2257 Aims Crush Adult EntertainmentPosted on Wednesday, June 22 @ 23:33:24 PDT by JWSmythe
The United States Goverment is looking to stamp out pornography, starting at midnight tonight. While sitting in church, people think it's fine to say "I abhor porn", but most men still look at it. It makes a nice safe political platform. If a politican stands up and says "Lets stop pornography", not too many people will argue with him.
I'm arguing right now. Leave my pornography alone. If I want to watch consenting adults having intercourse, that's my own business. It doesn't matter if I see it in a magazine, on Cinemax late at night, or on the Internet.
The U.S. Goverment has passed "18 U.S.C. § 2257", which effectively shuts down every American owned or operated adult industry where there may be a photograph or video. It requires more paperwork than even the most adept accountant could possibly keep up with. The punishment for even a single offense if $25,000 and/or 5 years in jail. Having even two pictures of adults in intimate situations would double those fines.
We'll use this example of a pornograph image to spell out the problems with this law.
(You thought we were going to show real porn, didn't you?)
For the above photograph, we require the following information:
The full legal name of the model
John Stickfigure
Jane Stickfigure
All other names, (maden/married/stage name, aliases)
John S
John The Stick
Jane
JaneS
Jane Sticky
Jane Markwitchz
Copy of the depiction, printed on the paper record.
Copy of every associated URL the image is displayed on, and the URL of the image every place it appears. Even on our site here, that's a problem. Any given page is dynamically shown not only in 4 different places on this site, but through every RSS newsreader, and aggregation sites such as Google News and Yahoo News, We must also maintain indexes which find the record alphabetically, numerically, by the performer's last name (followed by first), aliases, stage names, title, and identifying marks.
If someone else should reuse this image on their site, but linking it from our server, we must also append our records then. If http://my-anal-retentative-government-agency.gov put our picture on their site, linked from our servers, we must update our records accordingly. If the indexing and record keeping weren't enough, we have rules for record maintaince and retention and inspection.
The record must be maintained at my place of business. I cannot have a 3rd party company maintain my records for me. I must keep these records segregated from any other records.
I must keep the records intact for 7 years from creation or amendment, and finally even if my organization should fail, I'm required to keep these records on file for 5 years, which makes the following interesting.My location must be available for inspection from 8am to 6pm, 365 days a year. I understand this has been amended to only be 20 hours per week.
While "inspecting records", the agents may seize any evidence of any felony while conducting an inspection. Basically, they're opening up a door for warrentless entry into any adult business (adult video store, book store, or Internet business)Ahhh, and the disclosure statement. Several paragraphs in 11 point type, on the front page of the site, saying the title of the work, date of production, publication, duplication, reproduction, or reissuance. the street address where the records are kept, and the name, title, and business address of the custodian of records.So, our little photograph above not only has created a few pages of paperwork in a segregated part of our offices. We now also have a new part time employee (20 hours per week), who's only job is to sit over those records, waiting for the Attorney General or a delegate thereof to knock on the door and say "Show Me Your Papers"
As Penn and Teller would say, as is the title of their Showtime show, "BULLSHIT!"Pornography has been a driving factor in the devices we have today. Most Internet providers derive a large portion of their income from internet revenue. For example, a site such as ours uses very little bandwidth, and very little in server resources. In contrast, a porn site with streaming video and lots of high resolution pictures and tens of thousands of users will use a lot more. We consume less than 1% of our provider's total Internet usage. 9% belong to the large number of "mainstream" web sites. The remaining 90% belongs to a few pornographic web sites.
The VCR, the DVD and home video equipment such as the camcorder and even the polaroid camera became popular because it brought privacy to what was once a source of some embarassment. It gave the general public a way to partake in such illicit acts in the privacy of their own home.
This is nothing to be embarassed about. People like to see other people have sex. It's looking into something they are not allowed to have.
For more information on this topic, you may want to look at
http://www.freespeechcoalition.com, or ask anyone in the adult entertainment industry. You'd be amazed where you'd find us.
Editor: I felt it necessary to reply to the following comment:
You do realize that 18 U.S.C. § 2257 was passed in the 1980s, right? To prevent child pornography after Traci Lords started making videos as an underage teen lying about her age.
The laws have done absolutely nothing to stop what Traci Lords did. They require a virtually impossible paper trail to be created. Tracy Lords had a real drivers license, obtained through illegal methods. The drivers license had the wrong name, the wrong birthdate, but her photograph. Even with all the new laws, what does this do to stop the 15 year old Traci Lords from performing? Absolutely nothing As for the fact that every webmaster already has this paper trail, that is false. They may have the model releases already on file, but now they're required to create a new paper trail to every instance of the photograph anywhere it may be shown, which in most cases is impossible. The new paper trail, retroactive to every photo shot since 1969, makes it impossible ffor any American adult entertainment company work. In addition, providers of DVD's, in brick and mortor stores, or on the Internet, must have the full paper trail for every video they provide. In the past, they've simply referenced the people who do have the records.
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