Newspapers? Nudes-papers!
10/31/2006 9:59:31 PM
We're still transcribing the day's interviews, but on the way here we couldn't help but think about, um, well, porn, as we walked by a cluster of demonstrating reporters of the city's two newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. For the zillion-and-first time in the past few years, management of both newspapers has threatened huge layoffs in response to a steep decline in circulation and ad revenue; the Guild has threatened a strike, and I couldn't help but think of the old guys I used to work with as a Philly Daily News intern back in the nineties who came from the Trentonian, a newspaper that fought for its survival amid suburban flight and the death of print by printing pictures of scantily clad women (such as three-time Page Six honoree Bella. Because even at the time, it was fairly clear that newspapers were dying, and with them the vast majority of original reporting that bloggers like me would link to. In the years ahead of us more newspapers will fold, reporters will leave the business, and outlets like Hooksexup with the business models (and, perhaps, nude models) necessary for survival in an internet-dominated media business will only become more critical to the public discourse. Our speech will only become more valuable.
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Was it just me or...
10/31/2006 3:22:46 PM
Is the DOJ changing its entire approach? They barely cross-examined anyone today. Anyway, we conducted some real live interviews today that we are going to have to actually TRANSCRIBE before we post, so mercifully there happens to be this thing called the "blogosphere" that continues, in our absence, to generate dirty and possibly prurient vaguely policy-oriented content. The blog Wonkette is especially harmful to children today, directing us to what our expert opinion estimates might be a very tidy M66 by the really bizarre standards of Plaintiffs' Exhibit 40 also known as the Condomania "Fit Kit" (note how the sizes range from "Long" to "Longer" and "Wide" to "Wider," for all the pussies out there who aren't comfortable owning up to having small penises) and this, a video featuring a BJ-in-progress on the DC metro, performed on a -- how surprising, in DC! -- not particularly attractive man.
And Slate takes on our discovery last week that porn may in fact be good for us, though it's not clear if author Steven Landsburg is familiar with the actual study claiming to prove this.
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Meet Mitch
10/30/2006 7:30:57 PM
Mitch Tepper runs a website that specializes in answering reader mail called Sexual Health Network and his testimony was the dirtiest, kinkiest, most explicit by far. One anecdote sounded like it came straight from the mind of Scooter Libby. All the while his fifth grader sat there, bored out of his skull. Young Tepper knows a LOT about sex, having read the wildly controversial It's Perfectly Normal and having a dad who, in second grade, explained to a fellow seven-year-old who claimed to have a picture of a "woman with a penis" that it was more likely probably just "a man with breasts."
Mitch Tepper is devoted to this kind of frankness because he broke his neck in the early eighties, while on the finance track, and found a dearth of readily available information about the nuances of sex with a spinal cord injury. So he got his PhD in sexuality education at Penn and started the site in 1995 to spread his messages. Oh yeah, and he is an Orthodox Jew who claims he speaks from the pompatus of love.
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Your daily dose of After School Special: meet freshman B, of Pottstown PA
10/30/2006 7:27:27 PM
"B" is a Boy Scout. He and Z are similar in that they are both very intelligent. That is where their similarities end.
So first things first, does your mom use filtering software to monitor your computer usage?
She used to, but then I got my own computer. but it’s down in the living room generally either my sister or my mom or my dad or a combination are sitting in there.
So you can’t really spend much time with the interporn? What DO you look at, then?
Recently I’ve gotten into myspace which is cool, since it lets me message my friends, and sometimes I don’t get to talk to them because we’re not all in the same class anymore.
I play like, lots of games.
So you know all about this Warcraft stuff?
Yeah, the game I’m playing right now is very much like World of Warcraft, which I think it’s a complete ripoff because it charges you like fifteen bucks a month… and then they keep amending it where it doesn’t need to be amended. This is called Guild Wars. It’s a massively multiplayer online game which means you talk to like a bunch of people online and you go around with swords and stuff.
So, like, have you ever been exposed to content that might be considered harmful to children?
I’ve gotten popups inn the past that you could say featured adult material. But what with my hacking ability and stuff I can generally close them out.
So you guys aren’t really perverted?
I would say all of my friends, all boys and men are perverted in some way, but no one in my friends circle…no, wait, I forgot, my best friend likes that stuff but he’s really funny. He’s “Eyeblood,” the first friend on my Myspace page.
Yeah, all my funny guy friends are into porn. So Eyeblood’s computer is not located in the living room?
No, his is in the basement.
So, besides that what would you say is the difference between you and Eyeblood?
I would say he is more interested in recreational drugs, and he quit Boy Scouts. He’s not really into sports or intellectual activities I would say.
Recreational drugs, or just marijuana?
Just pot.
So pretty much he gave up his place in a club among such luminaries as L.L. Cool J and Jimmy Stewart so he could spend more time in his basement, smoking weed and jerking off?
That about sums it up.
Does that sort of lifestyle tempt you? Do you ever think about quitting?
I’ve thought about it.
I mean, you do a lot of activities.
Oh man, Tetris is so addicting. I’m playing it right now.
Really? I thought you were playing Guild Wars?
Uhhh, I’m at level 3. One time I played until I got to like level 20. It took a lot more time than I had available.
Yeah, you seem to do a lot of activities, like I was saying
Oh yeah I’m in band and I play soccer and I throw things during track and field.
Are you a good student?
I consider myself smart but I also consider myself a very much annoying person to any teacher. I mouth off I … guess you could say I am a class clown..
Do you like to read?
I love to read. My favorite is Splinter Cell by Tom Clancy. The book, not the video game. I mean the video game was good, but the book was better.
Man, that would be so cool to have a book made into a video game.
No, he made the video game before he made the book. I couldn’t believe it when it happened. I had all his video games and until he wrote a book based on Splinter Cell I didn’t know he was an author. I was so excited, I got like all his books. I’m also reading A Separate Peace right now. My sister hated it but I think it’s good. She’s reading a book of short stories by all women authors right now in preparation for her women’s studies career.
So I guess her being into women's studies and all your sister isn't much of a porn connoisseur either. What’s she like?
Nah. My sister... she’s really like book smart, but like, she’ll say stuff, like, for instance, you know where Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is right?
Yeah, steel town, Lehigh University..
The other day she said, ‘I was looking at Bethlehem but, you know, like I think it would be a party school because like, Jesus was born there and everything. She was completely serious. There was no sarcasm in her voice at all. It was just, like, blond stupidity.
Speaking of Jesus, your MySpace page says he’s your hero?
Yeah, he is my hero even though I’m atheist because he did a bunch of cool stuff.
So, uh, back to porn. So how do you know that your friends are into porn? Like, how does that come up in conversation?
Uh, it’s basically like, ‘Yo, yo yo, look at this.’ The last time he did it was about lesbian domination. Apparently he’s very interested in that.
Yeah, because he can't really get in on that. So, uh, do you know what a dirty sanchez is?
No. I guess I’ll have to consult urbandictionary.com Do you ever look at that site? It’s awesome.
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What's worse? Sex or witchcraft? Depends on the community standards...
10/30/2006 1:47:47 PM
Henry Reichman, author of the book Censorship and Selection and editor of a newsletter for the American Library Association, reminded us of pretty much every heartland book-ban controversy (and a few Blue State ones: schools in Connecticut reportedly tried to ban Bridge to Terabithia and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Also banned/complained about: Harry Potter, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Of Mice and Men, Forever by Judy Blume.
