US Sex Sells News

Private Media Group last week asked a federal judge to go along with a $11.3 million default judgment against two of the largest porn tube sites, EmpFlix.com and TnAFlix.com.

Private, which claims the tube sites' operator, YoungTek Solutions Ltd., is illegally streaming 75 of its videos, also is seeking to have EmpFlix.com and TnAFlix.com's domain names awarded to the adult entertainment company.

The amount at stake is large, but the defendant is a commercial venture that operates one of the busiest online commercial properties in the world, Private said in a motion for default judgment. Only a large award will serve to deter these arrogant defendants from future illegal action.

Los Angeles County public health officials have the discretion to mandate regulations to control sexually transmitted diseases on porn sets, an appeals court has ruled.

The county had been sued by nutters of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), which has been a thorn for the adult entertainment industry for years as it attempts to oppose the indiustry by making condoms mandatory for all porn productions.

The AHF sued the county for its inaction over regulating porn shoots. It lost in a lower court and reached out to the California Appeal Court, which ruled against it, 3-0.

Appellate judges, in the unpublished opinion, said the county's health department has discretion to determine what measures are necessary to prevent the transmission of communicable diseases and could not be forced by the courts to implement the specific means advocated by the AHF.

The AHF blames the lack of protective equipment for performers, including condoms, for a so-called epidemic of STDs, and says the county has taken no effective steps to address it.

The AHF told XBIZ that they won't challenge the appellate ruling but would fight on.

Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, told XBIZ that AHF has a history of filing frivolous lawsuits: L.A. County had already identified sexually transmitted infections in the adult industry as a 'non-issue' when it comes to public health, she said. Moreover, a recent report concerning STIs in the adult entertainment industry confirmed that adult performers have a lower rate of STIs than populations of individuals who test at STI clinics and other sexually active groups.

Appeal

See  article from  xbiz.com

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation will appeal last week's ruling by the California Court of Appeal that said Los Angeles County health officials can't be forced to regulate the local porn biz. The state's highest court now will decide whether to take the case over the AHF's bid to make condoms mandatory for all porn productions in the county.

Diane Duke, the Free Speech Coalition's executive director, blasted the AHF, saying:

It is shameful how AHF's grandstanding consistently takes priority over the health and well being of their clients and now the people of L.A. county. AHF has a history of frivolous lawsuits that not only squander funds that could and should be used for the prevention and treatment of HIV but also now into taxpayer dollars.

In a heated and contentious advisory panel meeting, nearly 70 porn performers came out in force to voice their concerns and give input on a Cal/OSHA draft proposal containing modifications to California's health code to extend adult industry workplace safety regulations.

The purpose of the meeting was to gather comments from industry stakeholders to crystalize specific areas of proposed regulations in the draft. Several items were on the agenda including discussing definitions, control measures, alternative measures, medical services and record keeping.

The draft described adult entertainment as the production of any film, video, multimedia or other recorded or live presentation in which performers actually engage in any activity that may result in exposure of the eyes, skin, mouth, anus, vagina or other mucous membranes to the blood or other potentially infectious materials -- sexually transmitted infections (OPIM-STI). Many took issue with this description saying this was too broad of a definition.

The meeting then moved on to barrier protection, described as a condom or other physical block that prevents the passage of blood and OPIM-STI to another person. A female performer said that if condoms are enforced, that every legitimate studio will be affected and productions will either go underground or leave the state.

Dan O'Connell, president of Girlfriends Films, said enforcing condoms especially for girl/girl scenes would be problematic: If we provide barrier protection, it'll be the end of the industry here in California, he said. Fans of girl/girl who are into the oral part will not put up with barrier protection.

Another topic that was hotly debated was permitting alternate measures to control risks of oral sex.

At the end of the meeting, Deborah Gold, Cal/OSHA’s senior safety engineer reminded everyone that current standards still apply to adult, which means the use of condoms as a form of barrier protection.

