Veteran adult director Henri Pachard died over the weekend from complications of cancer. He was 69.

It was a sad thing, veteran director Roy Karch told XBIZ: Ron Sullivan [Pachard's real name] was one of the true gentlemen of our business. He was a true filmmaker, too. When you said 'rack-focus,' he understood it. Ron was also a pornographer. He was dirty-minded, as reflected in his toilet scenes and stuff with Gloria Leonard in New York.

Pachard's career went back to the '70s Golden Age, when adult productions were shot on film, using scripts and actors from the New York acting community, and shown in theaters. He directed more than 300 titles, writing and directing classic films including Outlaw Ladies, October Silk, The Budding of Brie and Babylon Pink. He was working as recently as last year, when he was shooting gonzo scenes on video.

Pachard was married five times, divorced four. He is survived by his wife Deloras and two adult sons, one of whom is adult-industry cinematographer Ralph Parfait.

The Morehouse Parish Sheriff’s office arrested the owner of adult shop Red Door, Lori Tremaine on six counts of obscenity. Bond has been set for $30,000, $5,000 for each count.

The six counts followed six purchases of DVDs by undercover officers, Morehouse Sheriffs Department Major Terry Wyatt told XBIZ, and several hundred DVDs were confiscated after a search warrant was issued.

It's not the titles, Wyatt said: In this jurisdiction, those types of movies that show explicit sex acts fall under obscenity. In Louisiana, the obscenity law is extremely detailed and almost subjective in that it's based on community standards.

Wyatt told XBIZ that the DVDs were commercially produced and did not involve patently illegal content like children or bestiality.

A Manhattan S&M club that billed itself as the Leading House of Domination in NYC was put out of business after the kill joy police busted its manager and seized its business records.

The NYPD had supposedly received complaints from the club's nutter neighbors that the third-floor operation was a straight-up house of prostitution - despite the club's claims to the contrary.

We do not engage in any form of prostitution whatsoever, so don't even ask! ads claimed.

The NYPD's Manhattan South vice unit arrested Collin John Reeve for promoting prostitution and one of his ladies, Gina Noto for prostitution, police said.

The NYPD does not know the difference between prostitution and freedom of expression, said Reeve's attorney Salvatore Strazzullo: There is nothing on the books that states S&M is illegal.

The City of New York should know the difference between prostitution and a perfectly legal S&M dominatrix house, he added.

Mayor Dennis Elwell has announced that he intends to stop the Exxxotica New York show from taking place this coming weekend at the Meadowlands Expo Center.

According to NJ.com, the city plans to use zoning laws to shut down the three-day adult consumer expo.

A pornographic convention where alcohol is served in violation of state law and at a facility adjacent to a nursery school and playground is not the sort of atmosphere I'll allow in Secaucus, Elwell said in a statement to the press.

Elwell and other city officials have called a press conference to address the situation tomorrow at noon at the Harmony Early Learning Center in Secaucus.

Many of the adult industry's biggest stars, studios and vendors are scheduled to attend Exxxotica NY.

Victory Tradeshow Management has produced four successful Exxxotica conventions in Miami Beach since launching the event in 2005. This year's Miami Beach show drew a reported 22,000 attendees. First announced in June, the Meadowlands event is the first Exxxotica convention to be promoted in the New York area.

Update: Moved

9th September 2008, Based on article from avn.com

AVN has learned that the Exxxotica NY show originally scheduled for this weekend at the Meadowlands Expo Center has been moved to a new venue due to legal issues with the town of Secaucus.

The show will now take place Friday - Sunday at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center at the Raritan Center in Edison, N.J. Show hours on Sunday have been changed to 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., but otherwise, all scheduling remains the same.

Outgoing Nassau County Commissioner Marianne Marshall apparently hopes to leave behind a legacy that will guarantee free speech suppression for years to come - but First Amendment advocate Lawrence G. Walters won't be making it easy for her.