But a sex ed guide called It's Perfectly Normal was the Reichman's most complained about book, and a look at the Amazon reviews starts to reveal why:
While a mother of a nine year old in Sacramento will tell you:
Kids talk about sex A LOT. The problem is they often pass on incorrect information. This book is perfect to make sure that what they learn is correct, accurate and healthy.
a mother of a ten year old in Virginia comments sarcastically:
If normal to you is giving your child a book with lots of comic style nudity, directions for masterbating, sic exactly HOW to have sex (etc.) then you might want to grab this and run!
and a North Carolina reader couldn't help but feel like the book didn't make sex seem, well, fun enough:
My take on the book? Just don't have sex. You'll get pregnant. And it will kill you.
More on this later, but it made me think a lot. Does exposure to sexual content at age nine, as opposed to age 12, make that much of a difference? If Z had given the interview she gave at age fifteen, instead of 13, would you have been as shocked? If you left your ten year old with a family friend for a week and returned to find he'd been exposed to nudie magazines and an infidelity movie or two, would he be inalterably changed? Who really wants to be the source of everything their kids know about sex anyway? Isn't that just uncomfortable all around?
Anyway.
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Surreal lasciviousness-jurisprudence mashup of the day
10/30/2006 1:22:00 PM
-"Your honor this section is acutally a subsection of a section we call 'Lil Kinky' and this subsection is called "vibrators and massagers,'..."
-OBJECTION, your honor, narrative.
-Why don't we have a midday recess now....
That's thanks to Adam Glickman, who also helpfully narrated how one would employ the fit kit ("assuming the user has an erect penis") Condomania supplies free of charge so men (and she-males) can order the exclusive couture condoms that comprise 15% of Condomania's revenue.
Other great moments in Glickman testimony:
Q: Does a flavor of a condom have anything to do with its effectiveness?
A: In terms of efficacy, breakage, slippage, no.
Q: Why does Condomania market flavored condoms, then?
A: They're just kind of fun, a little bit of baskin robbins in the condom selection. All the different flavors, from strawberry to cola, suggest that there's something to explore, that it can be fun. My personal experience is that condoms .. for oral sex can be very, very important...
DOJ: Your honor! Lack of foundation...
(Meanwhile on the projection screen: a cartoon wizard with a speech bubble asks: So, you say you the taste of latex got you down? Looking for a tasty, mouth watering way to express your affections? Hungry for a savory, succulent love pop?)
Anyway, having never sucked wang that tasted like paradise, we don't have any foundation either, but we have to admit we sort of object to using condoms during oral sex too.
-MT
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While we're in court
10/30/2006 9:28:56 AM
Last week's events lent a measure of gravitas to our otherwise irredeemably puerile (though not quite prurient) weekend events, which included a live performance by the explicit joke rock band Sweatheart, who possibly out of respect to the parents of their numerous 16-year-old fans and interns do not post the lyrics to songs like "Finger Bangin'" on their website.
Anyway, so now we are back and headed to court, where one Adam Glickman tells us he is eager to be cross-examined on the subject of the Condomania fit kit knowing that "the DOJ lawyer is the whole time going to be wondering what size he is." (Chin up, Adam tells us the average size is between five and five-and-a-half inches.)
So while we're inside, Wi-fi-free and panning for the rare moment of courtroom gold amid dunes and embankments full of procedural tedium, we'll leave you with this: highlights of Scooter Libby's bear-fucking, deer-fucking, generally animal fuck-filled turn-of-the-century samurai novel.
If there is a way to make bestiality seem hot -- and we would probably deny it even if there was -- this ain't it, but it sure... does.... seem harmful to minors.
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And that was the Fucking Dangerously Exxxxplicit Week of COPA-lation That Was
10/27/2006 6:19:34 PM
*We almost coughed up $282.45 for a copy of the lesbo-erotic 1981 Lynne Cheney book Sisters (might a Henry Miller award be in store?) but settled for Scooter Libby's The Apprentice, which apparently contains a scene featuring bestiality, which you aren't even allowed to do during commercial phone sex when the guy has a credit card.
*And based on our expert analysis of current laws governing 1-900 calls we made the surprising prediction that enforcement of COPA would give rise to a dramatic surge in bad food-sex analogies Which, you know, is cool if you want to return to the good old days of baseball bats and cherry pies.
*We watched a 75-year-old judge listen in earnest to thirty seconds of "Pussy 101" thanks to a court appearance by a 30-year-old gay Jewish rapper called God-Des, who fears that such poetic speech as "Spread out her lips before you kiss/You wanna make sure that you find the clit" and "Lick her and finger her at the same time/Feel around the G-spot seek and you shall find" could be chilled by the enforcement of COPA. Which would be a real shame, if only because we know an of ex-boyfriend or two who could use a little advice.
*We learned porn is good for society from an ex Nixon expert who may have the next Freakonomic trend on his hands.
*We got the parenting blogs goin' nuts when an eighth grader told us she's seen more porn at 13 than the average horny telecommuter sees in a lifetime, but somehow, it's still those distinguished-looking anime Priests she always comes back to.
*And, oh yeah, we testified. Even got in some pretty funny lines.
Next week: The stand will see a King of Condom-dy, a "queerer than should be humanly possible" teen sexpert named Heather, and the Urban Dictionary founder who may have inadvertently taught Z the meaning of "Dirty Sanchez."
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The ACLU reminds us what we forgot to blog about..
10/27/2006 5:20:58 PM
After a few glitches the ACLU blog being kept primarily by Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney who for the record never got through Jane Eyre, is up and active. Ben reminds us of some of the better moments we forgot to blog about when we were busying ourselves studying Pussy 101:
We were told of the young girl who "typed [her] dog's name" into a search engine, and "pictures of naked girls kept popping up." I couldn't help wondering what the poor girl had named her dog. (Are they sure it wasn't a cat?. . . .)
That was the DOJ's opening statement. Surely there is some Freedom of Information Act clause prohibiting government lawyers from throwing out such tantalizing morsels without making good on them later on in testiomony. If this kid named her dog "Jenna Jameson," or, you know, "Vulva," Alberto Gonzalez is going to look pretty silly. (For the record, we didn't even call up any dirty pictures searching Paris Hilton's dog's name.)
and then this:
There is a stone-faced man with a large suitcase who has been observing proceedings form a perch in the corner of the courtroom. Today, one of my colleagues politely asked him who he was. He said that he was "part of a group" that is working on a "replacement law" in case "this one doesn't work."
I have yet to see this man, but no doubt a "replacement" will be introduced, and shuttle through Congress on the back of an omnibus spending bill as COPA did, no doubt with the support of such morally unimpeachable figures as Donna Rice.
Although, you know, the Dems could win.
And with that, go engage in harmful and explicit behavior this weekend. We're out.
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World's leading purveyor of literate smoot talks with the world's only purveyor of fitted condoms
10/27/2006 3:34:00 PM
Adam Glickman sells condoms of all kinds at a site called Condomania, including customized condoms to fit any cock (well, 99% of all cocks, which is to say, ones that fall between three and ten inches long, which is to say, kids, those guys who tell you on the internet that they are 12 inches or whatever at more than 99% full of shit). Anyway, like Hooksexup, Condomania is a plaintiff in the ACLU case (read his statement here and he was supposed to testify yesterday, but was bumped by God-Des, so instead he hung out with us:
So Adam, I feel like, as opposed to the sort of romantic notions of arming yourself for a deadly activity we had about condoms in the nineties, most people these days think of condoms sort of as.... you know...
A necessary evil?
Yeah.
Well, there are situations in which using them is unavoidable.
But did you read that Details story about the era of safe sex being over? I just worry that people these days, now that AIDS seems less urgent, have stopped using them. I am shocked, for instance, by how friends of mine who in college wouldn't have sex without two or three forms of contraception, now go without anything.
