Page 58 - AVN July 2013

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FEATURE
Third Circuit treated the organization’s standing as
already established.
The next plaintiff witness was Dr. Michelle Drouin, an
associate professor of Psychology at Indiana University,
who testified that she had conducted two studies, one in
2009 and another in 2011, regarding young adults’ use of
sexting.
The day’s final witness was Dian Wilson, office
manager of the Sinclair Institute, which produces sexually
explicit sex education videos mostly for mature adults.
On direct, Wilson detailed the time and expense Sinclair
undertakes to comply with 2257, estimating it cost about
$75,000 in employee time and another $12,000 to
reprogram the company’s computers to maintain the
security of the records.
Judge Baylson allowed DOJ attorney Hector Bladuell
to begin his cross-examination of the witness before he
recessed the trial for the day.
Day 2: Wide Range of Witnesses
Events moved fast during the second day of testimony in
the trial, but it didn’t begin very well for Bladuell, who
continued his cross-examination of Wilson. When he got
into too much detail about what percentage of younger
performers had appeared in Sinclair’s hardcore sex ed
videos, Judge Michael M. Baylson decided he’d heard
enough.
“It
’s absurd,” the judge interjected. “If that’s the only
contradiction you have, we’re gonna be here for a
month!”
Bladuell moved on, questioning Wilson about
Sinclair’s websites that sold both the company’s own
videos as well as those from other companies. Judge
Baylson seemed eager to keep testimony short, comment-
ing, “It’s obvious to me that some performers are adults”
and that others appear young, and that the exhibits
showed that, yes, young-looking people are in the videos.
After the cross examination, Judge Baylson himself
asked some questions about Wilson’s estimate of how
much 2257 compliance costs the company.
The next witness was plaintiff Dr. Carol Queen, a
sexologist who described her various jobs with the Good
Vibrations chain, her directorship of the Center for Sex
& Culture (CSC), her frequent lectures at colleges and
elsewhere, and her curatorship of the Vibrator Museum.
She also noted that she’d written, edited and/or con-
tributed to several scholarly works, had performed in sex
education films—and in her spare time, created sexually
explicit collages that she has exhibited at art galleries. She
also noted that CSC previously had an erotic
photography club that met on its premises.
On cross-examination, DOJ attorney James Schwartz
attempted to draw out more details of each 2257 situa-
tion. After Schwartz was done, Judge Baylson asked
several questions, some of which involved Queen’s
knowledge of sexting—she admitted she was aware that
some under-18s were indeed sexting.
On redirect examination, she told plaintiffs’ attorney J.
Michael Murray that adults also sext, and that she was
aware that each of those sexts require a 2257 label, but
58 | AVN.com | 7.13
that she knows of no one who complies with the require-
ments.
Murray asked, if they knew about 2257 would that
chill the sexters’ speech? Queen responded that people
think of their sexts as private communications, but that it
would concern them.
The next witness stand was photographic journalist
David Steinberg, author of several erotic photo collec-
tions including Erotic By Nature, and the U.S. photo rep-
resentative for Norwegian magazine Cupido, which pub-
lishes “fine art sexual photographs.” He testified that he
had been in discussions with Cupido’s editors about start-
ing an American version of the magazine using content
from the European versions, but scrapped the idea when
he realized that he would be unable to obtain 2257 ID
documents from some of the Euro models.
Murray next called attorney-turned-sex-educator
Carlin Ross, who testified that since 2004 her main job
has been to assist legendary 84-year-old sexual rights
activist Betty Dodson with her website,
DodsonAndRoss.com, which is dedicated to sexual rights
and female sexual liberation. Ross testified that she also
produces Dodson’s films—including Self-Loving and Viva
La Vulva—and video clips, which are available for pur-
chase on the site.
”Her bigges t
pr oblem,said actr ess
Nina Hartl e y,
was that the very
exis tenc e of 2257‘
puts sexual speech
in a different category from
r egular speech.’
Ross also testified about the site’s Genital Art Gallery,
created in 1998. After she and Dodson had begun to
require IDs with submissions, as required by 2257, sub-
missions dropped to nearly zero. She also said she had to
remove a large number of images that Dodson had col-
lected because they too had no age-verification data.
The afternoon’s star witness, however, had to be the
irascible Betty Dodson herself.
“Are you familiar with 2257?” asked Murray.
“Yeah, but I want to forget it,” Dodson shot back.
Asked about the purpose was of the Genital Art
Gallery, Dodson said it was to “show women that they’re
not genitally deformed. … We’re stuck in the Dark Ages
of human sexuality.”
Photo-journalist plaintiff Barbara Alper was the next
witness. Murray established that Alpers’ photos had been
published in The New York Times, Newsday the L.A. Times
and several other places, and that though mainly docu-
mentary in nature, they included sexually explicit shots
taken in nightclubs and other locations. She said she
never checked the IDs of her subjects—she assumed they
were adults because the clubs checked IDs at the door—
and in fact sometimes didn’t even ask permission to shoot
her subjects.
She noted she’d been shooting couples, both as indi-
viduals and while they made love, but noted that finding
subjects has been more difficult recently because “nobody
wants to give up their identity for government inspec-
tion.” She also said she wanted to shoot gay couples hav-
ing anonymous sex on Fire Island, but 2257 requirements
again derailed her plans.
The day’s final witness was AVN Senior Editor
Thomas Hymes, who was one of the creators of
DailyBabylon.com. When his two co-founders left the
project, Hymes was left to run the site himself. He said
he considered adding hardcore images to the site, but
avoids doing so because of 2257.
“They’re literally chilling my expression with 2257,” he
said, and gave his reason as the fact that he works from
home on the site, and wants to avoid warrantless FBI
searches of his house, but also that he was unable to be
available 20 hours per week for possible FBI inspections
because of his day job.
On cross, Hymes acknowledged that sections of his
website had not been updated for a few years, but denied
he had abandoned the project. At that point, Judge
Baylson adjourned testimony for the day.
Day 3: Plaintiffs’ Testimony Nearly Completed
Toward the end of her cross examination of plaintiff
Hymes on Day 3, Wyer touched on a subject that Hymes
later said concerned him deeply: Did he know that most
sites use a link from their home page to the page with a
2257 compliance notice? Hymes said he had looked at
some adult tube websites just that morning and found
that the 2257 compliance link on many of them led to a
list of companies that had supplied clips for the site, but
that the same list was replicated for every page, making it
impossible to know which image belonged to which pro-
ducer.
Murray next called actress and plaintiff Nina Hartley,
and began by asking her to trace her history in XXX, her
experiences having her ID checked and filling out model
releases before 2257 was in force, and her own experience
as a producer and webmaster.
Her biggest problem, Hartley said, was that the very
existence of 2257 “puts sexual speech in a different cate-
gory from regular speech,” and that by its very nature
assumes that she’s a criminal who uses minors in sexual
videos, when in fact there’s no proof that she has ever
done that. When Murray asked if she would still check
her fellow performers’ IDs even absent 2257, she said she
would and added that 2257 does not prevent minors
from using fake IDs to perform in adult fare.
On cross by DOJ attorney Hector Bladuell, Hartley
said she had performed with many 21- to 25-year-olds,
but when Bladuell produced a photo of Hartley with 19-
year-old Tara Lynn Foxx, Hartley joked, “She was the
first performer I worked with who was younger than my
breast implants.”
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