Marshall's the driving force behind a new proposed county ordinance that would outlaw the sale of any sexually explicit material that, among other characteristics, depicts multiple penetration by multiple partners of body orifices; visible penetration during intercourse, sodomy, or oral sodomy; visible ejaculation, urination, menstruation, bowel movements, ejaculate or feces; and visible penetration of a bodily orifice with a digit, hand, foot, or inanimate object.

Trouble is, some or all of those characteristics can be found in every sexually explicit movie produced in the U.S., so what the ordinance does is effectively prohibit any XXX product from being sold anywhere in the county.

What they've tried to do is create a new category of unprotected speech which, as we know from recent Supreme Court precedent in the Free Speech Coalition case, that cannot be done, Walters told AVN.

The proposed ordinance states, The purpose of this Ordinance is to afford the citizens of Nassau County a civil remedy to enjoin the distribution of pornographic materials for profit and commercial purposes within the community, and to recover civil penalties and damages. Further, this Ordinance shall provide these remedies to any church or religious organization, or other representative group of organization.

Any person, firm, corporation, association, or entity, or any agent or employee of the foregoing, who willfully and knowingly distributes for profit or other commercial use pornographic materials, within the state, is liable for a civil penalty of not more than $1,000 for each such violation.

The fact that they're talking about banning commercial pornography and identify it as a nuisance, is just amazing to us, Walters said: And they're going to allow church groups to sue to get damages against anybody who dares to distribute commercial pornography in the county - in fact, they're trying to regulate the whole state; the distribution cannot occur anywhere in the state - I don't see how anyone connected with the Board who has a working knowledge of the law could allow this to pass.

The ordinance's author projects that it will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.

The US Food and Drug Administration has declared open season on cockrings and penis pumps. Citing supposed safety concerns, the FDA said that devices purporting to help with external penile rigidity can be confiscated at U.S. borders.

These safety concerns include complaints from the FDA that these toys don't have inadequate directions and bring with them a host of harmful side effects, including ruptured blood vessels and the potential of gangrene in the penis.

Basically, the labeling of these devices falsely states or implies they will treat impotence, prolong erection and increase the dimensions of the penis, the FDA said in the new notice.

Penis-enlargement devices have also fallen under the FDA's increased scrutiny. Authorities can now collect any mechanical stretching devices that employ weights or lines tied to other parts of the body such as the knee, to affect tension on the penis.

Nassau County Commissioners are considering an ordinance banning the sale, but not the possession of, pornography within the northern Florida County.

At a meeting earlier this week, County Attorney David Hallman offered a draft ordinance for consideration by the board, despite reported concerns on his part, as well as that of Commissioners Mike Boyle and Barry Holloway, over potential legal challenges that could prove costly for the County.

Of all the loony ordinances we've seen lately, this one takes the cake, Lawrence Walters, an attorney representing the Adam & Eve store, told XBIZ. The County is attempting to create a new category of unprotected speech as a method of driving our client out of business.

According to Walters, if this ordinance is upheld, it would likely be passed by every local government that desires to eliminate adult bookstores from their jurisdiction.

Apparently, Nassau County believes that they are the first ones who thought about outlawing commercial pornography as a means of eliminating adult businesses, Walters said. Unfortunately for the County, the First Amendment poses a significant hurdle for their efforts.

The proposed ban defines pornography along the lines of the Miller Test, as described or depicted sexual conduct that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest, and that the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

A new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 3887, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, is worrying to both travellers and porn producers

Titled Sex tourism, Sec. 2423A provides, in subparagraph (a), that A person who travels in interstate commerce or travels into the United States, or a United States citizen or an alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States who travels in foreign commerce, for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

In case you don't know what illicit sexual conduct is, the Act later defines it as, in part, a commercial sex act - and in case you don't know what that is, Sec. 1591 of Title 18 already defines it as any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person. Hell, it doesn't even have to be money; treating the gal to a nice dinner, or paying for her flight or hotel room, could arguably fulfill the requirement!

