Reason.tv at Slamdance: The Porno-Terror Nexus

Porn funds terror?

That's the justification the Department of Homeland Security used to invoke the Patriot Act and target the hardcore bondage site Insex.com.

The documentary GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, explains how the government shut down the site in the name of fighting terror.

Reason.tv's Ted Balaker spoke with the film's directors, as well as a former insex.com model.

Comments

[Juanita]

If this is what it takes, whatever, good riddance.

[Warren]

Porn funds terror?

That’s the justification the Department of Homeland Security used to invoke the Patriot Act and target the hardcore bondage site Insex.com.

That’s what they’d like you to think. But really they were just acting on behalf of their puppet masters over at Kink.com

[OO===D]

“f this is what it takes, whatever, good riddance.”

But you told me you loved me, Juanita.

[Elemenope]

But you told me you loved me, Juanita.

She only loves you when you’re on top.

[mark]

Hahaha

I knew the people who first started and modelled at insex and unless they changed dramatically, they were about making money to make a living and get ahead in life. Of course this was back in 97 or 98.

Of course there are porn sites and places that are money laundering operations, however that’s because drugs are illegal, prostitution is illegal and other things that enable organized crime to make a killing, (literal and figuratively) if you legalized most of this stuff and taxed the hell out of it, you’d most likely have an amazing amount of revenue coming in for the government and lower all the other taxes out there.

Of course, that would imply that we have rational discussion about Drugs and *gasp* sex. which we know… isn’t going to happen

[Mike]

insex.com you say…?

Why are my banner ads so unexciting? Let’s get Reason banned at work!

[Elemenope]

What I’ve always found odd is that if you pay someone to have sex with you, that’s a crime, but if you pay a person to have sex with you and then put a video camera in the room, it’s perfectly fine.

That being the case, why don’t more prostitutes buy video cameras? The unspoken agreement with the john/jane could be that the recording would be destroyed immediately after the session (you could even have *them* do it), and the cover would be that the “take” wasn’t good enough for the “film” you were “producing”.

[Brandybuck]

You don’t even need to destroy the video. Just give it to the john^H^H^H^Hproducer.

[joe]

Porn site operators.

Funding terrorist groups.

Do you think the people making that accusation actually believe it?

[something to put in this field]

can’t view the video currently, but based on what i know of the site, when insex pulled all their material back in around ’04 or so and sold the domain to some european or so, they said then they made the move on the ‘fear’ that the us govt would do something. they never said that dhs or anyone actually shut them down. and about a year ago they have brought some stuff back in limited release and the dude that ran the site is part of another outfit that appears to be the biggest competitor to kink.com (they have kinda of east coast west coast thing going on to)

[joe]

Back in 2001, Ashcroft took FBI agents off of terrorism cases to free up labor for obscenity prosecutions.

And now this.

[Elemenope]

Do you think the people making that accusation actually believe it?

Violent pornography: tool of the devil
Islam: tool of the devil

Srsly, think about who you’re talking about for a second. To some very special people, evil is an active entity with a single root and merely several earthly manifestations. It’s like playing spiritual whack-a-mole with the universe.

[joe]

Srsly, think about who you’re talking about for a second.

People who thought that Iraqi Baathists, then Iranian Shiites, were allies of al Qaeda.

You’ve got a point.

To some very special people, evil is an active entity with a single root and merely several earthly manifestations. You know who produced Woodstock? The communists.

[Elemenope]

You know who produced Woodstock? The communists.

I knew it!

[.]

Casa Blago: An Apocryphal Farewell

The scene: Early morning, in the living room of a house on the North Side of Chicago, the day after former governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH was removed from office. Outside, a limousine waits to take ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s wife, Patty, to the airport.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH: Last night we said a lot of s—. You said I was gonna do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing, and it’s f—ing golden: You’re getting on that plane where you belong.

Patti: But, Milorad, no, I, I–

ROD BLAGOJEVICH: Now, you’ve got to f—ing listen to me! You have any idea what s— you have to look forward to if you stay here? Nine chances out of 10, we’d both wind up in f—ing prison. Isn’t that true, [Deputy Governor A]?

Deputy Governor A: I’m afraid Patrick Fitzgerald would insist.

Patti: Tell him to hold up that f—ing s—. F— them.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH: It’s f—ing true. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not on it, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but f—ing soon and for the rest of your f—ing life.