Well, yeah, in the early nineties the fear of AIDS was driving a new condom consciousness. Now that HIV is less of a crisis it's not on the frontburner you're seeing a real direct link to an increase in STDs. But what really worries me is what they're calling "Red Sex Ed", where sex education is taught with an abstinence-only message. Ed.: please note that the Texas Freedom Network's spokeswoman's last name is "Smoot."
Yeah, is that how you got involved in the case?
Well I got involved as soon as the ACLU called me in 1998, but I understood immediately how COPA could affect me, because there are plenty of communities where the community standards are that condoms promote promiscuity.
That reminds me, back when I was a Catholic schoolgirl, how we were always getting told that there were HOLES in condoms FIVE TIMES BIGGER THAN THE HIV VIRUS or some shit like that. I mean, where does that come from?
There are lots of studies that will argue that natural skin condoms aren't an adequate barrier against HIV. But that's red sex ed for you. Condoms are over 99% effective when used properly.
Do you use condoms?
Well, I'm married with two three year old daughters now, but you have to test-drive the merchandise, so yes, sometimes.
Do you plan on using filtering software that will block your website when your daughters get a little older?
Hah. People have always asked me that, how will you manage when your daughters ask you what you do and you have to tell them you're a condom salesman? And I would always say, "I will have long sold the company by the time my daughters are anywhere near old enough to know what condoms are. And then the obvious question is, because I've been in the business for nearly 20 years, since college, what will you do?
And what will you do?
God's work.
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Slow Day
10/27/2006 3:17:06 PM
Sorry no posts yet today, loyal readers. We've been trying to round up new interview subjects (particularly teenage internet users like Z, though perhaps not as, uh, precocious) and digest some of the week's events. In the meantime let us entertain you with this press release from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that just came in over the transom, which is to say, from our friend Mike who actually knows what "transom" means:
For Immediate Release
October 27, 2006
Contact: Phil Singer, 202-485-3123
PULP FICTION: THE GOP’S BEST-SELLERS
GOP Conservatives’ Library Features Bestiality & Pedophilia
Brothels, sex kittens, pedophilia? We’re not talking about the House Leadership covering up the Mark Foley scandal, we’re talking about what Mrs. Cheney, Newt Gingrich and other GOP conservatives write about. Here is a sampling of what some of the GOP’s best and brightest write about in their novels:
Lynne Cheney’s Book Featured Brothels and Attempted Rape. In 1981, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne wrote a book called “Sisters,” which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes. In 1988, Lynne Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.
Newt Gingrich Thriller Featured “Exotic Mistress.” Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich co-wrote a thriller called “1945,” featuring such titillations as biting foreplay, "pouting sex kitten," "exotic mistress" and "after-bout inhalation." At one point, the mistress of the president's chief of staff sits "athwart" her lover's chest and hisses that he must tell her a secret "or I will make you do terrible things."
Former Cheney Aide’s Novel Featured Pedophilia and Rape. In 1996, former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby wrote "The Apprentice," a novel that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape.
Former GOP Governor Bill Weld’s Book Included Sex and Murder. In 1999, former GOP Governor William Weld said of his book, “Big Ugly,” “I think of the theme of this book is sex and money meets the great outdoors.” Weld’s thriller included sex, bribery and murder.
2006 GOP Candidate Wrote Racy Romance Novel. This week, it was discovered that a Republican statewide candidate in Texas, Susan Combs, wrote a romance novel “full of steamy sex scenes.” The book’s heroine is “a freckle-faced brunette” who is drawn to “the gray-eyed bodyguard” and his “powerful, strong arms,” and desires him to "fill the aching void at her center," where a "deep heaviness throbbed in her belly.”
We'll try to get some excerpts for you in the coming days, in addition to anything said GOPers might have said regarding First Amendment rights, but for the record, I always sort of liked Bill Weld. (How can you not love a squash playing old-money poltician who insults people in Latin and openly admits he's a lazy drunk? That's our kind of Republican.
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DEPOSITION EXCERPT #4
10/26/2006 7:44:37 PM
The questions in the sworn testimony that follows were asked by ERIC J. BEANE, ESQ. representing U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Attorneys for Defendant in Case No. 98-CV-5591, ACLU vs. Gonzales. The questions are answered by Rufus Griscom, representing hooksexup.com, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
Pages 151-153 ARISTA COURT REPORTING CO.
6 Q. To your knowledge have these
7 bloggers [in the Blog-a-Log Section] ever posted nude photographs of
8 themselves or anyone else?
9 A. I don't think they have, but I sure
10 wish they would. It would be good for the
11 popularity of the blog. A blog like that would have a
12 wonderful future, but no, I don't think they've
13 ever posted nude photographs.
14 Q. Are you being serious that if
15 someone posted nude photographs that you would
16 leave them up?
17 A. Yes, yes.
18 Q. Are there any policies or
19 guidelines that you give to these bloggers
20 about what you want them to write about or not
21 write about?
22 A. No. No, I mean because they're
23 determined every month by the votes of the
24 readers it's sort of a self-motivating system
25 so they strive to be entertaining, you know,
2 and to post frequently. …
15 Q. Why do you say you fear you would
16 be prosecuted for the content of this section
17 of your web site?
18 A. Because they very often contain
19 very, you know, explicit accounts of their
20 misadventures, and there are certainly, you
21 know, several million or tens of millions of
22 Americans who would read these entries and
23 consider them to be obscene and lascivious and
24 a stain upon the nation's flag.
25 Q. Do you think some people might
2 learn from these postings?
3 A. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I do.
4 Q. Do you think that people might
5 derive benefit from hearing about other
6 people's experiences?
7 A. Yeah, I do think so. I do think
8 so, yeah. I mean they're also mothers who
9 would read them and consider them to be guiding
10 their daughters into a world of vice, but I
11 personally think that the net effect of reading
12 these blogs is a positive one.
13 Q. What made you decide to start this
14 feature?
15 A. Just part of our ongoing attempt to
16 create compelling content.
17 Q. What do you mean by compelling?
18 A. Content that people like.
19 Q. Are there other blogs that you have
20 on your web site?
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The Goddess who showed up with God-Des . . .
10/26/2006 6:51:43 PM
So, God-Des . . . what to say about her testimony? I think Judge Reed said it best: "I respect the lifestyle you have chosen." What I honestly respect, Alicia "God-Des" Smith, is the amazingly hot girlfriend you have landed, the apparent boxer/novelist/actress/model/lesbo/Chinese/Italian/self-professed "quarter-life crisis" sufferer known — on MySpace, anyway — as Cara:
I think I speak for the entire courtroom when I say, holy itshay. And the way she was trying to get your butch ass to put on lipstick before you testified? So adorbs. You two are cuter than Bow Wow and Ciara (were).
So, after reviewing God-Des's early life as a three-year-old cellist daughter of two classical musicians, band geek, college kid and political activist, the ACLU played thirty seconds of "Lick It" in court. They stopped it just in time for everyone to hear "Spread out the lips before you kiss" . . .
"For the record, I understood the words," Judge Reed said.
"SHE'S AWESOME," whispered the girl next to me, a clerk for another judge there solely to hear "the rapper."
Anyway, I felt kinda bad for the government today. They can't have as much fun with this as the ACLU is. So I'd like to extend the offer: if any of you wants to go barhopping next week in the city of Brotherly Love . . . I don't have any Republican brothers, but I do happen to have a Republican dad, whom I love (and who I very much hope is not reading this blog), and I'm a preacher of tolerance. I'll buy you a Yards to cry in.
And if this thing drags out until November 7, I'll buy you a few.
