Porn Producer Max Hardcore Indicted on 10 Counts

Max Hardcore aka Paul Little was indicted by the Feds yesterday on 10 counts of obscenity in a Florida court.

The ultra-hardcore (and downright violent) producer / actor / director was swept up in the actions of a post-9/11 administration who has launched an aggressive attack against adult entertainment. Little's Altadena studios were raided two years ago by the Feds which lead to these charges.

A Justice Department spokesman said the prosecution was an outgrowth of a government anti-obscenity initiative started in 2001 under former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

"Whenever a new administration comes in, it has to make a decision on what resources to put where," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. "And one of the things they took a look at in 2001 was to investigate and prosecute these types of crime because of the expansion of the Internet."

The Bush administration has significantly increased the number of pornography prosecutions in recent years, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering and research organization associated with Syracuse University.

Though the federal prosecution of white-collar crimes, gun offenses and police brutality cases is down nationwide, the number of pornography prosecutions has grown from 500 to 700 a year between 1999 and 2001, to 1,300 to 1,400 annually over the last three years, said David Burnham, co-director of the clearinghouse. - LA Times

LAist asks, of all of those cases, were any of them brought against former White House Press Corps visitor Jeff Gannon, who was allowed into the White House press room every day for a year under separate day passes until it was revealed that he was a gay male prostitute who solicited his illegal behavior... over the Internet?