Rob Black on behalf of Extreme Associates pleaded guilty this past year in federal court in Pittsburgh before U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster. Black copped to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mails and over the Internet.

Through their plea agreements, the company and its owners acknowledged responsibility for the conduct charged in Counts 2 through 10 of a Federal indictment – distributing three videos through the mail and six individual video clips over the Internet to western Pennsylvania.

In addition, they forfeited to the United States the Internet domain name, extremeassociates.com, which was used to commit the violations. The company is now defunct.

“Extreme Associates maintained a website through which it engaged in the business of producing, selling and distributing obscene videotapes, DVDs, and computer files in interstate commerce. This case affirms that no matter who you are, or where you are, certain abhorrent behavior simply violates our community’s standards,” stated Mary Beth Buchanan, the Wicked Witch of the East who prosecuted Black.

In connection with the guilty plea, the court was advised that Zicari and Romano, through Extreme Associates, Inc., mailed obscene films entitled “Force Entry – Director’s Cut,” “Cocktails 2 – Directors Cut,” and “Extreme Teen #24” to the Western District of Pennsylvania. “Forced Entry” portrays the rape and murder of three women, who are slapped, hit, spit upon and generally abused and degraded throughout graphic portrayals of forced sex acts.

In “Cocktails #2,” women engage in sex acts with multiple partners while a bowl, placed in front of the women, is filled with various bodily liquids. At the conclusion of each vignette, the women drink the concoction. Finally, “Extreme Teen #24” portrays abusive sexual acts between adult males and females dressed to look like minor children. In addition, the defendants transmitted six obscene video clips over the Internet through their website.

Extreme Associates, Inc. was the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary entitled “American Porn,” which aired nationwide on Feb. 7, 2002. That program showed non-sexually explicit portions of the filming of the video, “Forced Entry,” which depicts the brutal rapes and murders of several women.

As part of the investigation, undercover U.S. Postal Inspectors visited the Extreme Associates website and purchased certain obscene videotapes, which Extreme Associates delivered through U.S. mails. Inspectors also downloaded several obscene video clips.

In August 2003, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh returned a ten-count indictment against Extreme Associates for violating the federal obscenity statutes. In January 2005, Judge Lancaster dismissed the indictment on the basis that the federal obscenity statutes were unconstitutional. The government appealed and Ms. Buchanan argued the case in October 2005 before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Dec. 8, 2005, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the District Court, denied the defendant’s constitutional challenge and held that the federal statutes regulating the distribution of obscenity do not violate any constitutional right to privacy. The case was then remanded back to the District Court. The Court of Appeals recognized that the U.S. Supreme Court had consistently upheld the obscenity statutes in the face of constitutional challenges.

Happy Moscovite parents gave birth to a Penis Baby who was born with two Cocks. The boy was rushed from his maternity hospital to a specialist Moscow clinic where he underwent a lengthy operation to join the two sex organs.

Porn’s monetary problems apparently extended to the arts as we saw a Danish sex museum close for lack of money. Roughly a million visitors, half of them women, had passed through its doors since they opened in 1994, the museum said on its website.

Sexually, when you take matters in your own hand, you can get in trouble. Such was the case when Maryland State Police airlifted an unnamed 27-year-old woman to Prince George’s County Hospital Center after she was injured in an incident involving a sex toy attached to a saber saw blade, TheBayNet.com first reported.

An adult boutique owner in Los Angeles gave us the real lowdown on what’s happening with the porn economy. On the net he writes: “…our sales are down 35% from last year, we’ve racked up 50k in credit card debt to keep our doors open, we’re barely making mortgage each month, haven’t taken a vacation in over five years, we had to lay off our two employees and increase our hours to 12 per day, 6 days per week in the HOPE we’ll make it… Gawd help us if we get sick as we gave up our health insurance to save $600.00 per month over two years ago.” But there’s a lot of parties happening at this year’s AEE.

