From AdultFYI

Federal Grand Jury in Salt Lake City Charges Cleveland Men With Obscenity Violations

WASHINGTON -- Two Cleveland men have been charged by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City with operating an obscenity distribution business and related offenses, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman of the District of Utah announced today.

The indictment returned today charges Cleveland residents Sami R. Harb and Michael Harb, doing business as Movies by Mail, with three counts of engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene DVDs, and three counts of using the mails to deliver obscene DVDs. If convicted, the
defendants face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count. A summons was issued ordering the defendants to appear for arraignment on July 12 in Salt Lake City before U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells.

The indictment supersedes a complaint filed in federal court in Salt Lake City on June 8, 2007, and unsealed on June 14 following a search of the Harbs' offices and warehouse in Cleveland.

According to the indictment and other court documents, DVDs containing three films entitled "MaxHardcore, Pure Max 18," "MaxHardcore, Extreme 12," and "Extreme Associates, Cocktails 5," were ordered from a Web site operated by the Harbs and mailed to an address in Salt Lake City as part of
an FBI undercover investigation. The indictment alleges that these films are obscene. Court documents disclose that Movies by Mail delivered 683 packages to addresses in the state of Utah during 2006; 149 of them to addresses in Salt Lake City.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karin Fojtik of the District of Utah and Trial Attorney Kenneth Whitted of the Justice Department's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which was formed to focus on
the prosecution of adult obscenity nationwide. The investigation was conducted by the FBI's Adult Obscenity Squad, a national initiative of the FBI based in the Washington, D.C. Field Office, and agents from the FBI's
Salt Lake City Field Office.

RELATED: Sami Harb: Free Speech Coalition "Worthless."

The dude ships fucking Max Hardcore to Utah, not once, but hundreds of times, gets busted and then calls the FSC worthless. What a charmer.

"The U.S. Supreme Court established the test that judges and juries use to determine whether material is obscene. The test was developed in three major cases: Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24-25 (1973); Smith v. United States, 431 U.S. 291, 300-02, 309 (1977); and Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 500-01 (1987). The resulting three-pronged test to adjudicate obscenity is as follows:

Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion); and

Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse); and

Whether a reasonable person would find that the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Any material meeting this definition may be found to violate the laws of the United States and anyone convicted of distributing such material may be prosecuted and punished by fines and a term of imprisonment."


Seriously, how many of the porn movies out there these days would pass this test? Only the glossy and boring big studio productions... that's why the studios couldn't care less what happens to the rest of the industry. In fact, the harder obscenity will be prosecuted, the better for them, more $$$, less competition. Don't wait for phone calls from Judas.

The District Court hearing Rob Black's Case (US v. Extreme Associates) dismissed the case on the grounds that the (relatively) recent ruling in Lawrence v. Texas rendered the Miller test obsolete. The Third Circuit reversed that ruling, holding that, according to precedent, only the Supreme Court can determine if one of it's rulings invalidates an earlier ruling. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and it has been remanded to the District Court for trial. Eventually, the Supremes will have to rule on the issue.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court overturned State sodomy laws as being violative of privacy and liberty of adults, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to engage in private intimate conduct. The District Court in Rob Black's case held that the ruling in Lawrence applies to Pornography as well, in effect, saying that Lawrence overturns Miller. The Third Circuit, correctly, overruled the District Court, because only the Supreme Court can make that determination. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case at this time, sending it back to the District Court for trial. Sooner or later, whether in this case or another one, the Court is going to have to make the determination as to how far to apply Lawrence, and whether or not it invalidates earlier rulings like Miller.

Ok. Assuming that the courts are in no hurry to make that determination and that they will do all they can to delay that process, how many years from now could a decision by the Supreme Court be expected?