But what many porn proucers may not realize is that there are few areas in the U.S. where courts have determined that it is legal to record adults engaging in sexually explicit conduct. The California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Freeman secures that right for anyone filming in California; a recent decision in New York City similarly distinguishes porn performances from prostitution, and it's unclear whether the areas of Nevada where prostitution is legal would also allow the filming of consensual commercial sex acts - but the legal right to make porn exists nowhere else in the U.S., and some jurisdictions specifically forbid it. Hence, any attempt to shoot foreign women engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the U.S. outside of the above-mentioned areas, either for magazines, DVDs or a Website, or if American women traveled abroad for similar shooting in countries that similarly forbid porn production, such performances would likely constitute illicit sexual conduct under H.R. 3887 and could trigger a decade's worth of imprisonment plus unspecified fines for the participants.

Worse, however, is subsection (c): Whoever, for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, arranges, induces, procures, or facilitates the travel of a person knowing that such a person is traveling in interstate commerce or foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

Translation: Bring a foreign woman to the U.S. to shoot porn, or send an American woman overseas for the same purpose - or in any way assist that international travel - and that "facilitator" could find him/herself facing a 10-year sentence and possibly huge fines under this Act. And let's not forget (e): Whoever attempts or conspires to violate this section shall be punishable in the same manner as for the completed violation.

The U.S. District Court in Cleveland recently upheld a law regulating sexually oriented businesses in Ohio.

Last year, the General Assembly passed the Community Defense Act, which sets hours of operation for sex shops and prohibits contact between patrons and dancers. Sex-shop owners challenged the law.

Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. said more than enough evidence was presented to show the negative effects of sexually oriented businesses on the community.

California Assembly Bill 2914, which would have imposed a 25% excise tax on adult products and productions, has died in committee.

The outrageous tax burden would have applied to all businesses that either sell or produce sexually explicit shows, movies, books and magazines — as well as websites. It was proposed by Democratic Assemblyman Charles Calderon.

According to Diane Duke, Executive Director of FSC, who attended one of the bill's hearings, the people Calderon got to testify were very inflammatory: [They] were telling lies about the industry; that people were committing suicide and that drugs were rampant on the set. Of course, we had people from the set there to testify that [those things] are not happening.

Some opponents opposed the bill on the belief that the government shouldn't be involved in people's sex lives; some saw it as a violation of free-speech rights as it singled out the adult industry, which could have been forced to leave the state; while others saw it as a simple case of the Democrat's trying to pile more taxes on legitimate business owners.

The Legal Obscenities seminar that took place at XBIZ Summer Forum ’08 is now available for viewing on the event website.

The hour and a half seminar features an outstanding lineup of industry attorneys and Evil Angel’s John Stagliano, who was recently charged in federal court with obscenity.

The video of the seminar will provide the opportunity to stay educated on a subject of huge importance not only for those charged with obscenity crimes but also for the industry as a whole. The attorneys who participated represent a peerless brain trust of legal experience and insight into the specifics of obscenity law and legal strategy, and remarks by John Stagliano of Evil Angel provided a poignant human dimension to the occasion.

Would a woman ever pay to have sex with a man at a brothel? If you believe Heidi Fleiss, the clearly unstable yet strangely charming former “Hollywood madam” (she served 21 months in federal prison for tax evasion related to her dial-a-hooker business), the answer is yes.

Hence the ultra-modern, oyster-shaped complex she has designed to be constructed just outside a town in the Nevada desert with the very unsexy name of Pahrump. Fleiss is convinced that the frustrated housewives of America want nothing more than to drive to one of the most godforsaken places on the planet to pay hundreds of dollars to be groped by an off-duty and probably homosexual Chippendale.

Her ideas are detailed in a sadly compelling new HBO documentary, Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal (Crystal being the name of the proposed brothel location, as well as a snide reference to crystal meth, to which Fleiss appears hopelessly addicted).

