‘Girls Gone Wild’ producers deserving of punishment

Surprise, surprise: The producers of the Girls Gone Wild videos, under their alias Mantra Films Inc., broke the law.

It tends to be a little difficult not to break the law when you’re trying to videotape intoxicated young women exposing themselves. For instance, an adolescent who is not yet of age might appear in one of the videos. Oh, wait – that’s exactly what happened.

According to the Associated Press, Mantra on Tuesday pleaded guilty to charges stemming from its failure to maintain proof of age and identification records, along with its failure to label its videos in accordance with federal law.

MRA Holdings LLC – another company owned by Mantra head Joseph Francis – was also found guilty of improperly labeling its products.

Francis and his two companies were fined $2.1 million for their malfeasance.

Of course, Francis and his accomplices aren’t out of the woods yet. Separate charges brought by the state of Florida still remain against Francis, alleging he and his company filmed two 17-year-old females performing sexual acts.

Frankly, Francis is lucky he has a company to hide behind. If he didn’t, he might have had to join the ranks of registered sex offenders – a punishment he most certainly deserves.

After all, what’s $2.1 million to his companies? According to AP, Mantra has “released 83 different titles and sold 4.5 million videos and DVDs in 2002, according to Hoover’s Inc., a business data firm in Austin, Texas.”

In their defense, Francis and his companies stated the problem was one of record keeping. Aaron Dyer, an attorney for Mantra, said the problems occurred because of “serious record-keeping issues that occurred several years ago.”

One might assume Francis would have put some safeguards in place to prevent such a thing from happening.

This, of course, assumes he didn’t want it to happen. Francis has a history of taking advantage of his own malfeasance. Mantra released a “seized” Girls Gone Wild video in 2004.

Francis and his companies have every right to make the pornography they produce. However, the First Amendment does not protect them from being judged in the eyes of others.

Quite frankly, Francis’ moves look like a planned business decision made by the sleazy owner of a sleazy company in a sleazy business.