World Sex Sells News

  Prosperity and Justice Unlikely

I guess that the finer points of law  being debated are about which body part to hack off as punishment and whether to give a fuck if innocent people are persecuted too.

From the Jakarta Post

The Depok City Council in Indonesia will start deliberating next month the draft of an ordinance banning prostitution, the chairwoman of the Prosperous Justice Party faction, Qurtifa Wijaya, said: We're already 80% through, so hopefully we'll finish the draft by the end of the month and begin deliberating it next month.

Qurtifa said the council's working committee had conducted a comparative study in Sukabumi where the Sukabumi City Council is currently deliberating a bill on alcohol, prostitution and narcotics.

Councillor Ahmad Dahlan said scholars and experts would be invited to make recommendations. We hope they can improve the draft because it will be in everyone's best interests if it is passed into law.

Tangerang municipality was the first to bring in bylaws banning alcohol and prostitution. But experts said the law on prostitution contained definitions so vague it could be used to target women who went out by themselves after dark.

  Jamaican Porn

Based on an article from  Jamaica Gleaner

Athrong of hedonists crowds the stage at a popular nightclub in the Corporate Area to watch live sex onstage. This is one of several exotic clubs that have mushroomed across the island in recent years. Patrons go to witness the production of pornography. Tonight is one of those nights.

However, this is nothing new, as for almost two decades now strip clubs have been morphing into cafés of pornography. But the question for many is, what has caused this increase?

For Dr. Glenda Simms, former executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs, the high unemployment rate is the primary cause of the growing pornographic industry.

The Statistical Institute of Jamaica reveals that the unemployment rate for women in Jamaica is two times greater than their male counterparts. In 2005, the unemployment rate for men was almost eight per cent, while for women was near 16 per cent.

Hilary Nicholson, programme coordinator at Women's Media Watch, points to this high unemployment rate among the nation's females, coupled with the meagre pay from dead-end jobs, as a significant factor in their getting involved in pornography.

But what started as a trickle has now morphed into a thriving underground industry. It is not certain how many pornographic movies have been made in Jamaica, However it seems that the industry is growing rapidly

  An Extreme Divide

Based on an article from  Wired

Obscenity prosecutions are taking a toll on the US porn industry as publishers embrace an every-man-for-himself approach under relentless Bush administration attacks.

The annual Cybernet Expo on Sunday here was overshadowed by a big question: Whether to stand united with producers of "extreme" material bearing the brunt of the assault in order to preempt attacks on milder content, or get some distance and hope to avoid being targeted?

Tara, webmaster of freepornstarpix.com, prefers the latter approach. It would be better to sacrifice some people … so everybody else can get on with it, said Tara, who declined to give her last name because her family doesn't know about her job. Extreme content producers, she said, need to cool it, pull back a little bit.

The focus of the debate is the 2003 obscenity prosecution of production company Extreme Associates for videos that feature urination, adults portrayed as children and simulated rape. The case, which has been bouncing around the court system for three years, is expected to go to trial in Pittsburgh next year.

Extreme Associates owner Rob Black blasted the porn industry this weekend for breaking ranks, rather than standing united. You hear all this solidarity. Bullshit. This industry except for about five people has hung me out to dry. Everybody wants to make a fucking compromise.

Pressure against the industry increased last month with a landmark lawsuit that appears to target a somewhat milder grade of porn. The Justice Department issued an obscenity indictment against JM Productions and Five Star Video over four porn DVDs, one featuring bukkake and another that reportedly simulates torturous oral sex to satirize the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The defendants face a maximum sentence of five years for each of several obscenity counts.

In the new prosecution, the government is getting closer to the center and moving away from the most extreme content, said Connor Young, president of the porn webmaster resource site YNOT.com. He thinks all porn should be allowed except material that features children or involuntary violence.

Porn industry attorney Greg Piccionelli believes in the solidarity approach. If we don't defend the people they start with, sooner or later they'll work their way down, he told the webmasters.

Piccionelli acknowledged that industry attorneys have developed a reputation as "Chicken Littles" who always say the sky is falling. Even so, he predicted that if another Republican enters the White House: the whole industry will be in the same position as Extreme Associates four years from now.

Update: Charges Dropped

20th October 2007

All obscenity charges against JM Productions and owner Jeff Steward have been dropped in federal court. The charges were dropped by the government because of lack of evidence and that officials didn't feel there was enough of a case to pursue.

  Sing a Song of Repression

From Canada.com

Vietnam's popular karaoke bars, renowned for hard drinking and prostitution, face harsh new restrictions starting in July, according to a government decree.

The decree, issued this month by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai bans karaoke bar patrons from drinking spirits, imposes fines for public drunkenness and limits the number of servers to one person per room to discourage prostitution.

From July 1, drinking spirits in karaoke lounges is subject to a fine of up to 1.5 million dong (US$94), equivalent to a monthly salary of a government official.

Public drunkenness in any place out of the home including in clubs and restaurants, is punishable by up to 500,000 dong (US$31), the decree said.

Lounge owners would also be fined up to 4 million dong ($250) if they use more than one person per room.

  Feminists Turned On To Porn

From Canada.com

There There was a time when all you had to do to get women hot and bothered was mention pornography. Some would simply swear they weren't interested in looking at such images, that they found them neither arousing nor attractive. Others went further, declaring pornography to be exploitative, dangerous and violent. In 1986, feminist Andrea Dworkin equated pornography and rape, claiming it was used to plan, execute, choreograph and engender the excitement to commit the act.

It is amazing, then, that 20 years after Dworkin's hard-core-porn put-down, a group of 300 feminists from Canada and the U.S. would gather at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel to honour pornographers at the First Annual Feminist Porn Awards.

