Enforcing basic sexual boundaries in the workplace is one thing. Blaming sexual assault on pornography, which is what the MIM press release goes on to do, is another. It reads, "Research overwhelmingly demonstrates a link between pornography consumption and increased sexual violence." What that sentence suggests is that there is a demonstrated link between porn-watching and an increase in perpetration of sexual violence -- and that is patently untrue. The availability of Internet porn has been shown to be associated with a decrease in sex crimes.

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The video, unoriginally titled "Backdoor Teen Mom," helps to confirm Farrah Abraham's costar James Deen's claim that the scheme was to film the video in the style of a personal homemade sex tape and then pretend that it had been leaked against their will. (Shortly after filming it, he foiled that original plan by giving an honest answer to a reporter's probing question about the tape, which was being shopped around.) Deen is behind a hand-held camera for much of it; sometimes he sets it down down to catch the entire scene from a distance. Former "Teen Mom" star Abraham repeatedly calls him "baby" (actually, it's a grating whine of "baaayyybeeeee"), as though they're in an intimate relationship and not strangers filming a porno. At one point, she attempts to lead him up the stairs to the bedroom with, "Come on, boyfriend." She engages in baby talk -- "give me kisses," "come cuddle" -- that is creepily reminiscent of scenes of her interacting with her daughter on "Teen Mom." She even calls him "butthead" at one point.

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The opening two paragraphs deserve reprinting in full:

Plaintiffs have outmaneuvered the legal system. They’ve discovered the nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle -- for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense. For these individuals, resistance is futile; most reluctantly pay rather than have their names associated with illegally downloading porn. So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry.

Plaintiffs do have a right to assert their intellectual-property rights, so long as they do it right. But Plaintiffs filing of cases using the same boilerplate complaint against dozens of defendants raised the Courts alert. It was when the Court realized Plaintiffs engaged their cloak of shell companies and fraud that the Court went to battlestations.

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No, this is not the plot of another hot-for-teacher flick -- although here's hoping this journal begets its own porn parody. (I can picture it now: An orgiastic "peer-review process" and dialogue along the lines of, "I'll show you some intersextionality.) According to a recent call for papers, Porn Studies is "the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts," with an emphasis on "sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability."

The journal's editors, Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith, are looking for papers that examine "specifically sexual and explicit media forms, their connections to wider media landscapes and their links to the broader spheres of (sex) work across historical periods and national contexts." The journal won't be published until spring of 2014 -- because peer review takes time, ya'll -- but select articles will be published online as they're ready. From the first issue, you can expect discussions of everything from obscenity trials to Australian manga to "how we think of fantasy in relation to porn," Smith told me by phone.

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More from CNET:

In total, the investigation is looking at 198 Web sites and several app stores beyond Apple's.

Based solely on a rough Google-translated version of the People's Daily piece, it's difficult to tell exactly what type of X-rated material has raised China's hackles.

Apple is typically quite cautious about letting any "adult" content get through its app store approval process. And the company is usually quick to bar any app that violates its guidelines.

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But then Deen claimed that he had actually been hired by an unnamed porn company to film a video with Abraham. He told TMZ, "I think what happened is that they were going to pass it off as a 'sex tape,'" he said. But then "somebody saw us coming out of a building together ... and people asked me what's going on ... and I have this problem where I can't really lie, so I was like, 'We're making a porno!'"

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This is becoming an increasingly common scenario, activists say, given the proliferation of “revenge porn" and the legal system's failure to catch up with it.

A new bill in Florida is aiming to remedy that: It would make it a felony to publish online nude photos or videos of a person without their permission and along with identifying information. At the same time, activists around the country are petitioning for both state and federal laws to criminalize what they call “non-consensual porn.” A recent class action lawsuit filed by more than 20 women in Texas against revenge porn site Texxxan.com along with its host GoDaddy has only turned the heat up on the issue.

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In Spring Breakers, director Harmony Korine viscerally captures the emotional, mental and sensual inner process of coercion, both when he shows Faith (Selena Gomez) nearly quaking under the weight of Alien’s (James Franco) sweet and sinister cajoling, and also when our leading coeds (Ashley Benson and Vanessa Hudgens) corner Alien, and the tables are turned. We watch Korine’s cast flawlessly embody those gray area experiences that young people in particular seem to stumble into—the moments when life mimics the artistic style of this film, and the only real explanation is: It’s just sort of how it all happened, that’s all.

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The complaint is worth quoting extensively. (Emphases mine).

Plaintiff files this action seeking monetary damages, injunctive relief and other damages arising from the egregious Internet-based conduct of a number of individuals, whom Plaintiff knows only by the anonymous, salacious, false and libelous comments they have made, and continue to make, about him on the Internet. Shielded by unconventional pseudonyms, [they] belong to a community of Internet "commentators," fearful of being identified, and have falsely accused the law firm Prenda Law LLC,of which Plaintiff is the sole officer and employee, of, among other things, criminal offenses; want of integrity in the discharge of employment; lack of ability in its profession; and the commission of fornication and adultery....

The Defendants' defamatory statements are made under the most cowardly of circumstances; plastered over centralized Internet communities and available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. The Defendants have libeled Plaintiff under the disguise of such childish and unsophisticated pseudonyms as "die troll die." The defamatory statements that they have made about Plaintiff are the type that, if made under the light of day, would prompt loved ones to suggest (or intervene and force) intensive psychological therapy. But sheltered in a cloak of cowardly pseudonyms, emboldened by association [with] others apparently sharing the same affliction, Defendants have continued unabated in their conduct...

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Then in the '90s, fresh off the so-called feminist porn wars, the genre of “couples porn” began to boom. That gave the small cadre of female directors of the time opportunities in the mainstream male-dominated industry -- and “porn for women” began to seem less of an oxymoron. The next decade brought an explosion of feminist-minded pornographers -- from trans performer Buck Angel to actress-turned-director Madison Young -- as well as the creation of the Feminist Porn Awards. Since then we've seen the growth of explicit fan fiction -- and with it, a greater cultural awareness of female desire for sexual explicitness -- which has culminated in the global "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon.

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A new study from the University of California-San Diego reveals that "Emergency room visits due to pubic hair grooming mishaps," including oh my God no no noooo "lacerations," increased fivefold between 2002 and 2010, sending an impressive 11,704 pube-scapers to the E.R. The culprits? Scissors and hot wax did some of the damage, but plain-old non-electric-razors accounted for the lion's share, at 83 percent. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be under my desk, rocking slowly back and forth and crying as I think about this.

The study also revealed that below-the-belt grooming isn't just for adult ladies anymore – men accounted for 43.3 percent of the injuries, and almost 30 percent of them were girls under the age of 18. To avoid becoming yet another harrowing grooming gone bad statistic, the researchers advise hair removal aficionados to "Pay attention to where you're placing that razor. Invest in a non-slip bath mat. And don't shave while under the influence of drugs or alcohol." Yeah, don't do that. For the love of God don't do that.

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"Our study suggests that the more heterosexual men, especially less educated heterosexual men, watch pornography, the more supportive they become of same-sex marriage," Indiana University assistant professor and study co-author Paul Wright told the Washington Examiner.

According to recent polls, a majority of Americans now favor legalizing gay marriage, but straight men are still less likely to support it than straight women.

So what does porn do to change their minds?

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Not sure what revenge porn is? Congratulations, you're a good person.

Revenge porn is what you get when jilted exes and one-time hookups submit photos and videos of their sexual exploits for public consumption. While some of the material on these sites has been stolen by strangers off of phones and computers, all of it has one big thing in common: The women in these photos and videos didn't consent to share them.

Hollie Toups, a 32-year-old resident of Beaumont, Texas, is one of those women. In addition to signing on to the lawsuit, she publicly came forward to discuss her experience with revenge porn in an effort to encourage other women to do the same.

As she told BetaBeat:

“I live in an extremely small town and the website was flooded with people that I knew,” Ms. Toups said. “Those of us on there go to the grocery store and everybody recognizes you. Not everybody says something, but you get a lot of like, ‘Hey, do I know you?’ or, ‘I recognize you from somewhere.’ But then you also get people that will just come out and say it.”

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I kid, of course. The glossy surveyed 68 "relationship experts" and found that the majority think X-rated material can harm relationships. The magazine also found that said experts believe porn damages women’s confidence, which is rich coming from a publication that inflames women's insecurities in order to sell them a consumerist wet dream. I’m not going to even address the countless glaring research flaws here -- that would be giving the survey far too much credit -- instead, this seems a good excuse to talk about about how porn can be used to the benefit of relationships.

This isn’t at all to negate the potential for porn to be legitimately damaging. Reasonable people can agree that mainstream porn, as with most popular media, often produces unrealistic aesthetics and expectations -- not to mention poor sex education and instruction, right? That's something worth discussing in a relationship, no doubt. But instead of condemning all erotic material as an enemy to sex, what about taking the more productive route of talking about how porn can actually be good for relationships.

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In case you missed my earlier reporting, Isaacs was prosecuted for obscenity after selling self-made “scat” movies -- which he claimed featured fake feces -- as well as a foreign producer’s bestiality film. At one point I was absurdly subpoenaed by the federal government to testify in the trial, all thanks to having interviewed the fetish producer.

Today’s sentencing not only marks the end of this Bush-era holdover, but it also further illuminates judicial thinking on obscenity. U.S. District Judge George King said, “I have totally rejected during the course of the trial that he’s a shock artist," he said. "He has cloaked himself as a First Amendment defendant. But the fact is that he did it for money.” King added, “He's not a defender of the First Amendment. He cheapens the First Amendment."

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Both of my parents were shrinks, and even though I was generally comfortable talking about sex in my household, porn — especially the porn I was watching — just had to be taboo. It was inexplicably gross, divorced from the concept of sex as it had been explained to me. If sex was a man inserting his penis into a woman’s vagina, then how did girls drinking cum out of champagne glasses fit into that picture? Because of its unspeakable nature, Internet porn became inextricably linked with the anxiety of being caught.

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Lisa Biron, 43, of Manchester faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison after a jury convicted her yesterday. The jury deliberated for less than an hour.

Biron, arrested by the FBI last November, was accused of eight felony counts involving the videotaping of men having sex with a 14-year-old girl who was identified by the Associated Press as her daughter. She also allegedly made a cellphone video of herself having sex with her daughter.

Biron, who claimed on her Facebook page (which was taken down, according to the Concord Monitor) that the Bible was her favorite book, had worked with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, in defending a Pentecostal church in Concord in a tax fight against the city.

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As far as neighbors went, the sex workers were fine — quiet, courteous, not prone to cooking stinky tofu. The few times my clothes fell from the bamboo poles used to dry laundry in China, they saved the garments for me until I could make the trek downstairs to retrieve them. We didn’t share an entrance, though a window in the back of the parlor opened onto my stairwell, and on my way home on hot nights I would see the women brushing their teeth. (Even the room that doubled as a kitchen and bathroom glowed fuchsia.) As the years passed I rarely had reason to think about the brothel. But it remained a difficult thing to explain to overseas guests, invariably evoking one of those questions about China that evade any quick, pat answer.

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For those of you who are visiting the World Wide Web for the first time ever, a GIF is a static or animated, looped image that's been compressed for quick loading. The rest of you have probably come across your fair share of GIFs showing dramatic reactions, catly shenanigans, dancing politicians or Ryan Gosling doing any number of things. Most GIFs are meant for laughs, but, increasingly, they're being designed to tickle a different bone.

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