As Fleiss mentally and physically disintegrates throughout the film, you get the feeling The Stud Farm might have been one of the greatest PR con-jobs of all time. But for all the suggestions that Fleiss was planning to open the place up to gays, thus guaranteeing profitability, I like to think she was genuinely interested in the brothel as a social experiment. For that reason alone I hope she cleans up and gets her licence.

The current recession is proving extremely challenging for adult filmmakers, who are not only wrestling with anemic consumer spending, they're also competing with a nearly infinite supply of free, amateur videos from countless user-generated sites, not to mention a glut of traditional inventory.

This is the first time I can say that we're absolutely feeling the effects of the economy, says Steve Orenstein, president and founder of Wicked Pictures: There was a line we used to use about this business being recession proof. When people talked about the economy, we'd say our business is fine. But look, now you'd have to be blind and deaf not to see that there are problems.

Orenstein hasn't cut any pictures out of the production pipeline -- he still plans on making 48 films this year because, he says, cutting back on pictures would only cut back on his profits. He is, however, looking at ways to reduce expenses.

At the retail level, all the store owners I've talked to say their rental sales are off 10 percent to 15%, says Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News, an industry trade group. Producers say sales are down at least that much. We've identified the reasons we think sales are down. First and foremost, there's a glut of product. The laws of supply and demand have been turned upside down. We're on par to put out 15,000 new releases this year, which is just insane. Secondly, there's a battle with pirated or free material on the internet -- much like the music industry, adult [movie] producers are trying to figure out how to stem free or pirated content.

We're finding consumers don't want to pay $30 or $40 apiece for DVDs when they can subscribe and get DVDs in the mail. Prices are often higher for adult DVDs, and sometimes people don't want an extensive library of adult titles -- there are some movies that are great to see once or twice, but you don't want to own it. It's really changed the dynamics of the industry. Studios must innovate or start distributing digitally, says Tony Medrano, vice president of business development at SugarDVD.

The new set of guidelines from the Indian Censor Board have asked filmmakers to refrain from using caste names that could in any way undermine or hurt any section of the society.

This came in the wake of protests by some organisations, which voiced out concerns against objectionable dialogues in films like Maharadhi, Kantri, Ready and Gorintaku. In fact, the filmmakers were also asked to apologise.

However, the filmmakers are unhappy and are up in arms against the Censor Board. We have never hurt anyone intentionally. The guidelines are unwarranted, says Tammareddy Bharadwaj, president of Producers' Council.

Many filmmakers like Dil Raju feel that the guidelines will curb the creativity of the filmmakers. Films mirror the reality. Where's the originality left if there are so many restrictions, opines director EVV.

Meanwhile, the filmmakers have given a strong representation to the Board, requesting for revoking its decision.

A measure that would make it more difficult to investigate and punish prostitution crimes in San Francisco has qualified for the November ballot, opening another passage in the city's long fight over decriminalizing the sex-trade industry.

Proponents of the measure were able to collect more than 12,000 signatures, including those from three members of the Board of Supervisors, to put it on the ballot, according to the Erotic Service Providers Union, the labor group backing the measure. The same group was unsuccessful in putting a similar measure on the ballot in 2006.

The measure would end San Francisco's First Offender Prostitution Program for men who have been arrested for soliciting a prostitute. Men who go to "john school," which was created in 1996, pay $1,000 and attend a class on prostitution in exchange for the district attorney's office dropping the misdemeanor charge against them.

Mean minded politicians such as Mayor Gavin Newsom this week said the measure would severely hamper the city's ability to investigate and prosecute sex-trafficking cases.

The main goal of decriminalization, proponents say, is the safety of prostitutes. Maxine Doogan, a founder of the Erotic Service Providers Union, wrote in an e-mail: We want the right to make reports of crimes against us without being retaliated against by the Police Department.

A sleek black stretched limo was cruising Miami's Collins Avenue early on Sunday morning when three of the women on board got the attention of three undercover cops, Miami Beach police said.

They each handed over $US40 to board, then paid $US20 for lap dances, $US125 to get into the curtained-off VIP section at the back, and $US100 for various sex acts.

