Lawrence G. Walters | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 11, 1963 [1] [2] |
| Occupation | Attorney |
Lawrence G. Walters (born 11 November 1963) is an American First Amendment attorney and anti-censorship advocate. He is the head of the Walters Law Group, focusing on First Amendment and Internet law, and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Central Florida.
Walters was born in and grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Central Florida in 1985. [2] He received his JD from Florida State University with honors. [3]
Walters is an expert in adult entertainment and obscenity law who represents clients in the live webcam industry. [4] He also specializes in online gaming and sports betting law. [5] [6] [7] Walters works in the field of free speech, and represents the interests of the online entertainment community, and began his career as an attorney in 1988. [8] He has defended website operators in high-profile obscenity cases. [9] [10] In 1999, Walters defended Tammy Robinson in the first obscenity case based on website content. [11] Walters has defended Chris Wilson against more than 300 obscenity charges arising from his operation of a controversial website which included images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The case represented the first obscenity prosecution against a website based on user-generated content. [11]
In 2007, Walters defended Karen Fletcher, [12] who was charged with obscenity based on written stories published on her website in a case tested the boundaries of obscenity law. [13] In 2008, he was appointed President of the First Amendment Lawyers Association. [14] Walters also defended Clinton McCowen, where he introduced Google Trends evidence showing that online users were more interested in sexually explicit topics [15] than in generic terms like "apple pie" [16] or "watermelon." The case was settled shortly after Walters issues a subpoena to Google for supporting evidence. [17]
Walters is also known as an advocate for the free speech rights of protestors, [18] street performers, [19] and topless dancers. [20] For example, in 2006 he won an appellate court victory upholding the First Amendment right of a topless protestor in Daytona Beach, Florida. [21] Walters has also worked with the online gambling industry, representing GoldenPalace.com against the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the state's efforts to seize [22] the domain based on alleged gambling violations. He has also represented Internet Cafes [23] in constitutional challenges [24] to local ordinances banning the use of simulated gambling devices. [25]
In 2009, Walters began representing teens accused of sex offenses based on sexting behavior [26] [27] [28] and advocating changes in states' laws relating to teen sexting. [29] Walters has also developed apps used by content producers to comply with federal age verification laws and enforce copyrights. [30]
In 2018, Walters filed a constitutional challenge to the federal law known as the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (FOSTA), on behalf of the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, and others. [31] The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the First Amendment and puts sex workers at risk. [32] [33] Walters also represents Rebekah Jones, a geographer turned whistleblower who was fired by the State of Florida for allegedly failing to manipulate COVID 19 data whose claims the Office of Inspector General later found to be unsubstantiated or unfounded; those she accused were exonerated of any misconduct. [34] He sued the Florida Department of Law Enforcement after it raided her home and seized her computer data. [35] [36]
A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive or disturbing to its viewers, though it can also contain elements of humor or evoke sexual arousal. Shock-oriented websites generally contain material such as pornographic, scatological, racist, sexist, graphically violent, insulting, vulgar, profane, or otherwise some other provocative nature. Websites that are primarily fixated on real death and graphic violence are particularly referred to as a gore site. Some shock sites display a single picture, animation, video clip or small gallery, and are circulated via email or disguised in posts to discussion sites as a prank. Steven Jones distinguishes these sites from those that collect galleries where users search for shocking content, such as Rotten.com. Gallery sites can contain beheadings, execution, electrocution, suicide, murder, stoning, torching, police brutality, hangings, terrorism, cartel violence, drowning, vehicular accidents, war victims, rape, necrophilia, genital mutilation and other sexual crimes.
John Stagliano, also known as Buttman, is an American entrepreneur, former pornographic film actor, producer and director who founded and owns the Evil Angel pornographic film studio.
Vivid Entertainment Group is an American pornographic film production company, featuring internet content.
Adam Glasser, known professionally as Seymore Butts, is an American pornographic film director, producer, and occasional performer who has produced hundreds of films in the gonzo genre of pornography.
