AdultBizLaw.com - Fattorosi & Chisvin

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Members of the industry are encouraged to attend the “Protect Your Assets” seminar, which will take place next Thursday from 12-1 p.m., during the XBIZ Hollywood ’08 Industry Conference , which is being held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Feb. 6-8. The seminar, which will be moderated by attorney Michael Fattorosi, will focus on issues surrounding safe working conditions on the set, with an emphasis on ways to keep all parties safe and secure without incurring the unwanted and unwarranted intervention of government agencies.

Other panelists will include director Ira Levine, performer Nina Hartley, industry attorney Jeffrey J. Douglas and Alan Stearns of Lockton Insurance Brokers.

A main topic of conversation will be the question of whether adult performers are considered by the government, most notably California state government, to be employees or independent contractors. It is an issue that dovetails seamlessly with the question of whether the majority of production studios even carry workers’ compensation insurance.

Fattorosi emphasizes the mutual benefits of workers’ compensation insurance.

“Safe practices are beneficial for both studios and performers,” he said. “The most important aspect to remember about workers’ compensation is that it not only provides health care benefits for the performer in case of an injury, it also prevents the studio from being dragged into civil litigation and hit with punitive damages.”

Stearns, who is currently working with the Free Speech Coalition to offer inexpensive insurance to industry members, will speak to the relatively low cost of workers’ compensation insurance as well as simple things studios can do to make the work place safer.

XBIZ Publisher Tom Hymes said that he hopes the seminar will attract a large audience.

“Honestly, I can think of few other issues facing adult content producers, performers and potentially distributors and retailers, that contains so many elements of risk,” Hymes said. “We’re talking about people’s health and safety first, but also their very ability to work, as well as the ability of companies to stay in business; and ultimately, in a worst case scenario, we are talking about the end of the adult industry in California as we know it.

“I wish I were exaggerating, but I just returned from Las Veg

In a case attacking stories depicted solely by words, federal obscenity prosecution was brought in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2006. The stories concern the seduction, rape, torture, and murder of very young children, even as young as 2 years of age. There are no visuals depicted on the website.

In April 26, a motion to dismiss the charges challenging the constitutionality of finding obscene text descriptions without graphic illustrations. The motion was denied on August 30, but a new round of motions were set to be filed by November 7. The case is still pending.

After Danilo Simoes Croce produced content in South America and fulfilled orders in the United States as operator of the website VomitBrazil.com, he was prosecuted in Orlando. Croce pled guilty on June 8 and was sentenced on August 29 to three years of supervised release that would become unsupervised if he left the country.

Croce was ordered to stay in the country, for the extent his visa allowed, in order to assist in an investigation or prosecution of another person who may have committed an offense as detailed in open court during sentencing. He also has to pay a $500 fine and $98,000 in forfeitures, $40,000 of which he had paid as of sentencing.

Los Angeles prosecutors charged Ira Isaacs with obscenity violations relating to the video titles “Gang Bang Horse,” “Pony Sex Game,” “Mako’s First Time Scat,” and “Hollywood’s Scat Amateurs No. 7.”

The government also seeks to forfeit several domain names criminally. They are ScatMovies.com, ScatCinemax.com and StolenCarFilms.com. A trial date will be set in February 2008.

Four DVD deliveries (from producer to retailer and then from retailer to Virginia postal inspector) triggered obscenity prosecutions of Five Star Video and JM Productions in Phoenix. The videos were “Gag Factor 15,” “Gag Factor 18,” “American Bukkake,” and “Filthy Things 6.”

Before trial the individual defendants were dismissed. After five hours of deliberation following the trial, Five Star Video and Five Star Video Outlet were convicted only regarding “Gag Factor 18,” and were acquitted with respect to “Filthy Things 6″ and “American Bukkake 13.”

It all began with U.S. v. Ragsdale, when a former Dallas police officer and his wife were convicted of operating an Internet website that had obscene videos with rape scenes. During the Ragsdale investigation, Ragsdale implicated his partner, McDowell, who was convicted of aiding and abetting criminal distribution of obscene materials through the U.S. Mail.

McDowell was sentenced to 30 months in prison, but was acquitted of conspiracy to violate obscenity statutes among other distribution charges. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his conviction because there was no evidence McDowell knew his partners would use the mails to distribute obscence materials. This case turned largely on issues regarding proof of knowledge and other factors.

Double penetration, interracial sex, female urination, and an amateur swinger interracial orgy material was the content at issue in the case against Le Video Store in St. Martinville, Louisiana.  The trial court denied the defense’s standing to represent the position of webmasters and Internet distributors but the Court of Appeals reversed this holding. The matter was set for hearing in December.

Deemed the S&M Svengali by New York tabloids, Glenn Marcus was convicted for sexually abusing a woman he photographed for his BDSM website. After seven days of deliberation, the jury convicted Marcus of sex trafficking and forced labor, but he was acquitted of obscenity charges stemming from the website’s content.

A federal jury in Phoenix convicted Jeffrey Kilbride in U.S. v. Kilbride on four obscenity counts. The case arose of out porn spamming and the prosecutions included charges under CAN-SPAM, Section 2257, money laundering and four counts of obscenity.

Kilbride was sentenced to more than six years in prison after they were found guilty of embedding hardcore porn in mass emails. Anyone who opened the messages were able to view the porn.

Extreme Associates, Rob Black and Lizzy Borden were each indicted for 10 counts of violating federal obscenity laws. The investigation was spawned by a PBS special “American Porn” in which Black reportedly as consensually beat a female and inviting the Attorney General to come after him.

Judge Lancaster of the trial court originally dismissed the case on constitutional grounds but the Court of Appeals reversed that dismissal. When the United States Supreme Court denied review, the case was sent back to Judge Lancaster.

Early 2007 the defense filed a second motion to dismiss on constitutional grounds regarding the “work as a whole” and contemporary community standards concepts as articulated in Miller. Although Judge Lancaster denied the motion to dismiss, he used that motion to determine what the prosecution must prove during the trial in order to withstand a motion for acquittal.