But before their clothes could come off, their badges came out and the party was over, police said.

Police said one of the girls arrested served one officer vodka with cranberry juice and offered oral sex in exchange for $US100. She later told police she owned the bus.

Two other women were arrested for prostitution. No other customers were on the bus.

The driver and the only man found on the bus, was charged with transporting for the purpose of prostitution and possession of a controlled substance - six Viagra pills on him.

Escorts say TheEroticReview.com founder's arrest could change paid-sex industry.

Private sex-industry message boards are buzzing with stories of how Dave Elms, the now-jailed founder of TheEroticReview.com, removed reviews of escorts who refused to offer him free sex in exchange for maintaining their good standing on his influential site.

In an interview with Valleywag, Nancy, an escort in California who says she relies on TheEroticReview for the bulk of her clientele, says she continues to use Elms's site even though she has "seen his 'work' of persuading girls to come and service him" to maintain the presence of the reviews critical to their business.

Independent traveling escort Ashley is one of the thousands of providers whose services have been reviewed on TheEroticReview. She had a run-in with Elms two months ago, when she asked that he change her name on the website to throw off a stalker. Elms took this opportunity to make his own pitch and that meant sleeping with him. She declined, and later found her reviews removed from TER.

Last week, after she heard that Elms had been jailed, she attempted to post a warning to escorts and clients on the board, but it was blocked by administrators and her account was disabled.

Elms is unlikely to face charges over these allegations of abuse. He is versed in what the law says, Nancy explains: He knew exactly what he could get away with and did it for a long time. In fact he could have continued getting girls to service him, had he not been jailed.

And the fate of TER? TER is the industry standard for men seeking providers, says Nancy. There is no other that comes close. Reviews are what fuel the industry.

Pennsylvania state representative Paul Clymer has introduced his Sexually Oriented Businesses Revenue Act to state legislators. Proposed last month, the bill calls for a $5 "pole tax" at strip clubs to benefit the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.

Seventeen co-sponsors signed the bill, which would require strip club owners to collect the fee from every patron and send the proceeds to the state. The bill was inspired by the opening of Coyotes Show Club in Milford, Pa. and modeled on a strip-club tax introduced earlier this year in Texas.

The Texas pole tax was declared unconstitutional in March by a District Court judge. Clymer has implemented changes to his proposal in order to avoid similar legal challenges: We have strengthened the bill, and I believe it will meet constitutional muster. We're trying to advance good values and morality and be a help to the hardworking parents who are bringing their children up to have strong character.

Opponents of the bill, however, feel it will only drag Pennsylvania into unnecessary legal battles that will be costly to taxpayers.

Others claim that Clymer drafted the bill as an attempt to legislate his religious beliefs. Whatever happened to separation of church and state? asked Glenn McGogney, an attorney for Coyotes Show Club: He's picking on a business he doesn't like because of his personal religious objections and placing a tax on that.

In Brooklyn, New York, residents are hardly batting an eye over the opening of a new kind of sex shop. The high-design Babeland shop, which sells itself as being "kid-friendly," doesn't exactly scream sex though.

Unlike the older sex shops, often dark and dingy, the Babeland store has upbeat music, well-dressed saleswomen and infant changing tables -- marketing itself as a fun place for couples to shop. It's part of a growing trend that has been spreading from Louisville to Los Angeles in an attempt to take take the sleeze out of this part of the sex industry.

This store is the fifth Babeland store.

A months-long investigation by WSB-TV reporter Jodi Fleischer unearthed the 'news' that some men have sex inside adult movie theaters, and some neighbors of adult theaters consider such activity unseemly.

Fleischer’s May 7 report on Atlanta's the Belvedere Theatre in DeKalb County also riled some gay activists and civil libertarians who accuse the reporter and WSB of engaging in cheap, sensationalistic reporting in order to attract more viewers.

Fleischer’s report featured undercover camera footage of men engaging in sex inside the theater, and the reporter teamed up with the DeKalb Police vice squad to videotape men being arrested during a recent undercover sting.

