This latest setback really does explain a lot about their hinky attitude, but I think you’re right about the need to build political capital. I would say that approach has served Kink.com well when they’ve come under fire in San Francisco. Having people willing to go to bat for you when the muckrakers attack is invaluable.

Like you, I was approached by them for advertising and PR some time ago. I cracked up about a “yoga class” pictorial they did, which I featured on my blog. I asked if I could talk to someone, a fun interview, like I’ve done with other producers/directors. I like to find people to talk to in the Biz who do something different, creative, etc.

Anyway, to my surprise, I found that they were really nervous about talking to me about anything, at all. Did not want any sort of public profile, no matter how positive or engaging. And that whole thing about how it wasn’t “porn” and how very strict they were on that subject.

I know that they people running it couldn’t possibly be lighthearted young models, such as their subjects are. Their caution made me wonder… what have they experienced at the hands of Aus. law before? I knew that was the rubbing point. I have been unable to show my scholarly.. and I mean it, it’s frickin’ scholarly… film presentations on the history of pornography, in Australia, under ANY circumstances, because of their “obscenity” laws. I faced the same laws in Britain, for example, but when the BritishFilm Institute invited me, the doors opened. In Australia, no way.

Now I have read the local laws in Victoria they’re charged with and what I wanna know is damn, how could they have thought they could operate in that town? I mean they’re horrendous, absurd, right out of the Puritan’s Bible, but what a risk to run a scene there. Esp. if you didn’t build any political capital, any comraderie, just hiding instead. It was so risky. Well, I’m sure there are many elements we’re completely unaware of.

As to if the site was run and hosted in the US, perhaps that depends on which city and state the servers are in. Australia’s state’s laws are mostly the same on this kind of thing, our commonwealth government (the federal level) has a much more direct role in lawmaking, and our laws are much more uniform than those in the US.

Can you tell me that a site like AbbyWinters.com would get the same treatment if it was hosted in Utah, as if it was hosted in California?

And as knittedgoat mentioned, sometimes conservatives get their knickers in a knot, demand police action, the police raid someone, seize some stuff, and then it all quietly gets returned with no charges laid after the newspapers get their story, the church group gets their righteous indignation, the politician gets his votes, etc.

I ask because you’re just not correct. Something like this — with porn as tame as the Abby Winters stuff — simply could not happen in much of modern Europe.

Several of our Australian friends have said things, like Justin above…. “You’re coming along America, but I’m afraid we’re leading the way in a few small areas”. Ok, I’ll grant that, but I wonder…. if AbbyWinters.com was a site produced and hosted in the US, run in exactly the same way with exactly the same content, would this have happened here?

As the great firewall of Australia, I’ve been watching it’s development closely, being active in local politics, a computer geek, and a computer tech working for a state school where we are expected to keep as much stuff out of kid’s computers as possbile (we block what we find, but acknowledge it’s an unending battle). Senator Stephen Conroy, the lead ‘architect’ (he would shame any trained person of that description) of the firewall is a known religious conservative, and only given the portfolio he has (Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) because he asked for it and noone else cared about it. Incidentally, he was born in England and immigrated to Australia at the age of ten, at which time he was enrolled in a Catholic school.

He’s hated by members of his own party for his pig-headed obsession with filtering the internet, a project which his advisors would have told him not to get involved in, if he hadn’t chosen people who would tell him what he wanted to hear, as it’s a pet project. Other party members think he’s an idiot, and wasting everyone’s time. As you would expect, filtering the internet is well nigh impossible (ref China, Iran, etc and their failures to control online communications), and the tests they’ve been running have proven that. Noone has heard of the whole project for months now, which is a Very Good Thing.

We also recently had a scandal when someone complained that nude photos taken by a well-known photographer of young teens were pornographic. The pictures were taken with parental consent and the artist’s work sells for high prices, at this gallery showing however police confiscated all the framed pictures to check for indecent content. All were later returned with an admission that none were pornographic.

I’d say, overall, we’re not doing too bady. There are some things we’re lagging behind on, another unenforced law in Queensland, a very populous north-eastern state that is often quite conservative, bans abortion, yet this procedure is administered by publicly funded doctors. We do however have very flexible and sensitive age of consent laws, if the judge determines that there was no abuse of power and both partners were willing, there is very wide leeway for him to throw a case out, with partners two or even three years in age difference (ie 15 and 18) being let go without charges, or not even being charged in the first place.

You’re coming along America, but I’m afraid we’re leading the way in a few small areas. We’re still having trouble with same-sex marriages though :(