Intellectual Property Law

Chief Judge in Obscenity Case Caught Posting Porn

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

A top federal judge who is presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles has been caught posting explicit photos and videos to his web site. The judge told the Los Angeles Times that he didn't think the site was publicly accessible.

Alex Kozinski (at right), a conservative appointee of former president Ronald Reagan who is chief of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, posted a photo of naked women standing on all fours and painted to look like cows, as well as a video of a half-naked man with a farm animal. A step-by-step pictorial depicted a woman shaving her pubic hair and other images showed masturbation and what the Times called "contortionist sex."

The images were posted to a subdomain of the judge's web site that could only be accessed by directly typing in the correct URL. The domain, however, was not password-protected. In addition to the pornographic images, the subdomain contained legal writings, music files and the judge's personal photos.

The judge told the Times that he accidentally loaded the images to his server and would not have intentionally posted them. He said he thought some of the photos were "funny" but acknowledged that the photo of the women painted as cows was "degrading" and "gross." He said, however, that he didn't think the images were obscene.

Kozinski is presiding over a case involving filmmaker Ira Isaacs who allegedly distributed sexual-fetish videos depicting bestiality and other images that are deemed potentially "criminally obscene."

A New York University professor has called for Kozinski to recuse himself from the Isaacs case saying the images could call into question his objectivity.

"The phrase 'sober as a judge' resonates with the American public," Gillers said. "We don't want them to reveal their private selves publicly. This is going to upset a lot of people."

UPDATE: A tipster sent in this search link showing some of the files Kozinki had on his "stuff" subdomain before he took down his site (the site is no longer accessible). Many of them are .wmv files that can be found elsewhere on the internet. None of them depict the kind of sexual material described in the LA Times piece.

Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP

Full post as published by Threat Level on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).