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Everyone has a 2257 opinion - here's mine
The way I see it, yes, the DOJ will prosecute some companies. But their manpower is limited, and thus, just has been the case with the CanSpam act, they will make sure that the companies they prosecute will be operating on a very large scale.
And initially I am also confidant that the companies they prosecute will be clearly guilty of publishing underage material, and not merely unable to promptly produce id records. The reason is simple. The first case going forth to the courts will be a landmark case. As such, the DOJ will want to ensure 2 very important things:
1) The DOJ will want to go into court with as much confidence as possible that they will WIN the case.
2) The DOJ will want to ensure that their new crackdown will be backed by widespread public support. To achieve this, the public must be convinced that DOJ is fighting a worthy case. Simply prosecuting a company because they can not immediately produce records will not likely generate this support. Instead, this could easily be interpretted as a bureaucratic waste of the public's money. But involve children or teens in the equation, and then you are talking huge support.
Be rest assured, the first case is guaranteed to achieve vast media coverage. Anything involving civil rights is very media friendly. As time goes on, unless the offender is of a significant size, then most cases will likely be under the news media radar. This is when prosecutions for mere records keeping offences may start to appear.
So the moral, the sky probably isn't falling quite yet. But, if you keep your head in the sand for to long, you may find when you remove your head from the sand, that your neck has already been put on the chopping block.
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