Hi. I just finished reading your piece on the newer 2257 regs, and I wanted to write to you.

I work in adult, in several aspects of the industry. First, like the vast majority of the adult internet workforce, I promote paysites for a commission, just like Commission Junction works. I build pages and sites that link to paysites with my personal affiliate link and I get a commission from any sales I produce for my sponsors. I use content provided for me by my sponsors, because what I use to promote really ought to exist on the site I am promoting, right? I have no contact whatsoever with the production end of things, the performers, or even the photographers. And yet I am required to keep meticulous records of those performers..and all I can use is the exact same materials the producers and even the sponsors have already in their records. I can go to prison for five years if I screw it up….even if every performer is of legal age.

I have to keep these records in a location that I have to publicly display on any site I run, which means, since I work from home, I have to list my home address on my sites. I’m a single mother. I work in this industry because it gives me the income I need to support my family, and it gives me the flexibility I need to attend school functions, take children to appointments, and I don’t have to put my 2yo in day care. If I rent an office to store my records in, I have to be there at least 20 hours a week, and I have to list those hours. One, it defeats the purpose of working from home if I have to rent an office, not to mention that I won’t be able to feed my kids if an extra $600-1000 a month is going to storage, basically. Two, it exposes me and, more importantly, the very people these regs are supposedly made to protect, my kids, to anyone who decides they want to track me down. Maybe it would just be a curious person, but it could be a vigilante who thinks my kids would be better off without their porn-peddling mother, and decides to off me. Yeah, it sounds far-fetched, but how many abortion clinics thought it was far-fetched that they’d be bombed or shot at before it started happening?

As a webmaster, these regulations will put me out of business. I can’t afford the time required to assemble these records for every image I display. I can’t afford the rent on office space, or the day care for my baby while I am there. I can’t afford to risk the chance that some crack-pot will stalk me or my children, or worse. And I can’t risk 5 years in prison for a clerical error.

I have no degree. No real skills that will earn me better than minimum wage when I am forced to get a “real” job. I won’t be able to provide for my family like I do now, and I will probably need welfare to make ends meet. I know this because I was there before I started working this industry in the first place.

Now, I also run an amateur adult site, of which I am the model…this opens up a whole new can of worms, aside from those I’ve already covered. Putting my home address on my amateur adult site is probably the dumbest thing I could do. I get ten-15 emails a day from random guys wanting to meet me, hook up with me, whatever. I don’t do it~it’s only fantasy that I sell, not flesh. But I am scared to wonder how many would knock on my door instead of hitting “Send” if they could just get a Google map to my doorstep. And anyone unbalanced enough to do that, if rejected….well, it’s scary to think what they might do. Imagine if Jenna Jameson had her address on her website. Of course I am not anywhere near her status or fame, but the point is the same.

What’s even worse is the fact that I posed for a photographer that then sold the sets he took of me on a popular content shop. Now that he is required to provide age documentation for the buyers in order for them to use the sets, any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a credit card can buy my pics and a copy of my ID leading them right to my door. Before, only the producer (photographer in this case) was required to hold the docs, and I could buy the set, use it, and just make note on my 2257 page how to contact the producer for those docs if inspected. Check out Ounique.com, and buy some sets of some cute girls. See how easy it is for any whack-job to buy his next victim’s identity? Identity theft is a whole other concern.

These regulations are meant to protect people, but all they do is expose people. These girls who posed years ago, thinking their true identities were safe, now have to face their identities being passed around to anyone. Webmasters could become community targets when their neighbors find out what they do. Their kids could learn what their parents’ field is, not through exposure in the home, but through picketing, or just rumors. All for doing something that is legal. That’s what people need to remember…it is a legal occupation. We are not breaking the law.

