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May 29th, 2005, 05:44 PM
Changes made to law, eliminating privacy and safety (long)
I anticipate a lot of shitty responses, but I'm posting this in hopes that at least one person will give a damn.
I'll start off with saying that this pretains to pornography on the internet, but don't immediately dismiss this as something stupid and not worth reading/caring about. The important thing here is to look at the amendmants made to existing laws, and the underhanded execution of them by our US Government. There it nothing to say that this method of action couldn't be taken in other cases, regarding what our lawmakers do not approve of. Homosexuality, non-whites, non-Christians, etc.
The following are pieces copied and pasted from a post made by a camgirl, so the discussion primarily focuses on how this will effect other camgirls. But the law's effects stretch much farther than just a bunch of girls with webcams. All I'm asking is that you look this over, and look the amendmants over, and hopefully realize that - whether you give a shit about internet porn and these people or not - what's going on here is flat-out unconstitutional and compromises the freedom and safety of an immense number of people.
This is long, but I've tried to cut out some of the less significant parts.
I've also tried to remove all names and URLs from the link, to avoid any harassment of these people or ignorant judgements being passed. This may get confusing, and I apologize in advance. I've left the URLs in at the end that deal with this law.
Quote:
Well, as some of you are aware, the US Department of Justice's "internet child porn measure" went through. (That's in quotes because it's bullshit.) This is the same thing I wrote about last fall, which can still be found here(URL will ot be provided. -James). I'd taken it down because the election was over and the law went through, but it's still on the server for those who missed it the first time around. Amendements have been made to the first draft I was talking about in that article have been made, so not all of it is totally applicable now, but the generalities still are.
The reason I'm talking about it now is because there's a lot of confusion about how this law applies to those of us in the cam world. I'm also going way more into depth than necessary for most of you reading this because whether I like it or not, my book just got one chapter longer and it's best to document the event as it's happening, rather than try to remember things 6 months from now. I think this is too important to leave out of the book as it will nop doubt have a huge impact on cam culture - present and future.
As a lot of the girls reading this know, (website name removed) and no doubt many other portal owners, have requested a copy of your photo ID as well as some other information required by this new law. They're also requested the same ID and information for anyone who has ever appeared on your cam in a sexual manner as this law is being applied retroactively to content produced prior to the June 23rd (of this year) deadline.
There's been a lot of people pissed off about this, saying it's a scam to get camgirl information, saying that since they've never heard about this law that there's something fishy going on and "my momma taught me never to give out that kind of info on the intarweb". Some people are mad because it'll be impossible to track down the people in their archives and convince them to submit ID to, let's face it, a porn site.
Others are concerned about their info being distributed should (website name removed) resell old content. You see, with this law, there has to be a file attached to every picture or video that contains the ID of the performers as well as their full names and any aliases they may go by. If (website name removed) (or any other site you may be on) decided to sell your archive (and under the release you sign when you join, it would be within their legal right to do so), your information is then passed along as well and you have no control over who may see it.
So far no one's e-mailed me freaking out about this, but I've heard other people are being bombarded with questions, so I thought I'd cut everyone to the chase and type this up. Feel free to send this link to anyone who's having issues with the new rules or who's planning on leaving (website name removed) (or any other site for that matter) because of it.
I can only vouch for (website name removed) in this matter and I am NOT a lawyer, please take that into consideration when reading this.
I have no idea how other sites are handling this situation, I've heard that many are shutting down altogether because they can't afford the manpower to keep up with the paperwork this is going to create or the extra server space to keep the information secure.
Some sites that rely on 3rd party content will be shutting down as well due to old contracts not having provisions for a law like this. The original sellers of the content can't afford to track down the performers appearing in said content for the purpose of collecting ID/info or the contract doesn't have the information neccessary to do so, so many sites will no doubt be forced to buy all new content where this info is provided or shut down completely.
Basically, when content is created, under the old laws, just signing a consent that you are 18 and providing ID was enough proof for the authorities should a situation arise. Photo ID wasn't required to be kept on file by the buyer of the content, only by the person/company who originally created and sold it. Now that ID is required for every piece of content, most of the pornographic content that exists on the internet right now, legally speaking, is garbage.
Magazines and professional video companies produce and distribute their own content and they kept meticulous records and photocopies of ID so for the most part, they're safe (they have extra paperwork to do too, but the info is available), but many people producing web content never saw this one coming and didn't have the foresight to collect that information at the time of production. Then, due to reselling and things like that, the paper trail for performers runs cold or is incomplete (but would have been complete under the old laws).
