperlink us FTW!

[tambo]

Tsk, tsk. Bad submitter. How could you have posted this without the URL? I mean... we need to be able to judge the material for ourselves, right?

- David Stein

"Eh"

[Dogtanian]

Tsk, tsk. Bad submitter. How could you have posted this without the URL? I mean... we need to be able to judge the material for ourselves, right?

Oh well.... you really want to see it? Here it is! [goatse.cz]

Don't get too titillated now :)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly, that is not the worst photo of a 9th Circuit Court judge I've seen this week.

Re:"Eh"

[dfm3]

Even more amazing, this is the second time in a week [slashdot.org] that I've seen a link to goatse actually get modded UP...

RTFS

[Stanislav_J]

The hyperlink to the site (http://alex.kozinski.com/) is in the sentence that indicates that the judge took the stuff down. Nothing to see there. The Wayback Machine shows several versions of the site dating back to 2004, none of the juicy stuff is there.

huh?

[cptnapalm]

"a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows"

*blink*

*blinkblink*

*blink*

What?

Re:

[Overzeetop]

There's got to be an udder joke in here somewhere.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you ask me, the whole thing is udderly ridiculous.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be hear all week. Try the veal!

Re:huh?

[A beautiful mind]

Just be careful not to milk this joke for too long...

Re:huh?

[JK_the_Slacker]

Just be careful not to milk this joke for too long...

What are you talking about? We'll be milking this joke until the cows come home.

Re:huh?

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Try the veal!

I think the judge would be in serious trouble if he'd tried the veal.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

google image

safesearch off

2nd image result

http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=cow%20girl

Today's important legal lesson for budding Judges

[w3woody]

If you are a judge presiding over a case involving the illegal distribution of fetish porn, you should probably take down your own web site illegally distributing fetish porn first.

Re:Today's important legal lesson for budding Judg

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing from the site was illegal however. (aside from possible copyright infringement if he didn't have the rights to distribute the photos, which I don't think was your idea of illegal)

reaction of the community

[mapkinase]

I bet the reaction of the community would be much more drastic if
"his long record of defending the First Amendment" was not mentioned.

Where is the irony? I do not see it. Porn-loving judge defends "first amendment". I would call it "integrity".

The wolf was appointed to herd the sheep. Call me back when man bites dog.

Re:reaction of the community

[JustOK]

Call me back when man bites dog.

The man bit the dog, but it was part of the foreplay.

Oh boy

[joggle]

This is going to provide great fodder for all the comedy shows and FOX News. Especially considering the judge was telling jurors that there were about 4 hours of video and he'd be watching it with them since it's part of his job.

Re:Oh boy

[MightyMartian]

This is going to provide great fodder for all the comedy shows and FOX News. Especially considering the judge was telling jurors that there were about 4 hours of video and he'd be watching it with them since it's part of his job.

Is there something wrong with enjoying your work?

What better way...

[TobyWong]

What better way to become a better judge of obscenity than to immerse yourself in relevant material. Makes sense to me in an admittedly warped way.

Re:

[digitrev]

Actually, the best way to judge obscenity is to be a fairly normal person. After all, part of the Miller test for obscenity is

Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

Of course, seeing as how he was selling it on the intrnet, who's to say what the community is, what its standards are?

Re:What better way...

[A beautiful mind]

The Miller "test" is just a codification of hypocrisy. There is no such thing as an average person when it comes to taste.

Re:What better way...

[Arccot]

The Miller "test" is just a codification of hypocrisy. There is no such thing as an average person when it comes to taste.

The Miller test, combined with very potent obscenity penalties, is sheer genius from the right.

You can't see the line when you produce the item. You can't see the line when you're charged. You can only see the line you crossed when the jury reads the verdict. And then you go to jail, period.

Amazing, considering "obscenity" as a form of expression doesn't even hurt anyone. It's just a straight-up 1st Amendment violation.

Good Lawyering That...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I would have to say that the defendant's attorney definitely got his client into the right court. Sadly for said defendant, the judge will have to recuse himself now. Unless,the judge rules that it is not pornography, and then everybody goes home happy; except the prosecutors, of course.

First time in history

[A beautiful mind]

...a judge will actually be an expert in the specialty area the case deals with.

Car analogy

[xstonedogx]

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.

Should a judge also recuse himself from presiding over auto theft cases if he should happen like cars?

Does liking porn predispose him to favoring the defendant in an illegal porn case? More importantly, does it do so to a greater degree than being a defender of the First Amendment?

