May 26, 2005 | Sex & Society

Regs threaten adult sites

New  federal regulations mandating strict proof of age record keeping requirements by adult businesses will come into effect June 23. 

Though proof of age regulations have been on the books since 1988, the amended regs are so onerous that it appears that the motive for them has nothing to do with protecting persons under 18 from being exploited and everything to do with shutting down porn companies by first creating a  law that is impractical to comply with and then harshly punishing the newly created "criminals."

Regulation 2257, Title 18 of the US Criminal Code has always required that adult producers of sexually explicit media keep records of the proof of age of all their models on file. The changes to the regulation require that "secondary producers" - including websites - that purchase, lease or borrow content created by other companies also keep proof of age records. The implications could mean an administrative nightmare for porn site owners.

The proposal that has adult Internet companies the most concerned involves mandatory records inspections. Under the rules, federal officers could demand to inspect records with no notice.  Producers could be inspected as often as once every four months, and even more often if the feds think violations might be occuring. Furthermore, the federal officers would have the right to sieze any evidence they believe to be related to the commission of a felony.

Deliberately designing regulations that will be difficult for adult websites to comply with could be an efficient way to close down sites that could not be shut down through other means such as obscenity laws.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry lobby group, is planning on challenging the regulations on a number of legal grounds, but the challenges may not be heard in time to prevent arrests or massive deletion of  �undocumented� content from adult websites.

• New 2257 regs: "Yes, they are going to change the way this business is conducted" [AVN Online]
• New 2257 regulations published, most webmasters must keep records [YNOT]
• Inspection of records relating to depiction of sexually explicit performances [Regulation in pdf format]