Fleischer did not mention that every man arrested in her piece was charged with masturbation, leaving the impression that they were engaged in the oral and anal sex depicted in the undercover camera footage.

I think people have done that in adult theaters all around the world for years, said longtime Atlanta gay activist Floyd Taylor, who complained to WSB about the reports.

No one has a constitutional right to engage in public sex, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia. But the layout of an adult business can determine whether the sexual acts taking place inside are considered public or private, Seagraves said.

We have argued in the past that if there is a place that is set apart in a building where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and someone walks up on them, they should not be arrested for that, Seagraves said.

The Belvedere is currently closed, although a sign on the front door says that it will re-open soon.

Sales of porn videos are down double digits for the first time in 40 years. Some believe that a decline in this once recession-proof business, could be an indication of a decline in overall consumer confidence.

So is porn going soft? According to Adult Video News, the industry's leading trade publication, DVD sales fell 11% in 2006. This year, it's closer to 30%.

Economics professor Robert Gustafson said that's very unusual for this industry: We're seeing this happen for the first time where you have the adult world actually in their own form of a recession.

Competition from the internet has also cut into profits. Consumers are hooked on pornographic knockoffs of You Tube, like Your Porn, the world's number one porn site, which offers free uploads of adult entertainment videos.

Hustler president Michael Klein said while DVD sales may be down, his stores, magazines, and casino are doing well. In fact, Hustler is now marketing the brand on cell phones.

According to Professor Gustafson these obscene losses won't last long: It'll come back maybe in a different way maybe in 3D. The industry has always been able to profit from new technology.

The porn industry overall earned an estimated $14 billion last year although some within the industry say that estimate is high.

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) has called on the television network HBO to stop airing shows like Cathouse, which promote sex trafficking and prostitution.

On April 24, 2008, CATW held a picket line protest in front of the corporate offices of HBO in New York City to protest its reality series Cathouse, set in a brothel.

CATW claimed that by airing shows like Cathouse, HBO normalizes prostitution and its legalization. The cultural and legal acceptance of prostitution, in turn, encourages the demand for prostituted and trafficked women and girls in the global sex trade. Legitimizing pimps as entrepreneurs and managers, as well as portraying patronizing prostituted women as acceptable, harmless entertainment commences a vicious cycle in which the sex industry expands, and increases the demand for sex trafficked women and girls.

An association of First Amendment supporters and retailers have filed suit against the state of Indiana over a new law that would require sellers of sexually explicit and even softcore material to pay a litany of fees in order to do business.

Among the plaintiffs in the suit are the ACLU of Indiana, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Media Coalition, the Association of American Publishers Inc. and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers.

At issue is Indiana House Bill 1042, which Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into law at the end of March. The new law, which covers any business opening after July 1, 2008, or any existing business which changes location after that date, requires the affected business to register with the Secretary of State and pay a $250 registration fee, with several other fees possibly to follow, if the business sells sexually explicit materials.

The big question, of course, is, what constitutes sexually explicit materials? Well, among other things, it's any product or service that is harmful to minors or that is designed for use in, marketed primarily for, or provides for the stimulation of the human genital organs or masochism or a masochistic experience, sadism or a sadistic experience, sexual bondage, or sexual domination.

As to what is harmful to minors:

• It describes or represents, in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.
• Considered as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors.
• It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable matter for or performance before minors.
• Considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value to minors.

Rep. Terry Goodin claims the law will target pornography vendors that pop up along interstate exits in unincorporated areas. What it will do, however, is to require any business that deals in any way with any product or service that's remotely sexual - for instance, museums or art stores that sell statues of Michelangelo's David, or bookstores that sell mildly erotic literature or information on erectile dysfunction - to pay the $250 fee.

We're talking about a law that has very broad and very vague and, we would contend, very unconstitutional restrictions and burdens, said Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana: To the best of my knowledge, there is no similar law in the United States.

