Let's Play Porn Scare Whack-a-Mole!! Clover Finally Gets Cleared; Lisa Ann Goes SuperSleuth And Defuses Another Bomb

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Why Mike South Should Be Treated As The Alex Jones Of Porn Gossipers: The Latest Syphilis False Positive "Scare"

You may not have noticed it this week, but the adult industry just escaped yet another nuke in the form of another syphilis "outbreak".

A performer named Clover whom originally tested "inconclusive" for syphilis last week and was temporarily quarantined as a precaution, was ultimately retested through the services of the Free Speech Coalition's APHSS protocols, and found to be clean.

But this post is less about how the system of performer testing once again worked to avoid a major disaster. This is about how certain people, in particular one person, took it upon himself to invent and inflame the controversy to begin with, for no reason other than to satisfy his own long term vendettas and myopias.

That's right, Mike South, I'm looking directly at YOU.

(And BTW, this is Anthony talking, not Ernest, Nina, or anyone else. This rant is mine and mine alone.)

When you and your "detailed sources" decided to dive head first into that empty pool and report initially on the "NEW SYPHILIS OUTBREAK!!!!!!!!!!!", did it ever even bother you to even ask the actual performers involved? Or, to defer your victory celebrations until actual confirmation of the positive test had been verified by medical professionals? Oh, wait...who needs verification when you can just fling more of your shit at the FSC and APHSS, like you have been doing for, I don't know, the past 10 - 20 years?? It's not as if every charge that you have flung at them has been proven dead WRONG, right, Mike?

Does it ever even bother you, Mr. South, that the only other sources parroting your squawking about a "porn syphilis epidemic" were Monica Foster, Shelley Lubben, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation?? Considering the level of credibility these three actors have when it comes to performer testing, let alone the not so hidden agendas against the industry they all pursue, it probably would have been a good idea to slow your road a tad and at least wait until the tests came out?

Oh, and on the subject of AHF....boy, were they really quick to use you as a convenient foil to fire off TWO press releases in less than 24 hours, in their attempt to milk the panic for all its worth. What better way to prove to the masses that this dirty porn industry just can't be trusted to protect their performers, and that AHF through their newly created City of LA Health Department should run to the rescue with boxes of condoms to save the day!!

Oh, I know, LA County DPH is the main reg agency, and they have to be the ones to investigate any porn outbreak once they get a confirmed and verified positive test....which they never got. But, hey, why let such irrelevancies as protocol and legality get in the way of such a wonderful crusade? Tens of performers are being INFECTED even as I type this!!! WE MUST ACT NOW!!! Perhaps that should have been the red flag for you, Mr. South, to stop for at least a millisecond? Oh, no, we can't do that, not when we can bury FSC and APHSS for good and the final coup of AHF and Cal-OSHA and Rob Black and Gail Dines can be completed and bareback porn banished from the face of the earth!!

So now that the entire "outbreak" scam has unraveled quicker than a dandelion in an April wind, Mike, do you decide to...be a man about it and admit you were wrong and that Clover deserves an apology, and that the system developed by FSC/APHSS actually WORKED?

Ahhhh....nope, you decide to spin it as part of your continuing vendetta against FSC and APHSS, splitting them and Manwin (your other pet pinata) off against LATATA and Clover. Sorry, Mike, but it doesn't sell, since APHSS does indeed control the testing, and since Talent Testing and Cutting Edge Testing have buried the hatchet and actually coordinated with the agents to make the testing work.

Of course, the key element in all this was Clover not panicking and trusting his instincts that he was clean all along and that the '"inconclusive" tests were really false positives based on the strength and intensity of the TrepSure arrays used for the syphilis testing. Imagine if Clover had only relied on the propaganda you and AHF were swilling out, and assumed that he was indeed  "positive" for syphilis, and then attempted to pull the same act that Mr. Marcus did last year. Oh, what am I saying, you STILL would have convicted APHSS and FSC of spreading the virus...smearing them is simply part of your porn DNA by now.

Since Clover has now been cleared, all of this is now a moot point....but I still find it fascinating how you attempted to pull other performers into this through indicting Manwin for the two female performers whom had not been reached by LATATA by last Monday (but were ultimately reached by FSC later).

