This has less to do with the judge and everything to do with the jury.

Reading the article, the activities the two were engaged in were, by almost anyone's standards, pretty intense/severe (burning someone all over their body with a lit cigarette? I'm sorry, but that's fucked up, no matter how you slice it. Both of them need psychological help.)

Now... it does appear that the woman did consent to those activities, but in my book, if a guy is going to do that sort of shit, and then post it to the internet he ought to know that he's out on the edge, and that if anything goes wrong (a former model complains, for example), he's probably going to go down, because he's going to have a hard time convincing a jury composed of Aunt Ethel and her ilk that what he was doing was reasonable in the first place.

This isn't a free speech issue, in my book, it's an issue of asking a jury to determine reasonable behavior in a civilized society. The jury rightfully looked at whether there was consent on the part of the victim/slave, and apparently determined, hopefully based on the facts, that there was not.

Now... one can certainly argue that he had a release, there are the letters and emails in which the woman agreed to the actions, but I could probably also argue that the woman may not have been in a mental state to be able to give consent, in which case, the consent she gave would have been meaningless. Once again, if you're doing that sort of thing that's out on the edge, you have to assume the risks that go along with it, because you're going to have a hard time getting a jury to see your side.