The people these regs *should* be targeting are doing illegal activities that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Child porn is not synonymous with porn. Porn is a legal entity that the vast majority of adults enjoy. They may not say so in public, but the fact is they do enjoy it. Child porn is a sick, twisted disgusting crime that preys on innocence. People who promote porn HATE to be lumped in with sickos who are involved with child porn, and I am no exception. But here’s the rub: do you think the people who really do produce and traffick (sp?) child porn are collecting ids? Do you really think stricter record-keeping is going to stop them? They are not keeping ANY records, because those records would put them in jail! And do you really think a mandatory five year sentence for a clerical error is going to scare them from their crimes if the much heavier sentences for child porn in the first place don’t? The only folks who are going to suffer are the legitimate ones who are trying to follow the law. Producers can collect those IDS without fail, but that does not stop and underage performer from producing a fake id. That is one angle that could be tackled if the goverment was seriously trying to protect kids.

These regs are not about protecting children. Make no mistake about it. These regs are meant to put the American adult industry to bed. And that’s what they will do. American webmasters will have to post only non-nude images, which will leave the non-American webmasters free to capitolize on our need to stay within the law. The American economy will suffer, because this is one big, big business. People like me will wind up back on welfare. We will have less money to spend to keep the economy afloat. American porn consumers will be funnelling their money out of the country, though I fully expect before long somehow this US movement that apparently thinks it needs to be the morality police will block all questionable content from our ISPs. So much for land of the free and freedom of speech, and the right to choose for ourselves what we believe and what we want to see.

It is such a slippery slope….our rights are being systematically stripped away by this “family values” movement. I am a parent, don’t get me wrong, and I teach my children respect, honesty, non-violence, etc. But I believe it is MY responsibility, as a parent, to supervise my children, to teach my children, to protect my children, to provide for my children. I don’t feel my government should be trying to take those things away from me.

On a slightly different note, I think parents these days are lazy. They are either working, or don’t want to bother supervising what their kids see on tv or the net-they’d rather it be regulated for them. They blame everyone else for the problems their kids have instead of making time to be sure their kids are getting what they need. It’s disgusting, really. Anyone who lets their child have internet access in a private area of their home is an idiot. They’re lucky if the worst thing they are exposed to if given free reign online is porn..it’s far more scary to think about what predators could be preying on the parent’s laziness and the child’s need for attention. Those are the predators that the government should be targeting, don’t ya think? And parents should be involved enough and aware enough to put porn blockers on their computers (the vast majority of adult sites even provide links to popular programs that do just that for parents who care enough to actually take action instead of just running their mouths about how everyone else should be taking action), and keep their networked pcs in a public, high-traffic area, and possibly even keep a keylogger to track their child’s activities online.

Porn webmasters do NOT target children, contrary to the media’s insistance. Children do not have credit cards, as a general rule, and if they do, it’s their parent’s poor choice, again. We wish consumers would use software to keep their kids off our sites. It will mean less wasted bandwidth, which will save us money. And that’s just the monetary motivation behind keeping kids away from porn..a lot of us are parents ourselves, and we would never market to someone else’s child. There are always exceptions. There is in any industry. There are some assholes who spam search engines with kid-friendly terms, and there should be consequences for that. But MOST of us do not work that way, and we very much resent the picture being painted of people who market porn.

Getting back to the subject at hand….

If the government was not trying to put us out of business, they would have accepted some of the many ideas that webmasters came up with. Why not have a central database that producers enter 2257 info into, and assign each image or scene, or even performer an id that the FBI can check on if they require an inspection? (Oh, incidentally, there has NEVER been a 2257 inspection, much less an arrest or conviction. You would think if the old regs weren’t sufficient, as they now claim, they would have at least proven it by enforcing them, right?) Why not funnel all this time energy, and money info developing better technology to find the real child porn sickos? There are ways they can better protect children then forcing more paperwork on people who never use children.

The public wants to think these regs are protecting them. But they aren’t. These regs aren’t protecting anyone but the people who created them. They aren’t protecting MY kids. They aren’t protecting ME. They are forcing my family to choose between poverty, or exposure. When the same people who think these regs are protecting their kids find out their adult daughter posed nude and now her identity is easily bought, and one of their adult children gets stalked or worse..then they will care. Think that’s not gonna happen? LOL Think of how many beauty queens, starlets, and even a recent war hero had nude pics later surface and ruin their careers. It’s a lot more common then you think. No one talks about it, but the men are watching, and the co-eds are posing, and the public pretends to be disgusted when they can’t get their credit cards out fast enough behind closed doors.

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