Lap dancing cannot be considered an art form, a New York state court hearing a tax dispute has ruled.

The owners of the Nite Moves strip club in Albany had argued the business should not have to pay sales tax on money earned from admission fees and lap dances. It claimed a state law that makes dramatic or musical arts performances exempt from sales tax should include strippers' dances, whether they are on a stage or in private booths.

The five judges at the Appellate Division, Third Department disagreed with the idea that stripping could enjoy the same tax status as ballet and ruled against the club.

Justice John Egan Jr said Nite Moves had failed to establish that private dances were genuine choreographed performances and suggested the strippers usually learned their trade from videos or watching colleagues. He added: The record reflects that the club's dancers are not required to have any formal dance training.

Nite Moves' lawyer, Andrew McCullough, said the club would appeal against the ruling, on the grounds the court had made a value judgement on the artistic merits of lap dancing.

Nine months after Missouri implemented further restrictions on the state's adult businesses, at least two local strip clubs are continuing pretty much as before relying on the authorities' lax enforcement of their X-rated entertainment.

Kansas City Star reporters recently observed more than a dozen female dancers at Bazooka's and Temptations whose entire breasts were visible. Although state law allows such semi-nude exposure, clubs that regularly offer it must close at midnight. Both downtown clubs, however, remained open and admitted customers well past that closing deadline.

Some dancers also appeared on stages less than six feet from patrons, another violation of the statute. Reporters saw chairs lining the elevated stages in both clubs, placing some customers only inches from performers.

But Dick Bryant, a lawyer for Kansas City's adult entertainment industry, said the clubs are following the law, in part because he claimed the dancers only appear to be topless. The exposed breasts, he said, are actually covered by a thin layer of opaque latex. Once they're covered, none of the rest of the law applies, Bryant argued.

He also said clubs are observing other parts of the new law, including rules that prohibit full nudity and semi-nude dancers from touching customers. The Star found those regulations, as well as those involving the sale of alcohol, were being followed.

After a state court judge refused to delay implementation of the new rules, a coalition of strip club owners sought a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that its provisions are unconstitutional. A decision is expected later this year.

Kimberly Kupps, who co-operates namesake site KimberlyKupps.com with her husband, has been charged lwith 13 obscenity counts for content distributed over the Internet.

Kupps specializes in the big-boobs niche and had been on the radar of the nutter Sheriffs Department of Polk County for three months.

The Sheriff's Department booked her under statute 847.5 on 13 counts of wholesale promotion of obscene material. Kupps was jailed along with her husband, Warren Taylor, who remains locked up; Kupps was released Saturday night after posting $7,500 bail.

According to the police report, a deputy paid an initial $19.95 membership fee to her website, where he found videos of Kupps having sex with men and women. The deputy downloaded six videos, burned them to CDs and asked Judge Reinaldo Ojeda to review them. Ojeda, according to the police report, claimed the videos were obscene material under state law.

Gallup has just released the results of its annual values and beliefs poll, and as far as the issue of pornography goes, a majority of the country's citizens 66% believes it is morally wrong.

A slightly deeper look at the poll's results reveals a marked age factor with respect to their acceptance of porn. Among those 55 and older, 19% said it was acceptable; among those 35 to 54, the percentage rises to 29, and it rises to 42% among 18-to-34-year-olds. Clearly, an acceptance trend is in the making.

There were others moral issues run by the thousand plus adults, of course. On the more acceptable side of the scale, gay or lesbian relations was seen as morally acceptable by a margin of 56-39 percent, sex between an unmarried man and woman was given the green light by a margin of 60-36 and having a baby out of wedlock was morally permissible by a percentage margin of 54-41.

With the end of the 2011 legislative session nearing, socially conservative members of the Kansas legislature turned down a last chance to keep a bill alive that would have imposed severe restrictions on adult entertainment business in the state. The vote, which took place on the Senate, failed to garner the 24 votes necessary to approve a motion by Sen. Steve Abrams that would have pulled the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor for a vote.

