More cannon shots fired this week in the ongoing saga of the Pirates porn: Yesterday the University System of Maryland's Board of Regents announced a unanimous decision to defy state lawmakers' request that they regulate screenings of pornographic material on campus.
In April I reported on the controversy at University of Maryland around a planned screening of Digital Playground's award-winning adult film Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, and state lawmakers' overblown response: Threatening to pull state funding for the university if it went ahead with the screening or any other university-sanctioned porn events.
In October, I reported that the Maryland statehouse had given the university system a December 1 deadline to adopt rules governing pornographic movies. But yesterday the Board of Regents concluded, correctly in my opinion, that any policy they could come up with regulating the display of adult films on campus would "provoke costly free speech lawsuits" and likely be headed for a Supreme Court battle. Had the university system complied with lawmakers' requests, Maryland would have been the first state in the U.S. with an official state-wide pornography policy regulating college campuses.
Free speech advocates everywhere are now awaiting the response from Maryland's General Assembly: Will lawmakers make good on their threats to abscond with the treasure, as it were, now that the pirate ship U. MD has gone renegade?
The most detailed report I see this morning comes from the Baltimore Sun. Here's an excerpt:
It's unclear if the vote will bring reprisal from the legislature, which made the request after uproar over the scheduled screening of the XXX-rated film "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge" in April on the University of Maryland, College Park campus. Sen. Andy Harris, a Republican representing Baltimore and Harford counties, tried unsuccessfully to amend the state budget so that public universities could not access their funding unless they developed a pornography policy. The General Assembly ultimately passed a nonbinding resolution telling the university system to come up with a policy. No potential penalties were specified.
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