from a www.avn.com press release – This year’s Arthur Schwartz Legal Seminar featured some of the country’s top First Amendment attorneys giving attendees the low-down on the latest threats facing the adult industry, as well as some of the victories scored over the past year….

Paul Cambria discussed the current state of the obscenity laws—a topic he knows well, having been part of the team that, in July, secured the acquittal of Evil Angel owner John Stagliano on obscenity charges in the District of Columbia. (AVN’s day-by-day coverage of that trial can be found on AVN.com.)

“That case started here,” Cambria noted, referring to the fact that the FBI had sent agents into the Adult Entertainment Expo in 2008 to photograph Stagliano working at the Evil Angel booth.

Cambria focused on the fact that Department of Justice prosecutor Pamela Stever Satterfield had tried to make the jury think that the case had been about “providing [adult] material to minors,” since FBI Special Agent Dan Bradley had downloaded the trailer to Fetish Fanatic 5 to his laptop “in public” while sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C.—but Judge Richard J. Leon later ruled the trailer inadmissible as evidence.

“It was our great pleasure to defeat their ‘A Team’,” Cambria announced, adding that he’d heard that Satterfield had resigned her position after the trial was over.

But while there have been no new federal obscenity indictments since the Stagliano acquittal, Cambria warned of a new threat: Targeting websites that accept ads for adult services.

Cambria spoke specifically of the recent bust of Escorts.com, whose offices were raided by over 100 Philadelphia police and FBI agents in October, although no federal indictments have yet been issued, and Cambria’s own sources have indicated that the Justice Department has no interest in the case.

“It’s really new [legal] ground,” Cambria said of the raid, observing that courts around the country have held that advertisements posted on a host website are merely “republished” material, with the host having no responsibility for the ads’ contents.

However, he noted, the FBI has taken the position that allowing such ads to be posted on the sites amounts to “facilitating prostitution,” and that the web host could be charged with criminal facilitation and even money laundering—both very serious federal felonies.

Finally, Cambria voiced his concerns about the resurrection of the Religious Right—notably Morality In Media’s newly-appointed CEO, former DOJ prosecutor Patrick Trueman, who is “raising funds like televangelists,” and who has planned two anti-porn conferences, the next in February, which will take place in the Capitol building itself.