Patti: But what about us?

ROD BLAGOJEVICH: We’ll always have Burris. We didn’t have, we’d lost it until you came to Casa Blago. We got it back last night, when those m—–f—ers impeached my a–.

Patti: And I said I would never leave you.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH: And you never will. But I’ve got a f—ing job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any f—ing part of. Patti, I’m no f—ing good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little m—–f—ers don’t amount to a sack of s— in this f—ed-up world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now–here’s looking at you, b—-.

[Randall]

“Of course there are porn sites and places that are money laundering operations, however that’s because drugs are illegal, prostitution is illegal and other things that enable organized crime to make a killing, (literal and figuratively) if you legalized most of this stuff and taxed the hell out of it, you’d most likely have an amazing amount of revenue coming in for the government and lower all the other taxes out there.”

You Libertarians make this point all the time, but if this really happened, a huge number of criminals would be out of work:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm

[J sub D]

Porn site operators.

Funding terrorist groups.

Do you think the people making that accusation actually believe it?

No. They think the public (and the jury) will believe it. They may be right. Americans are too stupid for self government.

[Pro Libertate]

There’s something wrong with this country if Blago doesn’t get his own talk show. Called Blago!

[Elemenope]

No. They think the public (and the jury) will believe it. They may be right. Americans are too stupid for self government.

J sub, I think you are underselling the subtlety of mental elision that led many of our fine Bush-era officers to blend “all bad things” into a giant, massive, undifferentiated pile. To, you know, burn.

Something they learned at that fine liberal arts institution, Liberty University.

[SpongePaul]

At This point, Would it not be easier for our lord and master the fed to tell us what does not contribute to terrosim. seems like our vices which he/christian right/ etc is the problem. Strange how drugs porn etc fund terroisim is it not. HMMM! Just another attack on freedoms is all it is, another way to steal rights under the guise of protecting us

[MNG]

Shouldn’t SIV show up to demonstrate how the DemocRATs were behind all this?

Or at the least a RINO…

[Sparky]

“Called Blago!”

Or “The F—ing Golden Hour, with Blago!”

Or, more in line with the topic of the thread, “The F—ing Golden Shower, with Blago!”

[Pro Libertate]

I wonder if Oprah would put him on her new network?

[affenkopf]

Related: Max Hardcore just got sentenced to 4 yeats in prsion: http://boingboing.net/2008/10/07/adult-film-director.html

[SIV]

Despite the elaborate equipment,interesting settings,obvious skill and attractive female models, Insex made a lot of very boring BDSM porn. I do like bits and pieces such as the girl in bondage getting shot in the ass by paintballs.

Their clips have more educational than erotic value IMHO.

[Chelle]

“Their clips have more educational than erotic value IMHO.”

That’s actually what I liked about them. Well, I mostly was into the insexm stuff and not so much the stuff with the female subs. The female sub stuff is often pretty cheesy, too, but very little of it involves the dominant dressing up like a super hero/villian and other totally humiliating bullshit.

Insex just wasn’t even porn, really. It was like a documentary series. They even started out the videos with an interview of the “victim”, which was often pretty interesting. I wouldn’t want to know jack shit about the people in *porn*.

[William Walsh]

I fund terrorism.

Name withheld by request.

[surfin]

i’d write more, but i’m on my way to a porn site.

[SIV]

How does bit torrent fund terrorism?

[Elemenope]

I do like bits and pieces such as the girl in bondage getting shot in the ass by paintballs.

Huh.

[Aresen]

joe | January 30, 2009, 5:03pm | #

Porn site operators.

Funding terrorist groups.

Do you think the people making that accusation actually believe it?

Sadly, I do.

Even sadder: They have power to act on that belief.

[Anna]

‘what i know of the site, when insex pulled all their material back in around ’04 or so and sold the domain to some european or so, they said then they made the move on the ‘fear’ that the us govt would do something. they never said that dhs or anyone actually shut them down.’

That was because of the gag order on the patriot act, it seemed like a better alternative than going to jail for talking about it.

[Paul]

Do you think the people making that accusation actually believe it?

It doesn’t matter. Laws like the PATRIOT act are routinely used to limit other activities having nothing to do with the initial intention of said act. Remember, in the end, a law is just a tool.

[Atanarjuat]

Something about the chick who was a cast member reminds me of my friend’s younger sister*.