And please, Mike, spare us your attempt to split the difference regarding your support for AHF and the condom mandate. We know you have supported their efforts openly for the past 2 years through attacking their critics, so don't sell us the "unattached" line. It makes your alliance with Rob Black and Shelley Lubben (and possibly Gail Dines) that much more unseemly.

Now, I am NOT an insider who gets any sources from anyone; I write from the perspective of a fan and an advocate of consensual adult porn; so that makes me as much an outsider as anyone. But, I do have eyes and ears, and I can read; and as such I can see for myself who's being real and who's pushing BS and rumors. I can be as critical of the FSC as the next guy, but in this case of this latest "scare", they acted immediately and promptly to do their job, and thankfully everyone came out OK.

Well...everyone except those who invested themselves in priming the pump of fear in order to soothe their ingrown prejudices and stroke their old vendettas. For those people -- yourself included, Mike South -- there is not a pit in Hell deep enough or hot enough for you to melt in.

Oh..and Julie Meadows and Kayden Kross gives their best regards.

Gail Dines Raises The Bar Of Mount St. BS To New Heights: The #2257 Issue

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2257 Update: Could The Free Speech Coalition Have Made A Better Case?? J. D. Obenberger Thinks So.

It was Ernest Greene's comment to the previous post on Dist. Judge Michael Baylson's ruling upholding the 2257 regs that got me thinking that perhaps the Free Speech Coalition might not be offering the best case to be made against these regulations.

And now, I see that Ernest is hardly alone in that assessment.

Today, attorney J. D. Obenberger, who specializes in defending adult businesses and adult content and who operates an excellent legal blog (XXXLaw.com) on adult entertainment issues, posted an article over at XBiz.com providing his own assessment on Baylson's ruling last week. It's detailed and a long read, but it cuts to the heart of the major issues involved in the 2257 case.

Obenberger's main thesis parallels Ernest's comment in that he is respectfully critical of the approach of the lawyers representing the Free Speech Coalition, who was the main plantiffs in the legal action. Their main impetus was to attack the 2257/2257A regulations as an excessive burden for adult commerce due to the paperwork and legal hoops of obtaining the required records, and to emphasize the burden of having legal performers over the age of 18 being required to maintain for open access to legal authorities detailed and intimate information that could be used against them.

Obenberger sees this approach as counterproductive, because it allowed Judge Baylson to defend the regs using the time honored "Those damn pornographers just don't want to work hard enough to protect children from kiddie porn!!!" card.

I don't think that's an honest appraisal of what happened – and if the real issues were really set out, Americans would be outraged. None of the huffing and puffing of the commercial producers of porn about how much time and money Section 2257 compliance costs them – or its comparison with the amount of child pornography that exists – will ever carry the day in any courtroom to invalidate Section 2257, because to the courts of law (and in the values of the American people) the burdens imposed on commercial pornographers, even enormous burdens, are appropriate and constitutionally permissible if they will deter or prevent even a few children from performing in sexually explicit works.

In other words, having your personal, private sex business exposed to trolls and stalkers is the worthy price of "protecting" even one underage child from getting caught up in porn. Even if child porn is already illegal. Even if it's the underaged preadult who initiates the act against the will of the industry (see Traci Lords). The only reason, this logic goes, that the "pornographers" even complain is because they are simply lazy greedheads at best....and active sex-trafficking pedophiles at worse. They should be lucky to even be allowed to even exist, since at least 2257 gives them that right...we could just banish them outright. Think of the children, damn it!!

Where this goes off the rails, Obenberger says, is that there is an alternate approach that could have been taken by attorneys opposed to the regs, which could be far more effective in winning over both the legal and moral high ground. And, it might even have the support of the very appelate court that kicked the regs back to Baylson to begin with. (Italicized emphasis in original quote; bolded emphasis added by moi)

In Philadelphia, in the cradle of our constitutional liberty, three judges of the Third Circuit laid out a path for the total demolition of Section 2257 on another ground, far more important to Americans, when they reversed Judge Balyson and remanded the case to him on April 16, 2012. They telegraphed a message that a statute that invaded the important privacy rights of ordinary Americans in their own homes went far too far and could not stand.

