p2pnet - rss feed: Anti-kiddie porn law kicks in
p2pnet.net News:- Next Thursday Title 18, Section 2257 of the U.S. Code created under the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act will take effect. That is, unless the Free Speech Coalition, a trade organisation of the adult entertainment industry, is heard in its complaint and motion seeking a Temporary Restraining Order enjoining enforcement of the Title 18, Section 2257.
The section in question sets out rules for the registration of the identity and age of performers in adult (read porn) magazines and movies, which should be handed over to federal inspectors on demand.
But the producers of the content are covered aren’t the only ones covered. Included are "secondary producers" such as websites that distribute it. While aiming to battle child porn, the regulation is said to be part of a politically motivated crack down on porn in general. As an anonymous technology provider said in this August 2004 Wired article:
Unlike enforcement of obscenity laws, which require vetting of community standards, this is ‘yes or no, do you have the documents?’ for webmasters," said one technology provider close to the matter who requested anonymity. "This is a much more efficient way to wipe out online porn, a goal Ashcroft has already stated.
Ashcroft has now been replaced by Gonzales as Attorney General, but the goal stays the same, as do the concerns and emotions.
Says Will Doherty of the Online Policy Group:
Unilaterally changing interpretation of the law to require that every Web site owner check and record IDs from all those who appear in explicit images is an outrageous attempt by a repressive administration to effectively halt the publication and exchange of many images of adults — including those of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons — engaged in consensual explicit activity.
Both the scope of the proposed rules and the likeliness of an anti-pornography agenda using such an important and delicate subject as anti-child pornography regulation, is troubling. By pushing pornography in the realm of child-pornography the needed subtlety for an effective, constitutional enforcement gets lost in the crudeness of generalization.
Rik Lambers - CoCo
[Lambers is a former researcher at the Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam, who’s now in transition to a new full time job in the field of IP/Internet law. He’s also an associate member of the European INDICARE project, which researches consumer issues related to DRM.]
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June 23rd, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Today, the “Supreme” Court of the P.S.A. manage to remove the protection of private property rights from its citizens. Now, I guess the United States government wants to usurp the guarantee of freedom of speech. While I HATE porn especially CHILD PORN, I hate to see this problem being used as an excuse to stop people from excercising their free speech rights.
A better way of stopping obscene material from being manufactured and distributed is by removing ALL COPYRIGHTS for pornographic material. Sexual exploitation of children is already illegal (as it should be). If those who produced child pornography were force to strip nake in a public area and be forced to put up with all the cameras, touching, etc. maybe they will think twice before participating in that form of again.
If a child is raped or molested, then the perpetrator should be executed.
I have become extremely paranoid about any “service” or solution the government wants to implement. It seems that all it is intrested in is taking away freedom or lining the pockets of those in power (or their cronies). I wish the American people would band together or that I would be able to move to a free country.
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:35 pm
I guess your paranoia is spreading beyond government attempts to restrict freedom of speech. From your reply it is at least clear to me that you have no pproblem with “torture light” for child pornographers, you’re for the dead penalty for child rapers, and are generally hostile against pornography. On that last point, maybe that’s way you can’t, or don’t want to make a legal distinction between obscenity and pornography, and seemingly, child pornography pornography. Obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment, as child pornography, while pornography is.
If you consider pornography a problem, and removing copyright a solution, you’re getting very close to what the article suggests the government is doing: using indirect regulation to push an agenda and crack down on porn. I also think you’re actually falling for this scheme, mixing child pornography and pornography, mentioning them in one breath and searching a “solution” for both.
I’m fine with coming down on child pornographers as hard as possible within the legal limits, but get more than a little paranoid myself of people who are willing to offer another man’s constitutional rights for their own problems and opinions. That’s no means to an end. That’s truly the end of freedom, even in the USA.