Wired News: Blue Law Makes Webmasters See Red
SAN DIEGO — An adult industry trade association plans to head to court this week to fight new federal enforcement efforts that could catch thousands of online pørņ sites with their pants down.
Under penalty of federal prison terms, new interpretations of existing regulations would require sites that feature photographs or videos of sexual activity to keep records confirming that performers are of legal age.
So if you’re having trouble seeing profiles on Gay.com or even Yahoo.com, this is why… Gay.com has announced that they’ve had to take down ALL photos until they’re checked, because the maximum penalty is 10 years in prison per violation.
UPDATE 9/29/05: Closing comments, as this thread attracts a lot of adult spam.
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This is a different topic, but I thought readers of this board might enjoy(?) reading the latest idiocy to come from Houston. Certain members of the city council have temporarily cut off funding to public access cable channel so they can decide if they need to censor what they see as objectional material. Keep in mind that according to a different article, the program in question was aired at 3AM, and the money to fund the channel comes from cable fees, not taxes. Some nice quotes:
“It’s not violating anyone’s rights to say, ‘We have standards of decency, and they’ve got to be adhered to,’ ” she(Councilwoman Addie Wiseman) said.
And another quote:
Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who sought the delay based on Wiseman’s concerns, said “vulgar” shows have no place on a city-owned channel.
“Free speech is important, but free speech has a limit when it starts to hurt society.”
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory2/3247149
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou050629_mh_accessTV_.59fed6c7.html
Re: Traci Lords
These regulations will not prevent someone like Traci Lords from getting into the pørņ industry. Why? Because Traci Lords used a real drivers license.
Her fake ID was obtained from the DMV using a stolen birth certificate. The ID was real, only the information it contained was fake. A pørņ producer would have no way of knowing the difference.
Lords true age was discovered when she brought her real drivers license to a pørņ set by mistake. She thought she could use her real ID without anyone noticing, but she was wrong. Let me underscore this. Traci Lords was carded at every single pørņ shoot. That’s why she got caught. She was caught without a regulation like 2257 on the books. And she was caught by someone who works in the pørņ industry, not by law enforcement. Incidentally, there’ve only been four other cases like this one in the past 20 years and every time the underage performer was busted by the pørņ producers and the product was voluntarily pulled.
Pørņ producers have been carding models and keeping records for years. They were doing it even before anyone in congress ever conceived of 2257. They keep identification documents on file because it’s the only way they could protect themselves from a kiddie pørņ charge. And they would be happy to keep those records even without 2257.
Nothing in these regulations will prevent child pornography. It’s already illegal. Pedophiles aren’t going to stop molesting children because of new documentation requirements. And it won’t prevent another Traci Lords from slipping into the industry. If the DOJ was serious about keeping minors out of pørņ, they’d pass a law that holds minors like Lords accountable in some way.
Something else to consider, the original 2257 has been in effect for a decase, but in all that time DOJ never once tried to enforce them. So why change them now? There was nothing wrong with the old regulations. This just an obvious attempt to push a moral agenda and sidestep the Constitution.