Terminally Incoherent

Utterly random, incoherent and disjointed rants and ramblings...

Monday, July 04, 2005

No more pr0n?

Well... It seems that as of June 23 it is illegal to distribute pr0n without creating a crazy amount of paperwork thanks to the 18 USC 2257:

The U.S. Government has passed "18 U.S.C. ยง 2257", which effectively shuts down every American owned or operated adult industry where there may be a photograph or video. It requires more paperwork than even the most adept accountant could possibly keep up with. The punishment for even a single offense if $25,000 and/or 5 years in jail. Having even two pictures of adults in intimate situations would double those fines. [freeinternetpress.com]

See the link above for the full list of records that need to be kept. It is absolutely impossible for a pr0n website to actually be able to do this in any reasonable way. Which means this is simply an attack on pr0n industry, specifically targeted at internet pr0n.

Yes, this law is supposed to prevent child pornography but it is obvious that it will not change anything. Real internet pedos do not keep paper records and age proofs anyway and they can't be easily checked or audited. When they are caught, police usually already has a search warrant and enough evidence to put them in jail for good. This law does not make it any easier catch these people.

On the other hand if an underage person wants to be a pornstar, all they need to to is to get a fake id like Traci Lords did in the 80's. Now the distributor can produce the paper trail needed to satisfy the 2257 but it will be inaccurate. Again - nothing changes here.

What this law really does is making distribution of pr0n more expensive and troublesome. It will actually bankrupt many sites. For example link sites which usually make money on referrals and banner adds and contain no original content will also have to keep records on all pictures and movies they link to. Which means it may become impossible to run a sufficiently large and popular pr0n link site.

This of course was
pushed through by Bush appointee Alberto Gonzales. So if you have voted for Bush, this is your fault! I hope you are happy now...

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