Acting on behalf of AVN Online and through the Freedom of Information Act, Chicago-based attorney J.D. Obenberger has filed a request for a copy of Attorney General John Ashcroft's June report to the House Judiciary Committee on the history of 2257 inspections pursuant to Section 511 of the Protect Act.
"My hunch," Obenberger told AVNOnline.com, "is that [the federal government doesn't] want [the report] to be out because it's an embarrassing instance of nonperformance by the Justice Department, and they don't need that in an election year. But there may be stuff in that report pertinent to their strategy against the adult Internet. That's why we want it."
Obenberger sent the request via registered mail at the close of business September 7. "Release of this information is in the public interest because it will contribute significantly to the public understanding of government's operations and activities," he wrote in the FOIA query, a copy of which was made available to AVNOnline.com, to the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy.
If the FOIA request should be denied, Obenberger wrote in the letter, he called for "justify[ing] all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the Act," saying AVN Online reserved its right to appeal any rejection of the FOIA request.
Under Section 511 of the federal Protect Act, passed in April 2003, Ashcroft was under a mandate to present Congress with a report on 2257 inspections, a report he presented in June, saying that "as a practical matter" there had been no such inspections, but promising they would be forthcoming and calling for new "more specific and clear regulations detailing the records and inspections process."
"Ashcroft turned it over fourteen months after the Act was passed," Obenberger said. "The Act mandated he send it twelve months after the Act took effect. He may claim to have some legitimate excuse justifying his tardiness, but as far as I know Congress never gave him a pass. And Congress is, of course, exempt from the FOIA, so you can't use it against them."
Title 18 U.S.C. §2257 is a part of the United States criminal code that imposes certain record-keeping obligations on the producers of material containing depictions of actual sexually-explicit conduct made after November 1, 1990. It does so under penalty of criminal prosecution and the imposition of a criminal sentence.
Among other provisions, the Protect Act wants adult Webmasters to keep sexually explicit material off their Website index pages, and raises 2257 violation penalties from two to five years on first offenses and to ten years on second offenses.
"While the proposal modifies every one of the applicable regulations (28 C.F.R. §§ 75.1-75.8), except the superfluous regulation that allows an exemption statement (§ 75.7), it turns a blind eye to the government's agreement with materially all of the adult video industry that the law's effective date is July 3, 1995, rather than the 1990 and 1992 dates found on the face of the statute and original regulations," wrote AVN Online legal analyst Clyde DeWitt after Ashcroft presented his report to the House Judiciary Committee.
