Planet Manu

In the second story of its kind this week, an adult website has been raided by law enforcement. In this case, the site was a story site called “Red Rose Stories”. The webmaster of the site posted a message on his homepage saying that the FBI had entered his home when he was not at home and seized property related to the site.

The comments from the webmaster allege that the bust is related to obscenity, but that has not been confirmed yet. Here is part of the message posted by the webmaster on his site:

“I am being charged with ‘OBSCENITIES’ and face charges for having posted fantasy stories.

They are trying to say fantasy stories are illegal.

The men in black (FBI) took ALL of my computer equipment, and many of my diskettes, and have access to ALL my files and site information. “

The site owner is being represented by well known free speech attorney Larry Walters. Walters made the following statement to Ynot News:

“We’re still investigating the issues associated with the raid, but at this point it does not appear that any basis exists to justify obscenity charges premised on the written stories and audio files that were the subject of the search warrant.”

Walters’ comments seem to indicate that the search warrant may in fact be related to potential obscenity charges, even though rumors and speculation have suggested that there may have been other motivations for the raid. Allegedly, the site involved publishes a lot of underage stories. Some internet postings have suggested that it’s possible the FBI is looking for evidence in actual cases of abuse or trying to get information on specific subscribers to the site who they may have had their eye on for some reason. Until more information comes out, we will have to wait and see.

While Literotica does not publish underage stories or some of the other types of content allegedly published on that site, we support the free speech rights of authors and sites like ASSTR who do publish more extreme fiction. If this case only involves fictional stories, then it is a troubling development in the government’s war on free speech.

If the charges end up being related in any way to actual child abuse, then those responsible for that abuse should get what’s coming to them.

Fictional writing, no matter how offensive, is clearly protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

More updates on this story as we continue to find out what’s going on.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2005 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Free Speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.