With impeccable timing, a new website that aims to help content producers and their affiliates with 18 U.S.C. 2257 compliance and other significant issues went live on the same day the much-anticipated changes to federal 2257 regulations were published.
2257-compliance.com offers record-keeping and reporting services to help producers and their affiliates remain within the bounds of 2257 regulations and, concurrently, content management services like copyright filing and video and image storage for edited and unedited materials.
"We started the idea about a year ago, and started working on a plan for implementing the service probably six or seven months ago," developer and attorney Robert S. Apgood tells AVNOnline.com.
"Basically, I went and examined the proposed regs and determined what types of things would need to be available to a producer, while taking into consideration the major concerns that producers had regarding privacy of models," he continues. "People can be publishing perfectly legitimate content and still be subject to criminal liability. If they use our service the way it's designed to be used, they can be in compliance with the regulations and still be concerned with privacy of models."
Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection executive director Joan Irvine applauded the arrival of 2257-compliance.com. But she also said some of the final 2257 language shows the government still doesn't understand professional adult entertainment.
"The industry does not lure, exploit, or use children to engage in sexually explicit conduct," she tells AVNOnline.com.
Among the copyright services 2257-compliance.com offers are handling registrations for content producers, and ensuring clients are compensated appropriately for any infringement or piracy.
"We provide a vehicle that allows producers to maintain records regarding the content that's created, cross-indexing the models who are in that content, and one step further," Apgood says. "When affiliates use that content and publish it on a non-producer-maintained Website, they can publish that location to us, we will in spite of that location pick up names to any image either linked to or shown, and cross-index it to the original images created by that producer.
"That implies that an affiliate knows the rules and adheres to their contractual obligation to the producer," he continues. "If they don't, then by the nature of that agreement the secondary producers or webmasters will be breaching the agreement with the primary producers, and they will be committing a federal crime in infringing the copyright of the original producer. This protects a producer, because he or she cannot be held responsible for the unlawful acts of others."
2257-compliance.com also has search capabilities that will let clients search by an alias first name, an alias last name, and other identifiers, "and we'll identify that model if we have that information on file," Apgood says. "We're providing a vehicle that allows for the recording and cross-indexing of imagery."
A primary goal in creating 2257-compliance.com was privacy protection for adult entertainment models and performers. "Most producers have affiliate programs where just anyone can sign up, and some are stalkers trying to get information; trying to get the true identity and location of a model," Apgood says. "That's a major concern because of the liability a producer can incur if they release private information."
Apgood says he approves of the explicit goal of protecting children harm embodied in the revised 2257 regulations. Nonetheless, he questions how the Justice Department responded to input received during the public comment period.
The Justice Department rejected calls for 2257 to permit third-party custody of records. "Permitting a third party to possess the records would unnecessarily complicate the compliance and inspection processes by removing the records from the physical location where they were initially collected, sorted, indexed, and compiled," the published version of the revised 2257 regulations states.
"For example, producers could provide false names and addresses to the third party as a means to avoid scrutiny by law enforcement. Historically, producers have used front corporations in order to evade both law enforcement and tax authorities. Permitting third-party custodianship would exacerbate this problem," the text continues. "Custodians could, for example, disclaim any responsibility for the condition or completeness of the records or be unable to provide additional information regarding the status of the records. Permitting such third-party custodians in the final rule would thus require additional regulations to ensure that the third-party custodian could guarantee the accuracy of the records, would act as a legally liable agent of the producer, and would raise other administrative issues as well."
For Apgood, who has been a strong supporter of third-party custodianship, that comment is "nonsensical."
"The response to the comment is based upon an antiquated notion, somewhere along the line, that there's a piece of paper that identifies the true identity of a model," he says "This is the age of electronics and digitization. There are many producers who do not make Xerox or facsimile copies of documents. They shoot a picture of the damn thing. They never have a piece of paper. The new regulations acknowledge the age of electronics but ignore those very comments."
2257-compliance.com material is readily available to inspectors for the U.S. Attorney General who wish to require a producer to prove a model "is not a child in the legal sense of the word, and therefore [that] the legislative goals of 2257 are met," Apgood says.
"Congress has said it is their intent to protect children from being exploited in a pornographic manner, and enacted the legislation enabling the Department of Justice to formulate regulations for the implementation and enforcement of those statutes," he continues. "All that was done to protect children being harmed. And requiring identification of models is to allow the Department of Justice to do its job and ensure children are not being harmed."
Irvine said the real criminals will not be affected by 2257 regulations past or present. "[Our] hotline receives over 75,000 reports of suspected child pornography sites each year. Of these, [our] compliance manager validates 3,000 as new CP sites; 99.99% of which are not in any way, shape, or form related to the adult entertainment industry.
"The child pornography producers and distributors are criminals who prey upon innocent child and sick pedophiles," Irvine continues. "The new rules will do nothing to find these criminals, and these criminals will not adhere to the rules."
Irvine fears the government is trying to position itself to arrest legitimate businesspeople just to keep the religious right quiet.
"Did the government shut down Catholic churches when it discovered that tens of thousands of children were molested?" she asks. "Should churches and the Bible be condemned because some priests, ministers, and rabbis use them to sexually abuse children? They’re not really concerned about children, because from the reports that we get, it is not people in the adult entertainment industry [who prey on children]. It’s pedophiles; it’s people hidden away someplace. They may use us occasionally, you know, trying to use the affiliate programs, but it’s not the industry. It’s criminals."
