Posted on 06/23/2005 7:30:04 AM PDT by Responsibility1st
Naked Censorship? Seth Lubove, 06.23.05, 10:00 AM ET
Is your Internet browser a little less polluted with porn today? Are you seeing fewer banner ads promoting hard-core sex? If so, thank U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. Largely unnoticed in the mainstream world, his new porn record-keeping regulations went into effect today, causing fits of apoplexy among much of the porn world.
"The adult industry prepares for a legal battle that may determine whether it can survive against the onslaughts of the Bush administration's anti-adult agenda," intones a recent story in AVN, the preeminent industry trade publication, amid ads for something called Naughty America and Hotmovies.com.
"This is an attack, we are back to the dark ages of witch hunts and instead of burning innocent people at the stake they are putting them in jail and ripping apart their businesses and families," wails the Web site of Lisa S. Lawless, whose company specializes in videos featuring female orgasms. Casualties so far, if anyone will miss them, include the aptly named Bound & Gagged, which describes itself as "The world's greatest male bondage magazine." At least it was: Its Web site shut down on Wednesday.
The new rules, which are updates to regulations that date back to 1992, require porn promoters and distributors to maintain records proving their models and actors are over the age of 18, instead of signed forms and other loose documentation. In an announcement last month, Gonzales said the new rules "are crucial to preventing children from being exploited by the production of pornography." Although seemingly innocuous and for a good cause, the rules have suddenly forced the freewheeling trade to either find and organize legal documents for every performer engaging in sex, remove the pictures, or face jail time of up to five years for the first offense and up to ten years for additional offenses.
Easier said than done. The only acceptable identification is government-issued "picture identification" cards or documents, copies of which must be available on demand from the feds, according to a guidebook circulated among big porn clients by Paul Cambria Jr., one of the trade's top lawyers. Oh, that includes any photos or movies shot within the past ten years. Good luck tracking down all those once-naked people, many of whom are foreigners or use bogus names.
And the industry only had 30 days to get the records together from the time the regulations were announced.
The new regulations "will likely drive law-abiding adult businesses out of the industry not because they ignored the minimum-age requirements, but because they simply cannot afford to maintain the extensive records required under the new rules," Cambria tells his clients.
While compiling such records is hard enough for the actual producers of porn, they constitute the minority of much of what is distributed over the Internet. Most Internet porn sites are run by small-time independents who agree to distribute porn made by photographers and film producers, in exchange for a cut of as much as $70 for every purchase directed back to the originating sites. These so-called "secondary producers" now must also keep age documents for every performer, a near-impossible task that is being hotly disputed by the industry.
The Free Speech Coalition, a front group for the porn trade, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on Monday in Denver federal court, in which it argued that the extension of the rules to the secondary producers contradicts a 1998 federal court ruling (in the same court district) that porn distributors can't be held responsible for porn produced by someone else; a hearing is scheduled for today. In theory, that means the record-keeping rules could also affect cable companies such as Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people ) and Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ), which provide porn via pay-per-view, or even Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), whose image search engines provide porn photos and links to the originating sites (see "Sex Sells").
Private Media Group (nasdaq: PRVT - news - people ), a porn producer and distributor, told its U.S. Web site distributors on Wednesday to remove the company's hard-core content, despite the fact that the company is based in Barcelona, Spain, outside the reach of the U.S. Department of Justice. The company says it doesn't want to jeopardize the "privacy and safety of its models" by distributing their personal information and records to outside Internet distributors.
In a separate complaint filed last week against the attorney general in the same Denver court, the Free Speech Coalition and two co-plaintiffs who produce porn argue that the rules violate their First Amendment right to have sex on camera. They also claim the attorney general's contention that this is all for the benefit of protecting children is dubious at best, since performers older than 60 must now also provide proof of age.
That may likely explain the motivation for at least one of the co-plaintiffs, David Conners of San Diego. Under the stage name "Dave Cummings," the gray-haired and balding 65-year-old touts himself as "the oldest active male porn star in the business," with a repertoire that includes Sugar Daddy (volumes 1 through 23) and Grandpa Dave's Bedtime Tales.
So, FReepers: is this Censorship by Big Brother? Or is our government acting responsibily in repsone to the wishes of most Americans?
I think any effort to keep children from being exploited by porn producers is laudable, as long as it is reasonable.
I don't know enough about this paricular step to critically comment.
What would impress me more about Gonzales would be an attempt on his part to enforce the border regulations and immigration rules he is sworn to uphold, and is transparently dedicted to ignoring or paying mere lip service to. The continuing advnaace of the Hispanic Goths from south of the border in violation of oour national soverignty, along with the connivance of our immediate neighbor to the South, Senior Fox, goes essentially unaddressed while the administration continues to whine about their bogus "Guest Worker Program" (= exploited second class resident program to benefit corporate interests at the expense of the American taxpayer program).
I hope Gonzales never sees the Supreme Court.
Producers have been required to maintain age-on-file since the mid 70s. Many will think it laudable, but requiring third party distributors (even free off-the-web sites) to have equivalent documentation on file accomplishes nothing whatsoever to reduce the likelihood that minors will be exploited. It is clearly and transparently an effort at censorship, regardless of whether it's constitutional (I'm not really sure on that myself).
government acting responsibily in repsone to the wishes of most Americans
even though USG rarely does the above, this time they are, IMO.
It's a waste of time. The website and movie people will just go out and take more pictures and make more movies - this time making sure to get all the age documentation for the feds, who I wish were spending their time enforcing our immigration laws. This is a stupid plan that (a) won't work in the long run; and (b) takes valuable resources away from what should be higher priorities in law enforcement.
This is a thinly veiled attempt at censorship. Requiring the source to have documentation is one thing, but resellers should not have the same requirements. That would be similar to requiring pharmacies to maintain FDA testing documentation and certification on every medication they carry.
You could be right. How is it the Commerce Department is onboard with the .xxx internet domain, yet the A/G wants to limit porn?
Seems this administration needs to be better coordinated?
Well I'm glad your happy, but your kids will just look at porn from Germany while our government wastes my money.
hallelujah. gentlemen's clubs.....you say it aptly. i like how the perverts who leave their wives and daughters at home to go get their jollies by panting after a naked woman bumping and grinding flatter themselves in naming this pornographic entitlement for "gentlemen".
pornography is destroying life after life -- people who slide down its slippery slope from voyerism and titillation to hard core sexual abuse of children or women. pornography and free speech are not equal anymore than rape is equal to love.
Every child -- in your worldview -- is addicted to porn? That says the opposite of your intent, I am afraid. Assuming you want to protect porn, your own statement has damned it. For as adults, we must protect the children.
A "nanny state" ping.
It's called the "adult industry" because only folks over 18 are permitted to view it.
The porn industry is a multi-billion dollar concern. Care to gueess which political party is the beneficiary of a lot of that largesse?
The .xxx domain will mean no more porn available on the .com or .net sites. And parents can easily filter out the availability of .xxx on the computers so the kiddies can't see it!
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