Should the FSC Stay with 2257 or Go after pirates

Free Speech Coalition. It should be pretty easy to figure out.

1-2-3 bump

they can't do more than one thing?

what they should do is disband

They have such a sorry assed reputation the organization is generally considered worthless.

We need an organization with integrity, that actually works for the good of the industry not just a hole to throw money in.

I'm still trying to figure out how piracy ties into free speech.

Actually there is probably a free-speech argument endorsing piracy.

Just a way for them to cash in on the industry.

Of course go after pirates. After all look at the enormous success the BSA has had in ending pirated software, and the RIAA & MPAA has had stopping MP3s and pirated movies. Heck, if 100 billion companies like Microsoft can end piracy, why can't pornographers!

The FSC should disband right now and never look back, and a new non profit should form that actually wants to help and not try to profit and only do things that motivate them.

I think it best that they prosper or that they fail based on how they do battling 2257...... just like it's gonna play out for the rest of us.

After they win, of course they should pursue other worthwhile battles.

But right now everything hinges on 2257 and so called obscenity

I disagree.

They haven't lost the 2257 battle yet and for that reason it's too soon to write them off.

I just want the FSC to stay focused on the big issue before they use up their limited resources on less important shit.

They are just one of several organizations that only exist to troll companies for donations.

Part of the FSC's Mission Statement is to "protect" the "wellbeing of the adult entertainment community."

Accordingly, in my opinion, the FSC is rightly justified in doing what it can to address the rampant theft of it's members' intellectual property.

As I understand the situation, the FSC will be providing support for the adult content producer's group that was formed at the Roundtable last week.

Also, as I recall, Counselor Douglas stated at the meeting that because the FSC does not own trademarks or copyrights, the FSC does not have standing in the anti-piracy litigation against particular violators.

Any litigation must be initiated by the content producers who's IPR have been violated. Accordingly, FSC's role will be one of research, support, organization, and coordination between the interests when such activities are requested.

In my opinion, the FSC should continue to endeavor change in the laws that adversely affect our industry as a whole such as the overbroad safe harbor provision of the DMCA, Utah/Michigan email registry, XXX-tld and 2257.

I believe that the FSC and Content Producers should co-ordinate their efforts in both legislation and litigation to maximize the industry's effectiveness dealing with this content theft problem.

But, then again, this is just my opinion.

I no longer care what the FSC does anymore. They make me stomach feel as is it contains bile.

I am not about to comment about the above post though, maybe Air3k needs to be shown it so he can comment about their "support and help"

Organized or been to a meeting?
Sent in your 2257 comments?
Helped the adult businesses in Ohio rollback bad legislation?
Sent money to a business facing prosecution?
Called into a local talk radio show or written a letter to your local editor?
Organized a state group to fight bad legislation in your state?
Raised some funds and donated them to a "rights" group?

There is a lot that needs to be done and you can help.

Get involved.

Redrob, my feeling is that it is more like this:

The Free Speech Coalition’s new mission is to:

Cajole, frighten, and get in front of any issue that will allow us to raise money and consolidate our position in the industry.

Seriously. 2257 and free speech issues are HUGE things. They are a job all to themselves. FSC doesn't have to be all things to all people. It needs to keep itself focused on the issues that it has always tried to lead on and do it's best at those issues. Unless the threats to free speech and the ability for operators to run adult websites without onerous government influence have gone away, they need to keep at it with all their energy.

Unless of course FSC is suggesting that either (a) that 2257 is lost, or (b) it is such an easy issue that they can handle it will with much less than their full attention.

Which one is it?

In my opinion, as an organization that exists on the dues of our members, donations and fundraisers, there is never enough money to do all that we desire such as mounting a nationwide grass-roots organization for our customer base, lobbying for changes in legislation in Washington, DC, setting up state chapters from coast to coast so they can affect legislation at the state level, and, fighting all the bad legislation that has been, and will be, passed by Congress. Fighting the legislation is incredibly expensive, agreed.

I feel it is unfortunate that many members only want to be members in times of crisis and not during untroubled times. But, regardless, we are a passionate bunch of dedicated, true believers who volunteer our own time and money in good times and bad.


Right now, as I understand the situation, the 2257 litigation is temporarily on hold, more or less, awaiting the next move by the DOJ, i.e. the release of the post-comment, revised regulations.

Until the new regs are posted, we don't know how we will be affected as an industry, what particular regs we will challenge, or where the best venue will be for the challenge. Our current challenge is to get the 2257 proposed regs comments of the membership to the DOJ in the next two days. The comments will have an effect on the final regs. The more support our position has in the industry, the more likely we will see favorable regs AND IT IS VERY MUCH A NUMBERS GAME WHEN IT INDICATES INDUSTRY SUPPORT FOR A POSITION.

