Rou

In another step in the "Oh My God, Think of the Children"™ campaign, many years ago, they passed 2257. basically, it said that producers of pornography had to maintain records that demonstrated that the actors involved were all 18 or over. A good law, and one that I support. But it’s a little different today.

You see, without actually changing the law, they have changed the requirements for compliance to the law. As of Thursday night at midnight, they decided that every single person who had pornography online qualified as a producer of pornography. They also beefed up the requirements for compliance.

Now, every single web host that contains a pornographic picture must keep records of the name of each person in the item, their real names, all aliases they’ve ever gone by, their home address, as well as a link to every place on the internet that hosts this same picture. That’s for EVERY SINGLE item.

Furthermore, this change went into effect Thursday night, BUT it will be retroactively enforced back to the signing of the original bill.

Now, in order to maintain compliance of this, all records must be available 365 days a year to a max of 20 hours a week. Anything that is suspect or unverified during an inspection may be confiscated as evidence. Mind you, these inspections do not require a warrant. They can just show up, and inspect your records, than seize whatever they want.

Now, all of this seems like yet another of my “only 2 logical conclusions” scenarios. Either 1) they have no idea how the internet works and why those requirements are impossible to follow or 2) they have decided to try to drive a multi billion dollar aspect of our economy out of business.

And that’s just the obvious portion. The search and seizure requirements seem unreasonable. It’s retroactive? WTF. When did it become legal to make things retroactive? And how am I supposed to know if some asshat out there stole a picture off my site and posted it on his. Finally, it’s been ruled on before. In Sundance Associates, Inc. vs Reno the court ruled that only the primary producer of the imagery had to maintain age records.

Look, I know we want to ‘save the kids’ and all, but come on people. This isn’t reasonable enforcement.

Now, the mainstream media has barely said a word about this. I have no idea why. It would seem to be a direct attack on first amendment rights. As of today, the department of justice has agreed to place a temporary stay on enforcement until Sept. 7th. And by that time, I would imagine it will be in federal court with an injunction. But it’s still fucked up.