Paul Little, a.k.a Max Hardcore, head of the porn company Max World Entertainment and himself a porn star, has been sentenced 46 months in prison by a judge in Tampa. His crime: being too hardcore. The Justice Department got him on obscenity charges, saying that he distributed films in which he "is shown engaging in violent and extreme sexual acts with female performers." During his trial the jury could barely bring themselves to watch the material. So what was in there that was so bad?

There was a time when third world countries would rip off any Western product they wanted to. Because how much time were US companies really willing to invest wading through dusty Asian market stalls looking for bootlegs of their precious brand names? But things have changed! As China and India have grown into serious global economic powerhouses over the past decade, they've been forced to respect intellectual property laws in order to maintain good business relations with the West. Which makes this whole "Hari Puttar" thing a bit of a stretch. Warner Bros. sued an Indian film company for making a movie called "Hari Puttar," claiming that it was a ripoff of Harry Potter. They just lost the case in an Indian court. Home team advantage? Actually, when you hear the facts it seems more like sheer bullying or paranoia on Warner Bros. part:

Dan Rather filed that big $70 million lawsuit against CBS last year because, he said, they hung him out to dry like a coonskin on a tree branch when it turned out there were problems with his story about George W. Bush's National Guard Service. CBS said Rather was crazier than a coyote with Mexican jumping beans in his anus. (Okay, that's enough). Some of his suit was thrown out in April, and now two more of his remaining four claims have been dismissed. But he's still alive!

Cyrus Mehri is a big time civil rights lawyer who's won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of corporate discrimination settlements, and scared Wall Street and the National Football League into making serious integration-like movements. His latest project: the white-ass advertising industry. A new study found that only 5.8% of advertising professionals are black—a number that should be closer to 10%, based on the demographics of similar industries. And Mehri won't say whether he's planning a lawsuit, but he is delivering a verbal smackdown, oh yea:

Country politicos are still trying to ban salvia! How uncool. And it's all YouTube's fault. We warned you in May that New York was moving to outlaw salvia—the legal drug that really works, if you like falling down—based largely on the impression that hick State Senators got from America's dumbest teenagers posting their tripping experience videos online. Salvia is about fifty times more potent than weed (and "twice as prevalent as LSD," dang!), so it wouldn't be surprising if it was banned, though it would still be stupid. What's the danger? Driving on salvia? You'd be lucky to be able to find your keys. Now, in one of those laughable righteous battles between party stoners and philosophical stoners, the real salvia spiritual journeymen are speaking out against those god damn YouTube posers:

Oh, how the fake mighty have fallen. Raffaello Follieri, who just months ago was a high-flying "investment" operator with Ron Burkle's money and Anne Hathaway on his arm, "is near an agreement to plead guilty to fraud and money-laundering charges," according to the Wall Street Journal. Follieri hasn't previously admitted guilt, but the charges against him were fairly damning. Follieri would join his father as a convicted swindler. But his decision to settle (if he actually does) doesn't mean that he couldn't have constructed a defense for himself:

In America (the Land of the Free) you can't win a libel suit unless you can prove not only that what was published was false, but also that it was published with actual malice—i.e., you must show that someone meant to hurt you on purpose with false information. But in the UK, the situation is the opposite; it's up to the publisher to prove what they wrote is true. So offended parties from across the world practice "libel tourism," filing suits in the UK against writers and media outlets who have only sold a few copies there, in order to take advantage of the crazy English laws. Luckily our (USA) legislators have now done something useful by protecting gossip sites like us from libel suits across the pond. Here's how one evil Saudi billionaire is helping Gawker write more freely: Commentary has a think piece out this month on new legislation signed by New York's heroic blind governor last spring, which allows judges here to invalidate libel judgments obtained in countries with lesser free speech protections (hello, UK). The prime motivation was reportedly the nonstop libel tourism of Khalid bin Mahfouz (see below), which threatened to bankrupt some journalists. Huzzah for our right to write things, and yours to read them! Here are some of recent history's most notable libel tourists:

Vault.com has posted its list of the most prestigious law firms in America. The top three: Wachtell, Cravath and Sullivan & Cromwell. Not a coincidence: None of these names make appearances on the site's list of the "best firms to work for." [Vault.com, via ATL]

Sartorial scandal alert: Is the upcoming Seth Rogen film Pineapple Express guilty of wanton t-shirt design theft? A small Brooklyn t-shirt maker called WOWCH says that co-star James Franco's character appears in the movie wearing shark-and-kitten shirt that is really just a slightly altered version of a WOWCH design that was sold at Urban Outfitters in 2005. But the big stars don't give the little guys credit at all! The photographic evidence for this potential merchandising mockery-and the demands for redress-after the jump.

The government of France has officially forfeited all the liberal cred it's earned over the past 500 years: yesterday, French prosecutors raided the office of an auto magazine, confiscated its computers and files, and arrested a reporter for the crime of publishing a scoop. A scoop about autos, the subject of the magazine! Because in France, freedom of the press must take a back seat to the concerns of the almighty Renault corporation.