The FSC information on posting comments is:
http://www.freespeechcoalition.com

As I recall, the content theft issue has been discussed by the FSC Board and committees for at least the past year, and maybe longer. The Board of Directors formed an ad-hoc committee at the June 30th Board Meeting. Before announcing the committee's creation, we contacted other related organizations and had our initial committee meeting. After the intiial meeting we released a press release on 8/15/2007 which I posted to GFY at 2:19pm. The reponse was wonderful!! On the same day at 5:58pm, A1R3K, started his thread for a "Adult Content Producer Roundtable." I had nothing to do with A1R3K's decision to do so.


As I recall, last Wednesday at the Roundtable, the content producers chose members among themselves forming a group to move forward on the content theft issues. During the meeting Counselor Douglas pointed out that the FSC could not be a litigator as the FSC has no standing as a holder of the affected intellectual property. Moveover, Counselor Piccionelli pointed out that we have two years or less to resolve the content theft issue or.....

Knowing that it takes a great deal of time and money to create an organization from scratch with an effective infrastructure such as coast to coast memberships, lobbyists in Washington DC, relationships with other trade organizations, the ability to acquire needed research, ect... And, knowing the FSC is unable to resolve the problem even though it is within the parameters of its mission statement, the FSC offered its support to the content producers group without any strings attached according to my understanding.

We both desire the same goal: elimination of theft of our industry's intellectural property.

The Free Speech Coalition’s mission is to:

Lead, protect and support the growth and wellbeing of the adult entertainment community.

that such horseshit

The FSC mission is to line its fucking pockets consider

when the ACLU seeks an injunction against enforcement of a bad law they dont only do it for ACLU members, they do it across the board

You guys have shown your true colors over and over and over, untill yall do something useful how about
SHUT THE FUCK UP

Im a member of the FSC and I have a strong feeling they are getting involved in content theft is serving a hidden agenda,I dont see it as pure. For our org they arent on any big news programs, they dont really have a public presence. Defending some guy who sells adult videos in a store in ohio or talking to the local CA Gov is nice but does nothing for me. They havent hit any homeruns on 2257 and until they have that should be their whole focus whether it be in the courts or on the media.

Mike,

As I understand the situation, in order to be protected by an injunction, one must be a member of the class that is seeking the injunction. Accordingly, if a trade association seeks an injunction and receive it, the injunction will only apply to the trade association's members.

The ACLU is not a trade association.

I hope that helps.

Tony404

The issue is larger than a couple of bookstores in Ohio. The Ohio adult businesses are trying to get a bad law repealled by having the repeal placed on the November ballot. The effort is huge with bookstores, gentlemen's clubs, distributors and more contributing to the efforts. I think that if we fail in our efforts in Ohio, we will see this group take their legislation to every state. Would you appeciate an Ohio bookstore standing up for your rights?

It works both ways.

For more information vist:

http://www.baceohio.com/News.html?cb2575

Hasnt Ohio and Flynt been going at it for decades?

Nevermind I already pulled my horse from this race. Track is to slippery and covered in shit.

2257 is the biggest thing happening in adult bar none FSC should make that job one. The Gov keeps making that regs more and more fucked up. You wont have to worry about book stores in ohio.

What % of the FSC donations/dues come from dot com organizations vs brick and mortar dvd stores?

I agree that 2257 is the primary and most important issue there is for the adult industry right now... FSC takes my 5 figures every year, but it doesnt seem they are spending their resources wisely.

Do one thing and do it well.

thats right its out for themselves they arent even a 503c are they?
if you are so big on the welfare of the adult industry why dont you get off your asses

as for tony404 dude they dont even help some guy in OH. When Elyses passion went down in Cincy it was a clearly winnable high profile case...what did the FSC do NOT A FUCKING THING

same as they always do...Im tired of the bullshit they continue to dish...do something useful or go crawl back into whatever the fuck hole yall crawled out of

I tried to get the FSC to opens its books years ago...fat fucking chance

they are no friend to us they arent really even a friend to the video biz

They could just as easily have gotten that injunction, that it turns out doesnt apply to any of us, for all of us but instead they saw it as a way to line their pockets...now all those memberships are expiring and they want more money so voila they latch on to another "dragon" to fight for us

FUCK THE FSC

When I bitched about that in the last few weeks in an FSC thread I swear someone from their side said their books are open to members. May want to search for it if your interested in haunting them. I already pulled my membership.