Re:Car analogy

[raddan]

I'd personally be suspect of anyone who doesn't like porn, because you're talking about somebody with a powerful enough prejudice to find issue with millions of years of sexual reproduction.

Re:

[Maestro485]

That depends. Are the cars painted to look like cows???

So What

[Jerry Rivers]

Good luck finding a judge who can truthfully say they have never had any interest in pornography.

What conflict of interest?

[Calydor]

I fail to see where the conflict of interest is here. So he likes porn. Yeah, he's MALE.

What would be the 'right' judge to preside over this case? A known prude who prays to God at least seven times a week and has publically stated that pornography is a sin?

So he has a life outside the court room. Big fucking deal. There's no money involved in it for him, I'm sure, and he probably doesn't know the defendant either. Where is the conflict of interest?!

Re:

[geekoid]

A lot of women like porn as well.
Just an FYI for future dates.

Slashdotted, darn it!

[dpbsmith]

The bad news: the site is down. "Safari can't open the page 'http://alex.kozinski.com/' because it could not connect to the server 'alex.kozinski.com'"

The good news: it's in the Wayback machine. [archive.org]

The bad news: the Wayback machine just shows "Ain't nothin' here. Y'all best be movin' on, compadre" on the main page, from 2004 through the last snapshot in 2005. (The news story saying that this is a recent change is apparently wrong).

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps:
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/alex.kozinski.com/underneathmyrobe/

Although, these are ... entertaining
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 (sho

Have you seen this?

[rahvin112]

I bet 100% of the material on the website is the same material that moves around the "have you seen this" emails forwarded on by every unknowing idiot new to the Internet. I recognize the description of the animal video as the one where the drunk guy is trying to get away from the donkey that is trying to mount him. I also know the woman wearing the cow body paint circulated in a similar email. The vague descriptions on the others also sound as if they are the same type of material that gets forwarded around. I wouldn't be surprised if every adult who has ever used the Internet has seen the material in question, that the judge has some online storage with the material in question isn't surprising to me, and certainly not a reason to dismiss him from the case.

At the bare minimum I would suggest the material in question makes him much more applicable to judge a case involving bestiality because he should be able to recognize the difference between protected speech and images (those emails classify as such) and obscene material.

And now the punchline...

[ross.w]

...the Aristocrats

Define "obscene".

[TheDarkener]

I don't get how a government can even try to 'standardize' on something like sex. Isn't that what's so great about sex, that it's *not* like a lunch line, where everyone gets the same food? Variety is the spice of life.

P.S. Before you judge my own sexual desires and fetishes, I ask you to let it go and ask yourself if it's even necessary. It's not my point to try and "legalize" beastiality or anything of the sort - I just think it's kind of lame to try and tell someone what is "ok" sexually, and what isn't (as long as nobody/nothing gets hurt or is forced to do something against their will - that's a completely different story). It reminds me of the "old days" when certain sex positions were illegal.

Lets all pretend that we dont have sexual thoughts

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I find that America will be better off when we soon realize that we as adults are children afraid of our own sexual fantasies and the most important action we must take is to simply act as if the naughty naughty doesnt happen. That way we can legally penalize anyone that dares enjoy sex in ways we ourselves wished we could. This judge clearly has a sexual organ, and i move to have him removed from the bench and the legal justice system as we know it. What will the world think of us, when they find out this judge enjoys sex! WHAT i ask you?

Oh yeah... and dont forget... We do not wipe our own asses... that is dirty.

Obscenity wtf

[bluefoxlucid]

Let the FCC control broadcast obscenity. Anything subscribed or unicasted on demand is fine.

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.

Judge must have pretty good influence

[treeves]

since all archive.org has for all the archives of alex.kozinski.com is pages saying

    Ain't nothin' here.

    Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.

so....... isn't this like.....

[tygt]

Should a judge with pictures of guns on his website recuse himself from a murder trial where a gun was involved?

Of course not. Only if the judge's website had illegal porn should he be considered to have a conflict of interest.

Here ya go!!

[Stanislav_J]

Cryptome posted a Yahoo cache of Kozinski's directory [cryptome.org] on its site.

Some of the more interesting file names include:

a.day.without.jews.wmv
BBCCopsUndies.wmv
Colo-rectalSurgeon.wav
isitmanisitwoman.pps
jewsdontcamp.mp3
piss_diver.wmv
Sheep_guy.jpg
show.them.to.me.wmv
testicle.interview.wmv

Looks like Jewish groups may not appreciate his sense of humor as well as the anti-porn crowd. At any rate, I don't see much of anything there that looks from the file names alone to be hardcore. It really does look like a directory of miscellaneous stuff that came in "Look at this!" and "Check THIS out!" e-mails from friends that he just stored on the site for easy access.