No one protested, no one heckled, no one accused the organizers of setting the women's movement back, or letting women down. Rather, the women and men who attended the event listened politely as a panel of female pornographers discussed their trade.

There was polite applause as statuettes were awarded in such categories as Fiercest Female Orgasm and Lifetime Achievement in Women's Erotica.

To win a Feminist Porn Award a film had to feature female sexual pleasure and represent authentic women's erotica. The films up for awards offered a range of body types, skin tones and sexual tastes -- from the Harlequinesque films of female porn pioneer Candida Royalle to the MTV-inspired girl-on-girl action of Dana Dane's erotic music videos.

Tristan Taormino, the producer of the House of Ass porn series, said that when she appeared on a panel at Yale law school, a professor stood up and announced that all pornography is prostitution and that all pornographers are pimps.

I watched a movie by Toronto director Angela Phong and wondered how anyone could enjoy watching such unattractive people having sex, an observation that is unlikely to endear me to my fellow feminists.

That said, consumer reports don't lie -- business is booming. Candida Royalle said the industry was skeptical of her romantically charged porn until they saw how well it was selling. Taormino's movies are best-sellers in the American midwest.

Now, it seems, we can get hot and bothered with pornography without, as in the past, getting hot and bothered about pornography.

  Swiss Bonk Account

From SwissInfo

Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but prostitutes have to register with city authorities and health authorities and get regular health checks.

Pimping is illegal and uncommon: most prostitutes operate independently from small studios via mobile phones. They cannot display their wares.

Human trafficking in persons can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years and coercing a person into prostitution is punishable with up to ten years in prison.

The number of prostitutes and sex clubs has risen over the past few years, but the industry has become more violent, says a federal police internal security report.

Prostitution in Switzerland generates an annual turnover of SFr3.2 billion ($2.65 billion). This upsurge in activity is also reflected in the parallel rise in prostitution-related human trafficking cases.

The number of prostitutes in Zurich has increased by 20% since 2003, according to the 2005 annual report. In canton Basel, a new brothel opened every two weeks while the number of prostitutes went up in Geneva by 50% from 700 to over 1,000. Around 14,000 prostitutes worked in Switzerland in 2005, the majority of whom were immigrants.

Brigitte Honauer, a former dancer and cabaret manager from canton Solothurn, is critical of the recent growth, blaming the bars and saunas that employ illegal sex workers.

The girls who work in those kind of places are not there legally, said Honauer. The police carry out raids, but the very next day they are replaced by a whole new set of girls. We have been on about it for years but seemingly nothing can be done.

Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but heavily regulated to try to control and reduce the more undesirable consequences, such as forced prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, the locations of brothels and links with criminal organisations.

In their annual report, the police highlight the rise in human trafficking cases, the majority of which are linked to prostitution. The police estimate that there could be between 1,500 and 3,000 victims of human trafficking in Switzerland at present.

Sex can be a very lucrative business. Clubs and massage parlours tend to attract criminal elements from Switzerland and abroad, say the police. And with such huge profits up for grabs, criminals take higher risks, " said Jorg Bohler, from the Federal Police Office.

The authorities say that the rise in the supply, with more girls and clubs, is destabilising the industry.

There are turf wars going on over each group's share of the cake. New gangs are moving in and pushing the old ones out, resulting in shootings and arson attacks on rivals' clubs and bars, " said Bohler.

  Beware of Car Thieves

Based on an article from Canoe

Kerb crawling  husbands could be heading home without the family car in just over a month, as the province of Calgary in Canada enacts legislation allowing police to seize the cars of prostitutes' customers.

Provincial spokesman Bart Johnson said that the details are all but worked out, and the first cars will be impounded "in a month or so." It's one thing to say police can seize cars, but we need to have the processes in place to support that, said Johnson, spokesman for Alberta Infrastructure. Those processes are now in place, and the regulation is being fined tuned — it will come into effect very shortly."

Bill 206, as it was called, passed through the Legislature as a Private Member's Bill in December 2003, and was later amended to reflect Alberta's vehicle registry system, becoming law in May 2005.

It allows police to seize any vehicle used in the solicitation of prostitution, with the impounded car returned upon a not-guilty verdict, or after a first-offender partakes in an education program.

The province's promise of imminent seizures came after Ald. Joe Ceci held a press conference to blast the government for dawdling on what he says is an essential tool to deter the customers of prostitutes.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan already have similar laws.

  Politicians Hate Love

From Mainichi Daily News

Short time rooms are poised to disappear from Shibuya's renowned Love Hotel Hill as politicians move toward cleaning up one of the favorite spots for young Tokyoites.

Love Hotel Hill, or the Maruyamacho district of Shibuya as it is more formally known, is one of the most prominent and best-known gatherings of love hotels across Japan.

Love hotels, which rent out rooms for sex on an hourly or overnight basis, have served a vital role in space-poor Japan, where many adults still live with their parents and lack a place where they can enjoy life.

But now the Shibuya Municipal Government is tightening ordinances to stop any new love hotels from being built in the area in the hope that getting rid of these institutions of horizontal activity research will make their part of town look more pristine.

Prostitution is taking place in love hotels. The hotels are also a source of income for organized crime, which in turn threatens safety and has prompted many residents to complain, Hiroshi Matsui, a spokesman for the Shibuya Municipal Government said: There are also places that pretend to be reputable business hotels, but are actually love hotels. Existing ordinances do not allow us to combat them. Shibuya Municipal Government does not intend to newly regulate existing business operators, but we are going to create legislation that strictly limits anybody trying to build anew.