Section 2257 is important to ordinary Americans because it assaults the most private intimacies of human beings and the records of those intimacies in the most protected of places, inside shoeboxes and on cameras in closets of American bedrooms throughout the country. It forces Americans to show recordings of those intimate moments to men with badges, on demand, under penalty of five years imprisonment, as if the Bill of Rights did not exist. In the era of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, and after disclosures about the regularity with which our license plates are tracked wherever we drive and about the interception and retention of our email and phone calls by the NSA and CIA and agencies we've never heard about, the intrusion authorized to the government under Section 2257 just might be the kind of straw that breaks the camel's back to precipitate a broad rethinking of the government's wholesale invasion of the most personal privacies, just as Watergate and the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office was in the early 1970s. The government's claim of right to view the private sex videos of ordinary Americans is the personal and emotional kind of issue that can jump-start participatory democracy and spark strong and effective popular demands for broad social change.

 Now, you would think that 2257/2257A only dealt with age verification, and that only records showing proof of legal age and identity were required for adequate approval. However, even exposing the real identities and locations/addresses of performers, directors, and producers of sexual content can carry a real risk of inadvertent exposure of personal, private information that could be used in an inappropriate, or even physically damaging, fashion. What is to say that it wasn't 2257 documents that allowed for the original Porn Wikileaks (before it was transformed by Sean Tompkins into the safer and "kinder" adult portal as we know it today) to gay bait and smear performers?

Obenberger also goes deep into Judge Baylson's decision, pointing out how he attempts to parse the original Third Appellate Court decision in such a way to defend the regulations, in spite of the directions given him by the higher court. Essentially, Baylson takes all of the Department of Justice's arguments to his heart, and simply dismisses out of sight and out of mind the objections and concerns of the defendants...mostly by downplaying the potential impact of the regulations on non-commercial sexual speech.

To this end, Obenberger offers a detailed, five-part breakdown of Baylson's ruling, and then thusly summarizes:

This five-level attack is engineered to evade and escape the conclusion of his reviewing court that finds this statute to apply to private, noncommercial persons, leaving open only the question of whether its application is "substantial," that is numerically frequent enough in comparison with legitimate applications of the statute. Judge Baylson [first] tells the Third Circuit that they are wrong on the law, and then articulating that he is following their determination of law, he applies an unusually high barrier of proof in consideration of the issue at hand - he finds an inadequacy of proof, and he then asserts three further lines of defense that appear to this observer to be variously disconnected from the actual issues at bar, a misstatement of constitutional law, and a repackaging of the Government's argument that because it does not intend to apply the law, its constitutionality cannot be reviewed by a court.

By these means, he assassinates the most vital danger to Section 2257, as I see it, its effect on ordinary Americans. With their constitutional corpses disposed of as unimportant matters in the determination of this cause, he then treats the statute as though it were largely just any other scheme of regulation for an industry traditionally subject to close regulation. The absurdity of that proposition is beyond the scope of this article. In the end, he dismisses almost every argument that the industry could make for itself - and hoisting a flag up the pole that in this kind of case, dealing with real people and the protection of real children, the court will take off its glasses and not look very closely at how many constitutional protections are grievously offended. After all, it's just pornographers that he's dealing with now, after the deft application of his scalpel, and their rights appear minimal to him.

If the line of argument by Baylson sounds familiar to BPPA readers, it's because it sounds like the exact same arguments put forth by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in regards to the condom mandate for porn performers as opposed to mandating condoms for the general population. Maybe the industry should be lucky Baylson presides in Philadelphia and not Los Angeles or San Francisco.

But, to say that these regs don't have the possibility of a huge impact on non-commercial sexual speech is a major reach...and the recent controversies over social media throttling of adult sexual speech and commerce over the Internet should cast a real light over the potential firestorms that could develop. Baylson may have the liberty or the naivete to say that since the government hasn't applied 2257 in 5 years, people have nothing to worry about it being revived tomorrow...but that doesn't mean that there aren't active antiporn agents out there just waiting for the government to fire that weapon in the future.

