2008 Woodie Awards
Bush administration intensifies fight against porn
Child porn major objective, but prosecutor says all of Internet is on table
David K. Kelley
Issue date: 12/3/04 Section: Issues
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U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft met with conservative groups in 2002 to assure them that fighting pornography was a priority of the Bush administration, Laura Sullivan of The Baltimore Sun reported April 6 on the newspaper's Web site, www.baltimoresun.com. The Justice Department made good on that promise early this year with its campaign to prosecute obscenity cases around the country, Sullivan wrote.
The Justice Department hired Bruce Taylor, who has been involved in prosecuting more than 700 porn cases and who unsuccessfully represented the state in 1981's Larry Flynt v. Ohio, to work with more than 30 prosecutors, investigators and FBI agents in Washington, according to Sullivan. Targets include the Internet and pay-per-view channels.
"Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," Sullivan quoted Taylor as saying in 2001 on the PBS program, Frontline.
Christy Drake, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said she was aware of the obscenity emphasis but that she did not recall any recent censorship prosecutions in the Amarillo area. "I prosecute in the office a lot of child pornography," she said.
Drake provided a copy of a bulletin called "Prosecuting Web-based Obscenity Cases," written by Benjamin Vernia and David Szuchman, both trial attorneys with the child exploitation and obscenity section, criminal division, of the Justice Department. The bulletin, distributed in March, is a how-to manual for U.S. attorneys.
Vernia and Szuchman cited a study which estimates $1 billion in annual revenues from adult online pornography and which projects revenues to grow to $5 billion to $7 billion by 2007.
They wrote, "Even persons seeking to avoid the material find themselves confronted with it. It is this situation that has led to the attorney general's call for obscenity enforcement. The Internet's porous borders call for federal prosecution."
The Justice Department hired Bruce Taylor, who has been involved in prosecuting more than 700 porn cases and who unsuccessfully represented the state in 1981's Larry Flynt v. Ohio, to work with more than 30 prosecutors, investigators and FBI agents in Washington, according to Sullivan. Targets include the Internet and pay-per-view channels.
"Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," Sullivan quoted Taylor as saying in 2001 on the PBS program, Frontline.
Christy Drake, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said she was aware of the obscenity emphasis but that she did not recall any recent censorship prosecutions in the Amarillo area. "I prosecute in the office a lot of child pornography," she said.
Drake provided a copy of a bulletin called "Prosecuting Web-based Obscenity Cases," written by Benjamin Vernia and David Szuchman, both trial attorneys with the child exploitation and obscenity section, criminal division, of the Justice Department. The bulletin, distributed in March, is a how-to manual for U.S. attorneys.
Vernia and Szuchman cited a study which estimates $1 billion in annual revenues from adult online pornography and which projects revenues to grow to $5 billion to $7 billion by 2007.
They wrote, "Even persons seeking to avoid the material find themselves confronted with it. It is this situation that has led to the attorney general's call for obscenity enforcement. The Internet's porous borders call for federal prosecution."