Originally Posted by RawAlex

My take is this:

The only area at this point that the FSC has a hope on is the secondary producers. Essentially, there is no simple way to connect the goal of the Adam Walsh law"



Secondary record rention does not further any of those interests. Secondary producers do no exploit children, they do not abuse children, and they do not produce child pornography. Further, distributing 2257 far and wide and cross listing every URL will not in any way provide one iota of increased internet safety for children. The only thing that create record keeping requirements for people who do not actually film, produce, or directly sell content is to dampen free speech.

All the cross referenced documents in the world do not help if (a) the original producer fucked it up, or (b) the model lied about their age and had government mandated documents to support that lie. There is absolutely NOTHING that a secondary producer can do to limit distribution under the two circumstances that might be an issue.

Having a contract or license for content that states "all content is produced with models over 18 years of age in compliance with 2257, and documents and records for these images can be found at our custodian of records) offers EXACTLY the same level of assurance. The secondary producer has no way in their control to verify that the documents provided are valid. Simply requiring secondary producers to reference their websites and other work product to the original contract for content would serve the same purpose.

I understand that the government wants to be able to inspect a single location and find all records for all material. They do not want to have to raid 100 locations to find the records. But in the end, blacked out copies showing only a name and a year of birth woudl not appear to be adequate for proving model age in any true legal sense. A model born on December 31st 1989 would appear to be legal right now, even though they are only 17, because as a secondary producer, you would only see the model's name and YEAR of birth.

If the government agencies involved had been more agressive in the past 15 years to go out and actually enforce the EXISTING 2257 regulations, they would find that the "legal" porn industry just isn't the source for child porn, and the supply of child porn isn't going to drop one iota because of additional record keeping. I think that this alone is a clear indication that the new rules do not further the government's interests, but rather punishes the innocent and dampens free speech.

Good luck to everyone in court. If you are a US based webmaster, buy extra underware, you are about to crap your pants.