YouPorn is the highest trafficked adult website in the world and boasts a higher Alexa rating than bot
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CNN and Weather.com, reports Portfolio. Saw that one coming, didn't we?
But YouPorn and other blue Web 2.0 startups could be out of business in
the near future if proposed changes to 1
8 U.S.C. 2257 are accepted into law.
Known in the industry as "2257," 18 U.S.C. 2257 defines requirements
porn producers must follow to verify the age of every performer, keep
records about the performers' identities and make those records
available to the government. The proposed changes would extend the
statute's reach beyond adult-content producers to include social
networking websites.
That could mean every adult who wants to
upload a naughty picture to a social network would have to submit a
photo ID and state their full name, date of birth and other personal
information. The network would have to maintain that record for as long
as the picture exists -- likely in perpetuity throughout the universe
-- and ensure the record is available without question to The
Authorities for 20 hours a week, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday
through Friday.
Porn studios already have a hard time
complying with all the ins and outs of recordkeeping laws. And while
adult social networking sites do seem to try to keep illegal material
off their servers, I think it would be impossible for a social
networking site to comply with the proposed changes.
What if
users submit false information -- who gets punished? Who verifies IDs?
A studio production assistant can check performer IDs in person; would
social networks have to open offices all over the country to verify
prospective members in person? Good luck with that one.
Few
people know much about the recordkeeping requirements. It's like the
FBI warning you can't fast-forward on a DVD -- it's included on every
porn website and adult video, but doesn't stand out to viewers any more
than gang graffiti on delivery trucks in my east Los Angeles
neighborhood.
But if the proposed changes come to pass, I hope
we'll see a much overdue surge of patriotism and protest. After all,
this isn't the administration blatantly tucking the Bill of Rights into
the back of a storage closet -- our personal sex lives are at stake!
The
ostensible purpose of the law is to curtail child pornography, and no
legitimate porn producer argues with that. In fact, many have become
rather paranoid about not letting underage individuals slip through the
screening process.
Yet porn and adult social networking are entirely different things. The former is entertainment; the latter is sex.
An
adult social networking site is not about producers publishing static
content in hopes of making a profit. It's about people coming together
and sharing sexual experiences.
They might plan to hook up in
person or keep the sex online; they might simply participate in
exhibitionism or voyeurism; it can be entirely fantasy or a platform
for ongoing relationships. Sometimes it's as simple as uploading a
favorite clip from a porn DVD.
But the foundation of social
networking, or user-generated content, or Web 2.0, or whatever you want
to call it, is community. Users don't passively look at content someone
else chose to shove at them. They share, rate, create, organize,
recommend, criticize. No member stands alone.
A porn delivery
site is a one-on-one transaction; a social network is a many-to-many
bazaar that exists because its members communicate. Minors on the site
would not go unnoticed. And adults who frequent adults-only communities
do so because those places are adults-only, not because they want to hang out with minors.
It's not just the technology that would make it impossible to enforce
the new regulations on community sites. It's the attitude. Internet
community is traditionally against anything smacking of outside control
or authority, and the human need to expose ourselves in sexual ways
online simply cannot be stopped.
You can put pressure on a
business to comply with ridiculous legal requirements, but try leaning
on millions of individuals engaging in private, personal behavior in
their own bedrooms. Even Alabama focused its sex-toy ban on the stores,
not on the use or possession by individuals.
User-generated
content may not be as slick as studio porn, but that's okay when the
content is real -- when it's no longer porn, but sex. It's the
difference between form and substance, or between art and life.
We have become complacent in recent years about the government's
ability to control the form and art of things. But the substance -- the
life -- the sex?
Not when the venue is this private (your own
home) and doesn't involve controversial, far-reaching public decisions
that involve minors, like sex education versus abstinence curriculum.
And not when the regulations no longer apply to some amorphous other
(the "adult industry") but to regular people doing something perfectly
innocent, like posting a fully nude self-portrait on an adults-only
network.
Porn is always going to be political -- but sex shouldn't be.
See you in a fortnight,
Regina Lynn
The times are clearly changing. Metro, one of the give-away papers in London, covered 