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Zooreality, or why talking about porn in court before septugenarian judges never gets old
10/26/2006 5:55:24 PM
Today the court heard from Matthew Zook, a University of Kentucky economic geography professor who in 2002 published a seminal (heh heh) academic paper noting that the strange regulations, privacy concerns and all-around shady nature of the "adult" internet industry was creating new e-commerce hubs in unlikely place like, you know, the Cook Islands (not the best-kept secret in the Pacific for crystal clear waters and Maori culture alone!)
Anyway, what is funny about this is, Dr. Zook, who estimates that between 1 and 1.5% of all websites are porn, keeps lots of databases of web addresses and their country-registration data for the purposes of analyzing trends like this. The ACLU called him to the stand because he is an expert who can attest to the fact that lots of porn sites are headquartered outside the U.S. And today, in the process of trying to undermine his analysis, the Justice Department spent approximately 672 years pointing on the projector screen to the various non-pornographic-sounding domain names hidden on his list of 12,000 domains he'd listed as "adult."
So, while the DOJ lawyer would say something along the lines of, "What about this, number seventeen thousand six hundred eighty nine and a half, 'host.sk'? Is that a porn site?" while the projector beamed up a small part of the list where "host.sk" was located. And Dr. Zook would say he didn't know, and everyone else in the courtroom would be ogling the names of the other URLs on the list, of which the following were highlights:
Goblinporn.com
Hornyswedishgirls.com (located, interestingly, in the Philippines)
Plaidskirtteens.com
Chewynipples.com
ipee4u.com
Wank4toes.com
TopFatSluts.com
Site reviews to come....
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Z and the Zeitgeist
10/26/2006 5:09:42 PM
Lots of feedback on our EXCLUSIVE interview with middle school online porn connoisseur "Z" (below.)
One filtering expert and parent we had planned to interview saw it and backed out on grounds it was "inappropriate." Reader Mindfeck was a little taken aback.
And Cookie, Conde Nast's new and-not-at-all-suggestively named parenting magazine, linked to it in a thoughtful post opining that it sounds sort of pointless to be locking the barn door at this stage.
Well, yes and no. The filtering expert, for instance, told me her daughter was the same age and that neither she, nor any of her friends, would provide an interview anywhere close to Z's. Which is probably true, because all households are different, and all households are not located in major urban centers.
That said, I'd like to point out that Z's favorite sex symbol was an animated Catholic priest (albeit, a priest who sometimes feeds off the blood of vampires). She's still a kid, and her mom's a great mom and they have an enviable relationship that is wholly unlike, say, Evan Rachel Wood's relationship with Holly Hunter in Thirteen.
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/26/2006 12:30:00 PM
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To Free or Not to Free — Inconvenience as Censorship
10/26/2006 12:28:48 PM
One of the most critical facts the ACLU was trying to extract from both Joan’s testimony (on behalf of Salon) and my testimony was the degree to which a credit-card barrier reduces the size of the readership of our publications.
Hooksexup has roughly 20,000 paying premium members and one million readers per month, so about 2% of the monthly visitors to Hooksexup have paid for a full premium subscription. Interestingly, Salon reports exactly the same 2% ratio of paid subscribers to monthly readers. The New York Times had 11.6 million visitors in March 2006 according to Wikipedia and reported that is was nearing 200,000 paid subscribers to its TimesSelect service on September 20 2006, though apparently the growth is leveling off. That’s just shy of 2%. So based on this sampling, it seems that it’s not uncommon for websites to have fifty times more traffic to their free content than they have to their paid content.
These figures are central to the ACLU’s argument that requiring all “sexually explicit” writing and photography to be behind a credit card barrier unconstitutionally restricts our first amendment right to communicate with an audience. They are 100% correct, and indeed, we are in the process of making more and more hooksexup.com content free. The good news for all of us — publishers and readers alike — is that the market forces are pushing online content into the free zone. There are two forces that are moving content in this direction: (1) the ever-growing importance of links — from blogs, websites, and natural search — in an increasingly noisy and competitive online environment, and (2) the growth of online advertising revenues, which causes that traffic to have value. Search crawlers can’t reach password protected content, so we lose natural search traffic by putting content behind a registration wall, and blogs and other sites are disinclined to link to password protected content. Meanwhile, Hooksexup's ad revenues have grown by 75% in the last twelve months, so traffic is more valuable to us than ever.
We are thrilled by these trends, which push us towards making more and more content free — all of Hooksexup was free during our first five years online, and it was only reluctantly that we launched Hooksexup Premium during the dotcom downturn to help us weather the economic storm, much like Salon and many other entities. The team here works its collective ass off to publish extraordinary content, and we want to make darned sure as many people as possible see it!
For all these reasons, we have now made most of Hooksexup’s written archives free, and both of the new websites we launched this year — HooksexupPop.com and HooksexupVideo.com — are entirely free. The new urban parenting site we are launching in late November will be completely free — premium content is not part of the business model. And I would be very surprised if decision makers at New York Times Digital and other leading news companies aren’t looking seriously at the economics of making everything free; if they decide not to it’s probably more to protect the value proposition of the print product than to maximize online revenues.
The one part of Hooksexup that we are disinclined to make free is the premium photography (and though we love you anyway, we will love you twice as much if you buy a premium membership!), and that’s for a very simple business reason: our advertisers would prefer to be insulated from our racier photography. If we could make all our photos free without losing our advertisers, we would do so in heartbeat.
All of this is to say that the presumption implicit in COPA — indeed stated outright to me by DOJ lawyers — that sites like Hooksexup could recede behind a credit-card wall and retain our readership is entirely wrong. The traffic statistics of Hooksexup and Salon make it quite clear that requiring barriers is tantamount to censorship in the modern web habitat.
There has been a change in the last several years — there is now so much high quality content readily available that even putting up a free registration wall or other barrier dramatically reduces traffic. Joan Walsh testified that 40-90% of Salon readers who click on the “day pass” or “ultramercial” gateway to the site never make it through to the website. Web traffic is like water, and barriers are like rocks — you put one up and water goes elsewhere. In this environment, forcing websites to erect obstacles — even ones that do not require a fee (such as a credit card authorization without a charge) — dramatically impinges upon their First Amendment right to be heard. — Rufus
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The Prurient Interest: An Eighth Grader Weighs In
10/25/2006 11:25:14 PM
Z is thirteen, an eighth grader who lives about twelve blocks away from the courthouse where the COPA trial is playing out. Likes: Suicide Girls, Lolita, anime. Dislikes: Scat, foreign objects, blood. "I'm kind of squeamish," Z says. Aren't we all.
How old were you when you started using the internet?
Nine.
Have you ever seen any pornography on the internet?
Obviously.
How old were you would you estimate when you first saw porn?
I guess ten, but that was because there were pop-ups, like advertisements, shit like that.
Did you feel harmed by that?
No. I think kids are just gonna learn this stuff anyway. It's really up to the parent, like, when they really want their kids to learn that stuff.
Do any of your friends have parental controls installed on their computers?
Maybe like one or two. But they all know how to get around them. They're not as strict as the ones at our school. You basically just can't type the URL into the URL field.
When was the last time you were shocked by something? At 13, does anything shock you anymore?
Honestly, not really. In the area where me and all my friends grew up, we're sort of used to stuff like that. You go outside, you see used condoms on the ground and it's like a normal thing. But I guess the last time something shocked me . . . like, there's this one hip-hop dude, Necro or whatever, and his lyrics are so fuckin' brutal. And I'm a feminist and all . . . it was just really fuckin' terrible.
How many friends do you have on MySpace?
1,605. The majority of them are people that I know from camp and school and a lot of them are like bands and stuff like that that I promote. That's sort of my job. I get paid for it. Basically indie bands. Technically, I only get paid from one record label, and it's like depending on your time and interest. And my friends and I have a zine.
What's it called? Does it feature any explicit content?
Hey Indie Kid. And we curse a lot but that's it. It's not like Playboy or Suicide Girls or anything.