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) has called on the television network HBO to stop airing shows like Cathouse, which promote sex trafficking and prostitution.

On April 24, 2008, CATW held a picket line protest in front of the corporate offices of HBO in New York City to protest its reality series Cathouse, set in a brothel.

A New Hampshire adult video store's roadside sign will be moved, but not removed from the property.

The sign for XXXPosed in Wyndham has sparked complaints from passers-by who find the female silhouette on it racy and inappropriate for children to view. The planning director said, his department has received seven or eight complaints about the sign's content in the past several weeks.

Nonetheless, the sign's content is in keeping with local regulations, town officials say.

But the sign's location was deemed 7 feet too close to the right-of-way and must be moved back, said town Planning Director Al Turner.

Business co-owner Maurice Brancato said he has contracted with a company to move the sign.

Meanwhile, Planning Board nutter Ruth-Ellen Post said she can see how the sign would bother a mother with young children. In fact, she said, she would avoid it if she were transporting a young child.

Cops raided a New York S&M club  hauling off six dominatrices accused of prostitution, police sources said.

Undercover officers posed as customers to infiltrate Rebecca's Hidden Chamber, which bills itself as "the polite dungeon," according to its Web site.

The W. 31st St. club's Web site advertises more than 30 beauties available for spanking, whipping and the fulfillment of a variety of fetishes.

According to the site, a guide to adult entertainment named Rebecca's the best dungeon and fetish facility in New York.

From Northern Virginia to Southern California, federal and state prosecutors and grand juries across America continued to bring criminal obscenity charges against adult operators during 2007. Some of the cases were widely reported in the adult trade publications, while others were barely reported at all.

Here are some of the cases brought, pending or resolved in 2007 that are most useful in taking the temperature of the waters in which the adult producers and distributors swim.

...Read the full article

US economists are citing some dire portents of a recession these days, but they've missed one indicator I find especially disturbing: The porn business has suddenly gone flaccid.

The drop in porn rentals and sales is worrisome on several fronts: Till now, porn has been a recession-proof business. Further, with the country already in a dispirited mood, the fact that porn has gone limp may indicate a true plunge in consumer confidence.

DVD porn is down between 10% and 30%, depending on which nook and cranny of the business you scrutinize. Joy King, executive vice president of Wicked Pictures, and a smart analyst of the business, says the smallest dropoff is in "couples-friendly porn". By contrast, that sector called the "gonzo" side of the business is in serious need of fiscal Viagra. Guys with an appetite for "gonzo" are going unrequited, which may help account for the closing of many DVD emporiums like the Movie Galleries in the Midwest.

One beneficiary of these trends is online porn -- a business that's lofty in traffic but shrivelled in terms of revenue.

Porn proprietors are doing what they can to meet their business challenges. Wicked Pictures, for example, is recycling its biggest hits, so customers can acquire Space Nuts, Manhunters and Flashpoint in one package.

At the same time, other producers are cutting production costs and special effects. Since these films already are made on skimpy budgets of $50,000 to $75,000, these cuts are not welcomed by the porn filmmakers.

Still, veterans of the porn trade are edgy about the downturn. A generation ago, they recall, when authorities cracked down on Deep Throat and closed many of the porn palaces, the country promptly fell into a serious recession. Economists attributed this setback to the ups and downs of energy prices, but porn analysts insist other sorts of fluctuations play a more urgent role in consumer confidence.

Increased controls have been approved by the Dallas City Council to outlaw the presence of minors and closed-door VIP rooms in strip clubs.

According to The Dallas Morning News, the council revised its requirements for an adult business license after police discovered a 12-year-old girl dancing nude at Diamond's Cabaret in March.

Free Speech Coalition executive director Diane Duke criticized the revisions as "overbroad and overreaching for what they want to do.

