History of 2257
Public Comment Period for ‘2257′ ends today. So now is a good a time as any to recap what that law actually is. You may be surprised that it wasn’t all dreamed up as a diabolical plot by the Victorian-minded prudes that run the government in an attempt to destroy all porn everywhere. The actually name of the law is ‘Child Protection and Obscenity enforcement Act of 1988′. So unless your willing to believe that the close minded puritanical religious zealots added in that ‘of 1988′ part at the end to throw people off the trail …..
Lets begin with the Meese commission report. Though billed as a scientific investigation of the whole scope of pornography, the members of the commission were mostly anti-porn to begin with and there is wide speculation that the final findings of the report were a forgone conclusion to begin with. The investigation dragged on for years and it was overall a very bad situation.
It didn’t help matters at all that in May 1986 (just 2 months before the Meese Commission Report was published) it was discovered that Traci Lords was staring in porn films while underage.
Well, if the Regan administration was anti-porn to begin with, this set off a total firestorm. Prosecutors came out swinging, with the promise that they would unleash all holly hell against whoever it was that was responsible. From here on out the porn industry would have to check IDs before they let anyone star in a porn film. The porn producers tried to point out that they already DO check IDs. The administration said screw you. (footnote one)
And then suddenly the whole thing went away. The news media stopped covering it, and Traci Lords turns to mainstream acting. What happened to the promises of vengeance? Well, turns out that the ID that Traci Lords had used to fool everyone into thinking she was of age was a government issued passport. Cant exactly have the Justice department filing criminal charges against the state department? Now can you?
When things settled down, the result was that on Nov. 18, 1988 the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act came into being. In a nutshell it said “ok, you have checked peoples ID but now you REALLY have to check their ID”. And not just the people who made the porn. All the people distributing the porn as well. It was just a way for the Justice Department to cover their ass and look like they were being tough. Pass a new law. Never mind the fact that it was already a law in the first place.
That was the start of the whole ‘primary producer secondary producer’ thing. But it was never really enforced. It was even challenged by Sundance and Associates but that never got any traction. (Im still trying to figure out how Sundance and Associates could challenge the legality of ’secondary producers’ in 1998. We all ~know~ that laws against secondary producers didn’t come into existence until the evil Bush administration took over and pushed their fundamentalist agenda off onto everyone else.)
So that covers 2257 as far as print publications go. How did it make the hop from print to internet?
There has been attempts at government regulation of porn on the net between then and now. Most noticeably the Communications Decency Act of 1996. But this created harsh backlash. (Anyone else remember the ‘turn the web black’ protest? Google it if you don’t.) It cemented firmly that any attempt at regulating the internet was political suicide. Legal challenges against the Communications Decency Act still continue to this day, 10 years later.
So fast forward to 2003. One one side are family and morality groups demanding that something be done. One the other side are free speech advocates demanding freedom be preserved. Do something and you piss off voters. Do nothing and you piss off voters. So like any politician would in such a situation, Bush passed the buck.
Enter ‘Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today’. on April 30, 2003 Bush makes a very proud announcement “Today Im going to do something about porn on the net. Im going to …. er …. Im going to …. Im going to have those people over there do something!” A brilliant plan really. If it succeeds he can take credit for the authorization, if it fails you can bypass any blame by saying that it was the guy you authorized that screwed it all up. Politicians do this kind of thing all the time.
The whole thing gets shifted over to the DOJ. I can just imagine the poor sap that had this land on his desk. ‘What am I goign to do now?” He stands up and leans over the wall to the guy in the next cubical. “Dude? You know anything about writing congregational law?” he asks. His neighbor answers back “I thought congressmen did that shit?” (Footnote two). The guy scratches his head and wonders what to do.
Simple enough. Pull up the old laws from the ‘Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988′. Open it up in MS-Word and everywhere it says ‘print publications’ just replace that with ‘internet publications’. Shazam. Instant law. Job done and you can leave the office early and beat rush hour traffic.
The obvious problem, however, is that print and internet are two totally different media. What works for print (even if it never was enforced) simply doesn’t work for the internet. The second problem is that the desk jockey who made the edits forgot to update the part of the law detailing what year the law goes into effect. So instead of being a ‘from this moment forward’ law, it holds retroactively for all checking of IDs that porn studios have done for over a decade.
Did the government screw up? You bet! They are the government. Bungling incompetence is what they do. Have you gone to renew your drivers license recently? The government screws up everything they try to do. But if your goign to have indignant rage, direct it at where it should be. Direct it to the fact that law was written by people other than congress. Direct it to the fact that laws from 1988 are being used on2007 technology. But please don’t go into a panic attack thinking that it wasn’t REALLY a screw up and that the whole thing was planed this way from the start as part of a hidden agenda.
Overreacting can be as bad as underreacting. Look what happened to the ‘911 truth’ movement. Outcry was so extremest and so weird that now even legitimate criticism is dismissed as being idiocy from crackpots. The same thing has happened with activist groups getting involved in 2257 law. So many people have screamed “Its all part of their plan to destroy porn. They are all uptight prudes who hate sex” that there now can no longer be any rational debate on the subject.
Footnotes:
1) They probably didnt use the word ’screw’. Im summarizing.
2) He probably didnt use the word ’shit’. Im summarizing.