From www.insidejapantours.com

Love hotels are another uniquely Japanese phenomenon and provide a haven where Japanese couples young and old, can escape the confines and flimsy walls of the family home. They come in all shapes and sizes with some of the out of town complexes being a true sight to behold with their flashing neon lights and bright exteriors. Many offer 5 star luxury (extra big beds!) for a relatively cheap price and there is plenty of in-room entertainment on offer with your very own karaoke, wide-screen TV, games console, toys of one description or another, and luxury bathrooms (check-out the jacuzzi with built in TV!).

Discretion is the key; often you do not actually have to see anyone to be able to book in and once you're in your room, that's it. The car parks even provide covers for your car number plate to further protect your anonymity.

Perhaps the most famous area for love hotels is the infamous 'love hotel hill' in Shibuya in Tokyo. On one side of the main through road is a concentration of love hotels like nowhere else in Japan. If you want to experience a night of passion Japanese style or just want to have a look out of curiosity this is the place to come. There are hotels here to suit every taste. The garish neon exteriors and enticing room pictures are two of the things that mark love hotels out from their more sober cousins, business hotels. Other things to look for are rates by the hour and by the night ('rest' and 'stay' respectively) although many business hotels also offer this facility!

If you want to spend a night in a love hotel you should aim to arrive around 10pm. There is always a fixed rate from 10pm until 10am the following morning and prices are usually much cheaper than an equivalent standard room in a regular hotel. And of course you get all the fun extras! Standard love hotel procedure is to choose your room by selecting from the lit up pictures on a screen and then follow the directions to the nearest lift. Many hotels offer themed rooms such as jungle, Christmas, or Hollywood to spice up your evening. You can usually order drinks and food to your room with the hotel staff issuing a polite knock on the door before leaving a tray outside your door.

When you wish to leave, just insert payment in the machine by the door, and off you go.

  Protection form AIDS Moralisation

From the Monterey Herald

A federal judge has barred the Bush administration from requiring nonprofit AIDS groups to sign a pledge opposing prostitution and sex trafficking in exchange for federal dollars.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said a law passed by Congress in 2003 violates the free-speech rights of groups such as DKT International Inc., which provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention programs in 11 countries.

Sullivan said the law goes too far because it insists that DKT "parrot" the U.S. government's position on prostitution and bars the group from taking and putting in place a different viewpoint on the issue in the way it spends privately obtained funds: By mandating that DKT adopt an organization-wide policy against prostitution, the government exceeds its ability to limit the use of government funds.

In 2003, Congress created a $15 billion program for fighting AIDS worldwide. Under the law, groups that do not adopt a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking cannot receive federal money.

The group's representatives refused to sign the pledge because they are involved in a program to distribute condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers in Vietnam. Signing the pledge, they argued, would stigmatize and alienate many of the people they are trying to help.

  Adding the Good Stuff After the Censors See the Film

Based on an article from NDTV

The C-grade film industry turns out films are cleared by censors, but censors are unaware of scenes of sex and nudity in them that are added separately but performed by the same actors.

An investigation reveals that men who call themselves 'coordinators' supply the women who act in the films.

Reporters posing as producers of a Bhojpuri film meet in a small beer bar with the 'coordinators' in a western suburb of Mumbai who produce thousands of pictures of women to choose from.

The reporters select 15 women and phone calls from them start coming.

Four girls who turn up to consider the offer say they are even ready for sex on camera - scenes that will be inserted into the films after censor clearance.

But one of them said the price for such scenes go up and they act on a condition that films with such scenes are not released in Mumbai.

One of the girls offered a sample copy of her film produced by Ultra Movies, a fairly well known VCD, DVD distributor.

Scenes of sex and nudity are inserted separately which neither Ultra Movies nor the censor is aware of.

The investigation found that there was an industry within an industry - one that peddles what is called the 'director's cut'.

A version, the censor never sees but brings in the big bucks for making them.

  Grand Larceny of Freedom

Based on an article from AVN

A strip club owner has sued the city of Grand Rapids over a new measure barring nude dancing.

Mark London, owner of Sensations and Lady Godiva strip clubs, filed suit against the city last week in federal court over a new ordinance that bars total nudity at strip clubs and requires that dancers stay a minimum of six feet away from customers.

London claims Grand Rapids' ordinance violates the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. He claims it doesn't allow "reasonable opportunity" to operate an adult entertainment business and that there is no evidence to show that the clubs cause "adverse secondary effects" on the community.

London is seeking a temporary and a permanent restraining orders to stop the city from enforcing the measure and is seeking compensation for his legal costs from Grand Rapids.

Mayor George Heartwell said the city will not back down, adding that it plans to hire an attorney for $100,000 to fight the case. Already, the nutters of Michigan Decency Council says it has $100,000 in pledges to pay the city's legal bills.

  San Bernardino Rights Abusers

From CBS 2

The city of San Bernardino owes a strip club $1.4 million for losses the venue suffered when officials tried to shut it down.

A state appellate court has affirmed a jury's decision to award the damages to the all-nude venue, the Flesh Club.

The club's owner's attorney Roger Jon Diamond says the city is also liable for interest on the verdict, as well as attorney's fees and interest on the attorney's fees.

He's calling the verdict "a major victory" for everybody, since it shows that state immunity laws are trumped by the federal civil-rights act.

The appellate court already had upheld a trial court's ruling that the zoning ordinance the city used to prohibit nude dancing at the club from 1995 to 1999 was unconstitutional.

But the city had argued that it was immune from paying for the club's lost profits.

  We Need a Museum for Defunct Museums

From AVN

Declining attendance and an apparent drop in local tourism is forcing the Erotic Museum in LA to close for good.

