SO whats the 2257 law regarding user submitted content?

From a cursory glance, it seems as though the sites that accept these submissions are exempt, but the individuals who upload them must maintain the records. I'm not a lawyer though.

Or Tubes....

talk to a lawyer this place is full of bad 2257 info

Ban sexually explicit photos.

I think if it is non-sexually explicit, you are exempt.

However, check with a lawyer and do what your lawyer says to do.

It's a complicated issue with a lot of conflicting information because the new regs are not completely clear on the subject. I know most of the well-known first amendment attorneys have a private mailing list and bounce opinions back and forth, so I suspect they will be talking extensively about these issues at Internext.

In the meantime, it's probably prudent to prepare now to have a method within your web applications to be able to have whomever is reviewing your site's content identify photos as explicit or nonexplicit. That way, assuming the regs are shown to be enforceable, all you would have to do is flip a switch and all explicit images could be turned off. That's what we've been working on for about a year now with one of our projects that's under development.

One other sticky issue: The definition of "nonexplicit" or "2257 exempt" is changing; previously, mere nudity was exempt, so, for example, a pic of a guy with a raging hard-on who wasn't touching himself would have been exempt, as would a pic with people who were "simulating" sex but weren't actually having sex. The new regs attempt to make both sorts of images subject to 2257, although in my (non-legal) opinion, that would be a pretty clear violation of the first amendment.