BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Earlier this year, the Justice Department hired a lawyer named Bruce Taylor to a top position in its obscenity division. A hero in the anti-porn community, he's prosecuted hundreds of obscenity cases, including one at the Supreme Court against Larry Flynt. If it sounds like a bit of a throwback, well, maybe it is. After a decade in which federal obscenity cases dwindled to single digits, the Feds are again setting their sights on smut. President Bush's 2005 budget proposes four million dollars in new funds for obscenity prosecutions, and the Justice Department claims that it's racked up 25 convictions in the past two years. Among the cases still pending is one against Extreme Associates, producers of such titles as "Cornhole Armageddon" and "Depravity in Deutschland." The company is based in North Hollywood, but its movies are available nationwide on the net, and so it's been indicted in Pittsburgh where community standards are somewhat more rigid. Extreme Associates is run by Rob Zicari, aka Rob Black, who joins me now. Welcome to the show.

ROB ZICARI: Well, thank you for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Some communities will be more conservative than others, and prosecutors certainly will try to exploit that to their advantage, but even if you were prosecuted in your own back yard, do you think your defense could hold up?

ROB ZICARI: Oh, definitely, and I think our defense'll hold up in Pittsburgh. You know, this is the year 2004, and I have confidence that a jury will say listen, there's a difference between watching entertainment and feeling hey, that's not my, you know, cup of tea. I could do without seeing that for the next 30 years of my life, and saying you know what -- the person who made that should go to prison. We have 450 movies in our library. Maybe ten of 'em are considered edgy, and they're no more edgy than horror movies that are out there today, or your "Kill Bill" or even your "Passion of Christ." You know, just like you see on, on Cinemax with the story of Ted Bundy or someone, and they showed simulated sex -- our shows the sex, but that's the only difference.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's the name of the one where Jesus comes down from the cross and rapes an angel?

ROB ZICARI: That, that's "Ass Clowns."

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Uh-huh.

ROB ZICARI:That's "Ass Clowns III," which had Bin Laden raping a reporter who we depicted as Ashleigh Banfield from CNN, and the funny thing is, we were indicted on that movie. We got indicted on three of 'em, which is "Forced Entry," "Extreme Teen," and "Cocktails." And Extreme Teen is a series based off of-- older men with younger girls, and we're not talking about children --you know, we're talking about that fantasy that Hollywood plays out every single day.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think there is such a thing as obscene? How would you define it?

ROB ZICARI:Something that's obscene is up to you. You know, I guess you could say well, bestiality would be obscene, and child pornography would have been obscene. Yeah, of course, they're obscene, but they're illegal, and the illegalness of it takes precedent [sic] over something being obscene.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right.

ROB ZICARI:If you take those things out of the realm -what's obscene? Well you know what I find obscene? I find obscene watching these state preachers, you know, show that they're healing crippled people -- I find that obscene --bilking people out of money because they're de-- you know, depicting that they're healers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rob, why make a point of being extreme though? Aren't you just inviting a lawsuit?

ROB ZICARI:Mmmm. You know, that's a question of why does Miramax base their company on making edgy films? Why does Disney make family movies? You know, we built our company in, in a competitive market of the adult business that produces 10,000 new releases a, a year. The business is saturated. And we made our niche of being kind of extreme -- being that Miramax, being that studio that, you know, maybe every couple of years is going to do something that raises the bar in the business and where people go hey!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Wait a minute. You're not really likening yourself to Miramax, though, are you?

ROB ZICARI: We are making movies. Nothing more. Nothing less. And we should be held in the same light as a real movie studio.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:What about the current crackdown. Why do you think they're going after you? In the scheme of things, Extreme Associates is a pretty small player.

ROB ZICARI: We are a smaller player, without a shadow of a doubt. But we are mainstream in the business so to speak. We get nominated for awards and stuff, and if you go after somebody smaller, the first thing they're going to say is, well why aren't you going after them? Lookit, they've said that their stuff is on the edge; they're crazy; they got big mouths -- you should go after them. And if they could get a conviction here, then they just kind of move on down the line and, and start with everybody.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:A lot of the anti-porn activists say that pornography is simply not a healthy way to learn about sex and love, and that in the words of Morality and Media's Robert Peters, sex is linked to something greater than masturbating to depictions of other people having sex. Now, you grew up literally surrounded by porn. Your father was in the porn business. It surrounded you as you grew. How do you respond to this objection to porn -- that it should be limited because it constitutes a negative influence on society as a whole? It's almost a public health argument.