The reforms to Dallas' adult business laws call for:

• An automatic one-year revocation of licenses for any adult business found to be employing or allowing entrance by minors
• A ban on doors, walls, drapes or anything obstructing the view of VIP areas in a strip club from the rest of the premises
• A designated official club operator to be present during all operating hours and responsible for all activity within a club
• Detailed records to be kept on file of all employees including their age, an original photo, a copy of a valid driver's license, their fingerprints and a Texas criminal history report

The revised ordinance takes effect inediately. It reduces the number of days within which a club cited with a violation can be shut down from 30 to 10, but does not include several requirements some council members had hoped to impose.

Those include city licenses for adult business employees, mandatory cover charges and the prohibition of physical contact between strip club dancers and patrons. There was concern amongst city officials that these edicts would invite legal challenges.

Nevada is the only state in the US that allows legal prostitution, but in its largest city, Las Vegas, prostitution is illegal. When the mayor suggested changing the law, it sparked a huge debate.

Mayor Oscar Goodman grabs the headlines whatever he says or does - and he relishes it. He is proud of Las Vegas' image as "Sin City" and happily calls it "an adult playground".

He boasts about his love of gin, cigars and pretty women and calls himself the happiest mayor in the universe.

But when he suggested legalising prostitution and creating a red-light district and a string of magnificent brothels in downtown Vegas, the mayor got his most dramatic headlines yet.

He had opened up a debate on a taboo subject: Las Vegas' illegal prostitution. Everybody knows it goes on, many businesses profit from it, but in-keeping with the city's slogan What happens here, stays here, it is rarely discussed.

It's disingenuous when people say they don't want to legalise it, says Goodman: Right now it's uncontrolled and unregulated. There's no check and balance as far as the women's health is concerned and legal brothels could be an important revenue-raising device for the city.

It is estimated that there are as many as 10,000 prostitutes operating illegally in Las Vegas, in an industry that may be worth as much as $6 billion a year.

Over 150 pages in the Las Vegas phone book advertise "escorts" and "massage", and leaflets promising to deliver hot babes direct to your room in 20 minutes are handed out to tourists openly on Las Vegas Boulevard.

There are women who get propositioned in the casinos, bars and hotels. There are women who do 'extras' out of strip clubs and who 'give pleasure' in massage parlours. Women who do what we term 'outcall'. There are women who work by print ads or on-line. And every casino host has a bevy of girls to call at a moment's notice to satisfy their high-rollers.

In fact, Nevada is the only state in the US to allow legal brothels, which stems from a 1970 state law allowing Nevada's individual counties to licence their brothels. But this only applies to counties with populations under 400,000, which excludes Las Vegas and Reno. There are nearly 30 state-sanctioned brothels in Nevada.

But some religious nutters, academics and campaigners say that all prostitution is wrong and legalising it does not stop sex trafficking or the abuse of women.

Kate Hausbeck, a sociology professor at the University of Las Vegas, has spent nearly 10 years researching both the legal and illegal sex trade in Nevada. She concludes that the best model for Nevada - and any country in the world - is the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Empower the women who do the work. Give them labour protection and the rights given other workers. Because it's a job and a choice for many women, she says.

But, when asked about Mr Goodman's idea of legal brothels for Las Vegas, she says she doesn't think prostitution will ever be legal here: There's too much money to be made from the illegal sex trade. The casinos and convention industry fear it would be a step too far.

A $5-per-customer fee on Texas strip club patrons dubbed the "pole tax" has been declared unconstitutional.

A state district judge ruled that clubs can't collect the fee. The charge went into effect in January and was expected to raise about $44 million.

Judge Scott Jenkins wrote in the March 28 decision that the fee, while furthering laudable goals, violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and is therefore invalid.

The Texas Entertainment Association Inc., which is a group of topless clubs, and the owner of an Amarillo club, sued Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Comptroller Susan Combs over the fee.

Witnesses for the strip clubs testified at a hearing last year that the clubs would go out of business if they had to collect an additional $5-per-patron fee.

Lawyers for the state had said the Legislature was within its rights to impose the fee on businesses that serve alcohol and offer nude performances.

Attorneys for the