Re:Here ya go!!

[odin53]

Kozinski is Jewish; in fact, his parents were Holocaust survivors. I wouldn't be concerned.

UPDATE

[Stanislav_J]

In an updated version of the story, the L.A. Times now reporting that the trial has been suspended:

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."

One new wrinkle is that the good judge is at least partially trying to shift blame to his own son!

After publication of an latimes.com article about his website Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale. ["Yale??"]

"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."

Or maybe it was one of his brothers, Harvard and Princeton....

Re:

[MightyMartian]

Live by the ... er ... sword, die by the sword.

Not ironic

[jnadke]

irony?

Irony implies you wouldn't expect judges to have midget transexual transpecie gay porn.

Re:Can you say

[Original Replica]

Perhaps the porn was there as a benchmark (no pun intended). Anything freakier than what the judge had is obscene, anything less exotic is simply porn. Even if that wasn't it's intended purpose, it would make an interesting point to argue. After all as a judge, Kozinski is a moral compass, and he is sharing this material with his friends whom we can also assume are pillars of the community, so by them accepting this material,we can conclude that it is not "Offensive to accepted standards of decency or modesty." [thefreedictionary.com] because the standard-bearers of our society have already show to find it acceptable.

Re:Can you say

[Optic7]

"Everyone that has pr0n less nasty than mine is a prude. Everyone that has nastier pr0n than me is a freak." - Based on that driving quote.

Re:

[jlarocco]

I mostly agree, except for judges as moral compasses. Morals and laws are very different things.

Laws are meant to prevent a person from infringing another person's rights. Morals are meant to tell a person what's right or wrong. The confusion comes from all the situations where the two overlap, such as murder, rape, robbery, and fraud.

I would expect a judge to be lawful. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to agree with my morals.

Re:Ignorance is no defense...

[Bryansix]

Uhm, I think you are forgetting the part about where he did nothing illegal.

Re:

[GuyverDH]

Was the content viewable by minors? Did it have age verification before showing said content?

Well then...

Contributing to the delinquency of minors, and whatever statutes cover providing pornography to minors as well.

Re:Ignorance is no defense...

[Bryansix]

Assumptions and Conjecture don't mean he did anything wrong. A common exercise in law classes is to take a situation and state all the laws that could have been broken.

IE: A guy is walking down a street.

Well really the example doesn't lend itself to any laws being broken but here are the responses you'd get anyways.
1 - Maybe he is walking IN the street in which case he is Jaywalking
2 - He also might be obstructing traffic
3 - If he isn't wearing any clothes then he might be arrested for public indecency
I could go on but I won't.

Except Nowadays...

[maz2331]

Almost anyone can be gotten for a felony on a daily basis for nearly any action or inaction.

We have IIRC over 40,000 Federal felony statutes, and hundreds of thousands of regulations. Combine that with prosecutors and cops who take an "expansive view" of the definitions of the words in the code and someone committed a felony last night in their sleep.

Re:

[Peyna]

http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title18/parti_.html [gpo.gov]

I'll let you do the counting, but the majority of the felonies in the federal system are in Title 18.

Maybe if you consider all the different combinations of specifications and amounts, etc. as different offense you might get to 40,000, but otherwise, I have a feeling it's nowhere close to that.

Re:

[adminstring]

One can be negligent while sleeping. Say you're the captain of an oil tanker and you fall asleep, leaving someone less experienced in command, and they run it into the coastline. You could then be found guilty of criminal negligence for something that happened while you were asleep.

Re:

[hcmtnbiker]

Uhm, I think you are forgetting the part about where he did nothing illegal.

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:

[mooingyak]

Remember ignorance is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.

IANAL... but that said, AFAIK:
Ignorance *of the law* is not a valid excuse for breaking it. I doubt he was ignorant of the law. Ignorance of the ramifications of your actions is a variety of excuse. It still leaves you open to anything that is negligence related (I won't even try to speculate as to his potential degree of exposure in that realm). A very large number of statutes have the words 'knowingly and willingly' or other words to that e

Re:

[KillerBob]

IANAL... but that said, AFAIK

Y'know... every time I come across the acronym IANAL, I have the same thought. It's particularly apt in a thread about pornography.

Re:Ignorance is no defense...

[10101001 10101001]

Was the content viewable by minors?

Probably.