ROB ZICARI: [LAUGHS] Well, the, the only response to that is: who is the person to say they're going to be the deciding factor of, of what is not good for society? And where does it stop? Because I could probably list you 15 different things that also could probably contribute to not a good society, anywhere from the tobacco industry to, to alcohol sales to drug companies -- oh, I mean it's, it's ludicrous.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You produce two movies a week?

ROB ZICARI:Since all the problems and paying lawyers and stuff, we've slowed considerably down, just because we don't have the funds to produce like we did.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what are you working on this week?

ROB ZICARI: Nothing. Next week we're going to start working on a, a movie called Oral Hygiene II--it's a, it's a love story. [LAUGHS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rob, thank you very much.

ROB ZICARI: No, thank you very much.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Rob Zicari is founder and CEO of Extreme Associates. If and when his case finally goes to court, a jury of Zicari's peers, that is, his Pennsylvania peers, will be asked to watch the three movies in question. And then, says Marybeth Buchanan, the federal prosecutor handling Zicari's case, they will be asked to decide whether the films will meet the 3-part definition of obscene established in the 1973 case, Miller vs. California.

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: The first part is that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. And prurient means unhealthy and degrading interest in sex. Second, that the average person, applying those same contemporary community standards, would find that the material depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner. And last, that a reasonable person viewing the material, again, as a whole, would find that the material lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And that's why the government decided to go after this company?

MARYBETH BUCHANAN:Extreme Associates is involved in producing hundreds of videotapes, and many of these videotapes, we believe, meet the federal obscenity definition. They had absolutely no plans to try to comply with the law. In fact, it was their intention to produce the most disgusting material. So they're really not a very sympathetic defendant.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We were talking to Rob Zicari about the issue of community standards, and here's what he told us:

ROB ZICARI:You know, those community laws that were based back in the early '70s, the main goal was for the community to decide, hey, we don't want this strip club or adult book store right next to our child's school. There was no videotapes. There was no internet. There was no DVDs. They did not envision this form of media, so then those community standards, they, they're not appliable [sic]. You know, sitting in your home and privately ordering a tape from me in the mail -- me sending it to your house in a, in a brown paper bag doesn't affect the community.

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: Well, I strongly disagree. Extreme Associates is subject to the laws of every jurisdiction throughout the country where they choose to sell their product. You take an average person who knows their community, and they have to determine as an average person whether their community would find the material obscene. It doesn't mean that the community had to see it or the community is about to see it. It just -- whether the community would find it obscene.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So does that mean that the spectrum basically narrows down to what the average person would find offensive?

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: That's correct.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:If Zicari and Romano are convicted, they could face up to 50 years in prison, and Zicari likes to point out that that's more than double the sentence for someone who actually commits a rape in Pittsburgh -- he's just depicting rape in his movies.

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: The Zicaris face a sentence of up to 50 years in prison because they've been charged with 10 counts of violating federal law. So they could be sentenced for up to 5 years for each charge. Certainly someone who's convicted of rape ten times would face a much longer sentence than the Zicaris face.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now the current wave of prosecutions represents a turnaround from the Clinton era where obscenity was rarely prosecuted at the federal level. What do you think has been the effect of roughly a decade of lax enforcement?

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: I think that the reason that we are seeing such an expansion of the type of material that is available today is because there was a total lack of enforcement of the federal obscenity laws in the 1990s. Had we been enforcing the law during this time period, I don't think that we would be seeing the type of material that's available today.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Do you think it's really because of the prosecution environment or is it simply that the internet has made porn more available and easier to disseminate and easier to view in the privacy of your home?

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: You know, it's really not that different from speeding. If you don't think that law enforcement is going to stop you, you're going to continue to push the limit.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So what's the next step for justice? Will you eventually be going after bigger adult movie makers or the hotel chains that make a fortune off of porn delivered to people's rooms - the cable companies?

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: We have to look at every piece of material on a case by case basis. We're looking at those producers who are producing the worst material and the producers who are providing this material on a large scale basis, so it's really going to depend upon the content of the material.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And in every case you'll be trying to determine whether this material is patently offensive to the average viewer.

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: That's correct.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Marybeth Buchanan, thank you very much.

MARYBETH BUCHANAN: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Marybeth Buchanan is U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She joined us from the studios of WDUQ in Pittsburgh. [MUSIC]