The United States Government 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 politician 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. Government 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.
For a photograph, we require the following information:
1. The full legal name of the model
2. Copy of the depiction, printed on the paper record
3. Copy of every associated URL the image is displayed on, and the URL of the image every place it appears
If the indexing and record keeping wasn’t enough, we have rules for record maintenance 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 reinsurance. The street address where the records are kept, and the name, title, and business address of the custodian of records.
Pornography has been a driving factor in the devices we have the 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 embarrassment. It gave the public a way to partake of such illicit acts in the privacy of their own home.
This is nothing to be embarrassed 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.
Here you will find an overview about the changes to the Section 2257 Regulations.
