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Charge Max Hardcore's prosecutors with obscenity

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Following up on "Free Max Hardcore" below, I argue over at womensspace that by the same logic applying to this case, the judge, prosecutors, and defense attorneys should all be brought up on obscenity charges for showing Max Hardcore videos to a Tampa, Florida, jury:

If a prosecutor shot a juror with a gun to demonstrate how a murder took place, he’d be arrested and charged with murder. If she handed out cocaine to a jury and urged jurors to sniff, she’d be thrown out or worse. By allowing Max Hardcore videos to be shown in court, as evidence of themselves (and not of, say, a criminal act being depicted), the judge demonstrated that they are speech. They communicate, demonstrate, and illustrate. Nothing in the mechanics of offering, showing, and viewing the video in that courtroom was any different than when somebody in Florida pops a Max Hardcore DVD onto the player at home...

I also express my depression over the fact that a pro-obscenity-law element (however minor) still persists among active anti-sexists:

To me, it’s as if a small but surprisingly influential faction of the anti-war crowd had siphoned human energy into opposing pro-war films, then gloated when a pro-war director got sentenced to years in prison for making one. To me it’s worse than wrongheaded or beside the point: It’s vocally siding with the forces of repression that encourage violence in the first place.

One thing President Obama could do to reverse this hugely wasteful diversion of government energy would be to encourage the justice department to drop anything from the "Obscenity" portion of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, thus freeing up more staff and resources to prosecute child pornography. I wonder if DOJ employees wouldn't secretly rejoice at such as shift in priorities, especially after watching God-knows-how-much Max Hardcore as part of their homework.

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