2257 Regulations: Comin’ Around Again

The porn world has risen to its usual level of concern about the additions and modifications to the proposed 2257 regulations, published yesterday in the Federal Register. While adult lobbying group The Free Speech Coalition has been able to successfully contend with some of the more onerous aspects of previous 2257 proposals, this year's model is still particularly burdensome to "secondary producers", websites like this one that publish other people's racy content without also carrying documentation proving that the MILF in question is over 18. Read more after the gap.

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According to the FSC, the amended regulation proposals reflect some of their legal bulldogging efforts but still fall short of anything within reasonable expectations for working pornographers. "Some of the ... points are troubling and represent the intransigence which we have come to expect from Attorney General Gonzales and his associates," the organization says.

Intransigent is a good way to describe the attitude of a government that in the name of "protecting children" (2257 is code-speak for the 1988 Child Protection And Obscenity Enforcement Act) assumes that all depictions of sexuality are child porn unless proven not to be.

Among the disturbing "clarifications" in the proposal are directives regarding the genitals and the "lascivious" focus thereon as well as the notion that it might still be lascivious if the genitals have a protective covering of clothes.

Most troubling to bloggers or individuals or entities who reproduce the work of pornographers (workers at Fotomat are excluded) is the fact that they would also be lumped in with the original producers.

Therefore the term "secondary" producer has been jettisoned. So both the director of and the website editor who replicated images from "Dirtpipe Milkshakes" are in the same boat, legally.

Interested in voicing your concern? You have until September 10 to write [email protected] with your helpful suggestions, but do read the document first, if for anything your prurient interest.

· Free Speech Coalition (freespeechcoalition.com)
· Federal Register 2257 Proposal (frwebgate.com)

Previously: Porn Valley Dispatch Archive