They always SAY that but try to send in a CPA to read em and see what happens.

Redrob, i have to say while you speak well, your comments appear to be intended to deflect criticism and not to inform.

There is no reason in the slightest for a "free speech" group to be looking into piracy. If anything, "free speech" would come down on the side of the torrent and tube owners, as that is a "free speech" issue. The concept and idea of the FSC is to protect the industry's right to exist and operate, and to not have those rights chipped away by regulation and rule.

The current 2257 comment period should have been FSC's call to action, getting each and every one of these members to submit comments and such. instead, FSC has been totally mum on the issue, and the only things I have see about FSC have been about piracy. Only Dave Cummins has been on the boards waving the 2257 flag.

Piracy doesn't have anything to do with free speech. I don't think it was an issue at all for discussion until AFF showed up at the door with a promise of money and whispered in someone's ear to look into piracy. AFF had done the same with ASACP and CP, attempting to impede the industry's move to take action against torrent and file share sites that they profit greatly from.

First and foremost, the FSC members (acting as FSC members) really should have had nothing to say at the meeting. FSC's name shouldn't have even come up. Any attempt to derail this group from the outset shows a sort of protectionist pissing to mark your territory attitude that just isn't needed.

The purpose of the new group in part is to get away from the whole research, ponder, reach out to other groups mentality that FSC has. This situation is a "ready-aim-fire" situation, not a "ready - discuss - review - research - discuss - report - membership drive - working group - discuss - review - discuss - annual review - exchange - meet at internext 2009 - discuss - review - membership drive - discuss - aim - re aim - discuss - fir... wait, nevermind, overtaken by events". I suspect we will see this group move from formation to action in a shorter amount of time than a political process would allow. There will certainly be longer term political issues to be addressed, but the industry is feeling the pinch now, today, right here, and at least some of the primary producers are at risk right now.

FSC should have their hands full with 2257 issues and other legal issues regarding free speech without having to go and look for new challenges. Can you detail out everything FSC has done to solicit comments during this key time in the 2257 process?

2257 is fine.

The name "Free Speech Coalition" was chosen for the trade association by the original members over a decade ago when our main concern was censorship and obscenity cases. Our mission statement says, "The Free Speech Coalition?s mission is to: Lead, protect and support the growth and wellbeing of the adult entertainment community." We do not limit ourselves to addressing "regulation and rule" in our mission statement. Our agenda includes creating state chapters, best practices, reviewing proposed content rating systems, intellectual property protection, new technologies, relationship building with international organizations, and much, much more.

We have sent out new releases to the trade publications. We have included the information in our weekly X-Press emails. Gee, I seem to remember leaving about 30 or more posts on this matter on GFY. Some posts contained links to the FSC website for detailed information. If you missed the link, here is the link again:

http://www.freespeechcoalition.com

Have you submitted your comment yet? Today is the last day to do so.

The FSC is still actively working on the 2257 issue. The task is really a series of steps. The current step is to get as many comments to the DOJ as possible to reflect the opinion of the industry as a whole. This is much like the XXX-TLD responses that we solicited for ICANN: it is very much a numbers game. Few responses equates with not important to the industry.

As I understand the process, once the comments are reviewed by the DOJ, they will issue the final version of the regs. If there is sufficient opposition, they may make some favorable tweaks in our favor; however, nothing is guaranteed. After we review the final regs, we will know our position, develop our strategy, and challenge that which we believe is wrong.


As I was present at the FSC Board Meetings and Committee Meetings, I personally know that piracy has been on the table and discussed for at least the past year on a regular basis. We formed an ad-hoc committee on June 30th of this year to determine which sectors of our industry where being affected by content theft, the methods used by the thieves, the frequency with which is was occurring, the severity of the damage to each industry segment, to formulate our legal options, organize an elimination of content theft strategy, and start the process moving forward.

If AFF gave a million dollars, the decision would have been the same for me and would have had no effect on my personal decision to advocate for control and elimination of content theft. Donating money to the FSC will not buy you protection from illegal acts; that I can assure you.

Many people in the room were FSC members and we were there as content producers and distributors as requested. The FSC did not try to take over the meeting, moderate the meeting, limit discussion, or affect the choices of the Roundtable's members. As I recall, it was an open discussion of all options available without limits on who, how or what should be discussed. Do you have a problem with that? Any opinions that I expressed during the meeting were my own and did not represent any official position of the FSC.

As an ex-infantry sergeant, I know that you must pickoff the most damaging and dangerous targets first. After you secure your target area, you do clean-up operations to remove any remaining targets.

