Filmmaker Gets 4 Years for Grossing Out Jurors

[DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav]

Jacob Sullum|Jan. 16, 2013 7:41 pm

Today Ira Isaacs, a self-described "shock artist," was sentenced to four years in federal prison for shocking people a little too much. The FBI describes his crimes:

Evidence presented at trial established that beginning in or about 1999 and continuing until at least 2011, Isaacs, doing business under the name LA. Media, operated numerous websites, through which he advertised and sold obscene videos that he acquired from other people. The obscene videos included a video approximately two hours in length of a female engaging in sex acts involving human bodily waste and a video one hour and 37 minutes in length of a female engaged in sex acts with animals. The evidence presented at trial also established that in approximately 2004, Isaacs began operating under the name Stolen Car Films and made obscene videos in which he instructed women to engage in sexual activity involving human bodily waste.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/16/fillmmaker-gets-four-years-in-prison-for

I don't agree with what he was doing on a moral level and personally this disgusts me. I didn't see the films so I'm not sure if animal cruelty could be an issue, however as long as the humans involved were consenting adults and the humans who watch are consenting adults, I believe he should have by law the right to film this crap.

[The Magistrate]

1. Oh, This Is Going To End Well, Fella....

[jberryhill]

28. Four Jurors One Hide

[Luminous Animal]

2. Are the animals consenting adults?

[HappyMe]

3. Oh boy.

You might want to self-delete.

[quinnox]

4. yikes, I'm grossed out just reading it

I'm glad there is at least a MINIMAL standard on obscenity, apparently. And this sure as shit qualifies! No, people should not be able to film this disgusting stuff.

[Brother Buzz]

5. The defense should have packed the panel with DU jurors

[randome]

19. So it would end in chaos and inflghting and be declared a mistrial?

[alphafemale]

6. I'd imagine animal cruelty is the issue.

Possibly even one of the "crushing fetish" cases.

That is where a stiletto heel is shown piercing a body of a helpless infant animal.

Some people suck.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

27. Wasn't there a SCOTUS case, in which only Alito objected to crush films? n/t

[Deep13]

7. Revolting, disgusting, horrible, and protected by the 1st Amendment. nt

[EOTE]

18. Beastiality is protected by the 1st Amendment? NT

[Deep13]

24. The portrayal of it is...

...and the act might be too. Sorry, I'm really not worried about how the animals feel about it.

[bunnies]

8. Anyone care to join me on the couch?

[lpbk2713]

10. Pass the salt wouldja?

While I kick my feet up on the coffee table.

[bunnies]

11. Ive got plenty!

We could be here a while!

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. I smell a "progressive blue screen of death" coming...

Denigrating women, cruelty to animals but all sacred, always noble porn. Consenting adults, porn, artistic freedom, porn. But its horrifying, but its PORN.... We. Must. Defend. It.



It's like dividing by zero.

[Hippo_Tron]

16. Look, I can live with obscenity laws

But is it really necessary to send the guy to prison for 4 years? How about shut down is business and fine him. We have way too many people in prison as it is.

[2naSalit]

17. And besides

he might enjoy it too much.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

21. I'm personally a big believer in severe public beatings for douchebag behavior...

But the prevailing DU jurisprudence doesn't share my beliefs.

[NYC Liberal]

25. Patronizing women and telling them they can't make their own choices

is pretty denigrating.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

32. Freedom is the absense of coercion, not merely being physically unimpeded by authority.

Causation matters.

[NYC Liberal]

33. Which goes back to my point.

A woman makes a choice you don't like, so she must have been coerced. Is that your position for all pornography?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

34. If you want to believe that a tangible number of people completely free of coersive forces

make a conscious and informed decision that being filmed "engaging in sex acts involving human bodily waste" is a life experience they just really, really want to have... please tell me what color the sky is in creepy libertarian land.

I have family in the porn industry, and quite frankly i'm not a fan. But there is a huge difference between nudity and a blowjob and "sex acts involving human bodily waste".