We never received any public money and we never asked for it, said Boris Smorodinsky, the privately owned museum's chief executive: We had to count on the tourists and visitors who came into the museum, but it was always insufficient. It never covered the costs.

So when attendance dropped this year, the museum's days were numbered. Despite attempts to find investors and even a buyer for the fledgling venue, it all came for naught.

The museum housed classic original photos of Marilyn Monroe, a set of 7-foot tall Russian dolls made up in bondage gear along with a display outlining the San Fernando Valley porn industry.

Not so much a result of economics, but because of a lack of cultural acceptance, Smorodinsky said: I don't think people were comfortable with a museum that dealt with sexuality. They either didn't get our message or we just couldn't deliver the message that this place is educational.

Among its permanent exhibits are nude etchings by Pablo Picasso which were only revealed years after his death. The museum also owns a 1948 porn movie said to be of Marilyn Monroe by some experts, but Monroe's estate has repeatedly denied this. The museum itself touts the film to be that of a woman who may be the late actress.

  Ex 40 Year Old Virgins

From the Daily Times

A brothel has become the first in Berlin to offer special deals for virgins with prostitutes trained in the delicate art of catering for customers who have never had sex.

The brothel in the red light area of the Kreuzberg district of the city charges 60 euros for a half an hour of sex and works within the laws of Germany where prostitution is legal. These are men who either never had sex before or have never been in a brothel before , the brothel operatorsaid: It's the first house of love in Berlin that specialises in taking care of beginners.

Prostitutes are given "sensitivity training" for first-time clients, who the brothel operator said are not necessarily young but often 40 or older.

  Ghastly Nutters

Based on an article from AVN

Organizers of Sexpo, an annual sex trade fair held here beginning today, were facing criticism and outrage from political leaders and nutters over an amusement ride that uses electronic mannequins that simulate sex acts.

According to Perth's The Sunday Times today, opponents of the "Sex Train" say they hope to shut down the ride, deeming it indecent: We are not happy. In fact, the whole thing is disgusting, said John Barich, Australian Family Association president.

David Ross, Sexpo founder and organizer, said the ride is like a traditional ghost train boarded by passengers who would see unusual things. But instead of ghosts or vampires, riders would see Animatronic mannequins simulating sex acts such as oral sex, bondage and even a castration scene featuring mannequins meant to resemble John Bobbitt and his wife Lorena, who cut off her husband's penis with a knife.

( Sexpo) travels to three or four major cities each year and despite the censorship laws in (Western Australia province), the people of Perth have shown that they're no prudes , Ross said: (The train) is just a bit of fun.

  Cold Hearted Ideas

Based on an article from the Nordic Council

Efforts to restrict trafficking and prostitution has been one of the main themes of the Nordic Council meeting in Stockholm 25- 26 April. The Citizens and Consumer Rights Committee passed a motion calling on Nordic political meetings to be held in hotels that explicitly reject prostitution.

The Citizens and Consumer Rights Committee proposes that the Nordic Council adopts internal guidelines:

• that it only uses hotels that issue a guarantee stipulating that they do not help aid and abet the sale of sexual services and that their staff have been issued with written guidelines to that effect.
• that it sets up a website with a positive list, registering in a legal manner those hotels that issue such guarantees and agree to have their names published on the website. The website should cover the Nordic Region and neighbouring countries where Nordic organisations are active.

Unanimous agreement could not reached about the final point, however, and two of the members voted against this part of the statement.

  Immoral Legislatation

From Asian Sex Gazette

Two Hong Kong men who established a popular online prostitutes' directory were given suspended jail terms and fined HK$100,000 ($22,000) for conspiring to live off the earnings of prostitution.

Cheung Ming-man and Chan Sai-Ngan were found guilty of one count each of conspiracy to live off the earnings of prostitution arising from ads that appeared on their website.

While prostitution is not against the law in Hong Kong, it is illegal to use signs to advertise it or for third parties to benefit from prostitution.

This is the first time the publishers of advertisements for prostitution have been prosecuted, and may affect others who sell advertising space.

Associate professor Simon Young from Hong Kong University said the conviction highlights a deficiency in the laws surrounding prostitution. The law under which the men were prosecuted was meant to protect women from pimps. But the two men could be viewed as businessmen who offered a service to prostitutes for a fee. Young said: This offence was never meant to capture genuine business transactions.

  Arbitrary Entertainment Tax

From AVN

The owners of eight strip clubs have asked a federal judge to throw out Nevada's live entertainment tax, claiming it's a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Last Tuesday, the owners of the Déjà vu Showgirls, Little Darlings, Spearmint Rhino, Olympic Garden, Sapphire, Crazy Horse Too, Treasures and Scores strip clubs filed the complaint which also seeks the return of millions already paid the clubs.

The club owners argued that the implementation of the levy has been "arbitrary and capricious" and with exemptions for various kinds of businesses except for those with adult entertainment.

The tax on live entertainment, approved in 2003 and adjusted in 2005, requires strip club owners to pay up to 10% of ticket sales or admission fees to the state. Eliades complained that the state tax targets adult businesses while others which provide live entertainment are given exemptions.

But state Sen. Dina Titus, a Las Vegas Democrat who helped push the legislation, said she was confident the tax could overcome this latest legal challenge. She said the tax is needed because strip clubs don't generally pay payroll taxes or pay for workers' compensation insurance, since strippers are independent contractors who also don't receive health insurance. She argued such businesses are also a drain on social services and police.

  Anal Probes in South Carolina Legislature

From Independent Mail

South Carolina's Legislature is considering outlawing sex toys. The banning the sale of sex toys is actually quite common in some Southern states.

