U.S. Cracks down on porn industry
 

http://www.forbes.com/services/2005/...otix&referrer=


NEW YORK - Is your Internet browser a little less polluted with porn today? Are you seeing fewer banner ads promoting hard-core sex? If so, thank U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. Largely unnoticed in the mainstream world, his new porn record-keeping regulations went into effect today, causing fits of apoplexy among much of the porn world.

"The adult industry prepares for a legal battle that may determine whether it can survive against the onslaughts of the Bush administration's anti-adult agenda," intones a recent story in AVN, the preeminent industry trade publication, amid ads for something called Naughty America and Hotmovies.com.

"This is an attack, we are back to the dark ages of witch hunts and instead of burning innocent people at the stake they are putting them in jail and ripping apart their businesses and families," wails the Web site of Lisa S. Lawless, whose company specializes in videos featuring female orgasms. Casualties so far, if anyone will miss them, include the aptly named Bound & Gagged, which describes itself as "The world's greatest male bondage magazine." At least it was: Its Web site shut down on Wednesday.

The new rules, which are updates to regulations that date back to 1992, require porn promoters and distributors to maintain records proving their models and actors are over the age of 18, instead of signed forms and other loose documentation. In an announcement last month, Gonzales said the new rules "are crucial to preventing children from being exploited by the production of pornography." Although seemingly innocuous and for a good cause, the rules have suddenly forced the freewheeling trade to either find and organize legal documents for every performer engaging in sex, remove the pictures, or face jail time of up to five years for the first offense and up to ten years for additional offenses.

Easier said than done. The only acceptable identification is government-issued "picture identification" cards or documents, copies of which must be available on demand from the feds, according to a guidebook circulated among big porn clients by Paul Cambria Jr., one of the trade's top lawyers. Oh, that includes any photos or movies shot within the past ten years. Good luck tracking down all those once-naked people, many of whom are foreigners or use bogus names.

And the industry only had 30 days to get the records together from the time the regulations were announced.

The new regulations "will likely drive law-abiding adult businesses out of the industry not because they ignored the minimum-age requirements, but because they simply cannot afford to maintain the extensive records required under the new rules," Cambria tells his clients.

While compiling such records is hard enough for the actual producers of porn, they constitute the minority of much of what is distributed over the Internet. Most Internet porn sites are run by small-time independents who agree to distribute porn made by photographers and film producers, in exchange for a cut of as much as $70 for every purchase directed back to the originating sites. These so-called "secondary producers" now must also keep age documents for every performer, a near-impossible task that is being hotly disputed by the industry.

The Free Speech Coalition, a front group for the porn trade, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on Monday in Denver federal court, in which it argued that the extension of the rules to the secondary producers contradicts a 1998 federal court ruling (in the same court district) that porn distributors can't be held responsible for porn produced by someone else; a hearing is scheduled for today. In theory, that means the record-keeping rules could also affect cable companies such as Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people ) and Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ), which provide porn via pay-per-view, or even Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), whose image search engines provide porn photos and links to the originating sites (see "Sex Sells").

Private Media Group (nasdaq: PRVT - news - people ), a porn producer and distributor, told its U.S. Web site distributors on Wednesday to remove the company's hard-core content, despite the fact that the company is based in Barcelona, Spain, outside the reach of the U.S. Department of Justice. The company says it doesn't want to jeopardize the "privacy and safety of its models" by distributing their personal information and records to outside Internet distributors.

In a separate complaint filed last week against the attorney general in the same Denver court, the Free Speech Coalition and two co-plaintiffs who produce porn argue that the rules violate their First Amendment right to have sex on camera. They also claim the attorney general's contention that this is all for the benefit of protecting children is dubious at best, since performers older than 60 must now also provide proof of age.

That may likely explain the motivation for at least one of the co-plaintiffs, David Conners of San Diego. Under the stage name "Dave Cummings," the gray-haired and balding 65-year-old touts himself as "the oldest active male porn star in the business," with a repertoire that includes Sugar Daddy (volumes 1 through 23) and Grandpa Dave's Bedtime Tales.

Good stuff Lars, thanks for the read! :thumbsup

good read lars, thanks

thanks for the post today should be interesting

After reading the Pdf from the DOJ in response to the litigation it became quite clear to me that the DOJ fully expected litigation. They were able to put up a 35 page document in response in a couple of days. Thats either a huge ammount of manpower or a well thought out plan of attack, or both.

Well......they already fucked me up. I removed all my freesites, galleries and images last night. If this shit (secondary producer) is reverse some day I'll have to start over from scratch practically. Great post tho :thumbsup

Thanks for the post Lars

The "proof in the pudding" will be when the first cases come up.

