FEDERAL OBSCENITY LAW????
 

This excerpt was in the FSC newsletter......uh....just what is the law?

“Selling hard core pornography on the Internet is a violation of federal obscenity law, so the Bush Administration is right to oppose the .xxx domain,” said Patrick Trueman, Senior Legal Counsel for the Family Research Council and former Chief of the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. “The Bush Administration should not, in any way, be seen to facilitate the porn industry which has been a plague on our society since the establishment of the Internet. The .xxx domain proposal is an effort to pander to the porn industry and offers nothing but false hope to an American public which wants illegal pornographers prosecuted, not rewarded.”

If selling hard core porn is against Federal law....thousands of people are breaking it? Am I not reading or understanding as usual?

|banghead| |banghead| |banghead|

Yes, you read it right.

Nice to hear someone is getting FSC newsletters so they can share it with the rest of us.

Good thing the Family Research Council neither makes nor enforces the law. Bunch of fuckin' hypocrites.

I believe that the law is against the distribution of obscenity (through the internet, mail, or otherwise). Hardcore pornography is not explicitly defined as obscenity, which is based on the "Miller Test" of 1973. And the recent decision in the Extreme Associatiates case may have messed up Miller as well.

Or am I interpreting all of that incorrectly?

That is my understanding of it as well. Obscenity has always been determined on a case by case basis since it is so subjective. DA's tend to stay away from obscenity cases because they almost always go the way of the defendant. (Thank you Mr. Flynt |thumb )

Word

The FRC considers all porn to be obscene, even just showing a boob. They just don't seem to understand the Miller concept too well.

Hence the uproar over the 1/2 time slip at the Super Bowl. Strange that I don't remember hearing so much when it happened to Lucy Lawless at a hockey game.

That's because everyone wants to see Lucy Lawless naked. Who wants to see one of the Jackson clan naked?

Are you saying that NO ONE wants to see Tito naked? |huh

I've seen him naked. You're not missing much

if its ilegal how come they are passing the 2257 laws to regulate it

you cant regulate an illegal thing or tax it for that matter

For anyone who has not seen this article from FSC....here it is: |pink

ICANN FACES PRESSURE ON .XXX DOMAIN
WASHINGTON, DC -- Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, recently asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level .xxx domain, until the suffix can receive further scrutiny. In response, ICANN, the Internet’s key oversight agency, agreed to a one-month delay in approving the new domain. All this happened at the last minute, with meetings already scheduled for final approval and all systems “go.” Bush administration concerns cited “unprecedented” opposition and worries about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography.
The pressure on the administration appears to have come from right-wing social conservatives.
“Selling hard core pornography on the Internet is a violation of federal obscenity law, so the Bush Administration is right to oppose the .xxx domain,” said Patrick Trueman, Senior Legal Counsel for the Family Research Council and former Chief of the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. “The Bush Administration should not, in any way, be seen to facilitate the porn industry which has been a plague on our society since the establishment of the Internet. The .xxx domain proposal is an effort to pander to the porn industry and offers nothing but false hope to an American public which wants illegal pornographers prosecuted, not rewarded.”
Trueman’s opinions notwithstanding, the adult entertainment industry, fearing that adult websites could be forced to give up dot com domain names and be ghettoized in .xxx, is actually (mostly) closing ranks against the .xxx domain idea. This creates an interesting situation in which the adult industry and its traditional foes are pushing for the same outcome.
In the meantime, the Internet advocacy group ICANNWatch.org is accusing ICANN of abandoning its own stated processes and procedures for the adoption of top-level domains by caving-in to the Commerce Department.
If all that were not enough, ICANN is also facing pressure over .xxx from developing nations with different values about sexuality.
On the other side of the issue, .xxx champion Stuart Lawley, of the Florida-based ICM Registry which originally proposed and sold the idea, says he is confused about the timing of the objections at the last moment.
“This matter has been before ICANN for five years, and very actively and publicly debated for the past 18 months,” he said. “We are, to say the very least, disappointed that concerns that should have been raised and addressed weeks and months ago are being raised in the final days.”
Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, said it’s not surprising ICANN’s board has found itself in a pickle. “They’re supposed to be picked for technical competence,” Froomkin said. “They’re not elected. They’re not representative of anything much. Who would pick this group of people to make decisions about how we feel about (domains) with sexual connotations?”

