Kevin Marx

Many of my colleagues will attest to the fact that the proposed adjustments to the 2257 legislation are financially burdensome and ridiculous to legitimate producers. The additional amount of time and effort involved for me as a producer would equate to multiple hours per secondary producer I was required to provide the information to. Currently, that number for my organization is between 30-50 individuals, but as time goes on, that number can reach hundreds or thousands of individuals, for which, I have no need to hire additional assistance just to deliver information to persons which are essentially independent contractors of my business. A full time employee just for my organization could reasonably be paid $40-50,000/yr for such a task as well as the costs of hardware, office space, supplies, etc. I also believe that the $100million threshold that the government has stipulated is fairly ludicrous as well. Isn?t even $100 of wasted time and money too much to ask? Don?t we (as well as the government) have better things to do than duplicating paperwork when all that is necessary is for the governmental authorities to contact the original content producer to verify compliance?

More importantly, as a content producer, I have been entrusted with the legitimate identities, residence locations, business names, and/or tax identification numbers of the performers that I employ. I hold this information (as does my attorney) in the highest confidence and will release it to no one except a properly authorized governmental agent for the purpose of verifying my compliance with the 2257 regulations.

I cannot be expected to deliver this information to secondary producers (i.e. webmasters) when they in fact have absolutely no contact with performers or my business. Many of these people are independent contractors that align with tens or hundreds of organizations such as myself for the purpose of assisting us with the sales of our product. Although I accept their work and praise their efforts, I do not know each and every one of them by name, and location and reputation and would have no desire to deliver such highly sensitive information to each and every one of them.

Imagine if you will that perhaps the Hollywood talent agencies, or the movie studios were required to deliver this information to each and every Blockbuster location, or to the Blockbuster employees, or to every newspaper in the country (for placing advertisements of a movie showing in your town), of the actual names, and residences, and tax information of every performer in Hollywood. It would have little chance of even passing as a discussion due to the influence Hollywood has in Washington, but realistically, you are asking the same of the adult industry for the purpose of containing child pornography.

As many of my colleagues have stated, the legitimate adult industry has no interest in producing child pornography. Placing additional laws to restrict and burden the above the board industry will have no effect except to cause further expense and have no chance of stemming the flow of what is truly the problem. You would be better off to task the monies for enforcement under this proposed plan, to employing computer professionals that can locate the offending material (just google ?child porn?) and having the authority to shut down a site in the US for violations. Due process of course is required, but as a producer if you contacted me and requested proof for a performer, I would be happy to do so. If I could not produce such documentation, why should I be upset when the government shuts down my site and places a page indicating that the website has been closed until further notice due to violation of the 2257 guidelines? As a legit producer, I would love to see that occur to the 1000 or so torrent sites that are clearly violating the law day in and day out with illegal and/or stolen content. Laws are intended to be reasonable to those affected rather than restrictive and burdensome. Logic and a partnership with the legitimate side of the industry would go a long way to ensuring the desired effect of the proposed legislation.

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