After the Department of Justice took a nice big shit in the industry’s collective cereal Tuesday morning by releasing new-and-improved 2257 regulations, the online community, which will be most prominently affected, started to take stock.
As with any event that may negatively affect the industry, there was a certain amount of panic. There was even more confusion and anger, but there was also an element of preparedness.
Since the regulations were published for comment last June, many companies have been preparing accordingly, as if they would become law.
“Chris and myself spent the better part of a year structuring all our 2257 info anticipating this might get passed,” Alex Kalogianis, JasonAndAlex.com CFO, tells AVNOnline.com.
The company’s efforts, which have been thorough, left it with more than 700 pages of paperwork for the 50 scenes produced for the latest site alone. It cost the company around $2,000 to make the site complaint.
Others have followed suit.
“We have to have certain filing requirements for MobBucks, but since we shoot all our own content we are ahead of the game. I wasn’t worried about 2257,” says Mark Tiarra, vice president of business development for MobBucks.com. “I got all the IDs firsthand.”
That doesn’t mean everyone is prepared for what’s coming. Several webmasters contacted by AVNOnline.com admitted they hadn’t even read the published regulations. Others admitted to reading them, but they said they weren’t able to tell shit from shinola.
The bottom line: It ain’t good.
“As they were released this morning the regulations are going to have a chilling effect on the Internet side of the industry in particular,” Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Michelle Freridge tells AVNOnline.com. “Everyone, unless they produce their own content and don’t sell their content to anybody and don’t buy content from anybody else, is going to have trouble being compliant because of the new definition of the secondary producer.
“You hope the government wants to write good legislation,” she continues. “Unfortunately, the Justice Department and the Bush administration aren’t really focused on the original intent of the law. It’s not really about keeping minors out of the adult entertainment industry anymore. It’s about trapping and shutting down people. The intent is to make a public relations and a political stand against the industry.”
And that has a lot of people angry.
“It should surprise no one that 2257 contains subtleties that betray the true intent of government to achieve censorial effects, and not merely to protect children with this law,” Jack Mardack, president of online dating consultancy ProfitLAB, tells AVNOnline.com. “This is borne out in both the proposed scope of producer and in the proposed scope of the material over which 2257 applies.”
“As long as the government keeps throwing their effort to shut porn down completely into laws meant to protect children, all they will effectively do is waste time and taxpayer money,” LightspeedCash owner Steve Lightspeed tells AVNOnline.com. “This isn’t about saving children at all.”
Ultimately, Lightspeed said he feels the new regulations will follow the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2004. In the meantime, his greatest concern is for his models, whose personal information will be more readily available under the new standards.
Although they’ve spent a month scanning documents and are fully compliant with the new regulations, Matrix Content Director of Marketing and Sales Asher Hardt echoes the concern for performers and models.
“[When the regulations become law] on June 23, we will be forced to deliver those documents to any Joe Schmo webmaster, which is really scary,” Hardt tells AVNOnline.com. “They will have access to social security numbers and addresses.
“I just can’t understand how the government can put models who came into the industry, realized it wasn’t for them and left, in this type of a situation and basically say since you’re a whore on film you have no right to privacy.”
The new 2257 regulations also seem to take a shot at sites that carry third-party content, such as dating sites. Many site and program owners thought they were protected by Sundance Associates Inc. v Reno, in which a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a magazine publisher who ran third-party announcements containing sexually explicit material was not responsible for keeping the associated models’ records. The newly-published regulations, however, make several specific references to the case and seem to attempt to invalidate it.
Mardack, for one, isn’t buying it.
“The effects of 2257 on adult personals sites is different,” he says. “Self-submitted member content has many more free speech protections, at least traditionally, and the encumbrance of such by law is much closer to free speech suppression.”
Before projections of doom and gloom set in, webmasters can take solace in the knowledge that the Free Speech Coalition will mount a challenge to the regulations, first filing for a temporary restraining order and then an injunction by June 23. If granted in the coalition’s favor, the legal decisions will make the regulations unenforceable while the coalition prepares a lawsuit. The suit would make the regulations unenforceable until it fully played out in the courts.
“If we’re not granted the temporary restraining order and injunction, that is the drop-dead date; people will have to be compliant on June 23,” Freridge says. “We expect to get the restraining order and injunction, but there are no guarantees.”
