Ira Rothken is an attorney for AFF and Cams.com.
www.lukeisback.com
I call him Thursday afternoon.
Ira: "I have represented Friendfinder since the inception of that company. I have represented Steamray since Lars' involvement with this industry. I can assure you that tremendous steps have been taken historically and passionately, whenever it came to anybody's attention that there was any type of material that was inappropriate on those sites, to come down.
"Every single person who has ever appeared through Steamray's cams, we have full and total 2257 compliance. We have pictures identification, licenses, for every single person who has performed."
Luke: "It appears from the site that anyone can sign up and start streaming on there."
Ira: "No. To stream through Steamray, you have to fill out a contract and a model release. You have to say that you are over the age of 18 and that you warrant that everything you are doing is lawful in the jurisdiction that you are doing it. Furthermore, as a precondition for anyone to be able to stream ever, we have to have full 2257 documentation, which includes government-issued picture identification. That applies wherever you are located in the world.
"It's a slow process. It's a tremendous barrier to entry -- the enormous effort [to put together] those materials. If you don't put together those materials, you don't stream. We have a database that tracks all that. We have back-ups located in other states in case that database ever gets corrupted and we have to provide that to a governmental entity."
Luke: "Wouldn't it be easy to send in fake documentation?"
Ira: "That's something that would plague the industry as a whole. I don't know a way around that unless we get DNA samples. The legal requirement isn't perfection because nobody could ever be perfect. I can tell you that we make a good-faith attempt. It is possible for someone to commit fraud on us but I can't imagine that being any rational-legal standard. If it is, then it is statistically likely that one person has committed such fraud against every major adult company in the world. But we don't know of anyone, and if we did, we would immediately remove their ability to stream."
Luke: "What about AFF? Can't anyone just put up naked pictures without 2257 [paperwork]?"
Ira: "With AFF, we have contractual warranties from every person who posts that they are over 18 and they not committing any unlawful acts. For many, but not all, we have other types of age verification mechanisms.
"We have looked at the case law and for dating services, they are different than, say, Streamray. Dating services are not creating a performance. It's not like creating an adult video.
"It would make a dating site for adults difficult to maintain if it was a condition before proceeding that there had to be 2257 compliance.
"It's something we're looking at. If it ever came to our attention that that was a requirement for entry to a dating site, where we are an enabling device, we would do it."