The most hilarious and head-shaking irony of Baylson's "limited" ruling is that none other than Gail Dines was one of the principal witnesses for the defense of 2257....although even that didn't stop her and her antiporn associates from numerous violations of that reg in the production of their epic documentary The Price of Pleasure. (Though, I'm guessing that Dines would simply cite "Fair Use" and the notion that her theft of porn content for the purpose of condemning its producers and user iwas justified under "educating the masses" about the alleged "harms" of porn and BDSM. Riiiiiight.) The point is, though, Dines would probably have no problem with the government reviving 2257 as a joint effort to not only bust the primary producers of commercial porn, but also the "secondary producers" who repost their content on their own private blogs or websites.

And that's where the virtual F5 tornado hits the pig farm... because if you think that the recent actions of Yahoo!/tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress cracking down on adult blogs for their affiliate linkage and explicit pics is intrusive and invasive enough, then what would you say about Yahoo! and Google reacting to getting bombed by government agencies propelled by antiporn/anti-"sex trafficking"/child protection groups calling for more direct censorship of sexual content on the Internet? Imagine the firestorm that would ensue if, say, Tumblr was to announce that they would be requiring all their adult blogs to provide official 2257 information for all the naughty stolen....errrrrrr, shared pics deposited there? Or, if tube site uploaders were required to have 2257 info at the ready before they uploaded their vids to xHamster or Xvideos or Pornhub or whatever tube site service they used? Get the picture??

Since "opt-in" type ISP censorship like what's being proposed in Great Britain probably isn't going to fly too well here, and more direct "obscenity" prosecution (save for any jurisdiction within Polk County, Florida) is probably not going to happen for at least the next 2, if not 10 years, it may be that drowning adult content providers to death via excessive paperwork and verification would be the default means for the censors to meet their goals here in the US. All it would take is one state Attorney General to do what they successfully did against Backpage and Craigslist ads by shaking down Internet providers like Yahoo! and Google to impose the same 2257 verification requirements on all bloggers/website owners who produce or share sexually explicit content, under threat of prosecution under "child porn" or even "child exploitation" laws. Between that and Apple's exploitation of its monopoly status in mobile apps to freeze out adult sexual content, you can literally wipe out sexual content overnight.

This is why Obenberger's article is more than worth the time to read...and to react.

2257 Regulations Mostly Upheld By Federal Court Ruling, Save For Private Home Inspections: The Aftermath

I can't say that this wasn't really unexpected, given the political and social climate.

US District Court Judge Michael Baylson issued his long awaited ruling yesterday regarding US Statute Code 2257 and 2257A, the regulations which required performers of sexually explicit media to provide manditory age verification and other information to law enforcement for federal inspectors on request.

Essentially, the law was upheld on all conditions except for one: inspections at private residences of performers without prior notice were held to be unconstitutional abridgments of the Fourth Amendment. The remainder of the regs, however, were upheld and found to be justified on the basic of "public safety" overwhelming any "right of privacy".

Basically, Judge Baylson took the position that fighting child porn and preventing underage children from being "exploited" outweighs any invasion of privacy that the regulations had on legal adult performers. In short, the ends justify the means.

I won't go into the heart of the decision here, since both X-Biz.com and AVN have their own excellent analysis (and pay particular attention to Mark Kernes' righteous critique of Baylson's ruling over at AVN), but there is a dangerous precedent being established here regarding regulation of sexual speech.

If Baylson's ruling is upheld on appeal, this would give censorship forces a new weapon to use against companies which offer their media outlets for legally protected adult sexual content. I can already see Gail Dines, Dawn Hawkins, and the anti- "sex trafficking" lobby licking their chops at the thought of using the threat of 2257 inspections to drive porn producers and performers into bankruptcy or drive them out through death by paperwork asphyxiation.

Not to mention, the ease of personal and private information about performer's real identities being accessible to potential stalkers and blackmailers (remember the original Porn Wikileaks scam got most their information they used to gaybait and slander performers through 2257 documents), and the requirement that even "secondary producers" (such as adult webmasters trading videos and pictures for their paid sites) must have such information available upon request or face random raids from the Feds or face possible sanctions or even jail terms for "child porn" production.