Nice read, thanks Lars

this is going to be an interesting ride

good stuff. Damn I hope we get that injuction for affiliates like myself.

its sad to see all the gallery submitters closing shop :(

Yes an interesting ride for sure Stuart.

Good stuff to read ... thanks :)

You don't have to follow too many links today to notice a big difference. A lot of closed blogs anyway.

Love the subtle bias against us in the article:

"Is your Internet browser a little less polluted with porn today? Are you seeing fewer banner ads promoting hard-core sex?"

"...intones a recent story in AVN, the preeminent industry trade publication, amid ads for something called Naughty America and Hotmovies.com."

"Casualties so far, if anyone will miss them, include the aptly named Bound & Gagged,"

"...instead of signed forms and other loose documentation."

"Although seemingly innocuous and for a good cause, the rules have suddenly forced the freewheeling trade..."

Remember many of the reasons why there is these updates to 2257 is for political goodwill. These are the type of aticles the DOJ loves even if they never convict anyone it looks very good the the voters of the Zealots. So in effect if they can get a lot of good press they got what they wanted. More Votes the next time around ! :helpme

Yup... they become the good guys fighting the evil porn empire... protecting them from perversions and disgusting images being forced upon them.

It's a mochery of what is really happening... but the people believe it like the sheep they are.

time to get back into daytrading.


who do you like today lars?

Hmm, interesting article, but nothing unexpected there. Everything goes as it should...

shit article if you ask me.

if somebody doesn't know shit about porn, he shouldn't be writing articles about it.

well, not one news article would ever be written it seems.

journalists are usually just failed cooks.

"Is your Internet browser a little less polluted with porn today? Are you seeing fewer banner ads promoting hard-core sex? If so, thank U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales." :error

"Sex", "Porn" Still Top Search Terms

thanks Lars :thumbsup

Sure will, interesting times ahead :)

Damn! I wish they would have put my URL in the article.

ADG Webmaster

Fuk this - and fuk Gonzales. We aint based in the USA anymore thank the lord.
But it still pains me seeing the industry as a whole shot themselves becuase of this.
When the good ol us of a banned booze , this was a gold mine for some. Same with porn. It wont die .. ever. If you dont adapt your fucked and those left standing will be the winners. And by adapt I dont mean comply with laws that were set up to destroy you.! ................

Why not? People who know nothing about computers, the internet or porn made up these stupid laws.

I love how they call the FSC a "front group" for us....like we're the fucking Mafia or something.

ap·o·plex·y Audio pronunciation of "apoplexy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (p-plks)
n.

1. Sudden impairment of neurological function, especially that resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage; a stroke.
2. A sudden effusion of blood into an organ or tissue.
3. A fit of extreme anger; rage: ?The proud... members suffered collective apoplexy, and this year they are out for blood? (David Finch).

'Witchhunt' was a good description IMHO

If it wasn't clear to some of you that the current administration is out for blood then this should have been your wake up call.

I can't tell you how many vendors have had me moving their merchant accounts to offshore entities in the last month .. nor can I blame them. The states are becoming hostile ground for our industry.

Lars, you are 100% correct, they expected the storm of legal counterpunches and were well prepared for it. I would say the 30 day notice was not done on accident!

gaping anal is NOT ART!

IGN networking index ETF is rocking lately

it holds Motorolla Qualcom lucent nortel corning reaserch in motion Csco and some others. looks strong others am buying are boring but interesting to me
XLU and IYR for the gambler.. Cramers pics are rocking .. OVER EENC and TWX

it's making headlines... nice

This article makes it sound like we are against models having to provide proof of age when they first pose.

lol
us porn laws can suck my cock :)

fucking hypocrites, what will they have to look at if they try to shut down online porn..

My bet is 90% of those fighting this silly fight use porn to jerk off..

This whole thing is almost funny at how ridiculous they are being. DO they think they can stop people from accessing porn that is made in other countries..are they really that fucking stupid?

XLU looks awesome! :thumbsup

When the hell do you sleep Lars?

Short Private Media Group (nasdaq: PRVT - news - people )

:winkwink:

I dont get it, for the adult blog sites, why not just convert your pics. http://www.rugriders.com and http://www.naughtycookies.com are mine, and we just changed a few images, thus, they are in regulation, am I missing something?

interesting reading

Interesting storey, it also backs up that this has nothing to do with cp and everything to do with Bush's anti porn drive

That was a good read . Thnx bro :thumbsup

Fletch - I could have sworn it was based solely on penetration/oral. Perhaps I am wrong, anything else eye-poppingly obvious on those 2 sites?

your guess is as good as mine.

good read, interesting yet disturbing.......fuck bush

I love the plugs for Dave, Hotmovies and such. This is the type of coverage I was referring to in a previous thread.

bump so all can read

Almost 50 good read ..... :upsidedow