Pam nice thought but the idea of 1000 webmasters coming to gether is about as likely as 1000 cats doing the same thing.

Even then if they protested that they can't carry on working in a porn business from home if Ashcroft ammends a law "Designed to protect children" be sure Ashcroft will love that.

Might work if they had attorneys, but if that were the case I think most would have the documents.

However I'm not sure it actually says the webmaster has to be the Custodian of records, need to run back and check it.

Pam, the answer you would get for "detrminatal to your health" would be either get your lawyer / third party to be your official record keeper (you don't have to personally on site specific) or GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS if you don't like it.

Remember, most important, these are PROPOSED rules, and they have tried to PROPOSE thigns before and they died. Hundreds and thousands of bills get put on the order sheet for a year, and only a few dozen manage to squeek through in the end.

The sky ain't falling until they pass it - and even then, I am sure there are some interesting loopholes to be found to make it all work out in the end.

Alex

I've found it and here's what it says.

[QUOTE(3) A street address at which the records required by this part may be made available. The street address may be an address specified by the primary producer or, if the secondary producer satisfies the requirements of Sec. 75.2(b), the address of the secondary producer. A post office box address does not satisfy this requirement.
[/quote] Problem is I cannot find the bit about 75.2(b) in the statement.

Time to see a lawyer.

Can I just state at this point the benefits of having and checking the 2257 documents.

A) Shows they exist.
B) Shows the model is over 18.

+ plus if you add in the Model Release.

C) Shows the model signed away her rights to have her image published.
D) Shows who shot the content and owns the copyright.
E) Shows when the content was produced.

Now everything can be forged. But if you think having no documents and never checking anything negates you from the above responsibilities, remembering the content we are publishing, I think Ashcroft is right.

And that makes me mad as hell.

Can't we run a tight ship ourselves, do we constantly need people like Ashcroft and Visa to show us how we should run uor businesses?

When the law first came into being, I was publishing an adult magazine. I spoke to an attorney then. I've spoken to many attorney since then. In each instance I have been told I can not use an attorney's address.

This makes no sense to me, if I employ said attorney for $1 a year, that makes them an employee and I should be able to appoint them Custodian of Records.

I don't think they would say "get out of the business" since they very specifically mentioned how this would affect small businesses in the proposed changes.

Pam, Ashcroft is not looking to make friends in the porn business.

But I've read the law and unsure if secondary producers, need to be custodian of records. It's clear they need to have the records though.

[quote]Originally posted by Paul Markham2
[b]Pam nice thought but the idea of 1000 webmasters coming to gether is about as likely as 1000 cats doing the same thing.
[quote]

I disagree.

Get all the major sponsors -- the top 25 -- to email EVERY one of their webmasters. Flood the boards. Get AVN and Klix and whatever other online webmaster publications there are to mention it. Get the top 100 TGPs to email their top 50 trades. Get the smaller niche TGPs folks -- like me -- to email their trades. Etc etc etc

Pam, the webmasters could not pull together to fight Acacia, what makes you think they can pull together to fight the Whitehouse?

I WOULD LOVE TO BE PROVED WRONG, BUT THE REALIST IN ME SAYS IT WON'T HAPPEN

I never saw any effort to get everyone together. What I saw was fractured attempts by small groups without a clue. People were contacting First Amendment attorneys for advice instead of registered patent attorney. Things were too splintered.

www.impai.org and www.fightthepatent.com

All I'm doing is erring on the cautious side. When you see an iceberg on the horizen only a fool assumes IT will change course.

Neither has done much to get the word out.

I'm still curious about this part:

a.. Proposed 28 CFR 75.2(a)(1) would require computer site or service producers to maintain a ``hard'' physical or electronic copy of the actual depiction with the identification and age files, along with and linked to all accession information, such as each URL used for that depiction. This ensures that all of the data about all of the people in the depictions can be accessed to ensure that none of the people in the depictions are minors.

J.D., does this mean that the actual releases (with models' real names and addresses) have to be linked and freely accessible to surfers? I don't know any model so well-trained in martial arts and weaponry that she would ever agree to pose under such an arrangement.

You know in reading this again I misunderstood it during the initial hoopla. I thought (if this goes through 'as is' or very similar) we'd need to place a link on every page just pointing to the 2257 documents.

Now, after reading it again it seems we need to link to 2257 documents *and* maintain a URL list of every page where the image is used. |huh

What about content served up dynamically?

Explicit Banner ads served via script like on this board here. Sometimes explicit ads show, others they don't.

POTD links. Static URL, dynamically changing content.