The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

Ms. Gillespie, an employee at an Anderson shop said: We are supposed to be in a free country, and we're supposed to be adults who can decide what want to do and don't want to do in the privacy of our own homes.

The measure would add sex toys to the state's obscenity laws, which already prohibit the dissemination and advertisement of obscene materials. People convicted under obscenity laws face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

South Carolina law borrows from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to define obscene as something "contemporary community standards" determine as "patently offensive" sexual conduct, which "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

Other states that ban the sell of sex toys include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, said Mark Lopez, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Alabama's law banning the sale of sex toys has been circulating through the courts since its passage in 1998. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr. twice ruled against the law, holding that it violated the constitutional right to privacy, but the state won both times on appeal. In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which is back in the lower courts.

The ACLU got involved in the case, he said, to "keep the government out of the bedroom."

  Penthouse Cable

From Sex News Daily.com

Giving adult cable competitors a potential run for their money, Penthouse Media Group Inc. has announced the launch date of Penthouse TV, a new high-definition cable network that will directly compete with Playboy's Spice cable network and New Frontier's The Erotic Networks (TEN).

Penthouse TV will be offered in a variety of price packages, according to Penthouse, including video-on-demand, pay-per-view or subscription in hi-def or standard TV.

Earlier reports on the launch of Penthouse TV said the lineup would feature shows such as Dr. Z's Sex Tips, Speed Swap, Call the Shots, Fresh and Stripper Confidential, and Penthouse-branded programs Pet Confessions, Penthouse Letters and Variations .

  Manga and Sex

From Bar Ladies

Subway passengers in Nagoya, Japan earlier this month found their rail cars with one less tsuri kokoku (hang-down advertisement), after the city's police decided the contents were too unwholesome to be aired in public and ordered them removed. The weekly magazine Shukan Shincho reports that the offending ads, for a manga kissa (type of coffee shop that rents out comic books by the hour), had first been noticed during a routine inspection in January.

At that time, they were straightforward employee recruitment ads, relates a staff of Nagoya's metropolitan transit bureau. But in March, the contents were changed. with hourly wages, of 2,000 yen  or more. (A euphemism frequently used by the sex industry to recruit young women).

An astute subway passenger came to the conclusion that the shop was NOT a manga kissa . What was it then? Something else, known as a deai kissa, which is an establishment where couples meet for purposes than often involve the exchange of money for sexual favors. Such establishments made their debut in Osaka, and have subsequently popped up in Nagoya and Tokyo.

They're also called 'come-on coffee shops', but their layouts more closely resemble Internet cafes. The customer pays a set fee upon entry and can surf the Web or read manga, as he pleases. What's different from ordinary shops is that the girls also hang out, and if the customer eyes one he likes, he can invite her into a private cubicle for 'negotiations', which, if successful, lead to a 'date' outside. As often as not, such 'dates' take place in a hotel room.

Some of the females are freelance, but others are on the shop's payroll. Apparently the Aichi Prefectural Police had its eye on activities such businesses and was already mulling a crackdown. In any event, it ordered the subway ads to be removed.

  Experts Say that Sex Shops Do Not Attract Crime

Based on an article from Adult FYI

Opponents of a new sexually oriented store in Manchester, Connecticut, told the Board of Directors in February that the business would bring more sexually related crime, attract dangerous people, and hurt local children.

But experts in the field say there's no proof that a store that sells pornography will cause additional crime. Lori Sudderth, an associate professor at Quinnipiac University with a doctorate in sociology, says there's no evidence that pornography causes "sexually aggressive behavior." We can link it to attitude; we can't link it to sexually-related behavior, she says. Sudderth adds that the possibility that a sexually oriented business would bring more dangerous people into town is low, especially because, thanks to the Internet, such stores are no longer the only places to acquire porn.

Clinton Sanders, a University of Connecticut professor and an expert in deviant behavior, strongly agrees: There's absolutely no causal relationship. All those arguments are a smokescreen for the main concern: That these are dirty things and we don't want dirty people coming here.

Amazing Superstore on Broad Street opened in 1998 and sells pornographic movies and magazines, lingerie, body oils, and sex toys. When it opened, similar, if less strident, calls were made to keep the business away from parks and schools, but no significant changes were made in town zoning rules. The store has not caused major criminal problems and generated fewer police calls than a comparable nearby store.

There was no spike in crime from the opening of that business, police Capt. Marc Montminy says of Amazing Superstore. Certainly, facilities like pool halls and bars require more police service than a book store, but drawing a correlation between an adult store and crime in the area is pretty thin.

According to Montminy, there have been 32 police calls to Amazing Superstore since 2003. Of those calls, there were nine false alarms, five suspicious activity calls, four parking lot accidents, three harassing phone calls, three traffic stops, one theft, one intoxicated person, and one indecent exposure call. Other than the indecent exposure, Montminy said, the type and amount of police calls were nothing out of the ordinary.

Comparatively, Hollywood Video at 425 Broad St., a nearby and similarly sized business, had 61 police calls since 2003. Most notably, there were nine false alarms, five thefts, four motor-vehicle accidents, three disturbances, one drug investigation, one intoxicated driver call, and one burglary of a motor vehicle.

Montminy says that there have been no significant local trends in sexual crimes since 2003, with between 76 and 106 incidents a year. He adds that extra policing of an adult-oriented business would occur only if there were statistical proof to indicate that this was damaging to the crime pattern, and I have yet to see any information to prove that.

Les Rich, chief financial officer for Capital Video Corp., Amazing Superstore's parent company, says: We have over 40 stores and it's never been an issue at any of our stores.

Sudderth says sexually aggressive behavior can be caused by a variety of factors, but pornography is not one of them. The pornography itself doesn't cause the behavior; the tendency for that behavior is already there, she says.

