Ridiculous Pornography Trial Highlights Lack of Difference Between Bush and Obama

You may or may not have heard of the trial of John Stagliano.  You would think that, especially in 2010, a small businessman such as he would be considered a model of American entrepreneurship.  But the Obama administration, brought to power through a promise of hope and change, is showing that it has no problem pursing the silence of speech which it declares obscene.

Stagliano built his enterprise, Evil Angel, literally from the ground up.  His business is now worth millions and provides dozens of full-time jobs, hundreds of well-compensated part-time jobs, and even provides jobs that are required by the bureaucratic red tape that regulates the porn industry.

In college, Stagliano was an economics major.  Before he started Evil Angel, the business model in the porn industry was to give directors a flat budget for a movie and be done with it.  What the director didn't spend producing the film was his take-home profits.  With an incentive to make the cheapest movies possible, that's what the industry became known for.  Then Stagliano came along.

Stagliano's business model was to enter into partnerships with directors.  The directors paid to make their movies while Evil Angel paid to distribute and market them.  This model has long been successful in the music industry.  This resulted in the best directors in the industry partnering with Evil Angel because they now had the incentive of royalty payments and ongoing income from DVD sales due to directors maintaining ownership of their films.  This libertarian concept improved the quality of output from the industry.

However, in 2008, Stagliano was charged with obscenity.  The United States Department of Justice argued that pornography is a synonym for obscenity and thus the public should be protected from exposure to it.  That goes directly against 28 C.F.R. 75 which would seem to imply that pornography made by adults, with adults, and for adults is not a crime.

This case was not brought about by any complaints of citizens.  This case originated in the FBI.  The FBI purchased the DVDs, watched them, and then determined that they should bring charges of obscenity to fulfill the mission of the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.

If Stagliano had lost this case, nearly any adult content (not just pornography, but even graphic romance novels) could have been declared obscene by the government and removed from public accessibility.  Luckily, though, this case was thrown out on technical grounds.