What if it's served up inside frames or a chromeless pop-up window?

Or cases where one hotlinks from one of their own domains to display images on another domain?

Man, big sponsors will not have fun with that at all. |sad|

This URL list can't be public can it?

"Here are all the URL's where images of porn star 'x' appear:"

Talk about a comprehensive site map!

Do we all need to know if each other's PAGES are 2257 compliant?

The proposal states URL, not Domain. Hmmmm.

Google will have a pretty tough time with their cached pages and Google Images, huh?

http://images.google.com/images?q=ex...ie=UTF-8&hl=en

Those explicit pictures are running off Google's servers. Hope they can get the 2257 info for all those images related to that link above.

That is by far the easiest way for kids to view explicit images...

Adult Yahoo groups with explicit images in their files folder?

Yahoo Image search:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/searc...mg-t&n=10&fl=0

The Internet archive? (waybackmachine)

If they show if off their server they are no different than anyone else showing it.

:)

Brilliant. I'm going to steal this one (hope you don't mind, Paul).

I'm twisted up about this...it's going to create a monster record-keeping issue. On the positive side, that could give us all a leg up when it comes to defending ourselves and our industry, and it could conceivably weed out some of the non-professionals.

On the other hand, well, like I said, it's going to create a monster record-keeping issue. I have no problem with having copies of model ids and releases on hand, but linking every freaking url? It takes me too long to build a free site as it is.

And I have a vague feeling that this law would NOT be used against rogue webmasters. I don't recall exactly what the latest report was - something along the lines that there have been no investigations into 2257 since the law was put into effect (sorry, very sloppy, but it's late and I'm tired) - in other words, they don't seem to care about enforcing the law; they just want to keep us jumping through hoops. As long as that's the case, legit webmasters will continue to find themselves doing more and more work to remain legitimate, while rogue webmasters will continue to do nothing and remain untouched.

I'm going to put my thinking cap on (as opposed to the usual tin-foil hat) and try to come up with viable ways of dealing with this (likely inevitable) change.

JD - Great to see you here! *waves wildly*

This kind of stuff is exactly why I have come to respect Paul Markham so much. I used to think he was a pompous asshole, but the truth is that he sincerely cares.

Here he is living in the Czech republic and yet he understands more about US laws than 90% of the "webmasters" posting on all the boards combined.

What is going to come out of this whole deal? I dunno, but even if nothing happens it should be a wake up call to all people selling, buying, using content on their sites. Get legal and then some. If you don't you are a fool.

Your business is in the UK/EU/Whatever? So the fuck what. Sure, US law means dick in Albania - but why push the buttons? Is it really worth it?

Bottom line is get every bit of legal documentation you can from your content producers. If they won't release the model releases (blanking out real name, address, etc. is acceptable as long as the DOB and a picture is legible) then walk away. I know that I myself will be contacting all the folks that I've bought content from over the years and updating our docs.

These moves strike me as a means of chopping off or limiting our supply of content - afterall if you were a model doing adult work, would you really want your real name and address being given to every wm?

I thought I'd discussed that here, but could have been elsewhere :)

That's why I said each content provider would need to hire full-time employees to do nothing but keep track of where their content is. Same with sponsors giving free content from a content provider.

This would be a hardship, financially, on small businesses, and there is a provision in the proposed law where small businesses can complain about this.

Imagine if you have content of someone who appears to be underaged and are asked to provide proof of age. Now, let's say you *cough* borrowed the images without permission. ......

Ashcroft has to admit to a Senate enquiry his office had never examined document under 2257, he then went off an ammended the law.

This law comes out just before the election, be sure he's not done this for the fun of it.

Thanks venturi


No where on 2257 does it say about giving out addresses.

This is one of the good things about this law.

Theft is not a joke, maybe I should come down and *cough* borrow your car without your permission.

I file DMCA notices every day. Believe me, I know theft is no joke.

Yes this will change the industry and for the worse, but it's going to happen and the present system/law does not work.

Don't write your complaints here, go to the site given and register them there. Fro now assume this is going into law, give yourself as much time as possible to find those records.

Will be interesting to see the first post of a content provider refusing or being unable to supply. Or a company who went out of busines and cannot be found.

Or, someone with content they 'borrowed' who then posts and begs someone for a copy of a model release and IDs for the photos they stole.

To add to Google and Yahoo beng Secondary Producers of porn, all the web based USENET archives will be going away. At the very least they need to eliminate all their adult feeds.

But due to the nature of usenet, and the fact they archive stuff, a binary image can go through anywhere. Bye-bye www.********* and the like.

Did you see the post by xxxlaw?