June 13 (Bloomberg) -- When the U.S. Justice Department created an anti-obscenity task force in 2005, prosecutors looked for the most disgusting smut around in hopes of jailing its peddlers.

How else to justify an entire federal task force devoted to such hard-to-prove, drop-in-the-bucket, who-cares-anyway kinds of cases?

This week in Los Angeles, porn central, the feds put on trial one Ira Isaacs, producer of films so revolting you will have to keep reading to learn their content.

Surely prosecutors groaned when the case went to Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals, for trial.

Kozinski, who like other appellate judges occasionally tries cases in the lower court, has shown himself to be a friend of free-speech rights and an enemy of privacy invaders.

Appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, Kozinski is known for his brilliance, his prolific and amusing writing and his libertarian streak.

When administrators installed software to keep porn off court computers, Kozinski learned of it after the screen blocked his clerk from researching a case involving a gay book store.

Kozinski objected and defeated the project.

``I didn't think the bureaucrats in Washington should decide what the federal judiciary should have access to,'' Kozinski told the Los Angeles Times.

Porn Fighters

Given that attitude, his appointment to the Isaacs case couldn't have cheered the porn fighters. Ah, but this week their luck turned so bad it went all the way around to almost good.

As Isaacs's trial opened, the Los Angeles Times reported that the judge's own personal Web site contained, of all things, sexually explicit material.

Kozinski admitted to reporters he posted at least some of the material, didn't remember posting other items and hadn't realized the public could access it on the subdirectory where he put them. One of his sons manages the site and now says he posted the worst of the porn.

There were naked women pictured on all-fours, painted like cows, material Kozinski himself called ``degrading'' and ``gross'' in a Times interview.

Posted there, too, were a video of a man romping with an aroused farm animal and a slide show of a transsexual striptease, the Times said. Public sex, contortionist sex and masturbation could all be viewed at www.alex.kozinski.com.

(Don't bother. Access is now blocked.)

And Jokes, Too

Then there were the jokes, like the one showing female flashers and a sign reading, Bush for President.

It isn't as if the site were set up only for sexual content. It contained family photos, articles and inoffensive miscellany, too.

As for the sexual material, Kozinski told the Times he posted items he found ``funny'' or ``interesting,'' and he said people sometimes sent him material and vice versa.

With the Times's disclosures, Kozinski halted the Isaacs trial and today stepped aside from the case altogether.

``In light of the public controversy surrounding my involvement in this case, I have concluded that there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial,'' Kozinksi said in an order. ``I recuse myself from further participation in the case.''

This is where the bad luck for prosecutors transmogrifies into good luck.

Kozinski has asked for an investigation to see whether any of this constitutes judicial misconduct, to be conducted by a judicial council outside the 9th Circuit.

Obscene Or Not

Beyond that, if the material turns out to be obscene, and if prosecutors were of a mind to go after one of the leading federal judges in the country, neither of which is likely, sharing the material with friends is what would get Kozinski in trouble.

As long as it isn't child porn and isn't used to entice minors, the feds don't care what you keep under your bed. It becomes a federal crime when obscene material is distributed through wires, mail, the Internet, fax or just about any manner other than slipping it beneath the desk at study hall.

What's obscene? It is whatever appeals to prurient interest in the view of the average person, applying contemporary standards. Also, the material must depict sex acts ``in a patently offensive way'' and lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, according to U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The descriptions of the judge's postings make them sound like kindergarten potty jokes compared with the material Isaacs admittedly produced and distributed.

Beyond Degradation

His films go beyond mere degradation of women into violence against them. Then there are the sex acts performed with feces, urine and animals.

``I don't know of anything more disgusting,'' Isaacs's own lawyer, Roger Jon Diamond, told the Associated Press.

Isaacs himself has called the material disgusting, but with sufficient artistic content to grant it First Amendment protection from prosecution.

``The question is, should we throw someone in jail for it?'' he said to the Los Angeles Times.

If so, the question is which judge would do it.

As for Kozinski, you have to wonder how someone with his brains would assume he could keep private anything sent to an address that begins with, World Wide Web.

He couldn't have, as is clear from a 2000 review he wrote critiquing the book, ``The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy,'' by Jeffrey Rosen.

``The home computer has become a secret monitor of our daily activities,'' he wrote for the New York Times. Its contents ``can now be retrieved and used against us later if we are unlucky enough to become entangled, even peripherally, in a legal controversy.''

Smart man, eh?

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 13, 2008 16:06 EDT