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Court Strikes Down Age Verification For Adult Sites
How Appealing reports that a court has struck down age verification requirements for porn sites, as a First Amendment violation. Here is the ruling (PDF). While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net. The age verification requirements of U.S.C. Title 18, Section 2257 were yet another attempt to regulate to death what the government can't outright prohibit. The requirements intruded on the privacy and safety of performers and created headaches for sites like flickr and photobucket that host images. It is has long been thought that the requirements wouldn't hold up in court, but this is the first actual ruling.
There was widespread protest at the latest ammendments to 2257 (which just came out of review in Sept. and were going into law in Dec - written in 2006 by Gonzolas and the Bush whitehouse) as they were going to document-requirement-out-of-existence many adult themed but obviously non-porographic websites, the national lesbian bisexual gay transgenered taskforce was doing political organizing against it, among many other groups.
... quo... was going to be applied much, much more widely come December.
Effectively it said you are a porn producer if you run a website that has any graphic nudity (or "portrayals" of sexual activity) on it and you must therefore comply with section 2257 recordkeeping guidelines which are a huge, gigantic pain in the ass and go far, far beyond ensuring you're not using child actors in your smut.
Additionally if you are a producer (and w/ the new definition so very many people will be) you can be 'audited' at any time which is in effect a warrantless search and seizure.
I work with some people in the adult industry and I have this information from the source (i.e. not 2nd hand) that agents came into their production company on a 2257 record keeping inspection and seized EVERYTHING in the room the records were kept in. Computers. Other records. Everything.
Subsequently other production studios started actually building special rooms to contain just their 2257 paperwork and nothing else (it appears the understanding is the warrantless search only applies to the room where the records are kept). I was in meetings where they were trying to figure out if the room had to have a door or just an opening, a ceiling, and what cross-linked records (did I mention the requirements are a pain) might possibly be somewhere else... they even needed a new server just for the electronic records b/c elsewhere servers (with all their graphics and video) were seized b/c they had part of the 2257 records stored on them.
I know this sounds ridiculous but I'm certain this is was status quo - now this
Bravo 6th circuit for putting breaks on this insanity.
Sorry I don't have time to include links but I'll follow up later w/ documentation if I can.
closed minded is as closed minded does
I know someone who went through a 2257 inspection. It's scary, because record-keeping mistakes are felonies. The law was intended to intimidate, which is part of why the court struck it down as overreaching. She came through it OK; she and her staff can quote the record-keeping requirements from memory (yes, the separate room requirement is real), and she knows all her models.
Compliance is easier if you're a real, live producer, with offices, staff, a business address, production space, and a payroll system. It's amateurs and the people who use third-party photographers who have problems.
This thread is so typical of what /. has become -- perhaps setting a new record for irrelevant or plain ignorant comments. At the time I'm viewing it, there are about 200 posts. It looks like perhaps a couple dozen at most actually discuss the article in question. Of the rest, they seem to be roughly evenly divided between (a) people who totally misconstrued the subject matter (even if you failed to RTFA, the summary makes it very clear as to what "age verification" legislation is being referenced), and (b) those who go off on tangents totally unrelated to the subject matter (including the ubiquitous and almost mandatory posts from the "right to bear arms" crowd, who somehow manage to interject comments on gun ownership into almost any thread).
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
The more you repress it, the more it spreads. Where I live in GA we have this massive number of "massage parlors" that (curiously) advertise heavily on the interstate with large billboards featuring scantily clad women.
Now while you can probably also get a massage at these establishments, it is generally understood that this is not all you can get if you were so inclined. And the public outcry? Nil.
Now, dancing, even "bikini" dancing, which is the only kind not zoned out in the county I live in, is the subject of vigorous public debate. Place just opened up a couple of months ago not far from where I live. "Massage" parlor (with unusually long hours) opened up next door at about the same time. Public outcry over the girls in swimwear? Vast. Public outcry over the suspiciously placed massage parlor? Nil.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.