Without a word of debate, reported the Tokepa Capital-Journal, the chamber voted 17-22 to reject Abrams' motion.

According to the Capital-Journal, Abrams, who could have probably seen a compromise bill passed by both chambers, said the state had an obligation to bring order to sexually oriented businesses that damage communities with inspiring criminal behavior and creating other negative secondary effects.

AIM Medical Associates' executive director Sharon Mitchell has confirmed to AVN after much industry speculation that the clinic has closed its doors.

Mitchell also acknowledged that the AIM database has been taken offline making it impossible for producers to check the status of performers' tests.

We are officially closed over financial hardship, Mitchell said. We had to close.

In the meantime, most performers working in the Greater Los Angeles area are now using Talent Testing Service, which also has a wholly owned subsidiary in Miami and works with a network of draw stations located around the country.

A strip club sued Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in federal court over a new state law that bans adult businesses from putting anything but words, numbers and a logo on signs and billboards.

Lawyers for the Penthouse Club in Detroit, argue the restrictions are unconstitutional and asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the regulations.

Adult businesses can be fined up to $10,000 for violations under the law that took effect last week.

The law only affects adult businesses and requires logos on billboards to be registered as federal trademarks, which have their own restrictions on sexually explicit material. Former Governor Jennifer Granholm signed the bills into law in December, but they did not take effect until last week. Violators are subject to fines of $10,000 a day, and revenue from scofflaws would go into a fund for public libraries.

42 US senators have signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling on him to increase federal prosecutions of adult pornography.

The letter calls on the Department of Justice to vigorously enforce federal obscenity laws against major commercial distributors of hardcore adult pornography. It asks Holder to instruct the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to work together to combat the growing scourge of obscenity in America.

The senators pointed to a briefing last June where they claimed 'experts' explained that today's hardcore pornography is typified by extreme violence against women, adding that pornography consumption can contribute to sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Another 'expert' warned that Internet adult pornography normalizes sexual harm to children, while another addressed the growing connection between pornography and sex trafficking, they continued, before pointing to the identification of a pornography addiction disorder.

We believe it is imperative that the Department, with cooperation by the FBI, investigate and prosecute all major producers and distributors of adult obscenity, they write. We need your leadership.

Senator Orrin Hatch, who signed the letter, has complained that the Justice Department has focused disproportionately on fringe fetish pornography instead of large-scale pornography producers.

As Politico's Josh Gerstein points out, winning cases against large-scale operators could be complicated since they could argue that their very success demonstrates that their products do not violate community standards.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) has fined Hustler Video $14,175 for failing to use condoms in its productions.

According to the citation issued to Hustler Video and obtained by AVN, Cal-OSHA cites three violations, in which the video production company failed to provide condoms or other protective equipment for performers. Additionally the company was cited for failure to provide an injury and illness prevention program, and for failing to provide protection against other potentially infectious materials. Hustler was fined $4,725 for each violation.

Also cited was Mark Zane's Forsaken Pictures, which was fined $12,150 for three violations. According to the complaint, it appears that Forsaken's fines were in connection to producing an adult movie for Hustler Video.

The inspection of the Hustler Video was prompted by a complaint from anti porn nutters of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). And of course nutters are never satisified. AHF president Michael Weinstein said:

Something is better than nothing, but I don't know how long it takes Larry Flynt to make $14,000, Weinstein commented. I suspect it's not very long, so we would want to see something sterner. We would like to see an order prohibiting use that shuts down Hustler productions, and of course, we want to see the city revoke the permits and we want to see the LA County Department of Health also step in and declare it a public health nuisance, but every little bit helps. It's now established that it's against the law in California to produce [adult movies] without condoms and we're looking forward to actions by the Cal/OSHA Standards Board this year on regulations specific to the industry. We will continue to lobby the city and the county to be more aggressive as well.

Hustler has a right to appeal.