Nydia Ywalmoriel
06-23-2005, 07:26 PM
This week's attack on liberty and privacy by the DoJ, courtesy of Alberto Salazar, takes effect at 12:01 tonight and is real and substantial, rather than symbolic, and is probably already known to those of you who are purveyors of the 50% of the web dedicated to porn, or habitues of sites such as rotten.com. If you visited any of those sites today, you may have been greeted with a nearly blank page and message like this:
Yes, that is correct. The wonderful things that used to be here, the very funny things that you want to read, have been made retroactively illegal by the US government, in a side-handed attack on the pornography industry.
We might mention that the material here isn't even pornography as you normally think of it -- this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.
What the folks at gapingmaw.com and other amateur adult humor and/or pornography sites are talking about are the changes to U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257: changes ostensibly put in place in order to prevent the exploitation of children in pornographic images. However, the revised section does little to address this issue, while enacting onerous and sweeping changes to regulations regarding the display of naked bodies and/or their parts or depictions thereof, as well as a massive assault on the privacy rights of those who wish to allow their bodies to be photographed, filmed, or sketched (or like to send pictures of their hummer to ratemyboner.com ;) ).
The revised document is here:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20051800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-10107.htm
For those who don't feel like reading, what this means that *every* site on the Web (or anyone who produces a magazine, film, medical support group literature, or work of art for that matter) that displays 'pornographic' images must now not only have the consent and assent of the individuals depicted in them that they are over 18 years of age, it requires the individuals running such sites/businesses/publications to keep the personal information on each and every individual depicted on file, regardless of how many times that individual has provided consent/documentation to them or others, whether that image has been obtained second or third hand, or how many times that image has been used. Failure to have 'ones papers in order' is punishible by five years in prison. Furthermore, the act is retroactive to 1988, meaning that images that are seventeen years old are retroactively affected by this act.
Section 2257 is ostensibly aimed at preventing the exploitation of minors in pornography, but is widely viewed as a lever by the Bush administration to enable them shut down or drive out of operation the large number of amateur porn sites, adult matchmaking/swinging sites, or anyone else who, god forbid, likes to put naked pictures of themselves on public display. It's a huge assault on the privacy rights of those both inside the sex industry and out, and may actually put these individuals at real risk by forcing the wide disseminination of their personal information.
Some years ago, I went to go see a travelling exhibit, put together by Diane Neumaier, of close-cropped photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called 'Metropolitan Tits'. The purpose of the work was stimulate thought about how we view breasts both as commodity and as artwork; the deconstruction/dehumanization of the images was a purposeful artistic statement. How will 2257 affect legitimate artists who use the images second or third hand, as in this case, or artists like Sally Rand, who actually *use* photographs of their own naked or partially clothed children?
This is a horrible piece of law and will hopefully be declared unconstitutional; The Free Speech Coalition (an adult business advocacy group) has filed a lawsuit (good discussion here):
http://www.avn.com/avn/groups.yahoo.com/group/count_wallpaper.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=231124
And a discussion of the issue in more general terms from boingboing.com cam be found here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/22/rottencom_our_gaping.html
It's nice to know that, in a time of war, our DoJ is working hard to protect people from their own pernicious desire to view naked people, or to share naked pictures of themselves with others. They must be punished! It's for the children after all...
Regards,
Nydia
Yes, that is correct. The wonderful things that used to be here, the very funny things that you want to read, have been made retroactively illegal by the US government, in a side-handed attack on the pornography industry.
We might mention that the material here isn't even pornography as you normally think of it -- this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.
What the folks at gapingmaw.com and other amateur adult humor and/or pornography sites are talking about are the changes to U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257: changes ostensibly put in place in order to prevent the exploitation of children in pornographic images. However, the revised section does little to address this issue, while enacting onerous and sweeping changes to regulations regarding the display of naked bodies and/or their parts or depictions thereof, as well as a massive assault on the privacy rights of those who wish to allow their bodies to be photographed, filmed, or sketched (or like to send pictures of their hummer to ratemyboner.com ;) ).
The revised document is here:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20051800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-10107.htm
For those who don't feel like reading, what this means that *every* site on the Web (or anyone who produces a magazine, film, medical support group literature, or work of art for that matter) that displays 'pornographic' images must now not only have the consent and assent of the individuals depicted in them that they are over 18 years of age, it requires the individuals running such sites/businesses/publications to keep the personal information on each and every individual depicted on file, regardless of how many times that individual has provided consent/documentation to them or others, whether that image has been obtained second or third hand, or how many times that image has been used. Failure to have 'ones papers in order' is punishible by five years in prison. Furthermore, the act is retroactive to 1988, meaning that images that are seventeen years old are retroactively affected by this act.
Section 2257 is ostensibly aimed at preventing the exploitation of minors in pornography, but is widely viewed as a lever by the Bush administration to enable them shut down or drive out of operation the large number of amateur porn sites, adult matchmaking/swinging sites, or anyone else who, god forbid, likes to put naked pictures of themselves on public display. It's a huge assault on the privacy rights of those both inside the sex industry and out, and may actually put these individuals at real risk by forcing the wide disseminination of their personal information.
Some years ago, I went to go see a travelling exhibit, put together by Diane Neumaier, of close-cropped photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called 'Metropolitan Tits'. The purpose of the work was stimulate thought about how we view breasts both as commodity and as artwork; the deconstruction/dehumanization of the images was a purposeful artistic statement. How will 2257 affect legitimate artists who use the images second or third hand, as in this case, or artists like Sally Rand, who actually *use* photographs of their own naked or partially clothed children?
This is a horrible piece of law and will hopefully be declared unconstitutional; The Free Speech Coalition (an adult business advocacy group) has filed a lawsuit (good discussion here):
http://www.avn.com/avn/groups.yahoo.com/group/count_wallpaper.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=231124
And a discussion of the issue in more general terms from boingboing.com cam be found here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/22/rottencom_our_gaping.html
It's nice to know that, in a time of war, our DoJ is working hard to protect people from their own pernicious desire to view naked people, or to share naked pictures of themselves with others. They must be punished! It's for the children after all...
Regards,
Nydia