What do you think of Suicide Girls?
I actually like Suicide Girls. It's actually got an appeal to feminism and stuff. My mom doesn't actually care that I like Suicide Girls, she's cool with it. All the girls don't look exactly the same like . . . most pornstars and stuff like that.
So do you know anyone who's really into internet porn?
Basically all of my friends are.
Are you?
Yeah. I'm not like ashamed to say that. Most of the time the way my friends look at it it's not like, "Oh my God, that's so hot." It's like, "Yeah, that's all right." I sort of like gothic porn.
Like porn with blood?
No, just the way people dress. Hardcore stuff like that sort of freaks me out seeing how I'm kind of squeamish.
Do you know anyone that's addicted to porn or masturbation or anything?
I wouldn't say addicted, but they do look at a lot of it.
Are you a virgin?
Yes.
Have you learned any valuable lessons from porn that you will carry over when you start having sex?
Just . . . wear a condom and like, nothing involving human waste or anything. That shit ain't natural. And no girls using vegetables. One of my friends tried to masturbate with a cucumber. We'll never let her live that down.
Can you buy sex toys when you're thirteen years old?.
On South Street you can just walk straight in and buy a vibrator.
What's your favorite kind of porn
Gay, lesbian and hentai.
What's hentai?
Anime porn. Like I guess you can like make the people do whatever you want I've got a real thing for, like, anime guys who look sort of distinguished with, like, glasses and gray hair, sort of long, silvery gray hair. Like this one guy Abel Nightroad. He's from Trinity Blood. I'm obsessed with him.
Do you get good grades?
Not this year, because algebra is confusing as hell and my teacher goes really fast. I'm doing good in my other classes actually. Literature is my favorite class. Now we're reading the book of three it's really easy and it's really boring. It's like about this assistant pigkeeper to go on this quest to destroy the horned king or something. Maus by Art Spiegelman is another book I recently did. And Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. It was written a long time ago about this guy, basically it was his life story. It was very complex book but very good.
And what's your favorite book?
Lolita. I guess I sort of like how it's like a love story, but it's really entertaining, and it's really funny the way it's like, written.
Has anyone really old tried to have internet sex with you?
Well, there was this one, like, sixty year old. Then there was like this local DJ, he was into hip-hop, and just because I had just broken up with my boyfriend and stuff he started emailing me and listing all the stuff he wanted to do with me and stuff. Like bondage and like three-ways and basically everything. I don't really want to go into it. This guy was like a fuckin' wigger though, and I don't find any guy attractive who's not into the same things as me music-wise.
If you have kids, will you try to protect them from any of this stuff?
I think the way my mom raised me was a good way. She doesn't really care if I look at porn as long as I don't sign up for anything. As long as the kids don't get hurt in any way. Half of the stuff I say around my mom she doesn't even know. My mom's cool though. It's sort of weird when she has to explain stuff to us.
Do you know what dirty sanchez is?
Oh yeah and that's reeeeeaalllllly nasty. My mom doesn't know that that is.
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/25/2006 11:20:00 PM
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On the stand Thursday: a Midwestern Jewish lesbian band geek turned rapper
10/25/2006 11:19:12 PM
So on Thursday, for reasons yet to be determined, the courtoom will be treated to the dulcet tones of God-Des, one-half of the Wisconsin hip-hop duo God-Des and She, who have apparently had a song on The L Word:
Once you got that down, put your other hand around
I have to be blunt and not profound
Put your wet pinky finger in her asshole
You're in three different places — it's time to go
And the line of questioning will be about . . . data encryption.
Kidding. I actually have no idea. Don't touch that dial!
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And even though this isn't about porn, let us now praise . . . porn
10/25/2006 8:06:47 PM
As hard as Joe Francis would seem to be toiling to reverse this fascinating trend, a study called Porn Up, Rape Down out of the crazily prolific office of Northwestern law professor, international law expert and former consultant to Nixon's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography Anthony D'Amoto confirms what we all know intuitively: that a healthy porn habit makes for a kinder, gentler, less forcible-rape-prone male gender; according to his paper, the last twenty-five years have seen an 85% drop in sexual violence as the porn industry, aided by the communications revolution, has watched its revenues explode.
There is, however, one social factor that correlates almost exactly with the rape statistics. The American public is probably not ready to believe it. My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape. The correlation is inverse: the more pornography, the less rape. It is like the inverse correlation: the more police officers on the street, the less crime. — MT
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/25/2006 8:00:00 PM
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Anti-"Anti-Porn"
10/25/2006 7:21:47 PM
So today the court heard from its first commercial pornographer, one Michael Russo of (surprisingly work-safe and informative) ynot, and pretty much everything he said was surprisingly work-safe and informative. That's because this case, though it endlessly gets labeled the "Anti-Porn-Law case" by headline writers, isn't about PORN; as Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg points out eloquently on his blog, "it's a an Internet censorship bill masquerading as a 'protect our kids from porn' measure."
There are two prongs to the ACLU's argument against COPA, if you haven't gathered this already: the "why COPA is unconstitutional" prong and the "why COPA is a dumb law" prong. Anyway, basically Russo's testimony, which continues tomorrow, can be distilled down to this: credit cards can't accurately verify age, and even if they could, they would not offer such services for free; age-verification services that don't require credit cards don't really work either; COPA is a dumb law for assuming these things.
Tomorrow, though, the roster of witnesses and plaintiffs gets interesting. Previews to come.
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/25/2006 3:00:00 PM
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Trying to be Humble
10/25/2006 2:35:39 PM
A decent story from the local Legal Intelligencer today (you can also read an illustrated version thanks to the wonders of the blogosphere) both explains this case and why there are fewer stories like it covering it: "everyone knows from the start which side is likely to win."
Yeah, and maybe we're a little smug. And this week, for people who are not exactly fans of the Justice Department, there is a fair amount to feel smug about. (You might even say cocky.)
Well, it's hard not to be smug when even the raving lunatics of the Wall Street Journal editorial page agree with us. So today I am going to give the writers of COPA a bone. Much of today and yesterday's testimony comes from Princeton Professor Edwart William Felten, who the ACLU called to the stand mainly to prove how technologically idiotic COPA is, since it doesn't even account for such non World Wide Web (yes, they still use the term World Wide Web) modes of internet communication as IM, Skype, streaming video, P2P networks, chat rooms, whatever the hell else all the kids are using that you won't even find out about for another year or so. Meaning that, even if the law was enforced and Hooksexup did move to the Isle of Man, kids could still find, in the ACLU's words, "garbage truck fulls of porn" on SoulSeek.
Well, here is where I admit I am not such an Web 2.0 wizard myself. It has taken me two hours just to post this, because I am profoundly slow at typing hypertext links. (Sorry if you've wandered on here and noticed.) So I sympathize with the writers of COPA and by extension, the DOJ lawyers. I wouldn't have to defend a law written by anyone as dumb as me. — MT
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Deposition Excerpt #3
10/25/2006 2:02:19 PM
The questions in the sworn testimony that follows were asked by ERIC J. BEANE, ESQ. representing U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CIVIL DIVISION FEDERAL PROGRAMS BRAND, Attorneys for Defendant in Case No. 98-CV-5591, ACLU vs. Gonzales, in his offical capacity as Attorney General of the United States.
The questions are answered by Rufus Griscom, representing hooksexup.com, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
page 77 ARISTA COURT REPORTING CO.
7 Q. To your knowledge has anybody ever
8 posted a nude photograph of themselves on their
9 personal ad?
10 A. Probably they have or attempted to
11 do so or done so, but, again, there's a
12 screening process that removes those photos.
13 Q. So, any nude photographs are taken
14 down promptly?
