doit, doit now!

Section 2257 of Title 18, U.S.C., which is more often referred to as just “2257,” probably means very little to you unless you work in the porn business. Which I do, at least tangentally. Think and/or say what you want, my porn clients are businesses just like any other, with the notable exception that they are some of the most honest, easy-to-deal with clients I have—they pay on time (well, mostly… hint hint, COLT), they treat their employees, contractors, and customers extremely well, and they don’t bitch about how much it really costs to get good, non-Craigslist “I-will-design-your-lame-website-for-$300″ web application development. A lot of people think it must be heaven (or hell) to work in porn, but as far as I am concerned I can take it or leave it—I think naked people are much more exciting when they are real. And if you have a problem with naked people you can take it and shove it where the Puritanical sun don’t shine. But I digress.

Section 2257 basically says that producers of adult content must keep verifiable records of the age of their models. Fair enough. However, the Bush Administration, apparently under pressure from the Religious Rong, has changed the code to read in such a way that essentially anyone who has anything sexually explicit on any web site needs to have several (note that this is not “one of several” but in fact “several”) forms of verifiable proof of the age of the people in the content.

If you have ever put a picture of yourself on a chat room profile, or on your own web site, even, this applies to you. It also applies to most personals sites, including Yahoo!, Gay.com, Big Muscle, ManHunt, etc. They are going to have to prove the age of the people in the shots, even if they are gray-haired shag-carpeted 50-year-old bears. Of course this will be impossible to do, so they will have to shut down until a legal challenge is fully mounted. Do you ever look at message boards where people post porn? There’s a good chance those will get shut down, too.

The Free Speech Coalition has thankfully mounted a legal defense against the new rules. We shall see how it turns out.

The new regulations go into effect tomorrow, June 23rd, 2005.

Please don’t confuse 2257 with 227, the sitcom from the 80’s. 2257 is obnoxious and probably unconstitutional, whereas anything that involves Jackee Harry is by definition fabulous (well, probably by definition obnoxious, as well, but the point remains).