September 14, 2005
2257: Using Kiddie Porn to Screw Us All
...Remember people, if you're not with us, you're for kiddie porn! How 2257 works. 2257 Part two.
Even Joan Irvine, executive director of Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, says she is unsure about federal motives where the revised regulations are concerned. “It appears the government is confused,” she avers. “The legitimate businesses in the [adult] industry are already doing what is necessary to protect children and comply with 2257. I have to repeat what has been said before: If the government was really interested in protecting children, they would be using avenues such as hashed values of known [child pornography] images to find this illegal and horrific content. “They are treating the adult entertainment industry as if it is trying to lure children into the business, and this is not true. The government can't even handle the workload of [legitimate child porn] investigations.” This is why I try to only use overseas companies for anything even remotely connected with my adult website. However, they've even got them scared; Moneybookers; Moneybookers Limited is a money transmitter regulated under UK law. Our parent: Gatcombe Park Ventures Limited, London. caved in August and now won't handle your money transactions if they know they are affiliated with an adult site. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
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Wow, no comments yet? Heavy stuff for MoFi, I guess. The 2257 rules sound so onerous, I can't believe that more than a tiny fraction of the adult-oriented material on the web complies. Yet the government doesn't seem to have the manpower to do anything about it. Was it ever remotely realistic to think that the web could be so minutely policed? It seems likely that too much regulation will simply drive the porn biz out of reach of US regs by going online and overseas, probably having little impact on total US porn consumption but turning an economic asset into just another part of the trade deficit.
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The government are trying to get a bill through UK parliament at the moment to crack down on violent porn on the net. It's probably getting them all scared. Given that they've got that religious hate speech bill through, I'm not optimistic that they will have a sensible approach and definition of 'violent'.
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from the "How" link: It mentions June 24 of this year. Does anyone know what's happened with this so far? The weirdness of only being able to keep one form of ID for each performer sounds like it's specifically calculated to screw producers (or is that just a tinfoil condom interpretation)?
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Hey, I'm just a consumer of "adult entertainment" but my first reaction is that the US gov't will use this as a cudgel in cases where they can't establish a legitimate case against a producer. Sort of a pRon RICO statute. There aren't enough inspectors and there isn't enough money in gov't to seriously enforce this. Where it will be applied onerously is in small towns in traditionally religious areas (Western Michigan for example) where they want to hassle a legitimate "adult book store" that probably has the occasional clandestine gay trysts happening (between the local state senator and a call-boy?) but offends the blue-noses. Also in "the Valley" in CA if the marshals think that somebody ain't paying taxes or is just getting too "uppity." I'm not saying it is right--far from it, I think this is another DMCA-type wide-cast net and it sucks. I just don't think that enforcement will be widespread.
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And how does 2257 work with the porn profits of corporate America? This might have something to do with it; "Because there's a social stigma still attached to [pornography], you can charge a premium for it, the profit margin is higher. ... It makes pure economic sense.” Kill off the competition, bury your existing and future ties to porn, and profit like a motherfucker while saving America from child pornography. Go America, go!
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I'd also guess that the porn industry is one of the last industries that votes democrat as a block, and this is way to eliminate their political contributions.
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Oh yeah. And 2257 can get you killed. In addition to making identities of performers available to law enforcement, 2257 also would give affiliate sites access to the information. Aylesworth, who runs Naughty Niche, the parent company of www.MontrealDream.com and other adult sites, worries that stalkers could become affiliates simply to get the addresses and names of performers. "I make a personal promise that their identities are going into a filing cabinet and won't go to anybody without a court order," Aylesworth told the Montreal Mirror. "I think it's very dangerous. A model is going to turn up dead."
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Dutch porn stocks! Buy! Buy! Buy!
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The Attorney General is trying to get government prosecutors to go after obscenity in Florida, at the expense of child porn and other actual crime. This government could give a rat's ass about actually ending the exploitation of children. They're trying to play to their fundy fan base. Jackasses. Luckily, it looks like the state prosecutors are balking at this request, at least as of last month. (And I say this as a pro-porn, radical feminist, Christian woman. Contradictory? Probably. That's the fun part of being human!)
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Going after porn is a stupid idea. Hell, porn is the driving force behind all of our technological advances. Why was the camera invented? To take dirty pictures. The motion picture? So we could watch dirty movies. VCRs and DVDs? So we could watch the movies at home. The hand-held movie player? So we can take our porn on the road. They take away the porn, and the technology we build our world on will collapse. I'm serious. (Links mildly NSFW. Nothing too scary though.) Thanks for the info MJ - I hadn't heard about the latest way in which my government is screwing me over. On the plus side, from now on they will have to keep careful records of each and every citizen they screw with stupid legislation like this.
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It's a tremendous red herring. No adult content provider in their right mind wants anything to do with child pornography. Obviously there is child porn out there, but; "Commercial involvement in child pornography does still exist on the Internet mainly through web sites, but it is in my experience of limited scale and scope. Anyway, there is really very little market potential for commercial initiatives, because so much material is available free of charge through the newsgroups". Max Taylor Professor of Applied Psychology University College, Cork, Ireland In other words, pedophiles trade free material among themselves. There is no reason in hell Joe Webmaster should do five years because he/she didn't have the real full name and home address on file for every single image on their "Hot 'n' Horny Housewives" site. This disregard for privacy here is staggering. I can tell you there is no way I will have my real name and home address on any website. Any obsessed half-assed hacker or bogus site affiliate could turn up on my doorstep. This is a Fundamentalist attack on sexuality, not child pornography. How long until Homeland Security demands the same information from anyone with a political website or blog, in an effort to "identify possible dissemination of information that could lead to anti-American or Terrorist activities"?
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I believe that every time I have sex the world becomes a slightly better place.
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Except for the wet spot
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Don't get so worked up, moneyjane, you need to stop thinking selfishly about you and your website, and instead think of the children! Oh, god, we must protect the children! (Unless of course they're Guatemalen or Chinese children being exploited to make your clothes - we in the US of A only care about sexually exploited children, and even then pretty much we don't give a rat's ass if they aren't American anyway.) Really... this is a bunch of crap, I don't mean to make light of the issue at hand. I agree that this is bullshit. On a related note - how will this affect Girls Gone Wild and the other stupid videos I see advertised on late-night TV? I mean, getting them drunk enough to sign the release form is one thing, but getting them drunk enough to hand over their home address and Social Security number? Good luck with that, soft porn industry! The upside of this is that porn makes fat cash. Businesses that bring in money like that have a strong interest in protecting their income. (I'm guessing Larry Flynt and his lawyers are organizing a strategy right now.) Hopefully someone can fix this idiot mess before it gets out of hand.
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I thought the world was going to become a slightly better place last night, but it didn't.
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Great. The future of the free world rests on Mr. W gettin' some. However...that means that as Monkeys with a certain degree of social control over our members...Monkeys can make sure Hawthorne gets some, and moneyjane gets rich! Our operators are standing by at the 'Wingmen and Women for Wingo' hotlines. Please. Give what you can.