Iraq-corpse Web site operator held for obscenity

The American operator of a Web site which posted grisly pictures of people killed in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts was arrested on obscenity charges unrelated to the war photos, police officials in Florida said.

The Polk County sheriff's office said Christopher Michael Wilson was arrested on Friday and faces one count of wholesale distribution of obscene material and 300 misdemeanor charges relating to the Web site and pornographic photos.

The charges were unrelated to the photos of corpses from Iraq and Afghanistan, which the site states were provided by U.S. troops in exchange for free access to pornographic material.

Several of the graphic pictures showed men wearing what looked like U.S. military uniforms, standing over charred corpses, mutilated bodies and severed body parts.

Many were accompanied by captions making light of the corpses. One photo of a charred body was dubbed "Cooked Iraqi."

The Pentagon has said it found no evidence any of the photos were posted by soldiers.

Wilson was being held in jail under a $151,000 bond, the Polk County sheriff's office said.

"In my 33 years of law enforcement experience, this is one of the most horrific examples of filthy, obscene materials we have ever seized," Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement. He did not elaborate.

Judd said the investigation was continuing and any pertinent information would be shared with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division.

Judd told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper his investigation was not spurred by federal authorities.

BTW, the 06/07 term of the Supreme Court may have up to four obscenity cases on the docket. There's an internet "community standards" challenge from New York; a straightforward "right to acquire" case from Pennsylvania (that one is challenging the constitutionality of any federal prohibition); a §2257 record-keeping case from Colorado (mainly dealing with the distinction between "primary" and "secondary" distributors); and now this case from Florida, although it's unclear on what basis the guaranteed appeals will get filed.

Well, speaking from memory, the case from New York was brought by a dominatrix photographer whose artwork is reputedly similar in style to Robert Mapplethorpe's, if you recall that controversy. The basic dispute involves her contention that, as an Upstate New York artist primarily distributing her works over the internet, she should not be held to the "community standards" of rural Alabama. I wouldn't mind reviewing her work myself, as a professional service of course. =)

As for the Pennsylvania case, that one is the one brought by the Justice Department against California-based Extreme Associates, and from what I've gathered their productions are about as vile as they get. What's shocking is that the District Court ruled in their favor, based in part on the Lawrence precedent. The basic judgment is as follows: since individuals have the right to possess obscene materials (by decades-old precedent) they therefore have the right to acquire obscene materials, and if they have the right to acquire obscene materials, then they have the right to have obscene materials distributed to them, and in order for the right to mean anything, others have the right to distribute the materials to them.

Now, with the Colorado case, that one involves the §2257 revisions that require secondary producers to maintain ID records as if they were primary producers. The focus of contention involves the internet, because the vast majority of what appears on the internet is copied or linked from elsewhere, and it's utterly impossible to maintain the newly required records. Moreover, the new rules are retroactive to 1995, so that many post-1995 depictions don't have the required records (e.g., photocopy of DL) and cannot track down the performers now. Moreover, the rules require that the full identifying information be provided with every copy of the depiction, and so the performers real names and addresses would be made public.

And, then there's this Florida case, with at least a couple very interesting issues that I can see: (1) cyberspace jurisdiction; and (2) host liability. Those of course have major implications on the broader internet as a whole. Finally, so far as I can tell, this web forum is not a commercial enterprise, and that adds yet another interesting dimension to the case.

I don't know if you find all this as intriguing as I do, but pinged you over just in case!

e basic dispute involves her contention that, as an Upstate New York artist primarily distributing her works over the internet, she should not be held to the "community standards" of rural Alabama.

Not an unreasonable argument, in a sense. As I recall, SCOTUS rejected the notion that varying community standards were impermissible in Sable, and courts have been following that rationale basically ever since - infamously, in the so-called "Amateur Action" case of some ten years ago. The problem, I think, is that the courts are, as always, slow to adapt to a changing world - community standards are increasingly difficult to define as the definition of "community" itself changes.

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