I not going to tell anyone what they should do; that's up to you but I am serioulys considering saying fuck all that 2257 shit.
Why?
A legal precedent established by Sundance Assocs. Inc. v. Reno, 139 F.3d 804, 807
Basically this court ruling allows a thumb TGP to display explicit thumbs without 2257 docs.
Please read below and then I will explain further:
http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980407/961501.htm
Sundance publishes five magazines: Odyssey, Odyssey Express, Connexion, Looking Glass, and UnReal People. These magazines print personal or commercial announcements by individuals seeking to contact others with similar sexual interests. The announcements are typically accompanied by pictures, most of which are sexually explicit. The pictures are submitted voluntarily to Sundance by the individuals advertising in the magazines. Sundance, therefore, does not participate in the production of the photographs it publishes in its various magazines.
Facing possible criminal liability as a "secondary producer" under the regulation, Sundance filed a complaint seeking declaratory relief in the district court. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment in the district court.
The court ruled for Sundance, finding 28 C.F.R. § 75.1(c)(4)(iii) to be an invalid implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 2257.See footnote 4 Applying Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), the district court found the intent of Congress to be clear from the language of the statute and, consequently, did not inquire into the legislative history of the Act. Finding "[t]he plain meaning of this section of the Restoration Act clearly exempts persons whose activities '... include mere distribution or any other activity which does not involve hiring, contracting for[,] managing, or otherwise arranging for the participation of the performers depicted,'" the court determined the scope of the regulation's coverage to be impermissibly broader than that intended by the statute
Explained:
2257 is not a new law.
It is the enforcement regulations that are new.
The enforement regulations are NOT "law".
The attorney general cannot imposes regs that contradict the law!
This ruling declared the previous new regs contradicted the law in regards to "secondary producers".
This is a precedent that can be quoted to any judge in any court.
Any judge that ruled against you after review of this precedent would basically be a fool. It's an auto-win on appeal because it has already been upheld by a higher court.
*** What is required to be as legal as Sundance?
A thumb TGP that runs a script that either/and/or blindly crawls URLs for thumbs, blindly accepts submitted URLs for thumbs. Sponsor hosted galleries are blindly accepted if only your script views the gallery content.
This is exactly the area that exempts the search engines.
By this standard I am already in full compliance with 2257 except for my banners; which I do not accept blindly.
I run a script (getthumbs.com) that accepts urls and scans for and creates a thumbnail that is blindly posted on my site. I can do this without worry because the script tracks thumb productivity and removes shitty thumbs.
I do publish and distribute my webpage but I have no "contact" with performers("the Restoration Act clearly exempts persons whose activities '... include mere distribution or any other activity which does not involve hiring, contracting for[,] managing, or otherwise arranging for the participation of the performers depicted")
I am now officialy declaring my site as an online magazine and will state so on my site.
OK...reality! I'm still aware that by the time I can prove my case, if it comes to that, I might be broke etc...but I might go broke anyway with trying to comply with this broad regulation.
So I don't know exaclty what I will do but I have sued on constitutional free speech issues before and won in California so I'm feeling somewhat confident that I can run my thumb TGP and win any legal challenge.