15 A. That's correct.
16 Q. Have you received any complaints
17 about the content of the personal ads?
18 A. Not to my knowledge.
Q. Why do you have a personal ads
20 section on your web site?
21 A. To increase the amount of joy in
22 the world. To encourage — we'd like the
23 species to procreate and continue, so we help
24 people to meet each other, and also we're
25 looking to make money.
2 Q. Do you think that people use the
3 web site for purposes of arranging sexual
4 liaisons?
5 A. Yes, I do.
6 Q. Do you think that the policy of
7 removing nudity prevents that from taking place
8 on your web site very easily?
9 A. You mean liaisons from taking
10 place?
11 Q. Do you think that the policy of
12 hooksexup.com and the third party that operates
13 your personals section prevents people from
14 doing that overtly over the internet where it
15 can be used by any web visitor that subscribes
16 to Hooksexup?
17 MR. WIZNER: Objection. Vague. If
18 you understood his question, you can
19 answer it.
20 A. I don't think I do understand. Are
21 you saying do we by removing nude photographs
22 prevent people from subsequently meeting up
23 with each other and taking their clothes off?
2 Q. I'll move on.
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/25/2006 11:00:00 AM
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The (Tragi)Comical
10/25/2006 10:55:43 AM
Following up on my post below (The Serio and the Comic), a few words on the silly side of this serious matter, from where I sit:
First of all, COPA is ridiculously misconceived. It’s absurd. As Chris Hansen, the senior ACLU counsel leading the team in this case, pointed out eloquently in his opening statement, the majority of “porn” (I put this in quotes, because it’s a vague term that has no legal meaning) is published overseas. Passing and enforcing COPA would not begin to meaningfully impact the access minors have to naughty pics – all it would do (were it enforced, which is unlikely) is export hundreds of millions of dollars of porn revenues to Eastern Europe and elsewhere (indeed, their should be Romanian lobby for COPA). And in the process, it would jeopardize the businesses of companies like Hooksexup and Salon (this is not the funny part).
In a withering moment in Chris’s opening statement, he pointed out that of the 6 images the DOJ presented to the judge and intended to display during their opening statement, 4 were pulled from overseas sites! So in other words, two-thirds of the “offensive” images the DOJ presented to sensationalize the issue (largely for the benefit of the press, I am told) wouldn’t even by affected by COPA! This was a painfully embarrassing moment for the Department of Justice – someone over there should be fired, and we would like to send that person a free premium subscription (I am guessing its the Juicyboobs.com enthusiast).
From a personal perspective, the deposition and trial experience were long on irony: After 9 years of trying to convince the marketplace (advertisers, investors, business partners, and so on) that Hooksexup is not “porn” but rather an unclassifiable magazine about sex and culture that attracts a distinctly non-porn-like demographic, I was faced with a stiff, pallid government employee trying to convince me of exactly this. If I agreed with him I seemed to be helping his case. Here’s an excerpt from the deposition, taken on February 21, 2006:
15 Q. Returning to the document that I
16 gave you first that's marked as Exhibit A, will
17 you turn to the page marked 88 and 89. It says
18 on Page 88, "Hooksexup has established a reputation
19 for publishing exceptional writing and
20 photography," and on these pages it gives
21 examples of some of the people whose work
22 you've published.
23 Do you think that hooksexup.com
24 publishes quality writing and photography?
25 A. I do think so, but I also think the
page 63 Rufus Griscom ARISTA COURT REPORTING CO.
2 word quality is a very subjective one and this
3 implies that you're accusing us of having social
4 value and I deny it. No, I'm kidding, but I
5 think that we've, you know, earned a reputation
6 for publishing, you know, highly-respected
7 writing and photography.
8 I think it's equally true that
9 there are, you know, people and communities
10 that would look at Hooksexup and see it as, you
11 know, an abomination. So, I don't have
12 confidence that the perception of Hooksexup which
13 exists in the literary community in New York
14 and other major cities is shared across the
15 country.
16 Q. But it is fair to say that the
17 literary reputation of hooksexup.com is very high?
18 A. I mean we think so, but I mean, you
19 know, but certainly we, yeah, we publish a lot
20 of very serious writers. Certainly we take it
21 very seriously.
(Side note: Please accept my apologies for my constant repetition of the phrase, “you know” throughout this and future deposition excerpts … humbling to read. I highly recommend the deposition process for anyone who wants to remedy speech tics).
These kinds of exchanges continued for literally hundreds of pages – the Department of Justice trying to convince me that every last Hooksexup photograph and story has clear “artistic or literary value for minors.” Apparently if all 300 million Americans agree with this assessment, we would have a chance of defending ourselves if prosecuted under COPA. But given that I have relatives who think I should rot in hell for staining our fine nation with this abomination (Hooksexup), I found the DOJ’s implied reassurances rather hollow.
During both the deposition and trial, the DOJ lawyers were trying to corner me into confirming that (a) Hooksexup is not porn, and (b) porn is easily distinguished from content such as Hooksexup’s. This is clearly not the case – much Hooksexup content is “intentionally prurient,” much of it is intended to redirect bloodflow. And “artistic value” is highly subjective – if my mother were the judge, I would be thrown in jail (she was the judge and I was thrown in jail in a dream a few weeks back).
Another exchange on page 101, courtesy of ARISTA COURT REPORTING CO.
22 Q. In your personal opinion are the
23 photographs in your gallery pornographic?
24 MR. WIZNER: Objection. Vague.
25 You can answer.
2 A. I really have trouble with that
3 classification. I don't know really what that
4 means.
5 Q. Is the primary purpose for posting
6 these photographs to allow visitors to become
7 sexually aroused or is there some other
8 purpose?
9 A. I would say that more often than
10 not that tends not to be the primary purpose.
11 It tends to be a secondary purpose. However,
12 it's often, you know, a, you know, we
13 intentionally, you know, keep a portion of,
14 make sure that a portion of our photography
15 does have an effect of causing arousal and
16 that's true of our writing also. Although
17 there's probably some other material that
18 causes people to not be aroused for weeks at a
19 time there.
20 Q. Have there ever been organized
21 complaints or organized boycotts of hooksexup.com?
22 A. Much to our disappointment we have
23 never been boycotted or picketed.
24 MR. BEANE: I'm now at a natural
25 breaking point.
I am running through the 179-page deposition now and will post a few more excerpts for your amusement.
--Rufus
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/24/2006 10:30:00 PM
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We Read 272-Page Court Transcripts So You Don't Have To, the Rufus Edition
10/24/2006 10:27:26 PM
It is awfully loonng, but if these dispatches don't suffice and you absolutely can't get enough of the latest defense of free speech and sexy talk, you can download a transcript of the first day's testimony here. Some of our favorite quotes thus far:
Re: the meaning of "community standards":
"In a day when you’ve got john Ashcroft covering statues with exposed breasts that he thinks is pornographic, and on the other hand the curators of the National Museum of Art must feel very differently, because children walk through the museum all day . . . " (page 57)
Re: the content contained on Blog-a-Log:
"There are some photographs, but rarely explicit photographs. unfortunately they would — they would get higher ratings if they had more explicit photographs, but they don't." (page 74)
Re: what Rufus would do, were COPA enforced:
"Nine years ago, when I first started it, we probably would have just sailed forward without concern, because we were young and fearless. and now, with a 20-month-old son, and also fiduciary responsibility to investors who have backed the company over the years . . . I think maybe moving overseas would be a consideration." (page 91)
More after we wipe the blood from our eyes . . . — MT
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/24/2006 10:20:00 PM
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I Would Have Posted From Gym Class, But . . .
