Bill, when I was growing up there was two "sports" that appeared on TV every week and sometimes more often: Wrestling and Roller Derby. Now, everyone and their cousin pretty much knew without explaination that at least some of it was fake or planned. There was never much doubt about it, but there was much in the way of official semi-denials and vague references to "great athletes".
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``My Dad (wrestling impresario Vince J. McMahon) always hid behind the veil of this being a sport,'' McMahon says. ``It has never been a sport. It's always going to be entertainment. The promoters used to say, `This kid is killing the business. If they don't believe it's real, they won't show up.' But really we're no different than a magic show. We're just not going to show the fans how we do all our tricks.''
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When the WWE (then WWF) admitted the wrestling wasn't real in a sporting sense, the freed themselves from having to play the game by sports rules. They no longer had to falsely claim to be a sport (and just as importantly for them, they no longer had to have their wrestling matches sanctioned by approved "sport" associations in various states, as they were now entertainment, no different from a rock concert or a figure skating show... legally it helped them a great deal). Since that point, the ratings have taken off and nobody cares about the fake nature of wrestling, rather they tune in for the soap opera that it really is. (as a side note, I don't want wrestling... it is a stick figure drawing in an anime world of entertainment).
Anyway, once they decided on a course of action and took it, they were free from the contraints that existed because they were too busy trying to play defence.
Sometimes the best defence is a very solid offence.
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Originally Posted by Xbiz News
However, adult entertainment attorney Lawrence G. Walters said that while the government's repeated efforts to crack down on child pornography are noble, they have again managed to blur the lines between adult entertainment offered for the enjoyment of consensual adults and child pornography.
"The intent of what the government is trying to accomplish is clearly that they want to put the burden of proof on the ISPs to identify and investigate child porn," Walters told XBIZ. "But what sticks out is that this is just another dishonest attempt to tie the issues of child pornography with adult entertainment. These are two completely different issues, and it is an attempt to rile up the American public and focus that ire on the adult industy, which is not responsible for child pornography. We see this over and over again."
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I feel that even the ASACP has fallen into this trap. Instead of positioning our industy as against child porn (and therefore creating a grap between legal adult entertainment and illegal acts) they have been sucked into playing the government's game, now playing as "Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection". While protecting children is a noble and laudable goal, it does little for our industry at the end of the day because our indsutry isn't harming children to start with.
Sort of like McDonalds running a "use less gas" site. It is nice, but certainly has little to do with their core business. If they wanted to play environemental games, they would be better working on "reduce trash, recycle your McContainers" or something like that.
For me there needs to be an offensive. Press releases, press conferences, media expoure to the max: The adult entertainment industry hates child porn, and that nobody in our business would produce or distribute anything of that nature. Explain clearly the differences.
The distribution of child porn on the internet is not inherently different from any other illegal act sped up by the communications revolution. Pirated movies, music, stolen software, nigerian scams, fraud, deception, prostitution... all illegal acts that are aided and abetted by the internet and the speed at which information can move. It hasn't changed the game, just the speed at which it occurs.
Online software sales, Amazin.com, Adult entertainment, Itunes, and network TV selling access to episodes of their shows are all valid and LEGAL uses of the internet that differ greatly for the illegal or immoral uses of the internet.
More children are harmed as a result of posting on MySpace and answering people on chat rooms that were ever harmed by accidentily seeing a boob or a penis. Staking out that type of claim, that type of point of view would certainly open a few eyes.
Alex