Penthouse Denies Every Claim in Broadstream Adult FriendFinder Suit

Penthouse Denies Every Claim in Broadstream Adult FriendFinder Suit

The plaintiff in Broadstream Capital Partners vs. Penthouse Media Group recently filed an amended complaint in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, and the defendant has replied with a 22-page response filed Aug. 4 that essentially denies every claim made by the plaintiff.

Free Speech Coalition Releases 1st Annual Report

Free Speech Coalition Releases 1st Annual Report

The report has been distributed to FSC members and will be available for public view on the FSC website on Wednesday.

Veoh Porn Case Judge Rules in Favor of Tube Sites

Veoh Porn Case Judge Rules in Favor of Tube Sites

In a decision that will affect every video-sharing site on the Internet, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that just because a tube site encodes videos doesn't mean they control those videos.

Adult Patent Law Case Settled Out of Court

Adult Patent Law Case Settled Out of Court

A patent law court case that ensnared a prominent adult industry figure has come to a quiet close.

Saved by a loophole

August 22, 2008

Our view: Howard County porn shop is legal, but it's still a blight
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was hailed as The Man after he cleaned up New York's Times Square by chasing out the seedy adult bookstores and X-rated theaters that blighted the area.

But even Rudy might have been stumped by the Pack Shack, a Howard County smut shop that authorities have been trying to get rid of for years, and that keeps popping back like a Whack-a-Mole.

The Pack Shack has thwarted every effort to shut it down. No one even knows who owns it. It's been to business development along Route 40 near Ellicott City what crab grass is to a golf green.

The latest assault on this embarrassment involved pelting it with zoning ordinances that define adult stores as devoting at least 20 percent of their space and 20 percent of their stock to sexual materials. The Pack Shack was chock-a-block with the stuff, so the zoning gambit seemed like an easy win for the county.

But the store's owners, whoever they are, struck back by finding a loophole wide enough to drive a truckload of porn through. They filled every spare inch of the building's basement and entrance with inoffensive used paperback books, T-shirts and the like. The smut's still there, brazen as ever, but it's swamped by the sheer volume of other junk, allowing the store to evade the 20 percent rule on a narrow technicality.

Let no one mistake this outcome as a blow against censorship, as the attorney representing Pack Shack had the gall to suggest Wednesday. It's the unrepentant gloating of a vile commerce that degrades women and poisons the minds of everyone exposed to it. And it's all perfectly legal.

Adult book store raids net drug, lewdness, prostitution busts

August 22, 2008
By Jeff McShan / 11 News

HOUSTON -- For months, the Houston Police Department’s vice squad has been raiding adult bookstores and arcades across the city. The raids, including the latest at the Houston 420-Talk of the Town on Thursday night, netted plenty of arrests of those patronizing the stores.

What are the police finding inside these places? It’s a lot more than adult videos and magazines.

Often, the arrests are for illegal drugs. But more often the busts are for public lewdness, indecent exposure and prostitution.

And that’s just the customers.

At every bust so far, detectives have found the owners of the sexually-oriented bookstores are operating illegally because they don’t have the proper city license.

That’s the main reason police are conducting the raids.

Thursday night’s raid uncovered that Talk of the Town has not only not complied with the city’s sexually-oriented business ordinance; it hasn’t even applied for the proper license.

Since April, the HPD vice squad visited eight adult bookstores and arcades.

It’s not easy catching the illegal activity during these raids, though.

At one raid location, the clerk at the store’s cash register was able to push a button to change all the pornographic movies that were showing in the back into a live feed of the security cameras outside the store.

Luckily, vice officers were already staking out the place and knew what was going on inside.

Police Investigate Porn Shop Robberies

8/20/2008
11 ALIVE

ATLANTA -- The Fulton County Police Department is looking for a man they suspect may be responsible for as many as three robberies of adult video stores.

On August 10, a man entered the Starship store on Old National Highway. After browsing around the store, the man approached the counter where he appeared to be paying for several DVDs. Police say the man raised his shirt to reveal a gun tucked in his waistband and demanded money from the cashier. The man was not able to get any money, but did getaway with several stolen DVDs.

Thirty minutes later, the same man showed up at the Starship store on Fulton Industrial Boulevard and robbed that store in a similar fashion, police said. In that robbery, the man got away with cash and DVDs.

In both robberies the suspect is wearing the same clothes and follows a similar patter, police said. He was seen driving away from the robberies in a tan, older model Ford van.

Police believe the man may also be responsible for a robbery of the Love Shack on Fulton Industrial Boulevard in June.

Nobody was injured during the robberies.