A new documentary chronicles the rise and fall of Insex.com, one of the early websites. (NSFW) Co-directors Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell look at Insex, the people behind it, and the forces that ultimately brought it down. The stuff that Insex did tends to make even hardcore kinksters flinch a bit. However, as one reviewer points out, they at least put the activities into context, showing the performers both in the scenes (which include drowning and suffocation--some of this stuff may really hit some triggers for some people), as opposed to the notorious anti-porn documentary, The Price of Pleasure, which showed sex and kink without exploration of the performers' lives offscreen. One of the most interesting aspects of the film is that they ultimately were shut down not by obscenity laws, but by federal authorities who used the PATRIOT Act to claim that hardcore porn funded terrorism.
posted by Stochastic Jack on Sep 8, 2009 - 99 comments

Wal-Mart sells hentai now? (link SFW) Strange activity for a retailer well known to ban men's magazines (of both the pornographic variety and almost-but-not-quite pornographic variety), music with explicit lyrics, or pretty much any book they don't like. One can only assume that they were trying to get into the market for these newfangled Japanese comics that are suddenly all the rage, and didn't pay attention to precisely which ones they were ordering.
posted by Target Practice on Jan 21, 2007 - 24 comments

Detecting the erotic (like detecting the humorous) is one of those things that people can do better than any known machine. This new patent seems largely based on "Finding Naked People", a paper in the field of Computer vision.
posted by GeorgeHernandez on Oct 1, 2006 - 12 comments

What you watch Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes is language that could put many Hollywood movies in the same category as hardcore, X-rated films. The provision added to the Children's Safety Act of 2005 would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet.
posted by halekon on Oct 12, 2005 - 41 comments

Fighting the CDA : The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is working with one of nations most interesting erotic photographers to overturn the portion of the CDA that ties all internet obscenity to the most restrictive definition of the most restrictive community in the nation.
posted by soulhuntre on Dec 11, 2001 - 30 comments

John Ashcroft on web porn: "I am concerned about obscenity and I'm concerned about obscenity as it relates to our children". I'm curious what those of you who are more on the conservative/libertarian side of things think about this. Are there special exemptions to the concept of free speech when it comes to this type of content? [more]
posted by owillis on Jun 11, 2001 - 40 comments

Potential Employment: Here is a chance to show what you are made of. Quit your high paying job you have now, for one that will give you the opportunity to "help the children."
posted by brent on Feb 12, 2000 - 0 comments