[NYC Liberal]

35. I was responding to the more general point you made about porn.

Nonetheless, if you want to believe that of the millions and millions of women in this country, you can't find two or three who are into that sort of thing, then I would suggest you do a little more research. There are fetishes of every imaginable type; some are quite disgusting and, yes, some do involve feces and urine. That goes for both men and women. Just because it's not your "thing" (or mine, for that matter), and just because you or I might doesn't understand it, doesn't mean it's impossible for others to be into it without being coerced or threatened.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

36. the general point was about DU's sacred cows

Where contradictory hardline beliefs lead to some spectacular contortions. Such as an impassioned defense of driving stoned, Larry Craig's courtship rituals and a litany of others.

As for porn itself, most of the women who appear in "pervert with a camcorder" porn are recruited from a handful of sketchy L.A. "modeling" agencies that prey on the young, stupid and most importantly broke. Not sexually empowered fetishists.

My quarrel with the libertarian attitudes about the sex trade is that poverty is in and of itself every bit as coercive as any sexual predator. I don't consider a person living on the economic fringe participating in the sex trade for survival a "consenting adult".

[bluestateguy]

12. I can support his right to free expression until he starts hurting animals

Adults can consent, animals cannot.

[rrneck]

13. From the movie First Monday in October (1981)

How do you tell the difference between really bad porn and really good art? I recall a performance artist who bathed in pig offal. And another who did "paint enemas". And of course there's Vito Acconci's Seedbed.

In the piece, there is a low wooden ramp merging with the floor. The ramp extends across the width of the room, beginning two feet up the side of one wall and slanting down to the middle of the floor.

In his original performance of the piece, Acconci lay hidden underneath the ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating. The artist's spoken fantasies about the visitors walking above him were heard through loudspeakers in the gallery.

Performance artists are so out there.

This guy? I hope there aren't enough people in the world who would get off on the crap he produced to be able to call it porn. Then again there might. If you add to them the number of people who would look at just plain old shock content to be able to say they had seen it, maybe it was a money making proposition. Was it art? I don't think he intended it to be so. I don't think the jury thought so either.

One of the most famous tropes in art school is "where are you going with this?" In the trial of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnatti's exhibition of the Mapplethorpe exhibit the jury could see the artist was going somewhere worthwhile, which is to say he was going for a deeper insight into the human condition. This Isaacs asshole was just going to the bank.

[REP]

31. When I first read a review of this, I thought I was reading a parody:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cremaster_Cycle

(the review was in Harper's)

[flamingdem]

14. Dummy, he should have just called it "performance art" n/t

[RedCappedBandit]

15. Sex with animals is animal cruelty, not protected by free speech

The other 'gross' stuff is probably just incidental.

[MadrasT]

20. Animals can't consent. This is likely animal cruelty,

in which case 4 years isn't enough.

I don't care what people want to do with human body waste.

You don't do that to animals.

[kenny blankenship]

23. They also don't consent to being poleaxed

but nobody calls it murder, except PETA. And vegans. And I suppose Hindus and maybe some Buddhists. But nobody we have to listen to!

[LeftyMom]

22. Fuck that animal abuser. Hope he enjoys prison.

[undeterred]

26. Plenty of his kind there.

[stultusporcos]

29. Consenting adults who cares the animals did not have a choice and he deserves more than jail

He should have been found guilty for animal cruelty but that was not the charge so I would have let him walk, it is art. I don’t like it but I don’t have too either, he has the right to make it with those who freely choose to participate.

The use of animals is what pisses me off.

[Texasgal]

30. animal abusers can go to hell

for all I care!

The animals are NOT consenting adults! Four years dosen't cut it for this sick asshole!

[derby378]

37. It's really simple...

If humans instruct domesticated animals to serve as sexual objects, that is a form of animal abuse - they trust us to take care of them, and we are taking advantage of that trust.

If, on the other hand, a wild animal uses one of us hairless apes as a sexual object, it can be funny as hell. Observe: