PORN CASE DISMISSAL TO BE FOUGHT ASHCROFT SUCCESSOR TO APPEAL.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

WASHINGTON - In what will ultimately be a major test of the Bush administration's campaign against pornography, Justice Department prosecutors said Wednesday they will seek to reinstate charges against a Northridge adult film company that was accused of violating federal obscenity laws.

Billed as the government's first big obscenity case in a decade, a 10- count indictment against Extreme Associates Inc. and its owners, Robert Zicari and his wife, Janet Romano, both of Northridge, was dismissed last month in Pittsburgh by U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster, who declared current federal obscenity laws unconstitutional.

Zicari said he was not surprised by the Justice Department decision to appeal.

``They touted my case for almost a year and a half - about this being an important step in kind of stamping out the adult product as we know it,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``You'd think our government has a lot more things to worry about with the war in Iraq.''

In his ruling, Lancaster found that federal laws banning obscenity are unconstitutional as applied broadly to pornography distributors like Extreme Associates. He further ruled that prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the company's hard-core movies from children and from adults who do not want to see such material.

Extreme Associates touts the particularly graphic content of its movies, with scenes of simulated gang rapes and other attacks on women. Its Web site declares, ``See why the U.S. government is after us!''

The Justice Department will appeal Lancaster's ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. While acknowledging the importance of the constitutional guarantee of free speech, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said selling or distributing obscene materials does not fall within First Amendment protections.

``The Department of Justice remains strongly committed to the investigation and prosecution of adult obscenity cases,'' said Gonzales, who pledged during his confirmation hearing to pursue obscenity cases.

If allowed to stand, Lancaster's ruling would undermine obscenity laws as well as other statutes based on shared views of public morality, including laws against prostitution, bestiality and bigamy, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a joint statement.

The closely watched decision was a boon to the multibillion-dollar pornography industry - primarily based in the San Fernando Valley - which has been fighting efforts by the Bush administration to crack down on what many consider obscene material, particularly on the Internet.

Still, if Gonzales manages to win the appeal, industry insiders say it would merely restore current obscenity statutes, which have permitted the adult industry to reap an estimated $10 billion a year in domestic sales.

The fight is not really about obscenity, they say, but about the industry's right to distribute and market its films, which they consider well established.

``If the 3rd Circuit reverses, no effect: It reinstates the status quo,'' said attorney Roger Jon Diamond, who has successfully represented clients in the adult-entertainment industry.

Currently, there are laws on the books against transporting obscenity across state lines. But as a practical matter, industry leaders say so much pornography is now available in stores and on the Internet that what constitutes a community standard, as defined by law, has become much broader.

``It's interesting. ... The adult industry was always worried about (former Attorney General John) Ashcroft, because the feeling was that Ashcroft's first item was going to be: Go after the adult industry,'' Diamond said. ``But that was put on hold after 9-11.''

Adult industry lobbyists claimed Gonzales' attempt to get the Zicari charges reinstated is mainly a nod to the Christian fundamentalist base of the Republican party.

``The Republicans have made it perfectly clear that they would like to proceed with obscenity prosecution based on content in the adult entertainment industry,'' said Michelle Freridge, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, based in Canoga Park.

``It's not good for the industry. People have enjoyed, over the last 10 years, expanded social acceptance of sexually explicit material.

``It's become mainstream.''

Rob Spallone of Starworld Productions in Chatsworth said he and other filmmakers are less concerned about the appeal.

``Everyone in the business is just saying (the Bush administration) is just doing it to do it - that the chance of (the judge's decision) being overturned is none,'' said Spallone, whose father's company produced the first video-sex film upon which ``Boogie Nights'' was based.

``They have more important things to do than to worry about us. We're more hard on ourselves than they are. I shoot one movie a week. I don't do anything wrong. I I.D. all my girls. We're all legal. We follow all the rules.''

He said Extreme Associates is among a few adult companies that produce extreme ``gonzo'' films that have smeared the business and brought undo attention to the adult film industry.

``Having girls dress up as nuns - you're asking for trouble,'' he said.

Prosecutors charged Zicari, Romano and their company with distributing videos to Pittsburgh through the mail and over the Internet. Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, has said the case was not about banning all sexually explicit materials, but just about reining in obscenity.

When she announced the indictment in August 2003, Buchanan said the lack of enforcement of obscenity laws during the mid- to late-1990s ``led to a proliferation of obscenity throughout the United States.''