10/24/2006 10:09:25 PM
OMG, sooo meta: I was going to post today's court rehash on parental internet filtering from the high-school board meeting I just attended for that other story, but I couldn't get access to the Hooksexup blog site. That's right, a FILTER! Specifically, filters the Radnor Township School District installed on its network, preventing students (and anyone else squatting on its wi-fi signal) from viewing content in category "Nudity; dating." (Which was sort of a bummer compared to the category I was given when TheSuperficial failed to load: simply "Mature.")
Radnor High School is actually required to do this by another federal law starting with C called CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act. It requires all public libraries and schools to operate a "technology-protection measure with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that protects against access through such computers to visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors." More on the differences between CIPA and COPA can be found here. Passed in 2000, CIPA was, like COPA, vigorously opposed by the ACLU, which got the Supreme Court to modify it so that at libraries, adult users would have librarians on hand to unblock the computers "without significant delay" if they wanted to, say, check their MySpace accounts.
This means that much of today's testimony, which primarily came from Carnegie Mellon professor Lorrie Faith Cranor (on behalf of the ACLU and in support of the use of filters), was kind of ironic, given that just a few years ago the ACLU was arguing against the use of filters. The key, of course, is that if censorship of the Internet is going to occur, individual parents, not governments, should be the ones doing it.
(And all this having been said, it probably isn't a bad thing that high schoolers can't check MySpace in trig class.) — MT
Oh, and banned in high school, for your information:
hooksexup.com
TheSuperficial.com
TheCobrasnake.com
Fleshbot.com
Viceland.com
MySpace.com
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/24/2006 10:00:00 PM
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The Opening Statement
10/24/2006 9:47:44 PM
Hooksexup has posted the full text of lead counsel Chris Hansen's opening statement here. Check it out; it's a bracing read. Stay tuned — we'll also be directing you complete transcripts of each day's proceedings.
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Kids, Threats, and What We Lose When We Overreact
10/24/2006 5:32:39 PM
So, your COPA correspondent was out on assignment at a totally different, comparatively minuscule, court, on a totally different, comparatively minuscule case about 30 minutes away in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but I was struck by a familiar theme.
The hearing was for a kid who, in the days following the Amish school shooting, wrote on his high school bathroom wall, “It’s people like you, that make people like me bring guns to school, to hug people like you.”
Granted, this doesn’t make grammatical sense, but pretty much all of the kid’s friends and supporters agree that it was a message of peace scrawled in response to racist and anti-Semitic messages already up on the bathroom wall.
Anyway, to make a long story short, the kid confessed to writing the message after a school assembly, the cops were called, and the kid ended up spending 11 nights in jail while he waited for the results of his psychiatric evaluation to come through. The kid had no prior criminal record or record of violence at the school. The kid is now hanging out at home awaiting an expulsion hearing.
What does this have to do with COPA? Both cases are symptomatic of a culture that is willing to sustain a whole lot of collateral damage in its vigorous attempt to protect our kids from distant threats with no rational, accurate mode of protection against.
Today the kid, Cameron Plaice, got off with what will probably amount to community service. Apparently the judge did not find him to be much of a threat.
God bless the judicial branch. — MT
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Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity
10/24/2006 2:00:00 PM
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The Serio and the Comic
10/24/2006 12:15:27 PM
As you can see, we now have the highly capable Moe Tkacik reporting live from the COPA trial-in-progress, enduring mind-numbing procedural boredom and frighteningly lurid images and text, harmful to her inner child, all for your edification. I will continue to post periodically to provide a little background.
This entire experience, which started 18 months ago when I was first contacted by Ben Wizner at the ACLU, has been seriocomic for me — serious, because COPA genuinely threatens to criminalize speech online in a manner far more severe than in any other medium; comic, because the arguments of the DOJ are so patently absurd, and because I have been in the position of responding to forceful DOJ accusations that hooksexup.com is a respected publication that publishes nothing but text and photographs with clear artistic merit (the audacity!) which means that Hooksexup would never be adversely affected by COPA. It’s not true — and I take some offense at the suggestion — but it is amusing to see DOJ lawyers get red in the face in their insistence that all 14,000 Hooksexup photographs and 3,000-plus articles make valuable contributions to the fabric of American culture — if only I could take these guys home for Thanksgiving (in fact gentlemen, consider this an open invitation … my mother will make an equally forceful argument to the contrary, and can’t imagine a more interesting conversation with a mouthful of Turkey and stuffing).
Let me address the serious and the comic in a little greater detail:
THE SERIOUS
If COPA were passed, it would make the publication of online content deemed “harmful to children,” published outside of a credit card restricted area, a criminal act punishable by large fines and imprisonment. More specifically, it would criminalize speech that is “sexually explicit,” content that “depicts, describes or represents actual or simulated sexual acts or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts or a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent breasts as provided in 231(E)(6)(B).”
Leaving aside the question of whether the DOJ is more concerned about representations of simulated perverted acts or actual normal ones, here's the upshot: Hooksexup, Salon, and other online publishers would have to either stop publishing writing or photographs that describe sex, put all sexual content behind a paid credit card wall, or move to Romania.
The primary objective of my testimony, from the perspective of the ACLU, was to prove (1) that Hooksexup could be prosecuted under COPA (which is pretty easy — and amusing — to establish … more on that later); and (2) that putting all Hooksexup content behind a premium wall would dramatically reduce the size of Hooksexup’s audience, and not only harm our business, but more importantly restrict our first amendment right to publish content that we believe in.
In my deposition some months ago I said that hypothetically Hooksexup could have 30 readers each of whom paid us $100,000 per year, and with that budget we could continue to publish the same caliber and quantity of content that we publish today. However, we don’t come to work every day to make money, or even for the simple pleasure of producing the content we do. We come to work every day to try and make a cultural impact, to communicate with the world. Given our druthers we would make the entire website free, and indeed, we are moving in this direction (more that later).
The DOJ’s retort is that Hooksexup is CLEARLY a force for good in the world (aw shucks, those Department of Justice guys are such softies) and would never actually be prosecuted under COPA. Even though we are clearly technically in violation of the statute. But even if that is true (and it may be … obscenity laws currently on the books are not enforced very diligently), as cuddly as those DOJ lawyers are, we do not want the government to have the arbitrary right to shut is down — or put us in jail — if they happened to wake up one morning with a crick in their neck.
Time for our IT scheduling meeting … more soon on the comical side of this. — Rufus
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| The HooksexupMobile circa 2001 |
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Not Much Action on the DOJ Front
10/24/2006 11:00:00 AM
The DOJ website (https://www.justice.gov) is fairly mum on COPA, choosing instead to celebrate its sentencing of Enron's Jeff Skilling and "Project Safe Childhood," the agency's crusade against the "proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children." Yesterday we were told the DOJ would be calling someone from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the stand to testify on behalf of COPA, but as the ACLU reminded us yesterday, COPA does not protect children from dirty IMs or content originating outside the United States. (Or their own impure adolescent thoughts.) — MT
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Somewhat Off-Subject, But . . .
10/24/2006 10:00:00 AM
In my previous capacity as a phone-sex operator (I did it for science, of course), nothing saddened me more than a 1-900 call. Such a caller probably didn’t have a credit card, so he'd charge the call to his phone bill by dialing 1-900-TEENTIT or what have you. Not only did the guy have to pay $4.99 a minute instead of the usual $2.99 (the rate of nonpayment was much higher on phone-bill calls), but the FCC could listen in. So the poor, credit-deficient sap had to suffer the indignity of stroking his member while I invited him to stick his finger in my hot, sticky, pulsing . . . cherry pie.
“I thought we were gonna have sex!” he would say. He was usually in his fifties, and not particularly smart sounding (this was not helped by the fact that you could practically smell the Soco on his breath through the phone).