Wicked Pictures is an American pornographic movie studio headquartered in Canoga Park, California. Between 2004 and 2021, it was one of the only heterosexual studios to maintain a condoms-only policy.
Fucking Machines is a pornographic website founded in 2000 that features video and photographs of women engaged in autoerotic sexual stimulation with penetrative sex-machines and sex toys. Based in San Francisco, California, the site is operated by Kink.com. Web entrepreneur Peter Acworth launched Fucking Machines on September 25, 2000, as his company's second website after Kink.com. Devices shown on the site were created with the intent to bring women authentic orgasms. Performers were instructed to allow themselves to be recorded experiencing pleasure.
nowthatsfuckedup.com was a controversial shock website depicting corpses in kill zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. It existed from February 2004 until April 2006, when it was shut down under Florida obscenity laws.
Evil Angel is an American production company and distributor of pornographic films, founded and owned by John Stagliano.
XBIZ is an American publisher of business news and business information for the sex industry.
Ira E. Isaacs is an American pornographic film director and self-described "shock artist." He was convicted of five federal counts of selling and distributing obscene material in 2012.
Flava Works, Inc. is a company that produces gay media featuring black and Latino men. Its headquarters are in Miami, Florida with a satellite office in Chicago, Illinois.
Amateur pornography is a category of pornography that features models, actors or non-professionals performing without pay, or actors for whom this material is not their only paid modeling work. Reality pornography is made porn that seeks to emulate the style of amateur pornography. Amateur porn has been called one of the most profitable and long-lasting genres of pornography.
Paul F. Little is an American pornographic actor, producer and director better known by his stage name Max Hardcore. He rose to prominence in 1992 with the film series The Anal Adventures of Max Hardcore, which in 1994 was awarded the X-Rated Critics Organization's award for Best Amateur or Pro-Am series. Former AVN writer, Gerrie Lim, has classified Hardcore's works as gonzo pornography and "testing the limits of acceptability". He is a member of the X-Rated Critics Organization's Hall of Fame. He spent two and a half years in prison (2009–2011), convicted in a trial for obscenity.
Legal frameworks around fictional pornography depicting minors vary depending on country and nature of the material involved. Laws against production, distribution and consumption of child pornography generally separate images into three categories: real, pseudo, and virtual. Pseudo-photographic child pornography is produced by digitally manipulating non-sexual images of real children to create pornographic material. Virtual child pornography depicts purely-fictional characters. "Fictional pornography depicting minors", as covered in this article, includes these latter two categories, whose legalities vary by jurisdiction, and often differ with each other and with the legality of real child pornography.
New Sensations is an American pornographic film studio. It is the parent company and sister-label of Digital Sin and HotwifeXXX. New Sensations was founded in 1993; The first films it produced were the Video Virgins series, which ran from 1993 to 1998. In 2006 it was described by Reuters as one of the handful of studios that dominate the U.S. porn industry.
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage, in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to graphic depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity, and related utterances of profane speech.
Brazzers is a Canadian pornographic video production company with headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and legal domicile in Nicosia, Cyprus. With an online network consisting of thirty-one hardcore pornography websites, the company's slogan is "World's Best HD Porn Site!". The site contains 10,036 videos, which were published by 33 different sites. Their network of sites features 2,340 pornstar models.
Reality Kings is a brand launched by RK Netmedia, an internet-based hardcore pornography production company operating out of Miami Beach, Florida.
Lorelei Lee is an American pornographic actor and writer. They identify as non-binary.
MindGeek is a Luxembourg-based, privately held company with Canada as its center of operations that primarily focuses on pornography. It is owned by Feras Antoon, Bernd Bergmair, David Marmorstein, and — more recently — by Leonardo DaSilva and operates many popular streaming websites, as well as film production companies Digital Playground, Men.com, Reality Kings, Sean Cody, and WhyNotBi.com, among others. MindGeek is headquartered in Luxembourg, and maintains additional offices in Bucharest, Dublin, London, Los Angeles, and Montreal. A spokesperson for the company stated that they are "one of the top five bandwidth consumption companies in the world".
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