Daze Reader

A few weeks ago, the company that owns the Three Stooges trademark threatened to sue the company that made the porn parody Not the Three Stooges XXX. That lawsuit would lose. The right to make porn parodies, without permission from or payment to the original copyright holders, is protected by a very strong precedent.

This week, lawyers for EL James issued a cease & desist order against Adult Source Media, which recently announced plans to make a hardcore porn version of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. This legal threat has a better shot. (Disclaimer: Daze is not a lawyer.) Excerpts from the April 24 XBiz article “Adult Source Media to Make XXX Adaption of Fifty Shades of Grey”:

Adult Source Media has announced that its Romance studio, Intimate Encounters, has begun pre-production of a XXX film adaption of the literary sensation, Fifty Shades of Grey.

The film will be a realistic and intimate adaption of E.L. James best-selling erotic novel.

“Women throughout the world are fascinated by Fifty Shades of Grey,” said Adult Source Media President Wendy Crawford. [...] The amazing thing is how I keep getting calls from girlfriends who traditionally are shy about discussing their sex lives, asking me what films they can watch to get a better visual of the story. That’s where Intimate Encounters comes in. This will certainly be the most highly anticipated adult romance film of the year.”

ASM VP of Sales John Amatucci has promised that Intimate Encounters will deliver a “spot on take” of Fifty Shades of Grey, re-creating the sex scenes that have propelled the book to the top of the New York Times and Amazon.com bestsellers lists.

“The feedback we’ve received, is that while women genuinely enjoy the literal aspects of the novel, what really has them intrigued is the incredible sex between the novels main characters Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, and how that sex can be duplicated and re-created for the screen,” Amatucci said. “And that’s exactly what we are going to give them. In addition to the adult market, our vast network of mainstream retailers & distributors have been begging us to create a soft version, so we will have a version that will be on the retail shelves of every major chain in the country.”

That doesn’t sound like a parody of Fifty Shades of Grey, that sounds like a straight adaptation. The novel is a steamy BDSM romance with explicit sex scenes; the proposed film will be a steamy BDSM romance with explicit sex scenes. ASM execs boxed themselves into a corner by billing their project as a “romance” aimed at the novel’s female readers, and announcing their intent to “duplicate and re-create” the sex scenes in a “spot on take” of the novel. The proposed “soft” “mainstream” cut of the ASM/Intimate Encounters version would presumably be very similar to the inevitable Hollywood adaptation, except with a much lower budget. Where’s the parody element?

ASM execs sound clueless about the legal issues in the latest XBiz article:

Adult Source Media’s legal counsel has responded, reminding the author’s representatives that Adult Source Media’s upcoming project does not violate any intellectual property rights. As explained by ASM’s lawyers, “the naked truth is, the adult film industry is not excluded from the protections of the fair use doctrine.”

Producing a feature-length adaptation of a novel does not fall under “fair use”. If a Hollywood studio wants to make a feature adaptation of a best-selling novel like Twilight, it has to negotiate adaptation rights with the author. On the other hand, if a porn studio wants to make a feature-length XXX version of Twilight with nonstop fucking between pornstars with vaguely gothy makeup and plastic fangs, and they clearly label it “PARODY”, they’re legally in the clear and don’t have to pay Stephanie Meyer a penny.

Would ASM’s proposed film be a protected parody or an unauthorized adaptation? EL James and her lawyers seem to have a pretty good case here. Again, I’m no lawyer and don’t claim to understand all the legal issues at stake.

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Federal prosecutors had failed twice before to convict Ira Isaacs on obscenity counts, but their third try worked. Ira Isaacs Found Guilty on Five Counts of Federal Obscenity.

The charges covered Isaacs’ distribution of four titles — Mako’s First Time Scat, Hollywood Scat Amateurs #7, Hollywood Scat Amateurs #10 and Japanese Doggie 3 Way — through his company Stolen Car Films.

Earlier coverage of Isaacs’ second trial with premature headline: Ira Isaacs Beats The Rap.

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I’d never heard the phrase “gateway sexual activity” before the state of Tennessee declared it verboten in sex ed classes, but it sounds like fun. Here’s how one state legislator there explained it:

“Everybody knows there are certain buttons when you push them, certain switches when you turn them on, there’s no stopping, especially for undisciplined, untrained, untaught and unraised children who just want to feel affection from somebody or anybody.”

The part about pushing buttons and turning on switches definitely sounds like fun.

As for the danger of undisciplined, untrained, untaught and unraised adolescents experimenting with sex, one could make a good argument that disciplining, training, teaching and raising them is a better solution than keeping them as undisciplined, untrained, untaught and unraised as possible.

This whole kerfuffle seems very quaint. The thinking apparently goes, if the government makes it illegal to tell adolescents that sex exists, they’ll never find out. Problem solved. Even before the internet, this was unlikely to work.

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Sacha Baron Cohen has been making the talk show and red carpet circuit in character as Admiral General Aladeen, complete with a brigade of uniformed virgin bodyguards toting AK-47s. The conceit barely counts as satire, since Moammar Qaddafi did the exact same thing in real life. Call it homage.

If anything, Qaddafi’s version was more modern. Aladeen’s bodyguards wear identical uniforms, while Qaddafi’s bodyguards often wore varied but complementary looks. The Pussycat Dolls don’t go onstage wearing identical outfits, why should a dictator’s personal guard have to?

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Thanks to the efforts of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and others, last week brought good news for comics fans, ethical pervs and free speech partisans. Canadian Court Drops Criminal Charges in Manga Customs Case.

Ryan Matheson faced criminal child porn charges after Canadian customs agents searched his computer. Comic Book Resources explains:

Upon going through the files, the customs officer found an image that was described in the court papers as “a collage of 48 discrete animated images which portray ‘persons’ involved in sexual acts.” This image is actually a moe-style parody of a classical Japanese woodblock print titled Shijūhatte, which roughly translates to “the 48 positions,” and is in turn based on a print of the 48 wrestling positions. Moe is a Japanese style of super-cute, childlike figures. While the illustration does show these figures having sex, there is very little detail.

The linked page at Sankaku Complex includes the original wrestling print, the classic Shijūhatte print and the moe-style Shijūhatte which Canadian border agents found obscene. If you google “moe Shijūhatte”, you’ll find the image at dozens of other sites.

The settlement after two years allows Matheson to avoid a criminal record and sex offender status.

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