And if you think that even your free blog can't be potentially affected by this..well, think again, because given the decision yesterday by Tumblr to modify their policies regarding sexually explicit content to be more in line with the consensus (porn can stay, as long as it is hidden deep in the lower basement beyond reach and not searchable, and marked with a scarlet letter "X" for easy recognition and stigma), it's not a long shot to say that the major media companies could easily go further and simply erase all sexual content further down the road. 2257 can easily be used by the Feds as a wedge to force Yahoo or Google to impose sexual censorship without actually pulling a site or a blog; simply requiring a blogger to have the necessary papers for that porn pic (s)he uploaded to her blog would be more than enough.

Bottom line here: that in 2013 a performer such as Kylie Ireland or Nina Hartley or Vicky Vette must provide paperwork everytime they upload a video to their pay sites verifying that they are not under 18, and that they must prove that they don't perform with underage performers every single time they take a picture or film a scene...even though there are already laws against child porn and sexual abuse of children in the first place??  Seems like the adult media industry could learn some lessons from the Black community about assumed guilt and collective punishment...and permanent stigma.

Is the Left Trafficking in Neo-Puritanism?

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The Great Blogger Adult Blog Deletion Poop Storm, And How It MIGHT Affect BPPA

Well, if most you haven't heard of have been under a rock this past week, you now know that Blogger is making a serious change to their policy regarding blogs with adult sexual content. If you have gotten this email, please raise your hand:

Important Update to Adult Content Policy on Blogger
You are receiving this message because you are the admin of a blog hosted on Blogger which is identified to have Adult content.
Please be advised that on June 30th 2013, we will be updating our Content Policy to strictly prohibit the monetization of Adult content on Blogger. After June 30th 2013, we will be enforcing this policy and will remove blogs which are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites.
If your adult blog currently has advertisements which are adult in nature, you should remove them as soon as possible as to avoid any potential Terms of Service violation and/or content removals.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

"Monetization of Adult content" basically refers to ads for paid membership porn sites and affiliate links used to upsell said paid sites.

In short, Blogger/Google believes that you are making way too much money off their free generosity, but rather than actually offer a premium service to get in on the gravvy train, they'd rather just throw you, your blog, and your page links under the bus.

Of course, it may also be the PITA of battling the nasty malware that occasionally travels with those third-party ads that motivated Blogger, or their parent company Google's newly found commitment to focusing their services on a more conservative demographic and "protecting their investment".

Or, possibly Google/Blogger has ceded ground to the antiporn/"anti-sex trafficking" meme that allowing people to get paid using adult commerce is one half step below "sex trafficking" and needs to be nipped in the bud before the federal authorities intervene.

The response of the adult blogosphere, needless to say, has been explosive anger: blogger and sex toy reviewer Epiphora has posted a comprehensive review of all of the drama, along with some helpful suggestions for those wanting to either continue on or move to another venue. Her suggestion of going toward paid self-hosting is the same as mine; since it's relatively cheap and you have more control over your content.

Now...where does BPPA come in on this?? Since we are NOT listed as an adult blog, and we do NOT offer any affiliate links or explicit ad banners, and we are more of a political and discussion-based blog rather than a traditional sex site, we should not be affected by Google/Blogger's new policy...provided that it does allow for adult-oriented sites without ads or affiliate links. That should be that...except that Google/Blogger has been a bit vague about whether or not their policy could extend to all other adult blogs.

Just to be on the safe side, in the small chance that Blogger gets ignorant and does decide to pull the plug on this blog, I've created an exact mirror using my WordPress Red Garter Club Network that can be found here:

http://www.redgarterclub.com/RGClubNetwork/bppa

I am slowly copying all of the links and blogroll over there as well.

Like I said, I fully expect this blog to be open and accessible after 7 PM EDT on Monday....but not a bad idea to prepare for the worst.

See also Violet Blue's ZDNet article, and a distrubing and comprehensive article in ErosBlog on the history of corporate online sex censorship. Also, see Lydia Lee''s post on the issue (especially the comment section).

How The SCOTUS Prop 8 Repeal May Have Kneecapped AHF's Measure B Defense

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