Reporter Elaine Silvestrini of the Tampa Tribine displayed her obvious distaste for Max Hardcore throughout his trial. Here she gets to write his epitaph:

TAMPA – His pornographic persona, Max Hardcore, is all swagger and sadism – forcing women in his movies to do things that can’t be described in a family newspaper.

But in federal court Friday, as he faced a federal prison sentence, Paul F. Little trembled and begged a woman for mercy.

“It just seems a very high price to pay, I think,” Little told U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew, “and I ask you to understand how much I’ve suffered.”

Little and his attorneys argued that his conviction in June for 10 counts of distributing obscene materials over the Internet and through the mail had devastated his business and left him near ruin. That, they said, should be punishment enough.

But Bucklew sentenced Little to three years and 10 months in federal prison.

She was unimpressed with Little’s apologies, noting he had given interviews in which he ridiculed the charges against him. “He was flip throughout the entire trial,” she said. “He wasn’t apologetic, as far as I can tell, until this morning.”

Little Said They Were ‘Euro’ Editions

Little also said the videos in question, which were labeled as “Euro” editions, were intended for distribution in the permissive European market, not the United States. He said he told his distributor not to sell them in the United States.

That, the judge said, is “questionable.” She said she believed prosecutors when they said that label was a marketing technique to let buyers know the content was more extreme. “You’re either incredibly naive or you’re just not being truthful,” she told Little.

Bucklew also ordered Little, 50, to pay a $7,500 fine on his own behalf and another $7,500 on behalf of his company, Max World Entertainment. She leveled $5,000 in special assessments and ordered Little to serve three years of probation after he is released from prison. The company was placed on probation for five years.

The judge granted a defense request that Little be allowed to remain free until the bureau of prisons designates a prison.

According to evidence in the trial, federal investigators in January 2006 purchased an online membership to the Max Hardcore Web site and downloaded five promotional video clips. Then, in March 2007, an undercover postal inspector bought five DVDs from the Web site, having them delivered to a post office box in Tampa.

The videos featured scenes of vomiting and urination, showing women being forced to ingest various bodily fluids.

Federal prosecutor Edward McAndrew, a lawyer with the Justice Department, said the videos were “some of the most extreme material available on the Internet.”

“This case is not about the conduct,” McAndrew said. “It’s not about consenting adults. It’s about commercial distribution. … He made a choice that his material would be more extreme than others. What he creates gives mainstream pornography a bad name.”

McAndrew said Little was undeterred by his conviction and had sold two of the videos in question after he was convicted.

In seeking a more lenient sentence, one of Little’s attorneys argued the videos were not sadomasochistic. “Urine and vomit, our argument is, isn’t sadistic or masochistic,” James Benjamin said.

“What about humiliation?” the judge asked.

That, Benjamin replied, isn’t in the legal definition of sadomasochistic.

“Clearly, there seemed to be pain,” Bucklew said.

That was acting, Benjamin said. “The person that was involved in the conduct sat in court with a smile on her face and wrote your honor a letter saying, ‘Judge, this was a beautiful part of my life.'”

“I don’t even think this is a close call,” the judge said. The videos portrayed “sadistic conduct. …This is clearly degrading, clearly humiliating and intended to be so.”

Defense attorney Jeffrey Douglas said the conviction has reverberated throughout the adult entertainment industry and marks the first time prosecutors successfully have gone after a pornography producer while granting immunity to the distributor.

Until the videos were ruled by a jury to be obscene, Douglas said, Little had “no way of knowing the activity he was engaged in was criminal.”

It was unprecedented, Benjamin said, “to consider a purveyor of dirty movies in the arena of criminal conduct.”

“This came out of nowhere,” Little said.