'girls Gone Wild' Guilty In Sexual Exploitation Case
 

from drudge:

'GIRLS GONE WILD' GUILTY IN SEXUAL EXPLOITATION CASE... Company pleads guilty for failing to 'create and maintain age and identity documents for performers in sexually explicit films'... Under agreements, founder Joseph Francis agrees to plead guilty to offenses and pay fines and restitution totaling $2.1 million... DEVELOPING...

ohhhh snap

And those girls? Its not like they were forced to do stuff?

Wonder if there will be any jail time?

That wording makes it sound like a 2257 infraction. Is that the case or...?

Sounds like a Federal Case. Anyone know more details?

aint that some shit

well that hardly matters for the charges.. besides we don't know the cntext of the filming.. (i.e. what was said verbally for them to agree ) like what if they said $500 to show your tits for scientific research .. then didnt pay them and made a video called ggw .. thats a bit of a stretch but , just saying..

$2 mill is spit for him...

I am thinking the same thing :winkwink:

""In the court papers distributed by the Justice Department, " 'Girls Gone Wild' admitted filming performers and producing and distributing sexually explicit video materials during all of 2002 and part of 2003 while violating the record keeping and labeling laws.""

taken from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...home-headlines

So then it is a 2257 violation, and money so far has allowed him to walk

So everybody will be buyinf those "girls gone wild" dvd´s. i think that´s worth the 2 million.

only goes to show that the old saying "money talks and bullshit walks" is not always true.

Money is walking this time.

Have to figure a party style shoot ,has to be hell to keep records for. He made his money, even with this he probably doesn't have to work again in his life.

Gee... only 2 million for 2 years worth of bad record keeping? Is that the kind of penalty we can expect for underage performers appearing in adult films? Doesn't seem like much at all! Now I wonder if the pedos will increase their dastardly work knowing that they'll get little more than a slap on the wrist!

"Under terms of the deal, after three years the Los Angeles charges against MRA will be dismissed if the company fully complies with the record-keeping laws and has made full restitution."

Good luck to them! :thumbsup 3 years is quite the chunk of time there..

I've never understood how it's even possible for them to comply. Shouldn't that have been thought of by now?

Oh well, :girl What do I know...

Only fines? I though if you don't comply withh 2257 you go to jail.

If 2257 is meant to protect children and they didn't comply, then the gov is saying they value the exploitation of children at 2 mil. So if you want to produce cp factor 2 mil into your budget to pay the gov.

Thats fucked up.

Did they HAVE IDs for all the models (with releases) and did not jump through the silly 2257 hoops, or did they simply not even have IDs?

Sounds like Joe got lucky.

:)

Nah, it's called lawyers.

Nah, it's called big $$ lawyers.

I'm confused too on where the infraction is. Was their record keeping just sloppy or were they missing the actual ID's? The easy way to get ID's is with a polaroid camera ;o) Lots and lots of company's use that method... Portable copy machines are just too damned heavy and bulky to have - especially when you're in a small hotel room with drunken chicks all over the place, hehe

Bad record keeping doesn't = CP :helpme
If they were caught with underage they'd be in jail.

yea they were just talking about it on the o'reilly factor. bill actually sounded like he was backing up the girls gone wild guys...

It is all the difference between filming what happens at Mardi Gras and taking girls back to your room and filming them eat each other out. The first part is open without issue, the second part requires documentation.

As soon as you pay someone to appear (ie: you aren't just filming events, but actually creating the event) you have moved from reporting to production... and you need 2257 documents and model releases.

Alex

From reading some of these news stories it seems they did not keep any "age documents" at all. If that is the case who is to know if these girls were underage or not.

Now if they did have model releases and these girls were all of legal age, and it was just about not having the paperwork filed correctly, that's another story.

If the later is true that just goes to show that 2257 does nothing to protect the poor innocent children (that are flashing their tits at spring break).

This brings up some good questions.
Why in the fuck does a company as big and profitable as GGW not have someone to maintain their 2257 records? Could it be they can't produce the docs because some of these girls are underage, or are they really that stupid? Had they been a smaller program I could understand the defense of "The government has made this whole 2257 shit so confusing that neither me nor my lawyer could figure it out." but this is not some small company.

I hope that all the girls are of age and that they just didn't bother keeping the records in order, because that would just further prove that the purpose of 2257 is not to "protect the children", but to make it harder to produce porn in the USA. It would also show that 2257 is just a tool for the government to take money from someone that is doing nothing wrong and by saying it's to protect children they in turn are the ones "exploiting the children"

2257 has absolutely no bearing on whether you pay a model for filming her or not. If you produce the content with her consent you have entered into a 'contract' with her (or him) and you have managerial authority over the relationship, regardless of payment, then you must keep records of the identities.

The interesting question becomes "Does flashing your tits constitute sexuallly explicit content?"... seems a bit discriminatory to me... Suppose I want to produce a set of videos called "Guys Gone Wild" and have a bunch of guys flash their tits .... is that sexually explicit? Is it produced with the intent of satisfying prurient interests? Could it be construed in some communities (outside of San Francisco) as being obscene content?

I think the feds must have had more on these guys than what is being told and they just copped to a 2257 records beef.

Remember, 2257 record keeping is a BUSINESS requirement, just like keeping tax records or payroll records. If you don't keep 2257 records, you are begging for inspections and then that opens you up to all kinds of other issues due to the rules of 'in plain sight' evidence collection. It's much harder for the feds to come to you (with a warrant) and inspect for income tax evasion. They probably wouldn't be able to get the warrant. But as a content producer, they can say to the judge, "We need to do inspections of these guys because we think they are using underage models." and the judge will probably give it to them. Then when they come to do the inspections, they'll be on the lookout for other non-compliance issues they may stumble across in the attempt to inspect 2257 records.

This is why it is imperitive to keep your 2257 records on a single computer, not attached to the internet, or to any other business network. They can come in and inspect your 2257 records and that's all they can inspect. If you keep all of your records electronically, then all they can inspect is electronic information, especially if you have explicitly identified your company as one that only keeps electronic records. If you keep ANY paper records then they are able to inpect ANY paper records to determine whether they are pertinent to 2257 and that's where things really get nasty.

When the inspectors come (and they eventually will) to do 2257 inspections you should already have a written affidavit (get help from your attorney) stating that all of your 2257 records are stored in an electronic format without any paper records. This will greatly limit the scope of what they can search and search for. It's also not a good idea to keep the party tray of coke or ecstacy in plain site when the inspectors come knocking at your door. :winkwink: