In the past few years, the Internet has given rise to a new breed of porn merchant, a group of computer-savvy entrepreneurs with plenty of ambition and few inhibitions.
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The porn merchants have been routed by tough local laws ( their steel-shuttered storefronts still dominate the western end of the block, due to be redeveloped in the coming months ).
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The Supreme Court upheld zoning restrictions that either quarantine or disperse pornography merchants, leaving it to local officials to determine whether local interests are best served by restricting all porn merchants to a single district.
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The movie's ruthless porn merchants and talk show personnel, who suddenly turn pious when what they do for a living comes too close to home, are skewered with a mockery as funny as it is scalding.
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COL . 1 of COPA04 ( 90084 ) Danni Ashe, chief executive officer of a pornography site called Danni's Hard Drive, said children's safety advocates and porn merchants have some of the same problems.
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Critic Robert van Gelder called it " perhaps the most tearjerkers . " Gallico made no apologies, saying that in the contest between sentiment and " slime, " " sentiment remains so far out in front, as it always has and always will among ordinary humans that the calamity-howlers and porn merchants have to increase the decibels of their lamentations, the hideousness of their violence and the mountainous piles of their filth to keep in the race at all ."
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The film, which grossed $ 2 million on a $ 15, 000 budget, resulted in a well-documented court case, in which the judge ruled that it was " in keeping with the Supreme Court edict that draws the line between what constitutes free speech and what constitutes obscenity . " As a result, some open-minded San Franciscans became filmmakers and porn merchants, with the likes of the Mitchell brothers and Lowell Pickett capitalizing on the legalization of pornography in the city, and it was referred to early on by " The New York Times " as " The Smut Capital of the United States " and " the porn capital of America ", with a rush later compared to the Silicon Valley boom of the late 1990s.
