OOPS! WRONG WHORE PHOTO

Happy belatedly, Blogslutty New Year!

Last week, I was in Las Vegas for the 2006 Internext Expo. I was only able to stay for a couple of days and missed out on most of the good stuff like the Player's Ball:

Internext is arguably the biggest convention for my particular portion of the porn industry. The internet portion. We geeks have never really been accepted the video/print porn industries. We never got much love from the non-porn geeks either. When Comdex kicked all the web smutmeisters out, we started AdultDex. AdultDex didn't catch on. Cybernet Expo teamed up with AdultDex for a while but eventually AdultDex died quietly. In the meantime, AVN - home to a massive borg-like network of sites and publications dealing orginally with the porn video news for retail shoppers - opened Internext. Powered by name recognition and sponsorship dollars, Internext Expo soon became the big show for adult webmasters.

However, that orginal indifference to adult webmasters still exists. The kids in Chatsworth don't like us geeks and they never have. Before the internet, if one wanted to purchase pornographic image/video content to publish/sell commercially, one almost always had to deal with the clique from California. The problem was that the porn makers in Porn Valley refused to understand that no webmaster in the world was going to pay $1000.00 for a set of dirty photos. The video/print pornographers refused to realize that porn on the web is a numbers game. A photographer could sell a set of 50 photos for $1000.00 to five non-web buyers and make $5000.00. On the other hand, that same photographer can sell 50 photos for $50.00 to 1000 webmasters and make $50,000.00. But no. The establishment porn manufacturers in Chatsworth would have none of us. So we made our own damned porn. There has been deep emnity ever since and it showed at this year's Internext.

Adult Video News is AVN. AVN publishes magazines, hosts a network of websites and is responsible for the Adult Entertainment Expo, the AVN Awards and Internext Expo. In previous years, Internext was usually scheduled to happen concurrent with Comdex and now the Computer Electronics Show (CES). AVN always had the courtesy to schedule AEE and the AVN Awards after Internext. Not this year. This year, CES, AEE/AVN Awards and Internext weren't just occuring at the same damned time. They all took place in the same damned building. The Sands Expo Center. Clusterfuck can't begin to describe what it was like trying to find Internext in that madhouse of badges and ill-informed Sands employees. Signs for AEE? Everywhere. Signs for Internext? Nowhere. When I finally found my convention it turned out to be tucked in the back, like an afterthought. AVN raised the prices for Internext attendees and exhibitors and lowered them for AEE. Naturally, AEE was a smash and Internext was a bust. Many suspect AVN intends to kill Internext completely and sweep it's corpse back under the AEE umbrella. All I know is a lot of adult webmasters were pissed as hell. Many of them said this year was their last year for Internext. From now on, they plan to attend smaller shows like Webmaster Access.

Despite all the crap, I got to see friends, talk shop and even managed to go to a party. I love adult webmasters. They're smart, funny and they come from all walks of life. Let the Chatsworth Clique have their club. Internet porn doesn't need them and they know it.

(permanent link)
 

What do you leave to your child when you're dead?
Only whatever you put in it's head
Things that your mother and father had said
Which were left to them too...

In his autobiography, King Jr. remembered his father leaving a shoe shop because he and his son were asked to change seats:

This was the first time I had seen Dad so furious. That experience revealed to me at a very early age that my father had not adjusted to the system, and he played a great part in shaping my conscience. I still remember walking down the street beside him as he muttered, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it."
- source: Wikipedia

Why does the DOJ hate American parents?

According to the Mercury News:

Feds after Google data
RECORDS SOUGHT IN U.S. QUEST TO REVIVE PORN LAW

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches..."

SNIP

...government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based on the argument that it is far more effective than software filters in protecting children from porn. To back that claim, the government has subpoenaed search engines to develop a factual record of how often Web users encounter online porn and how Web searches turn up material they say is ``harmful to minors.''

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was signed into law in 1998. Since then, it's been struck down three times by lower courts and has been argued before the Supreme Court twice. Both times, the SCOTUS threw the case back to the Third District Court.

From the last SCOTUS opinion on COPA:

"In particular, it noted that "[t]he record before the Court reveals that blocking or filtering technology may be at least as successful as COPA would be in restricting minors’ access to harmful material online without impos-ing the burden on constitutionally protected speech that COPA imposes on adult users or Web site operators."

So, now the DOJ is arguing that they can do a better job at protecting children than the parents of America - using freely available filtering software. The DOJ believes that the mothers, fathers and guardians of the US aren't smart enough or observant enough to do their collective duty. You can block any and all inappropriate content in a matter of minutes. Listen here.

If the DOJ is so much better at minding our children then how does Alberto Gonzalez explain the fact that his son was a webmaster for Hustler?

That's basically what James Weaver said at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing: Protecting Children on the Internet, today.

To summarize Weaver: American parents are too busy, too lazy and too dumb to set up filtering software and oh, there's free porn on the Internet.

I don't mind Paul Cambria representing for pornographers but he's pretty clueless about Internet pornographers. Ted Stevens asked Cambria why there was no ratings system on adult sites. Cambria should have told Mr. Stevens that 99% of adult sites fly a warning page, usually with links to filtering software. Cambria totally forgets to mention the Internet Content Ratings Association. Of course, Cambria is hot for an industry-based ratings system because he's a good friend of the company pimping for such a thing: AVN.

Professors Grant Goodman and Jenifer Winter aren't the only ones all paranoid now that the Bush administration is proudly defending its illegal surrveillance of US citizens.

I've been paranoid for years. Then again, I'm in the kind of business that's closely monitored by law enforcement types. I also realize that US customs has every legal right to open mail that comes to me from another country. Just the same, I had been receiving a paycheck by mail, from my employer in Canada, for three uneventful years. One day in 2004, I got this:

I haven't seen any cute tape on my paychecks since, but I live each day realizing it could happen again. I'm a freaking writer for Bob's sake! It's just a freaking check from freaking Canada! Did they look into my bank account? Did they trace my history of deposits or spending habits? What was it about my innocuous piece of mail that made them open it? I didn't do anything illegal yet this invasion of my privacy makes me feel like a criminal.

Today we hear that the NSA is tapping phone calls without warrants, the DOJ is demanding search logs from Google, American citizens can be arrested and fined for carrying protest signs and our elected officials are as corrupt as the day is long. Nice culture of fear they've made for us.

I'm reminded of the words of Jim McDermott (Medical Doctor, Congressman and righteous dude) in Fahrenheit 911:

"You can make people do anything when they're afraid...You make them afraid by creating an aura of endless threat..."

Novakula is actually reporting on a survey sponsored by the DLC. Old Bob might not know how to keep his cock-hole shut but he sure knows how to play attention whore. You go girl!

"...And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chesnut in a farmer’s fire?"

Poor Anne. When Petruchio starved Katherine, he tamed her. I guess the process doesn't work when a gal does it to herself.

"Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul."
- Coretta Scott King

"Do you think I made a mistake, splitting his brain between the two of them?"