WASHINGTON — A bill has been introduced in Congress that would impose prison sentences, fines and property seizures for online adult operators who make available any porn content, including content on splash pages, without an age-verification system. The bill, HR 4059, also targets payment service providers, making them responsible to maintain internal policies to ensure that porn isn’t displayed to web surfers who enter sites without first verifying that the user is at least 18.
The sweeping piece of legislation, known as the Online Age Verification and Child Safety Act, also swings jurisdiction over to the Federal Trade Commission, which would enforce age verification for all sites offering material defined as sexually explicit under 18 U.S.C. § 2257.
Violators of the act would receive sentences of up to 10 years and undetermined fines and property seizures.
On it’s face here this is just another attempt to attack the industry in the name of the children…..But let’s look at it a different way. What if it does pass?
Would it spell the end of the “tube sites” and other such sites that plague the industry? Would it do away with free tours that give away too much porn?
A wise friend of mine once said the only way to restore real profitability to this industry would be to make it illegal.
6 Responses
[New Post] Is Congress About To Help Us? – via @twitoaster http://www.mikesouth.com/legal/is-congre…
Hmmmm, I think we already have that, don’t we? Most sites you go to, you have to swear you are at least 18 and porn is legal in your area. Certainly, no one would read that and then LIE!!! What more could we possibly do? 🙂
Just one gotcha. At this time there is no reliable means of verifying age online.
“Age Verification” is just a euphemism for charging a credit card.
Dude, the subject line alone should give a moment of pause. When’s the last time Congress did anything to help anybody that wasn’t paying richly for it? I don’t really know much about the porn industry, but could there be another motive behind this? (Granted, we know it’s not really about protecting children). Doesn’t this have the potential to give CC companies and online billing companies more power to demand more transactions (thus more fees for them) under the guise of “age verification”? It could even mean LESS paid memberships because finding out what the site’s about may be too difficult or costly.
Call me paranoid, but I’m quite skeptical of any “help” the government offers. I mean damn, look at the “Patriot act”. And how well the bail-out and Cash for Clunkers schemes worked out. Who were the real recipients there?
I hate to say it but without “help” from the Feds our adult movie industry is doomed. Free porn either authorized or pirated is killing many companies faster than we care to believe. The first job of the Federal Government is to protect and defend the citizens of the United States of America and if I had little kids at home I would be even more upset over the proliferation of easy-to-view porn online than I already am.
The simple fact is that those that offer click and watch porn clips with sex and still photos with sex should be deemed illegal. If the violator continues then the hosting company should be forced to shut them off or that site blocked. (they block sites in China I’m sure we can do it here) This would be a strange way for the Feds to actually enforce existing copyright infringement laws (even though they don’t want to do that especially for our dirty industry). Without some sort of major move I am afraid that the sand in the hour glass is running out and those were the (great)days of our lives.
porn was never meant to be free and given away as a lost leader. This could be a very good thing. I have been saying for loooonnng time this was coming. Porn survived so long because it was sold under counters, behind darkened windows and in backrooms of video stores. A few free pics who cares, kids able to see anal fisting with a click. Its jumped the shark.