Large-scale federal studies back up this stance. After two years of research, the President's Commission on Obscenity concluded in 1970 that there was no evidence that exposure to erotic materials caused sex crimes. Those findings were reached again in 1985 by the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, known as the Meese Commission.

I wouldn't be concerned about this store coming in, Sudderth says. If you're focusing on pornography or focusing on this one establishment as the cause of sexual assault, you're chasing the wrong thing.

  Sex Monster vs Monster Sex Store

Based on an article from the New York Times

A large sign on a soon-to-be-occupied storefront with tinted windows carries an announcement: Fama DVD & Video, Coming Soon.

Those would be adult DVD's and videos, merchandise that on its face may not seem like something that would stir much controversy in Nyack, a village where various strip clubs and sex-related businesses have opened and closed before.

Yet ever since the local Planning Board voted in January to approve the opening of the Fama DVD shop, some residents here have begun to mourn what they say is the imminent demise of their community. They have flooded Village Hall meetings, lashed out at the Planning Board and warned that the shop will invariably become a magnet for crime, drugs and gloom.

What scares them about the shop, the residents say, is that it is more than a place to buy X-rated films. According to the village, the shop will also include a row of eight private closet-size viewing booths where patrons can watch movies behind closed doors, a prospect that reminds many people here of the sex-shop booths that once made Times Square so notorious.

The widespread anger only intensified in April when the owners, instead of leaving, asked the village for permission to remain open 24 hours a day.

One nutter group, the Catholic Citizenship, sued the board and the store's owners, saying the shop would all but drive Nyack into the gutter. It has contended that the board violated the state environmental review law by failing to consider the socioeconomic impact the store would have on the community. The board has said it has no legal recourse to block the video shop.

But perhaps the most famous opponent of the shop has been the actor Stephen Baldwin, a resident of nearby Grand View. Baldwin became a born-again Christian after 9/11, stood outside the future shop last January and took photographs of some of its workers. He has vowed to stand outside the shop every day and take pictures of its patrons as well, so he can identify them and publish their names in local newspaper advertisements.

The owners of the shop, Quintus Algama and Leslie Fernandopulle, have tried to keep a low profile.
 

  Booth Bother

From AVN

Patrons of a soon-to-open adult business on Route 59 will not be allowed to view movies inside the store's video booths, a judge recently ruled.

State Supreme Court Justice Joan Lefkowitz issued a handwritten temporary restraining order, preventing a certificate of occupancy for use of the booths at the Fama DVD Video Center.

David MacCartney, a lawyer for a group of nutters calling themselves the Catholic Citizenship, sought the order during oral arguments in the White Plains court to prevent the village's Building Department from issuing the business a certificate of occupancy. The only thing they're allowed to do is sell and rent books and videos, MacCartney.

I would consider it a victory, MacCartney told The Journal News. The court has agreed with us that the use of the video booths is improper at this time. And we're looking forward to receiving a final decision on the petition in the near future.

  Dancing Girls in Court

Based on an article from India Times

Eight months after the Maharashtra government shut down dance bars, the Bombay high court on Wednesday will hand out its verdict on the state's ban. A division bench of Justices F I Rebello and Roshan Dalvi will decide on a bunch of petitions by bar owners, bar dancers, women's activists and NGOs challenging the ban.

Dance bars were banned from August 15, 2005, by an amendment introduced by the state in the Mumbai Police (Amendment) Act. The newly-introduced provision banned the holding of a dance performance, of any kind, in an eating house, permit room or beer bar. Punishment for violators of the provision is imprisonment of up to three years or a fine up to Rs 2 lakh.

Following the state's ban, the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHAR) claimed in the court that it had affected 2,500 establishments in the state and left around 75,000 bar dancers unemployed.

The state government justified the ban on the grounds of immorality and that most dance bars had become pick-up joints and fronts for a thriving prostitution business.

  Update: Dancing For Joy

From The Times

A ban on dancing in Bombay's famous dance bars has been lifted by the High Court. Dancing in the bars — a longtime feature of the city's nightlife — was banned in August by the state government of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital. However, the court ruled that it amounted to discrimination against the dancers.

The state government has eight weeks in which it can appeal to the Supreme Court, India's highest court.

Over the past several months, police raids were commonplace in bars that continued to feature dancing girls. Hundreds of dancers have been arrested.

  Update: Government Appeals for a Return to Repression

From the Calcutta Telegraph

The Maharashtra government today claimed the ban on dance bars had lowered crime figures and said it would appeal in the Supreme Court against yesterday's Bombay High Court judgment lifting the ban.

Deputy chief minister R.R. Patil's announcement, however, failed to discourage the thousands of bar dancers here who continued their celebrations late into the night, distributing sweets and doing little jigs to Bollywood beats.

The verdict has given hope to the dance bar industry that employs about 2 lakh people, including 75,000 dancers. The court has said the process of renewing the bars' dance performance licences — withdrawn after the ban kicked in on August 15 last year — must begin in eight weeks.

The high court struck down the ban because it prohibited dance performances at beer bars and restaurants while allowing them at high-end hotels, theatres, pubs and sports clubs. The court found this discrimination unconstitutional.

  Update: No Dancing in Court

From the Indian Express

For Mumbai bar girls, the wait for reopening of dance bars just got longer. Today, amid claims by the Maharashtra government that the dance bars were encouraging prostitution, the Supreme Court ordered continuation of the interim stay on processing their licences.

The eight-week stay granted by the High Court on renewal of licences will continue till further orders, a bench of Justices PP Naolekar and BN Agrawal said. They allowed the state government's petition challenging the Bombay High Court order striking down amendments to the Bombay Police Act, by which the ban was imposed, as unconstitutional.