Now that Staunton, Virginia doesn’t have video store owner Rick Krial to kick around any more, a 39 year-old slob named Wayne “Drain my Vein” Gill stepped in and got on the wrong side of a POV camera. Police arrested 39-year-old Gill for allegedly paying an underage high school girl to perform sexual acts on him while he filmed it in a room in the store. Gill’s brother is the owner of the shop. Gill faced charges of child pornography and solicitation of prostitution. The 17-year-old girl involved in the scandal was not be charged.

Digital Playground’s Ali Joone was interviewed by Ad Age and we found this particular paragraph of interest:

“He [Joone] insists the answer is to spend more not only marketing adult content, but on making it, too. While the typical adult film costs between $15,000 and $25,000, Mr. Joone often spends three times that amount to shoot in exotic tropical locations, in high definition video with well-known stars. His “Pirates 2” just crested 1 million units sold in a business where a blockbuster porn title typically sells just 5,000 copies.”

You believe that number? We wouldn’t in a million years especially when Pirates 2 was going for a reported $50 a pop and more in video stores.

The world was shocked as we were when Octomom’s second publicist quit. “Nadya got real greedy. This woman is nuts,” the publicist, Victor Munoz, told Usmagazine.com.

Like TMZ with the JFK naked girls on a yacht story, even the big boys get it wrong some times. And that’s what happened to XBiz when they had to gobble a story about SwingFest 2009 and an alleged misappropriation of funds. The story was recanted to say that the money actually went to fund a JFK vacation in the Mediterranean with a bunch of naked girls. Just kidding, but XBiz did have to eat computer on that one.

Like Caesar, the Ides of March didn’t favor Arrow’s Ray Pistol none when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied Arrow Productions’ request for a temporary restraining order that would have barred Vivid Entertainment from distributing “Throat,” a movie loosely based on the classic adult film “Deep Throat.”

Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe rejected an argument by Pistol that Arrow would be damaged irreparably if Vivid released its version of the famous Linda Lovelace film.

“Ray Pistol’s attorneys spent a full half hour before the judge trying to make their case, but he essentially told Arrow they can’t stop this movie from being released. I am of course delighted and we are moving forward with release of the movie as scheduled,” Vivid’s Steve Hirsch was quoted as saying.

“As is evident from the Showtime series Pistol is a bit hard-headed and tends to make snap decisions without adequate research.”

As if this should come as a shock to anyone except those porners who find an excuse to party every weekend, the SF Valley Examiner reported that an alarming number of porn stars were out of work.

“The dismal state of the economy has resulted in porn pay rates dropping dramatically, and with several production companies shutting up shop or limiting their production schedules (juggernauts such as Vivid have no plans to film new content until well into 2010) many performers in the industry are finding themselves marginalized,” the article went on to say.

“Girls accustomed to clearing a grand in a day are now scrabbling to perform acts of point-of-view perversion for next to nothing- and that’s not enough to cover the rent in a town like Los Angeles.

As a result, a lot of seasoned performers are in desperate search of more profitable avenues of work.” At last someone telling the truth, and you won’t find that on the big boys sites.

With that story in mind comes revelations from Kayla Paige a porn performer who dances at clubs across the country. She had this to say:

“It’s bad for everybody. There is not one person out there who isn’t suffering. It’s a very over-saturated market. I think with the economy getting worse there’s a lot more women that want to come to a strip club and make money and it’s not easy to do.”

One of AdultFYI’s esteemed Creep of the Week awards went to Ryan Ward Welty. Ryan was a manager of a chain of strip clubs his father owned. One would suspect that being in such a position, Ryan would have his choice of pussy any time he wanted. But no, Ryan liked little girls so he surfed the Internet and found a mother willing to offer up her 9-year-old girl for sex.

Thusly, Ry-Ry traveled to Colorado and quickly discovered the “mother” he was dealing with was actually a cop searching the Internet for douche bags like him. Oh, but wait, it gets better. Back home in Rancho Cucamonga, the local sheriff’s department decided to open their own investigation on Ry-Ry. Local authorities hit the trifecta with this creep charging him with soliciting sex with a minor, possession of steroids for sale and possession of child pornography.