Thanks so much Linda. |thumb An interesting read.

Tommy - thats exactly right - thats why the industry has never really contested the whole 2257 concept - it pretty much gives what we do a legitimate base by defining internet porn and seperating it from obscenity (which is illegal but like posted above is hard to define and prosecute). There have been cases of actual illegal obscenity prosecuted but they normally are in cases where an adult store violates a local ordinance and the locals use that to shut it down.
Hopefully the people that are following the 2257 case presently understand that the concept of 2257 has to stay around for the primary producers - as this is what has protected us in the past - and they dont go trying to get the whole thing thrown out.

I think 2257 should stay around for secondary producers as well

not as it written but I think webmasters should have the ids and at least make sure that the content they are using is done by models that are at least 18

I also think the min age should be changed to 20

The IDs are exactly what I think webmasters shouldn't have, because that's where we are breaching the privacy and safety of the models. What would be better is to have some sort of -INTERNATIONAL- ID number assigned to each shoot, photo IDs registered at some new International database for each shoot, and then make secondary producers document with ID number the pics came from. If the DOJ wants proof of age - they we give them the ID# for the content and they track it back to the ultra top secret international database. Everyone is covered. Everyone is safe. And CP will be affected just as little as any other effort made by the DOJ. All of our self regulatory efforts should be made on the international level, not just in an effort to provide a level playing field, but help show the U.S. that this industry cannot and should not be regulated on a simply federal level.

well the ids could be sanitzed

I also think all adult webmasters should be licensed
like a liquer license
and that license # should be on every adult website

Do you believe that Wal Mart should get copies of IDs from all the producers of clothing? The right to sell cheap goods is not part of The Constitution and we have found some great American icons using child and slave labor.

Why should Freedom Of Speech be held to a different standard? Is it possible that it has something to do with the amount of corporate lobbying be paid to our law makers or is it just that if the American public gets cheap goods we don’t give a damn about how it’s produced?

A highly developed 16 year old Tracy Lords that has obviously been having sex for years, gets fake IDs, fucks on camera and Americans go crazy. We find 8 year old children sold in to slave labor making products that we love and we don’t give a damn. Why is that?

I will always want IDs and model release forms because that fits my morals but why should we be the ONLY industry that’s required to keep such information from the original producers? I think we all know that answer.

we are not the only industry to require ids

dont you think doctors see ids before they do abortions
or tatoo artists see ids before they put any ink on someone

cigerettes, liquer

what if some content producer in some forgin country like russia is having a hard time selling his content and he decides that younger looking sells better so he starts shooting 17 year olds and of course passes his content off as legal

should do the same thing for prostitution.. legalize it, give them 'clean' cards.. tax it.. Give the public what it wants.. Free trade etc..

on the age 20 thing.. actually i don't take girls under 21 on my site.. for 1 reason.. working with camgirls is a bitch in itself.. working with YOUNG camgirls is worse.. and while some of them pass themselves off as 19 or 20 yrs old.. I know they are really 23/24 and have at least 3 brain cells of common sense.

|pimpin

when I was an apprentice in elevators I worked with this older guy who when he was young was in the merchant marines

this is maybe 40 years ago I would guess

and he use to talk about it a lot
he would say how when they would get in to some of these ports in poor countries
the first thing he would do is go buy a chicken and a bar of soap

then go to a village and for the chicken he could fuck every woman in a family
the mother and 2 daughters... whatever

the soap was to clean them up

could this be done with content ???
I am sure it happens

Tommy - having been in the Navy when I was young I can tell you that story is very true - for around $5 you could live like a king in some places with whole stables of women waiting on you for a whole weekend - for whatever you want. Of course I never did anything like that |jester|

As far as the ID for porn suppliers on the internet - it will never happen - just like the .xxx idea - the FRC and other groups from the religious right will yell legitimicy - and the congress would step back not wanting to offend their constituency with giving porn the "status" of acceptable.

