Susannah Breslin discusses a claim by Adult Video News that Perez Hilton may have violated U.S. child porn laws by posting an explicit video of Chelsea Handler sidekick Chuy Bravo.
According to AVN.com [NSFW], the online home of Adult Video News, the adult movie industry’s trade publication, Hilton’s March 15 post, “Chuy Is an Official Porn Star!” [NSFW], does not follow 18 U.S.C. § 2257 guidelines. The code requires websites that post explicit sexual content to comply to various regulations and rules, including a link to a “2257 compliance statement containing the name and address of the custodian of records, who is required to keep records relating to the age and identity of the performers in the content, as well as other information,” writes AVN.com’s Tom Hymes. Hilton’s post doesn’t.
Nice of AVN to call attention to that discrepancy. Paragraph 2257 is basically harassment legislation aimed at legitimate producers of adult porn. Adult porn has fortunately been declared to be protected speech by the intellectually challenged U.S. Supreme Court which contends that First Amendment restrictions on government censorship are optional and that they get to pick and choose what’s covered and what isn’t.
Paragraph 2257 simply saddles adult porn producers with onerous record keeping requirements so that they can prove, should the Justice Department ever demand it, that none the actors they use are underage. In other words, it gives the government the power to charge a producer under child porn laws even though no child porn was being produced. This is especially handy because, you know, real criminals are hard to find, so being able to prosecute legitimate businesses is a great way to bolster those all-important conviction rates and make it look like they’re “protecting children” and all that shit.
Of final note is Breslin’s comments about how 2257 might take on new meaning as more and more individuals become porn producers.
Of course, most Americans don’t care about 2257 regulations. They figure that’s business of the sort left to sex-crazed bloggers and San Fernando Valley pornographers. Yet, with the rise of sexting and the proliferation of adult content being generated by people who don’t consider themselves pornographers using cellphones and video cameras, it may seem like someone else’s problem — until, that is, the adult content features someone you know, or, say, you, and the regulators have left the building.
I can’t wait for the feds to charge some eighth grader for not including a 2257 declaration when she sends a nude cell phone picture of herself to her boyfriend. Surely there’s a app that will handle that for the teenyboppers.