Old law: Photographer takes pornographic pictures of a 20 year old woman. He has on file her photo ID and information. On the contract the woman signs, she's told by the photographer that her information/ID is secure and will never be shown to a 3rd party, with the exception of certain authorities should the situation arise. Photographer sells the pictures to a website. Website receives ONLY the content, because they're not authorized to view the woman's personal information (and have no reason to).
That's why a lot of the porn content on the internet right now is legally garbage. The photographer/production company is under contract with the woman in the pictures that he cannot release her info to a 3rd party. He may not be able to track her down to sign a new contract and really, he's under no legal obligation to the site that bought the pictures to do so. The photographer/production company of the original content may not even be alive or in business anymore, or even the girl herself, so the information given when all of the content was sold is all there is and it's unacceptable under the new law.
New Law: Photographer/production company produces pornographic pictures of a 20 year old woman. They need her photo ID and other information. When the content is produced and packaged for resale to a distributor, they MUST include her ID and info with EACH piece of content. That means each picture and each video, not just one file of info per set of pictures. This means that the girl's personal info will be in the hands of MANY people, not just the original production company as it was under the old law. The content creator will have her info, the distribution company will have her info and everyone they resell the content to will have her info.
Look at how the internet works, how many sites buy content from the same source. It's not a stretch that because of this law, a performer's personal info and photo ID will be accessible to thousands of people under this law, not just a handful at the place where the content was originally created as per the old law.
However, that whole thing doesn't really apply to amateur camgirls because very few of us produce content for resellers, but I thought I'd include it for the few who do.
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This still applies to you if you're on (website name removed) and do not show nudity. In the off-chance that someone's feeling frisky and/or drunk and may decide to show nudity, this information needs to be on file.
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I'll provide the info to do so at the end of this post, in fact I encourage writing to your member of congress so that amendments to this unrealistic way of doing things may be put into action.
The more I think about the scope of this law, the more my head hurts. Quite literally, this is going to affect way more people than previously thought. Most of the people this is going to inadvertantly affect probably weren't even aware that this thing was going through.
Big sites like (website name removed) aren't the only ones affected by this. Sites similar to my own, that happen to be run out of the US of A are going to have problems as well.
For example, (name and website name removed) who has a small cam portal attached to her personal site is going to be affected, despite not being a porn enterprise nor a corporate entity. Under this new law, having the portal means she's a distributor, even if the portal doesn't archive.
Say someone on (name removed) portal shows a boob flash. Say I save that image to my hard drive and a few years down the road, my computer is seized in a kiddie porn crackdown of some sort. I would have to tell the authorities where I obtained every piece of pornographic material on my hard drive. When I tell them that I obtained that one boob shot from (website name removed), they will contact (name removed) to request the ID of the person whose boobs they are. If she isn't able to provide that information, she could get into trouble and face jail time.
Under this new law, (name removed) is technically required to archive every pornographic picture uploaded on her portal and attach the proper ID file to it. I do believe that (name removed) portal is a G-rated portal, but if someone accidentally takes a naked shot or gets frisky one night and flashes boobs, that counts and could possibly lead to problems later on for (name removed). (Unlikely but totally possible under this new law.)
This would of course, apply to anyone with a portal regardless of how big the parent site is. If I added a portal, being in Canada, this wouldn't apply to me, but if I were in the US, it would. This means that it's not worth it for people living in the US running small personal sites to have any sort of cam portal in association with their site unless they are assured, without any doubt at all, that the people on said portal will NEVER show nudity or sexuality of any kind. I'd expect most of those to be shutting down "just in case" within the next little while.
Having offshore servers isn't going to make this law not apply to a person's website if they reside in the US. Many people have said "why not just move the servers?" in response to (name removed) initial e-mail regarding the situation. The DoJ thought of that when they drafted this law and it's worded so that the location of the server is irrelevant to the application of the new rules. In order to avoid the law, (website name removed) (his corporation that owns (website name removed)) would have to be located in another country where this law doesn't exist, the servers would all have to be moved as well, but more importantly, (name removed) himself (as well as (name removed)) would also have to move to that country and become citizens in order to operate a corporation under that country's laws and not the US ones. This is obviously an extremely costly way of remedying the situation, both monetarily and personally. It would also make them a target for investigation long before the process would be completed and an investigation avoided.
This law is going to have an adverse effect for any site that runs or participates in an adult banner exchange or partner program. Say I had banner ads on my site for (website name removed) (not that I would, just pretend). (website name removed) would have to send me ID files for every performer in every ad I have displayed on my site, which means extra record keeping for me.