*yes, she is over 18.

[BT6]

“if you legalized most of this stuff and taxed the hell out of it, you’d most likely have an amazing amount of revenue coming in for the government and lower all the other taxes out there.”

Perhaps so, but as long as the government plans to mess with out minds and screw us, they don’t want the competition.

[poster @ 5:05]

thanks for the response anna

[mephistefales]

“if you legalized most of this stuff and taxed the hell out of it, you’d most likely have an amazing amount of revenue coming in for the government and lower all the other taxes out there.”

But if you go nuts and truly “tax the hell out of it,” you risk driving it back underground. Money’s always an object. If cig. taxes go up enough, I may wind up casting my morals aside and purchasing mail-order smokes with Cyrillic on them, even though it would probably finance the Russian mob or Chechen rebels. Ah, the combination of addiction and limited funding…

Also, nobody on the supply side is just going to take a pay cut and bop merrily along because they’re on the good side of the fence now.

[Head]

damn, that blonde in the vid is smokin. Laura Lightly? (googles furiously)

[Young \'Un]

If you masturbate, the terrorists win.

[geo8rge]

Do you think you could fill in some details about exactly how the patriot act was invoked. I don’t understand exactly, something about credit cards?

[Chelle]

It wasn’t actually invoked. Due to some nasty loopholes in the Patriot Act, Homeland Security got to be in charge of a special task force to “eliminate obscenity”. They directly threatened Insex with prosecution that would have cost the company bitchloads of money to defend against. They’d have gone bankrupt.

The company was already considering closing up shop when the Feds decided it would be better to start targeting the credit card processors. Some card processors were pretty much only in business *because* of the internet porn industry. If you shut them down, then the people distributing the porn can’t get paid.

The company handling Insex at the time informed them that they weren’t willing to take the risk of getting shut down and dropped their most high-profile client. Insex went looking for another processor and kept getting shot down. So they sold the video rights to some dutch people for almost nothing considering what that empire would have been worth before the legislative assfucking.

FYI, the dutch company apparently still sells “tickets” to access the videos, but you have to mail in the payments. They don’t use CCs at all.

[joe]

The USA PATRIOT Act authorizes the feds to demand all sorts of information from banks – without warrants, of course – about customers/clients that the feds decide they want to look at closer as part of a terrorism investigation.

No bank wants to be buried under mountains of reporting requirements. Nor do they want to get on the feds’ bad side by pushing back.

So it’s pretty easy for the feds to get a bank to stop servicing a client.

[Mephistefales]

Heh heh, you said “servicing.”

[Robin]

Those must be some pretty freewheeling Islamic fundamentalist extremists, but what do they have against porn that isn’t hardcore bondage?

[Art-P.O.G.]

Hmmm…”freewheeling Islamic fundamentalist extremists”…”porn” and “hardcore bondage” in one sentence. Best sentence ever?

[Wicks Cherrycoke]

Did anyone actually see this letter from Homeland Security? After hearing the closing speech from the producer, my spider senses make me wonder if we are getting a straight story here.

[Anna]

The founder of Insex.com saw the letter:
http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=GL4rUYOTvYg

[Michael Claymore]

Puritan claptrap dressed up as patriotism.

[JB]

Hell, let’s close down the Oral Office.

We know Slick Willy used that place to ignore Osama while getting head from an intern.

[recorded]

Nick Gillespie, wearing not but his leather jacket, sits on a metal folding chair and masturbates to the bondage pornography.

Did any of you people even google this outfit? Sounds quite unhinged.

http://arkansas.indymedia.org/newswire/display/19165/index.php

http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/18775/index.php

Reason, if not for Radley Balko, I would not read your website. I just realized that today.

What’s that? Balko has his own site, theagitator.com?

Looks like this is goodbye Reason. I guess nothing lasts forever, but I thought I would be reading you for quite a long time.

The sad thing is, I never even got to read that copy of The Fountainhead that you got me for our anniversary. In fact, I’m going to go burn it right now.

This comment may have been recorded for political control purposes.

[Stevo Darkly]

I’m glad the government is cracking down on this pretend-torture. It makes me feel a lot better about the real torture the government has been doing.

[Basement dweller]

wtf @ recorded

[Free Templates]

This is a nice and neat step taken by Reason.tv. We must support and encourage them to keep carrying on.