The matter will now be heard in July after the court's summer recess.

  Swedish Nutters Kicked out of Play

Based on an article from Cape Times

Sweden's sexual equality nutter demanded yesterday that their soccer team pull out of the World Cup in Germany in protest at extra brothels being set up to cope with demand from football fans.

The idea got short shrift from Swedish Football Association president Lars-Ake Lagrell, who said such a move would "disappoint the nation" and probably get it knocked out of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa as well.

With a million visitors heading to Germany for the month-long tournament starting on June 9, red light districts of the 12 host cities are braced for a huge influx.

I'm a soccer fan myself but the point is that the World Cup in soccer is an opportunity for men to show our abhorrence of the trade in human beings, the nutter equality ombudsman Claes Borgstrom said. Other countries might follow our example.

Unlike Germany, where some 400 000 prostitutes work legally, Sweden has introduced some of Europe's toughest laws against prostitution, targeting those buying sex rather than prostitutes themselves, who are treated as victims.

Alarmed at reports of giant brothels and wooden "sex huts" being built for the World Cup, Swedish politicians have taken up the cause, earning Lagrell the offer of a guided tour of a brothel from a group of German prostitutes, which he declined.

Nutter Minister Thomas Bodstrom has called on Germany to simply "forbid buying sex" to prevent the exploitation of women.

Lagrell promises that no Swedish player will use brothels in the World Cup, but has resisted calls for high-profile players like Juventus striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Arsenal's Fredrik Ljungberg or Barcelona's Henrik Larsson to campaign against prostitution.

  Update: Exploitative Nutters

Based on an article from the ABC News

Arch nutter George Bush will ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel to do more for women who may be exploited during the World Cup finals when she visits Washington this week.

World Cup host Germany is not doing enough to tackle prostitution, said lawmaker, U.S. Congress human rights committee chairman Christopher Smith.

Brothels in Germany, where prostitution is legal, are expecting a big increase in trade during the World Cup and concerns have been raised that vulnerable women could be forced into prostitution to meet the expected demand. It is an outrage that the German government is currently facilitating prostitution and we believe women who will be exploited will be treated as commodities, Smith, a Republican nutter, said in a statement.

President Bush has very strong views on this issue and will make them known to the German chancellor, who will be asked to step up for women who are about to be exploited.
 

  Update: Have Fun at the World Cup

Available from www.LoveHoney.co.uk at £4.99

Good to see that Durex are providing a little humorous counterbalance to the stream of big wig nutters whinging about about Germany's legal prostitution.

From publicity material:

Score off the pitch during World Cup 06 with with Durex England Supporter Condoms. Do not attempt to score without one.

World Cup fever is nigh and Durex are marking the occasion with the limited edition Durex England Supporter condom packs. These condoms stand out from the rest– show your support and wear them with pride. Eng-er-land!

Should you plan to score this summer then do it as patriotically as possible. Durex England Supporter condom packs – show your true colours!
 

  Update: Germany Put Under Pressure from the USA Right Wing

From China Broadcast

German police in four states arrested nearly 100 people in brothel raids during a check on illegal prostitution ahead of next month's World Cup.

Police in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria questioned hundreds of sex workers in the statewide raids, authorities said.

Volker Bouffier, interior minister of Hesse, said the raids Wednesday were launched in an effort to combat concerns expressed by human rights organizations and other groups that thousands of women, mostly from Eastern Europe, could be smuggled into Germany and forced to work as prostitutes during the World Cup. The the World Cup.

Police in Hesse checked the documentation and registration of 603 prostitutes, making 74 arrests. Authorities in neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate said they arrested 22 people and another 34 were issued citations, mostly for immigration violations and failure to comply with business regulations.

Prostitution is legal in Germany and sex workers, who pay taxes and receive social benefits, are required to register with authorities. About 400,000 people are registered in the trade.
 

  Update: Some Germans Reconsider Legal Prostitution

Surely that even if problems are still the same as before then the legalisation is a massive success, ie nobody has suffered imprisonment and persecution whilst the status quo is maintained.

From Centre Daily

Luna, who uses only one name professionally, is one of an estimated 400,000 female sex workers in a country that legalized prostitution in 2002. Another 40,000 are expected to come from outside Germany during the month-long tournament, at least some of whom, advocates worry, will have been forced into the sex trade against their will.

Stopping human trafficking was one of the reasons that Germany legalized prostitution. The logic was that by legitimizing the trade, it would become safer and healthier. But a United Nations report on human trafficking released last month still rated Germany "very high" as a destination for women forced into sex work, and some of those who supported legalization are reconsidering.

I was with my party, the Greens, when we pushed for legalization, said Hiltrud Breyer, a German member of the European Parliament. We really believed it would bring the profession out of the shadows and improve lives. I'm rethinking that position.

In Germany, as in the rest of the world, prostitution is big business, with annual revenues estimated at 14.5 billion euro, or $18 billion.

Under German law, prostitutes must be at least 18 years old, but registration isn't mandatory and the official government service-workers union, which represents them, says only a few have signed up. There's no health screening because prostitutes are eligible for the national health system. Some cities have limited where they can work, but Berlin allows them to work anywhere.

German officials hope to persuade more prostitutes to register by pointing out that it makes them eligible for state pensions, unemployment payments when they aren't working and even career-retraining benefits. But those benefits may be outweighed by costs such as paying taxes on their earnings, one possible reason that the number of registered prostitutes is so low.

Breyer said that when she checked national statistics recently only 300 to 600 taxpayers listed their jobs as prostitute. But union officials say they work with tens of thousands of prostitutes and that they think the government estimate of 400,000 is about right.