Boy oh boy do I agree with changing the age to 20....and really it should be 21!!!. Having daughters and sons and knowing how totally "not with it" kids are at the age of 18....I do not think they look old enough...act old enough...mentally are old enough....and for that matter look desirable enough except for peds....to be in porn. But then, maybe I am showing my age here. I've never met an 18 year old who had it together and a decision to enter porn should not be part of their growing up process. Leave that to the mature crowd. Wow...did I just say all that??
|huh |huh

Is this the issue at hand or a new issue all together? The Dr. and the Tatoo artist are the producers of the work and are performing a service.

We are distributers and we do not produce the goods that we distribute.

Smokes and booze are regulated to ensure they're not being sold to minors and I'm all for a working age verification system but that's not the issue either. Is there any requirement to ensure that minors or slaves were not used to produce those smokes or that bottle of booze? Walk into 7-Eleven and ask to see the docs that prove those things were produced legally.

I should and do take responsibility to ensure that content purchased in other countries meets the 18 year old age requirement. No industry in America is required by law to ensure that thier manufacturers are of legal age. In the security industry there are background checks on some manufacturers but that's for the another purpose.

do you realy feel that your just a distributer ???
your not selling some prepackaged goods that comes sealed in plastic

I also think 18 is too young but what do I know.

Is what I feel the issue?

Phillip Morris buys tobacco, paper, ink, filters and a huge amount of other goods and then producers the product known as cigarettes. You’ll find a similar process for everything that can be purchased. They do NOT need to ensure that any of those goods were produced legally.

Why should the adult industry have different laws then all others?

scratch that.. it was a bad example

you said yourself that you feel you have a moral obligation to make sure the models you are using are 18

dont you feel everyone has that same moral obligation and when you think about it this industry has a lot of dirt bags in it and a LOT of content that is coming from very poor countries

how many webmasters will take free content from sponsors that they never heard of before nor do they know anything about the people that run that program

and how many us content providers still to this day arent 2257 compiant

even with the law passed your still having problems getting ids

why is that ???

Tommy, you know I love you but they're ALL bad examples because we’re putting moral values on the products that are being produced in the adult industry.

My morals are my own so should they be forced onto others? My morals were often at conflict when I worked for well respected corporations in well respected businesses. There are incredible scum in this business but does that means that there is a higher percentage in this business then there is in others? After spending 2 decades in the well respected corporate world I can honestly say that today I’m working with business partners that have higher moral values then I did before.

Still morals are not laws.

I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO COME UP WITH A CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT ON WHY A DISTRIBUTOR OF PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES SHOULD HAVE THEIR SUPPLY CHAIN MORE HIGHLY REGULATED THEN WAL MART.



BTW – If I was purchasing hand dyed cloth from another country to make clothing for resell I would also feel that I have a moral obligation to ensure that the child or slave labor was not used in the process of making and delivery those products to me. Again that’s my own moral values and there is NO law that would require me to do that.

It is kinda of hard to classify what the normal WM actually does, but, producer really doesn't fit the bill. Distributor isn't quite right either because that would sorta imply actually moving stuff.

Maybe something artistic, more along the lines of how some music groups do sampling from other material.So I buy the content, and then organize, crop, chop, filter, morph, color, optomize and end up displaying it on a page. Yet the original content is still there somewhere.

The same logic applies to this scenerio. The artists creating the final product do NOT need to ensure that the sounds they're using for sampling did not break any child labor laws.

A painter is not responsible for the makers of the canvas, brushes and pigments.

The US Department of Defense is not responsible for the Malyasian companies making the chips that go into most computer systems.

A kosher deli purchases meat from a reliable source but they are not legally responsible if that producer of meat certifies something as kosher when it is not.

Compare it to any other business, remove your own emotional responce about nudity and suddenly it seems totally crazy to have secondary producers forced to keep this level of information.

WE OFFEND CHRISTIANS!!!

Sorry, I couldn't come up with anything other than that. |clown|