Joe (a journalist, not law enforcement) says that kink.com is under investigation. "The two most controversial issues are child pornography and bondage. The Justice Department has made it their agenda to go after those kinds of smut peddlers."
I also expect the extreme gonzo companies such as Anabolic/Diabolic to get popped on federal obscenity charges within the next 18 months.
I expect a steady stream of obscenity indictments (one every few months) for the remainder of the Bush presidency.
Someguy posts on XPT:
It isn’t even about getting a conviction that the government cares about. The point is to either scare companies away for fear of prosecution because legal bills can be a lot or to try and bleed these companies dry through tons of litigation. I don’t know if anyone followed it at the time(or even knew about it) but insex.com used to be this very hard bondage site run out of New York. They had to shut down cause of the heat they were getting from the government. They knew a lawsuit would bankrupt them through legal fees so they had to close their doors and just come back as a much softer bdsm site.
I don’t know the exact in and outs of it but apparently the government is also pretty good at scaring credit card processors away from certain areas of business as well. That’s another problem insex had.
I hope that kink.com is as well off financially as I think they might be and has the resources to fight this. They better not have spent all that cash on buying that building in San Fran.