Here's where we play Goofus & Gallant, European nations edition. Gallant Denmark stood up in favor of the rights of publishers when those stupid, mediocre cartoons about the prophet Muhammed caused worldwide outrage and riots a couple years back. Goofus Netherlands, on the other hand, recently threw a cartoonist in jail for drawing cartoons that might be offensive to Muslims. By all accounts the cartoonist, "Gregorius Nekschot," is offensive to Muslims. That makes his arrest no less phenomenally stupid.

When reporting on The Rich, it's critical to prove that they are, in fact, rich. This is most easily accomplished by showing their homes, because every reader can immediately tell that they couldn't even afford the solid gold horse stable, much less the platinum guest house or uranium master bedroom. But most of The Rich aren't gauche enough to allow a photographer to set foot on their property. What to do? Hire a helicopter, of course. You can spy on wealthy barons from the air all you want, and it's perfectly legal! Here's the proof, and the pudding:

An interesting philosophical question: Should employees get paid overtime for checking their BlackBerries outside work hours? Money-grubbing writers at ABC News say "Yes." Money-grubbing executives at ABC say "No." We say: throw away your BlackBerry and it becomes a moot point.

A California appeals court ruled yesterday that your job has no right to obtain your work emails or text messages if they are stored by a third party provider. That means that the roughly 30% of Microsoft Outlook users whose emails are handled by a vendor, for example, would be protected from having their employers snoop on them. If your job stores employee emails internally, they can still read them. Regardless, this is good news for leakers in this age of corporate snooping on your Facebook pages. Who do you have to thank for this newfound privacy? A cop who sent sexy text messages from his work phone!:

Recently, we met the Media Bloggers Association, supposedly a group that provides legal aid to bloggers and one that is currently negotiating with the Associated Press to establish guidlines for reposting tiny snippets of their copy. Our night editor asked who died and made them Internet Kings, and they responded with a bitchy email that said we didn't even email them or anything. Then a couple enterprising commenters did some more research (and not the "email them for comment" kind either-what is up with the internet?). And now we have reason to be suspicious of everything the MBA and their head troll Roger Cox have to say. They might just be a money-making scam!

R&B singer R. Kelly has been acquitted of everything. Specifically, the 14 counts of child pornography that he's been on trial for in Chicago for the last month, stemming from a video allegedly showing him having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The jury repeatedly viewed the video during their deliberations, and have now let him walk. Everybody else in the world thought he was guilty. The entire case may have hinged on a single mole:

The UK's stupid libel laws allow people to successfully sue the media for making fun of them. So Robert Dee, a 21-year-old British guy who is the world's Worst Professional Tennis Player, is suing three newspapers there for pointing out that he is, in fact, the Worst Professional Tennis Player. Mainly, this makes us glad to be in America, where we're free to tell you that Robert Dee is the Worst Professional Tennis Player. But also, the facts aren't even on his side; it sure sounds like he really is the Worst Professional Tennis Player!:

A lawyer named Jeremy Pitcock got fired last year, and his firm put a fine point on his dismissal: they issued a press release attributing his firing to "extremely inappropriate personal conduct." That's, uh, not considered a good thing to have on your resume in the legal world. Turns out that the law firm crafted the release with the help of Sitrick & Co., the super high-powered PR firm run by shadowy, high-priced crisis guru Mike Sitrick. Now Pitcock is suing Sitrick and his old firm for $90 million, charging them with ruining his reputation over what he says was simply a misguided and consensual kiss after a drunken night at a bar. The bigger question is, doesn't Sitrick have more important things to do than get embroiled in a petty sexual harassment dismissal? Answer: not really!

Teenagers have always been complete jerks, but in the YouTube age, they have an unprecedented ability to share their jerky ways with the entire world. And then to get arrested for it. When two teenage jerks in (naturally) Florida videotaped themselves pulling a "Fire in the hole" prank—tossing a huge cup of soda through the window at a drive-through worker—and put it up on YouTube, the enterprising victim did some online detective work of her own and caught them. Now, a judge has sentenced the young punks to post another video of themselves on YouTube: "an apology that shows them facedown and handcuffed on the hood of a car." That's nice and everything, but even better would be an apology that shows them facedown after being beat up by angry fast food workers. (Florida McDonald's veteran here, thank you). Sometimes, too, teenage jerks get their comeuppance right when they try their stupid soda-tossing. Like this:

Seven former US health secretaries have signed a letter calling on the government to ban menthol cigarettes, which have been exempted from an upcoming bill banning "flavored" cigarettes. Congress, thankfully, isn't backing them on this one. Do you know what we smoked before Kools? Beedies. They're even worse! Soon, shady Astroturf groups quietly financed by Big Tobacco will come together with unscrupulous hustlers posing as representatives of the black community to say: Hands off our bodies, government! [NYT]