The content theft issue is complex with many types of theft occuring: all equally devastating to those directly affected. Girls with their websites ripped off and urls spoofed, traffic redirection by crooked system administrators within organizations, ripped dvds on torrent sites, hard copies of dvds being mass produced and distributed though legit distributors and flea markets, and more.

When you represent an industry, you have to give equal consideration to all the various groups within and make an informed decision. With limited resources, you must get maximum bang for your buck. These are dangerous times in my opinion and knowing your priorities its vital to the effort. I, personally, don't believe that the research that needs to be done will take too long or be a waste of effort realizing that time is of the essence in this matter.

If they were a real company and actually doing something, they could do both. But from all appearances, they are just taking money, and doing nothing.

We are doing something.

What are you doing?

You say we are taking money, whose money? How much? When?

What was promised in exchange for the money?

Give me the facts.

Redrob, the only threads I have seen here about 2257 have been started by Dave Cummins. He has been a strong voice, and has certainly made the point. However, considering the important nature of this process, you would think that the FSC people would be here DAILY talking up the subject, asking GFY to maybe pin a thread or otherwise help to promote the issue.

That statement is called "mission creep". You mistake me for someone who walked into the room last week. I was a past supporter of FSC for a long time, back to the days when Bill Marigold use to travel to shows with nothing more than a sack full of T-shirts and pins to sell and a small rollup banner. The entire idea of FSC was to protect performers rights to perform, to protect the industry as a whole from restrictive laws, zoning ordinances, and the endless hassling that the opponents of porn have used to try to put the industry in the trash.

Copyright / piracy isn't a core part of what FSC was. It may be on the list of things a re-written mission statement now covers, but it isn't the point or the issue. In the same manner that ASACP slipped from being about "reporting and working to eliminate CP" to a "protect children from porn".

The issue of piracy and copyright violation is an issue specific to the people who produce porn. There is nothing any of the rest of us can do about it, because we don't have the rights to go after the violators. It is the people who own the rights to the material that must make the move. They need thier own group specific to them that can work to satisfy their specific needs and legal rights and obligations.

If FSC wants to form a committee to discuss the subject of the potential actions for the review of an upcoming discussion group to look into a 2003 report on piracy, knock yourselves out. But you guys should be ashamed of yourselves for even considering trying to knock the copyright holders off their plan to represent themselves as they should.

Sorry RawAlex, didn't happen.

Everyone is hurt by content theft, retailers, distributors, website operators, VOD sites, etc.

Rob, apparently we didn't get the same reports from the meeting.

There is no debate that everyone is hurt by content theft. But third parties have no rights to argue about it. Content producers and rights holders alone are the ones that have to take action. Someone running a TGP or a blog has no ability to send DMCA notices or take other action because the content isn't theirs to start with. Content producers need to organize themselves and take their action as they see fit.

Take a look at the poll results. FSC needs to stick with what it (arguably) does best, issues such as 2257 and other free speech related issues. Perhaps the FSC would like to start an anti-CP reporting system too? I hear that is something that our industry really needs.

never mind

Redrob,

If the FSC is so dedicated to helping the adult community and stopping content theft, why do you accept donations from companies that advertise heavily on almost all the major torrent/tube sites that rely on stolen content. Simple question, yet to hear a good answer from you guys on it. Thank you.

quoting one of my favorite characters from this biz

"i have all the morals i can afford"

Yah!

I was bored and had nothing to do at Shane's World, so I took it upon myself to just do something crazy and copy the FSC in making a piracy organization. I have THAT much time that I really thought that I could spend it doing something that won't put a nickle in my pocket. That's just the type of guy I am. I am absolutely sure that no content producers were ever talking behind the scenes for over a year or anything. That just wouldn't be feasible to believe.

</sarcasm>

P.S.

I am getting a lot of credit for things that I don't deserve. I did not put all those people in that room, evolution did. When your bank account starts screaming from outside effects of things like piracy, it tends to motivate people.

For the last time, I WAS A VOICE! I am a PROMOTER. I have been for 15 years. I used to get paid by nightclubs to fill them up. This is much easier. Simple. Please stop giving me so much credit. This isn't necessarily about this thread. I understand that I am seen as the PIRACY MARTYR, but it just isn't so. There were 65 Piracy Martyrs in that room, they deserve ALL the credit for getting their asses in a room on a Wednesday night to discuss the issues affecting them.

Over and Out!

2cents

Good night and sweet dreams.

I had a feeling that question about accepting money from AFF is ignored. You guys are lawyers, should be able to come up with some better spin than the typical GFYer.

Bump for an answer on the AFF donation.