We’ll give Tabitha Stevens credit for one thing. She never met a man with Down Syndrome she wouldn’t fuck. Stevens was the topic of discussion on a Howard Stern Show after she revealed that she would gladly give herself to a 21 year old man with Down Syndrome whose Mother wants him to get laid.

When asked why she made the offer Tabitha said,” He’s a man that hasn’t had sex. It isn’t his fault he has Down Syndrome. He should be able to experience it like everyone else and this is what his Mother wants.” A true angel of mercy.

Many Playboy is a sinking ship stories grabbed headlines this year. One of them was when executive vice president Bob Meyers stepped down as head of media for the Chicago company. The 53-year-old Meyers’ exit, which came 30 months after he joined Playboy to head its magazine and entertainment operations, was the latest in a series of recent management changes at the financially struggling company.

Jenna Jameson gave birth to twins and named her sons, Jesse Jameson Ortiz and Journey Jett Ortiz.

Sad was the passing of the mainstream actor Ron Silver, and in our fond farewells we couldn’t help mentioning the fact that Silver played a porn company owner in the short-lived Fox TV series, Skin [eight episodes]. In researching his role, Silver met with Larry Flynt, Jenna Jameson as well as reading magazines and watching videos. Ginger Lynn also appeared in the series.

Dying people can be dopey, probably because they’re on dope. Our favorite dying dope award went to Lisa Connell, 29. Connell, suffering with inoperable brain cancer, decided to shell out $50,000 on plastic surgery to look like Demi Moore- she got the complete works: lipo, breast enlargements, etc..

The fact that the priest giving her last rites looked like Ashton Kutcher is one of life’s strange little ironies. Of course, we’re kidding about that part. If we were in Connell’s shoes, though, we would have donated $50,000 to help AVN get back on its feet- and that would have been one of life’s real ironies.

One of our favorite hooker stories of the year involved Vince Shlomi otherwise known as the ShamWow guy. Shlomi, 44, was arrested on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room.

According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she “propositioned him for straight sex.”

Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly “bit his tongue and would not let go.”

Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face. After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse. Asked if she worked as a hooker, Harris declined comment.

And were we the only ones to be just a little bit uncomfortable with the appearance of Steve Hirsch’s underaged kids in the Showtime reality series, “Deeper Throat”? Apparently, since it didn’t seem to bother Steve-o none, nor a production crew that’s supposed to make sure that 2257’s are the order of the day in sex-related projects.

Ya gotta love this business. Especially when AVN’s Paul Fishbein sent out an industry-wide memo in the wake of one of his employees, Sara Sazzman, defecting and going to work for XBiz.

“While we wish her the best in her new position, I must take issue with information that Sara is sending to people in the industry,” Fishbein said. “She says, ‘XBIZ has the same reach (as AVN) for less.’ I believe this statement is patently false.”

To back his case, Fishbein accompanied his claims with an “audited circulation statement” to prove AVN’s circulation of over 18,000 qualified B2B readers per month.”

“I strongly urge you to ask Sara for comparative circulation data before you accept a sales pitch based on false information,” Fishbein added.

Were those audited statements similar to the ones that prompted Jack Gallagher and Babenet to sue Fishbein later in the year? Just askin’

One of my great memories of puberty was my weekly visits to the Devon Art Theater in Northeast Philly to see the latest skin flicks. After sitting vacant for the better part of a decade, it re-opened last year as the family-friendly Devon Theater for the Performing Arts.

Here’s what I wrote: “Here’s how far back I go with the Devon Theatre in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. My grandmother would take me there as a little boy to see Hollywood films like Prince Valiant. Then in the mid-Sixties The Devon began showing Euro-shlock fests like Elke Sommer nudie pics and a winsome variety of New York-spun softcore Grindhouse sleaze epics. Great times. Then it went hardcore with the Philadelphia premiere of Deep Throat.” That is, until the lights went out.