It's not just missing tax revenue that's worrisome, Breyer said. Because prostitution is legal, police don't investigate it as aggressively as they once did, and that's allowed forced prostitution to thrive, she thinks.

Anne Fitzgerald, who works with Solidarity With Women in Distress, agrees. That's why her group began preparing an information campaign last year. The idea behind the change in legislation was, I believe, that prostitutes should be able to leave the `gray zone' of semi-illegality and be registered and have social insurance like other professions, Fitzgerald said. Reality has since shown that very few prostitutes are officially registered and the police have practically no way of justifying brothel raids, so that now fewer victims of trafficking are actually discovered.

Standing, nude and out of her work outfit only because she's removed her stiletto heels, Luna can't imagine why anyone would think she'd been forced into her job. The job only got better when prostitution was legalized. Now she works at Artemis, Berlin's newest high-profile brothel.

Like the other women at Artemis, she pays rent for her space: 50 euros, about $70, for every 24 hours. For that, she gets two meals and a place to sleep. It's better now, she said. It's safer, and I'm able to control my finances, instead of relying on a pimp.

  Update: Exploitation of Football Fans

I somehow think that the authorities are jumping at the opportunity of imposing their nutter morality on the back of a the unlikely occurrence of meeting a trafficked girl. I suggest that fans should simply enjoy life, and use there nounce should they come across serious crime of any description.

From Turkish Daily News

British police are urging soccer fans heading for the World Cup to think twice before visiting prostitutes in Germany as many of the women may have been forced into sex slavery.

Grahame Maxwell, the head of a UK-wide operation against people-trafficking, said police had written to soccer club magazines to warn fans the prostitutes could have been coerced or kidnapped.

His officers were sharing information with German police on sex traffickers, who they expect will try to cash in on a rise in demand for prostitutes during next month's tournament.

We feel there might be 100,000 fans going from the UK to Germany and it's for us to raise awareness among them that there could be trafficked women there , said Maxwell, Deputy Chief Constable of South Yorkshire police.

German police are worried that the huge inflow of fans -- most of them young men -- will increase demand for prostitution. If the supply of sex workers in Germany, where prostitution is legal, cannot meet World Cup demand, traffickers will smuggle more women into the country to meet the shortfall, he added.

Youth television channel MTV, which has enlisted the support of Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie in its own anti-trafficking campaign, is working with British police on information leaflets to be distributed at UK and German airports and hotels.

Human rights and religious groups have also raised concerns about forced prostitution during the tournament.

Amnesty International has called on European countries to ratify the European convention against human trafficking, which sets out a legal framework for the prosecution of traffickers and the protection of victims.

  Update: Screwed by the Church

From Life SIte

The Vatican has condemned Germany's promotion of prostitution during the World Cup and called for prosecution and heavy fines on those who profit from sex industry and human trafficking.

Prostitution, in fact, violates the dignity of the human person, reducing [her] to an object and instrument of sexual pleasure. Women have become market commodities, which can be bought. And they cost less than a ticket for a football match, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, said on Vatican Radio.

Prostitution was made legal in Germany over three years ago. The country has recently received heavy international criticism.

Archbishop Marchetto said German authorities had a special responsibility to interfere and place limits on prostitution.

He also called on the Church to examine the motives of men who seek out prostitutes, saying the Church should educate boys and men in healthy human sexuality.

[Umm...I think that the Catholic Church has learnt a lot of valuable lessons about human sexuality that could be of value to pass on to the younger generation:

• Chastity screws people up. Even priests can be, and are, horribly perverted by this policy.
• Prohibition of condoms causes untold deaths and misery due to disease
• Masturbation clearly causes nutters to go blind to the harm caused by religion

Perhaps these lessons could be succinctly summarised in that youngsters should simply not believe the unbelievable nonsense taught by this church]

Msgr. Aldo Giordano, secretary-general of the Council of European Bishops Conferences, said the open promotion of prostitution during the World Cup was a "scandal," and entirely against the spirit of the World Cup. He also said he hoped Europeans, particularly women, would react strongly against the marketing of women during the event: The churches want to challenge this with all their strength, because it is a real sign of decadence in Europe,
 

  Update: Trafficking Bollox

From SI

Police checks in Munich's red-light district found no signs of women being forced into prostitution for the World Cup.

Officers raided 48 brothels and checked six streetwalking zones in the Bavarian capital on Saturday night, a day after the tournament opened.

Police found that all the businesses that were checked had increased noticeably the number of prostitutes working for them during the World Cup, a police spokesman said, estimating that the number of prostitutes working in Munich has risen to 800 from the usual 500. However, the increase in guests that the red light scene was hoping for so far has failed to appear.

  ouristsBrazilian Police Harass T

Based on an article from Star Telegram

Cracking down on visitors to Brazil, police raided clubs known for using call girls and strippers, detaining 118 foreigners to discourage what authorities called "sexual tourism."

The tourists - mostly from Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Norway - were briefly held in the northeastern city of Natal for not carrying passports or international identification cards that Brazil requires of all foreigners, police said. They were fined $76 and released.

Luiz Pereira, a federal police officer, said the country hoped the operation will help discourage tourists who think sexual tourism is easy in Brazil.

More than 70 federal agents raided two nightclubs known for using strippers and call girls to attract tourists, Pereira said. Police detained 118 tourists in the raids in Natal, 1,520 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, he said.

Prostitution is legal in Brazil, but people who promote sex tourism can be charged.

Some of the detained had expired visas and were ordered to leave the country within eight days, police said.

Police have conducted similar operations in recent months in Natal. In one raid, six Italian men were arrested on charges of owning prostitution houses aimed at tourists.