Anyway, the point: the government regulation that forced phone-sex operators to resort to food analogies was intended to protect minors. (The thinking there was, as it is with COPA, that the use of a credit card is a clear indication of adulthood.) The irony, of course, was that the only people stopped in their jackoff tracks were the men in their forties and fifties. As any girl who has ever made a veiled reference to muff in the presence of a teenage boy, it's a lot easier to get a sixteen year old off with a food analogy than it is a fifty year old. — MT
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Meet Joan Walsh
10/24/2006 9:20:00 AM
Joan Walsh is the pretty, dulcet-toned mom who also happens to be editor-in-chief of one of our favorite publicly traded companies, Salon. How could the politics-, technology- and, um, maraschino-cherry-obsessed online magazine possibly be construed as creating anything harmful to minors?
1. As Joan explained in court, you never know what the old "user-generated content" is going to drag in:
"We have a really wonderful advice column from a recovered alcoholic. Recently, he got a letter from a middle-aged woman really torn about the current trend toward, um, bikini waxing, or even more than bikini waxing" — specifically, its propensity to make her genitals look "like a giant baby's crotch" — "and as a middle-aged man, he didn't feel qualified to answer . . . we watched the letters pour in by the dozens, and then by the hundreds. And some . . . could have a sexual element."
(WARNING: Link contains explicit user-generated content found to be harmful to minors, and minors-at-heart as mature as twenty-eight years of age, such as, "I like to think at those times her vulva feels loved in ways that wasn't always the case" or "She just had fifty-five-year-old pussy waxed for my sixty-fourth birthday.")
2. Sometimes it is in the national interest to harm minors. Earlier this year, Salon posted more than 1,000 theretofore unseen Abu Ghraib photos. "One depicts a mentally deranged man who appears to be sodomizing himself," Walsh testified helpfully. Link here.
3. Occasionally, apparently, Salon likes to publish stories about "cherry-popping forays" into "techno-jacking-off." This sounds potentially harmful to everyone involved, but we couldn't find it on the site.
"This would kind of hit our sweet spot into technology, culture, and sexuality," Ms. Walsh explained. — MT
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Day One Recap
10/24/2006 7:00:58 AM
So basically, on Day One, two generally respectable (and respectable looking — you saw the boss’s tie) journalists got on the stand and argued that the sum of their lives’ work could pretty much be classified as “harmful to children,” if “community standards” chose to interpret it that way. So while the government's aim was to make the case that sites like Hooksexup could never be confused with porn, our job — and the ACLU’s — was to make the case that, well, sometimes we ride pretty damn dirty.
Fave moments in Rufus's testimony:
In response to a question about whether Hooksexup ever depicted a "lewd exhibition of the genitals or the post-pubescent female breast":
“We make it a policy never to depict the PRE-pubescent female breast.”
In response to a DOJ letter’s query about what Hooksexup would do if COPA were enforced:
“I guess I’d probably look into moving overseas.”
(This is funny because the legislation, if enforced, would be near-impossible to use on any websites incorporated and hosted outside the United States. This point, made by ACLU lawyers, was met with the DOJ's insistence that America had managed to enforce its rules on overseas companies when it came to internet gambling, which may turn out to be true, now that we have BANNED INTERNET GAMBLING ALTOGETHER.) — MT
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Judge Reed Doesn't Need to See "Shocking" Pornography
10/23/2006 7:01:09 PM
Okay, so first things first: as Rufus pointed out, there were no wall-sized, full-color come shots projected onto the wall of Courtroom 1701 today. This was, as you can imagine, a major bummer, both for Rufus and for me, an ex-phone-sex operator who got out of bed at 5 a.m. and dragged herself to the train station in total darkness under the impression that the rewards would involve early-morning courthouse snatch.
The silver lining was that the only people who wanted to see JuicyBoobs (motto: “You must want to see movies depicting women with very big breasts naked and having fun”) more than us were the Justice Department lawyers, who filed the pornographic exhibits as evidence with the intention, in the words of DOJ lawyer Eric Beane, of showing the court a few examples of the “shocking amount of pornography” that “slips” (!) “through to children.”
Judge Lowell Reed, who is in his mid-seventies and will, in a matter of weeks, celebrate the eighth anniversary of the first time he struck down COPA, was not in the mood, however. “I don’t need to see them,” he said. “They can be described.”
Yes, they can. And that is one of the major reasons, dear reader, that Hooksexup is here. If COPA is enforced, the originator of any “communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind” that “the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest” could be forced behind a credit-card or age-verification “wall,” and fined $50,000 and/or sentenced to six months in jail if they fail to comply. So while the Justice Department is retroactively trying to make the law about commercial pornography, it could, interpreted another way, apply very easily to Hooksexup, Vice, the odd advice column, and anything else your inner seventh grader might happen to find retardedly amusing.
And although kids arguably should be protected from some of this stuff, our feeling is that this can’t — practically, constitutionally — be the role of the federal government. — Moe Tkacik
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Day One Wrap-Up
10/23/2006 5:19:05 PM
I just left the courthouse, after a morning and early afternoon of testimony from myself and Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of Salon.com. It was all very surreal. Stiff, long-winded proceedings punctuated by photographs of penetration and the slow, awkward pronunciation of body parts. We have learned a few things so far:
1) The favorite porn sites of the Department of Justice lawyers appear to be Hustler.com and JuicyBoobs.com — they refer to these two the most
frequently, and apparently selected extremely "graphic" (courtspeak for "skanky") photos from the latter to accompany their opening proceedings. Sadly, the judge forbade the DOJ from exhibiting the photos in the courtroom, but they are part of the public record, and we intend to get them for you. I, for one, would like to know what a "prurient and salacious image" featuring "post-pubescent female breasts" looks like.
2) The cafeteria at the federal courthouse in downtown Philadelphia sells a burger for $1.99 and overcharges for it.
For some background on this case, see the AP story here and the IDG News Service story here.
And thank you, Boing Boing, for the shout-out.
More later,
--Rufus
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Opening Thoughts
10/23/2006 12:02:54 PM
June 26, 1997, was a big day for me, and a big day for Hooksexup, for two reasons: (1) it was the day the Supreme Court made its decision on Reno v. ACLU, which effectively overturned the Communications Decency Act, and (2) it was the day that we launched Hooksexup (then Hooksexupmag.com).
This was not a complete coincidence — we delayed our launch for a week to coincide with the ruling, and consider ourselves in some ways a creature of that decision. Don't get me wrong — we would have published Hooksexup irrespective of that ruling. We were young and fearless, and we also understood that the government would be relatively foolish to go after some idealistic bespectacled kids publishing "literate smut," were the act to be passed. However, we also understood that this was an important decision supporting critical First Amendment rights, and that laws criminalizing what we do every day are not a good thing. Every day since, we have taken great pleasure bringing you lewd and salacious content, baked fresh daily and inappropriate for minors.
Now, nine years later, I am sitting in a hotel room, about to go on the stand as the first plaintiff in ACLU v. Gonzales, Civil Action No. 98-CV-5591, better known as the Child Online Protection Act case. Despite repeated drubbings by the ACLU over the years, the Department of Justice is continuing its efforts to criminalize the publication of content "inappropriate for minors" online — they are, in my view, attempting to put the entire nation back in nursery school.
I am told the case will open with the Department of Justice projecting enormous images of hardcore internet porn on the walls of the courtroom for the pleasure of the septagenarian judge. What I would give to have permission to get a picture of this from the witness stand. It should be colorful . . . I will report back later today with more details. — Rufus Griscom
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| Here I am at 6:30 am (not my favorite hour of the day) with court documents and a souvenir I intend to take home courtesy of the ACLU. |
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