Did it have age verification before showing said content?

Doesn't sound like it. Not that it matters. Not even commercial* porn providers require age verification.

Well then...

Contributing to the delinquency of minors, and whatever statutes cover providing pornography to minors as well.

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.

Re:

[NtroP]

Are you sure about that? The man cavorting sounds awfully close to bestiality, which is, in fact, illegal most places as it constitutes animal abuse.

It specifically says the animal was aroused. How can you claim abuse? I don't think the animal would.

Re:

[Peter Mork]

At the risk of incurring a "think of the children!" response, I'm going to use child porn as an example.

So, I see that not one amongst our libertarian crowd has yet taken you to task for your kmee-jerk 'think of the blinkin' children' response. Perhaps because they know better than to feed the stinkin' trolls. Regardless, I'm just dumb enough to bite.

Here goes: Are you frackin' stupid? It's illegal to show someone speeding? Or running a red light? It's illegal to show OJ failing to pull over? Or t

Re:

[1u3hr]

Absolutely. At the risk of incurring a "think of the children!" response, I'm going to use child porn as an example. By allowing distribution of child porn, you would be creating a market for it. People may discover their interest in it by viewing material that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do, and that would in turn increase demand for the materials.

Is it a market if the distribution is free, as in this case? And as for the rest, it's thought crime, entirely conjectural "may discover", etc.,

Re:psychologically

[digitrev]

The mind of a censor is best described in the following joke/anecdote.

Every day, Joe, a construction worker, would walk to his job singing dirty songs. Mrs. Williams finally got fed up and complained to the police about Joe's singing. They told Joe to cut out the singing. The next day, Mrs. Williams complained again. They asked Joe, and he had stopped singing. So they asked her what the problem was. "He's whistling dirty songs now."

Re:

[schmobag]

You laugh, but this actually happened. Frank Zappa's completely instrumental album Jazz From Hell was marked with one of the first "Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics" warnings. I repeat: the album has no lyrics. But it had an explicit lyrics warning from the RIAA. The likely reason? His vocal opposition to the Tipper Gore-led Parent's Music Resource Center, whose bludgeoning pressured the RIAA to start putting those warnings on albums in the first place. See http://ericnuzum.com/banned/incidents/80s [ericnuzum.com]

Re:No big surprise

[jellie]

That's a really retarded and overused argument. Are you saying that the decisions by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are examples of that bullshit known called "judicial activism"? According to the 2000 census, the states within its jurisdiction comprise 20% of the country's population. And they also see a fifth of the federal appellate workload. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit probably has the most cases upheld by the Supreme Court.

Your lawyer buddies probably also know that Judge Kozinski tends to be conservative/libertarian, not "liberal" (as the court is often characterized), and is a highly respect jurist. I'm not defending him or his actions, but I'm saying that dismissing an entire court due to some stupid belief is just ... naive. What do you know?

Re:No big surprise

[Qzukk]

Not only is the statistic taken out of context (The 9th Circuit has "one-fifth of the entire federal appellate caseload [senate.gov]"), the statistic is bullshit in the first place.

For every case the Supreme Court hears, how many do they allow to stand?

During its 2004-05 term, the Supreme Court reversed 84 percent of the cases it chose to hear from appeals of 9th Circuit decisions... But the high court reversed 100 percent of the decisions it heard from the 1st, 2nd, and 10th Circuit Courts of Appeals

-- http://mediamatters.org/items/200511090012 [mediamatters.org]

If 16 of 19 cases that were taken were overturned in 04/05, how many cases did the Supreme Court decline to hear, allowing the 9th Circuit decision to stand? I can't find statistics on the numbers of appeals where the Supreme Court essentially "agreed" with the Circuit court, but I did find this neat doohickey [uscourts.gov] that lets me generate reports on case information for each Circuit, and it tells me that for 2005, the number of "on the merits" decisions (as opposed to decisions about procedural error, etc) was:
1st) 986
2nd) 2121
3rd) 2329
4th) 2590
5th) 3608
6th) 2903
7th) 1480
8th) 2078
9th) 6197
10th) 1524
11th) 3579
DCth ;) 518

If every one of those 6197 decisions was appealed and the Supreme Court only disagreed 16 times, that's a pretty damn good percentage in my opinion.

Finally, California has money out the wazoo. That money is required in order to appeal cases in the first place, and doubly so to appeal to the Supreme Court. Coupled with the fact that the government is more or less required to let the people try to appeal (something about a right to petition for redress of grievances), you can see those dollars at work in this Circuit.