Porn is legal in the United States. Just wanted to get that one out of the way.
Now, ready your pop-up blockers for the New York Post link to Feds’ Porn Ultimatum (with a nearly-unrecognizable recent photo of Jenna Jameson). Snip:
The Department of Justice wants to come up with an official list of every porn star in America – and slap stiff penalties on producers who don’t cooperate.
The new rules, proposed under the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act, would require blue-movie makers to keep photos, stage names, professional names, maiden names, aliases, nicknames and ages on file for the inspection of the department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
“The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring that no performer is a minor,” according to the new proposal.
The Adam Walsh Child Safety Act was brought to us courtesy of former Rep. Mark Foley, who resigned after getting caught for (estimated, alleged, one actual, an apparently well-known) ten years’ worth of sexual misconduct with Congressional pages. And we all know how well harassing adult porn performers and legitimate, law-abiding porn producers works to curb all those law-abiding child porn makers. Anyone else seriously freaked out by the government making lists of citizens based on their profession, or sexual choices?
Side note — conservatives have a real problem with adult sexuality, especially their own. Read all about it in grisly, humorous detail in my Chron piece, Conservative sexual fetishes: A hardcore guide.
Meanwhile, in Utah, CP80 (pet project of Ralph Yarro) is getting ready to push forward anti-porn, wi-fi punishing internet legislation, expected to be introduced to Utah state legislature next year — and if passed, could go further. A summary of the just-released working drafts of the proposed legislation after the jump, courtesy of an anon Tiny Nibbles reader.
* * * * * * *
CP80 has released working drafts of the proposed legislation. There
are a couple of small surprises in there:* Required logging by ISPs:
Essentially, they want to require ISPs to log and store information
about IP address assignments for a 2 year period. The idea behind
this being that if you provide pornography to a minor, whether it be
by hosting it directly or by hosting a proxy (or any other software)
that allows a minor to access pornography, they can find you and
prosecute you. Want to anonymously post that erotic story? Think again.Under this provision, ISPs would be required to turn over this
information without a court order to do so.Moreover, U.S. ISPs would be prohibited from assigning IP addresses
to individuals outside the United States. How they plan to do this is
anybody’s guess, but there it is.* Open wireless:
Anybody providing open wireless access that a minor uses to access
pornography will be subject to a fine. Repeated violations are
subject to criminal and/or civil prosecution.Here’s the kicker, a “minor” is defined in this legislation as
anybody 14-17 years of age. If you supply pornography to a 8 year
old, no problem. Want to give sex information to somebody who might
actually use it? That’s a jailin’.* WIreless hardware
All wireless access points must be configured to use a authentication
by default, instead of open access. Linksys tech support workers of
the world explode. Bits of rage and Mountain Dew rain down upon us.There are some additional provisions for things like “state endorsed
family-friendly ISPs” and other go-nowhere ideas, but the above is
the stuff to really be concerned about for the time being. The really
nasty stuff like outlawing open proxies, doing “alternate clean
ports” and outlawing virtual web hosting is later on, one assumes.It’s widely expected that this legislation will be introduced in the
Utah state legislature next year. Other states may follow suit, but I
don’t know what the status of those. (One can safely assume that this
isn’t going to fly in California anytime soon.)IANAL, but I am concerned that a single state passing laws like these
has potential legal impacts for the Internet-at-large.Since you’re one of the only people who I can get to take this issue
seriously and see it for what it is, I’m sending you this update.Yarro, as the head of the CP80 Foundation, is speaking on what he
calls the “porndemic” (which is a word you gotta love) this week at
BYU. Obviously, he’ll be pitching CP80 at the same time. [personal detail redacted] Now that SCO has lost, CP80 is going to
be his full-time focus. Expect this issue to get pushed harder over
the next few months.I have complete copies of the proposed legislation, if you’re
interested.
