Porn wouldn't exist without millions wanting it, and while privacy isn't guaranteed by the Constitution, people don't want others telling them what to do behind closed doors, and more lawmakers agree, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt told National Public Radio in an April 14 interview on the afternoon news program, Day to Day.
"Privacy is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution like freedom of speech is in the First Amendment," he told NPR, "but I think there are a lot of people that want to remain anonymous, and want to try and hang onto [their anonymity], and probably some of the lawmakers feel that way as well."
Flynt's interview came as part of a brief segment on the adult Internet and a likely federal crackdown on online porn, which he suggested was going to be a lot harder to do than the government thinks.
"The genie is out of the bottle," he said of Internet porn. "It's not going to go away. And, people are no longer interested in having others tell them what they can read, or what they can see, or what they can do, in the privacy of their own home."
Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow told Day to Day correspondent Xeni Jardin that things like a federal bid to crack down on online porn and even certain other materials, as some also fear could happen, "are about controlling the Internet.
"And one of the ways in which they're trying to control the Internet is by embedding things in the very architecture of computing that will make anonymity impossible," Barlow continued. "I mean, the new trusted computing model that is being developed by Microsoft and Intel will make it very difficult for you to have anything coming into or leaving your computer that doesn't have your identity attached to it. And this is something, I think, that the government is going to find very useful."
Even a known and vocal opponent of adult entertainment like the American Family Association knows, as general counsel Patrick Vaughan told Day to Day, that handling e-porn is "not something that is full of real simple solutions. There probably is a role for government to play," he continued. "Sometimes, it's appropriate for the government to say, 'We want this piece of information, so we can regulate'."
Vaughan compared online porn to pollution regulation – but not quite in the way you might think upon first seeing the phrasing. "Compare [regulating the adult Internet] to regulating polluters. There's always a well-funded industry that fights all attempts at regulating pollution. And [they say] if you do this, you're going to ruin the industry," Vaughan said. "Society has to balance how do we have a vibrant industry and, also, how do we make it so that people can protect themselves from stuff they don't want to see, protect their children from things that might be harmful to them."
Flynt alluded again to the Extreme Associates case, reiterating comments he had made earlier this month to AVN regarding his view of why the government hit Extreme last August with a ten-count indictment on federal obscenity charges, and answering Extreme chieftain Robert Zicari (Rob Black), who had suggested Flynt and others in adult entertainment had lent him little help with his defense.
"I like to say that we stick to plain old vanilla sex," said Flynt – no stranger himself to obscenity prosecutions – on Day to Day. "And it seems to keep us out of trouble. When they push the envelope, they've got to realize that they're inviting prosecution. I went through all that 30 years ago."
