Monday, August 20, 2007

When Sexual Fascism Attacks: Sec. 2257 and the "Porn Registry"

I had briefly commented on this in the previous thread...but this is scary enough to deserve its own discussion.

This is what Abu Gonzales's Anti-Porn Posse has in store for anyone who wants to be a porn star:

[linked from the New York Post, via the AdultFYI dot com website:


NY Post: Department of Justice Wants Official List of Every Porn Star in America

Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jameson - get ready to stand and be counted.

The Department of Justice wants to come up with an official list of every
porn star in America - and slap stiff penalties on producers who don't
cooperate.

Porn Valley- The new rules, proposed under the Adam Walsh Child Safety and
Protection Act, would require blue-movie makers to keep photos, stage names,
professional names, maiden names, aliases, nicknames and ages on file for the
inspection of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

"The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring
that no performer is a minor," according to the new proposal.

The adult film industry plans to challenge the new rule as a violation of
the First Amendment, said Paul Cambria, a lawyer for Hustler and other adult
film companies.He sees it as a way to harass legitimate stag-film
producers.

"If they can't get you for obscenity, they'll get you for violating
record-keeping," he said. Such a violation would carry a five-year
penalty.

The proposed rule would require porn producers to give the title of the
video or magazine, or the Web address where the actor appears.

The Department of Justice has shown some sensitivity for the performers'
privacy, however. All information not essential to proving their age and
identity, like phone numbers and addresses, can be withheld.

Distributors of foreign pornography aren't off the hook - they must still
produce a copy of the foreign actor's identification card. The department
estimates that there are 500,000 Web sites, 200 DVD producers and 5,000
businesses nationwide that would be subject to the new rule.

The department did not respond to requests for comment, but in its proposal
suggested that the benefits outweighed any negative impact on the porn
industry.

"The benefit of the rule is that children will be better protected from
exploitation in the production of visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct
by ensuring that only those who are at least 18 years of age perform in such
depictions. The costs to the industry include slightly higher record-keeping
costs," the agency argued.

"Slightly higher record-keeping costs"???

Really??? I mean, it's not as if this "registry" won't be easily available to every right-wing fundie/antipornradicalfeminist crackpot or any hacker with time on his hands to harrass and "out" legal porn performers, right??

Or perhaps it's the fact that we have to rely on the very same organization headed by a man who thinks that torture is a very good way to smack Muslims into submission....ahhhh, I mean fight terrorists?? Or that wiretapping the Internet and land-based conversations of their political critics and dissidents....errrrrr, suspected terrorists...without the need for a warrant or any other proof of a crime is simply good crime fighting???

Oh...and did I forget that such information about the ages of porn performers are already required in the first place??

And since when did they need the private info on all porn performers in the first place...since even Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles could see that the majority of them are well over the legal age??? Or, are they planning to make this retroactive so that they can tap the records of past work to grasp for their lack of prosecutions??

"Protecting children from porn", my ASS.

This is more about the BushCONS feeding the Far Right and APRF one last slab of red-meat to save the sinking ship....at the expense of the rest of us.

2257 shouldn't be reformed...it should be NUKED. Like, yesterday.

4 comments:

  1. The Department of Justice is taking comments about this until September 10th. Email and snailmail addresses here.

    Basically, these proposals are a bad-faith attempt to wipe out the porn industry by making record-keeping impossible to deal with. At least, wipe out everybody but the majors (hence killing independent porn), so they can then focus on them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "2257 shouldn't be reformed...it should be NUKED. Like, yesterday."

    right on

    ReplyDelete