Say I was ON (website name removed) (the mental image of that is REALLY skeeving me out btw) and my images were used on banner ads for the site as per the terms of agreement I signed when I added my content to the site. That means that every single site that advertises (website name removed) would have my personal information and a copy of my photo ID. That means thousands of people would have access to that just because I apppeared on a banner image. I have no control over who has that info, they could be anyone, I don't have the chance to screen those people myself.
This law effectively cripples any and all image-based advertising for (website name removed)(along with every other site that deals with amateur content) because no amateur camgirl is going to want her personal information accessible to other webmasters who may not be trustworthy. (They could be totally trustworthy, but we'd never know because it's not like you're given a list of all the sites who will have access to your personal information. Even if you were, if you pick and choose, the parent site ((website name removed)) loses good relations with the other site.)
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My head hurts as I think of the scope of what this law will affect, so I think I'm going to stop here. It's going to go quite a bit deeper than the aspects I've mentioned here, some a few of us haven't even thought about yet I'd imagine, but there are people working to compromise and amend the current law in order to be more realistic yet still meet the core objectives set forth in the beginning.
The thing is, this law was put in place to try and squash the production and distribution of child pornography and there's no way that this law is going to have an affect on that. Corporate porn sites don't buy underage content because it's illegal to do so obviously, but they're being overburdened and penalized anyway.
Professional adult content providers don't produce child pornography either, because it's illegal.
The people who produce and distribute child pornography won't be touched by this law. The people who do these horrible things aren't on the books in any official, obviously tracable capacity and they certainly aren't keeping records of their victims. They aren't openly distributing the material in a public way, this law will do nothing to prevent these awful things from occurring.
All this law accomplishes is penalizing and overburdening a legitimate law-abiding industry. It violates the privacy rights of those law-abiding citizens within the industry and as a result of that violation there could be serious implications for those innocent law-abiding people by putting their personal information in the hands of people who may be seeking that information for no other reason than to do them harm.
If I was a rabid Jenna Jameson fan of the stalker/psycho variety, I could open a fake porn site tomorrow and buy content of her. Under this law, who I buy that content from would legally have to provide me with her ID and personal information. After doing this, there would be nothing to stop me from showing up on her front step.
It's an unlikely scenario, but how dare the US government violate privacy rights to make it possible, for very little to no benefit of investigating, prosecuting or deterring the serious crime of child pornography.
Say the secret service (who is in charge of inernet crimes because they occur across state lines, I believe) swarms in on a suspected kiddy porn ring. In this sting, they seize 20 servers that contain porn. They do need to sift through those servers to determine how much child porn there is (if any). If the owner of those servers can provide documentation for say, 50% of the porn on there that is legal and meets age requirements, then the secret service (or whoever) only has to sift through the other 50%.
Theoretically, this would cut down on the time and/or manpower it currently takes to investigate such a thing. However, the reality is, that even when that documentation of age verification is provided, they're still going to go through it to make sure it's legit information and not made up, so it doesn't cut down on the process at all and therefore serves absolutely zero purpose while penalizing a legitimate and legal industry.
This is not going to dissuade those who victimize children in this way from continuing to do what they do.
I can't say for sure if this is an attack on the adult industry, disguised by a "think of the children" tactic or if the efforts are legitimate but misguided due to misunderstanding the industry itself but considering the fact that one Mr. Ashcroft drafted this law prior to leaing office, a moral legal crusade against the adult industry wouldn't be out of the question. I'll leave you to come to your own conclusions in regards to this as I honestly don't have a solid opinion on the matter in respect to motive.
Again, I would like to stress that I'm not a lawyer, particularly not a lawyer familiar with US laws, but the above is my understanding of the law based on conversations from those being affected by it, as well as the Free Speech Coalition who is working towards having it amended. This was written up to answer some of the questions and relieve some of the apprehension that has arisen by those within the cam scene that are affected by it.
For more information on the ruling itself, go here.
To keep up to date with the efforts being made to amend the law to be more realistic, go here.
If you feel inclined and want to write your congressman about U.S.C. Title 18, Section 2257 go here.
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Just one thing that wasn't touched upon in her post; If you are a US Citizen running a website that is deemed to have pornographic content of ANY KIND, you will be REQUIRED to publically provide your full name and business address on the pages of your website. For most amateurs and webmasters, this business address ends up being their home address. So in other words, you are required by law to give everyone on the internet a roadmap to your front door. | |
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