Conservatives take aim at sex in entertainment...AGAIN
I commented elsewhere that I am sometimes amazed that my fellow Midwesterners actually manage to reproduce, given their extreme hang-ups about sex. Not surprisingly, the legislation described in this article comes to us from an Indiana Congressional representative:
Of course, the record-keeping requirements have always been ridiculous, even back in the 1990's, when Bill Clinton first signed them into law. More recently they've gotten even worse, thanks to the machinations of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, who together implemented some sweeping modifications to the regulations that specify exactly how a content provider is expected to comply with the law. This happened last year, and it created quite a ruckus within the online adult industry, with quite a few websites initially shutting themselves down--an effect which pretty much every person with a brain agrees was exactly the intent of the revisions.
However, attempting to apply the record-keeping rules to ordinary films and TV shows is truly getting into the realm of extremism. There was a time in America when the social climate was so conservative that movies depicted married couples sleeping in separate beds. With this new broadening of the laws, it seems that many conservatives actually want to return us to those times, and they're using their tried-and-true ploy of "we must protect the children!!!" to do it. Don't be fooled. Protecting children is not the issue here, and it never has been.
The ostensible reason for enactment of the 2257 record-keeping requirements was to prevent underage people like Traci Lords from appearing in porn movies. Lords was one of the most popular performers in the adult industry in the mid-1980's, and in 1986, she revealed that she had been underage in every single adult film in which she ever appeared but one. Video stores across the country frantically trashed all their Traci Lords titles, and the adult industry, meanwhile, got started on the effort of re-editing many of the movies she had appeared in, to cut out her scenes. This included not just re-editing the films themselves, but in many cases, redesigning boxcovers (and need I mention that this was not done on computers back then?). It was a tremendous mess, and the entire industry was incredibly pissed off. But they cooperated, because nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of the law, which already contained pretty serious penalties for use of underage performers. How did Lords manage to appear in so many movies prior to turning 18? She had a fake ID. In other words, it was her fault, and hers alone. She committed fraud, and got away with it because she was underage. The irony, which must have been pretty bitter for adult producers, who were at risk of being jailed for this, was that Lords herself couldn't be prosecuted, or even sued.
A similar situation occurred a few years later. Alexandra Quinn was discovered to have starred in a number of hardcore films when she was 17 years old. She had been using an ID that stated she was a few years older. Once again, the entire industry went through the same rigamarole it had before, although this time it wasn't so bad because Quinn was not all that big a star, and she hadn't appeared on very many boxcovers. Nevertheless, such excellent features as Curse of the Catwoman (an early Rocco Siffredi classic) had to be gutted to remove her scenes. (Strangely enough, though, Quinn kept on performing after this. Go figure.)
Anyway, 2257 was supposedly enacted to prevent this sort of thing from happening. The fact that it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in either of the aforementioned cases was ignored. Nobody bothered to notice that porn producers were already checking IDs of their performers, and that no law in the universe could prevent a sufficiently resourceful teenager from obtaining a properly convincing fake ID. Many lawmakers maintained that 2257 would prevent porn producers from deliberately using underage performers and then later on claiming that they had no idea their stars were underage. This is bullshit, of course. If such materials were actually produced, they would have to be marketed as featuring performers over 18, otherwise their producers would immediately be jailed and no retailer would stock them in the first place. There would be no way to distinguish them from every other adult video or magazine on the market, because they would all claim to feature performers over 18. What would be the point of risking jail time to produce a product that would be indistinguishable to the marketplace? And did anyone seriously think that porn producers would be dumb enough to use performers who were obviously underage?
Nevertheless, it was decided that this sort of imaginary problem, along with the "problem" of ID fakers like Traci Lords and Alexandra Quinn (and I maintain that having two teenage girls using fake IDs to appear in porn movies is hardly the end of the world) was significant enough to warrant placing a substantial bureaucratic burden on the entire adult industry. In fact, that was the whole point. Smaller producers, newer producers, and those using amateur content would be especially hard hit. No lawmaker or court was ever willing to admit that the law was clearly bullshit, and they pointedly did not care that porn producers were not out recruiting talent in schoolyards or anything like that, nor that the porn industry was already making reasonable efforts to exclude underage performers and models. No--the real reason for 2257, the reason that could never be publicly admitted, was that obscenity prosecutions were too expensive, too difficult, and too likely to result in an acquittal. Social conservatives and their mainstream dupes (hello Bill Clinton!) needed an easier way to make things difficult for the adult industry, and the record-keeping requirements were it. The hope was clearly that somebody would screw up their record-keeping and be busted for it, and that others would go out of business rather than bother to try complying with the law. Luckily, this didn't happen--at least until the recent revamping done by Ashcroft and Gonzalez, which actually succeeded in silencing a handful of websites. [I should also mention that the new Ashcroft/Gonzalez interpretation of the law makes it considerably more difficult for new adult business enterprises to start up. No longer can a person take pictures of himself fucking the local college girls, outsource the recordkeeping requirements, put the photos up on a website, and run it all from a home PC. Now the recordkeeping requirements have to be met by the actual content provider, and the records have to be available for 20 hours each week. This means that a content provider must have an actual office, and must actually keep it open at least 20 hours a week, which means paying somebody to staff it. And, as any entrepreneur can tell you, a start-up business has more than enough problems to worry about, without also having to worry about hiring and paying for employees. See this for more details and commentary on these revisions--skip down to the third or fourth paragraph.]
While it's pretty clear that both the original and the revamped Ashcroft/Gonzalez versions of 2257 were out of line, Congress is now entering whole new territory by trying to extend this law to the mainstream media, which is a whole different animal than the adult industry. The most significant difference is that the mainstream media are influential enough to kill political campaigns if they want to. So there are a couple of questions that need to be asked. Will the mainstream media go along with this, and, assuming a law is passed, will it be upheld in court? The original version of 2257, not including the Ashcroft/Gonzalez revisions, has already been upheld (which is proof positive that you don't have to pay attention to logical reasoning, or even have a functioning brain, to be a federal judge). Will a much broader and more restrictive law be upheld? I expect not, and I think members of Congress are aware of this. Note, from the above linked article:
Of course, all this is fabulous news, for prudes who thinks human sexuality is not an appropriate topic for entertainment to cover. But that leads back to a more basic question, namely, “Why the hell not?” Time and time again, conservatives have demonstrated that they are simply not interested in the will of the people when it comes to sexual matters. In this case, the will of the people is clearly that sexual entertainment is something they want, and the only evidence that is needed is to take a look at what’s popular. Even discounting the absolutely gigantic adult industry, sex sells, and it sells because people want it, and because people like it. And who the fuck are the wingnuts to say “no!” to that?
Hollywood sex scenes attract lawmakers' attentionMust it actually be said that this is getting pretty ridiculous?
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - The U.S. House of Representatives has approved child-safety legislation that includes a provision bringing some legitimate film and TV productions under the same federal-reporting requirements as X-rated films.
Under a provision inserted in the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act, the legislation would require "any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape or other matter" that contains a simulated sex scene to come under the same government-filing requirements that adult films have to meet.
Currently, any filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail.
Under the provision authored by Rep. Mike Pence (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.
[...]
Of course, the record-keeping requirements have always been ridiculous, even back in the 1990's, when Bill Clinton first signed them into law. More recently they've gotten even worse, thanks to the machinations of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, who together implemented some sweeping modifications to the regulations that specify exactly how a content provider is expected to comply with the law. This happened last year, and it created quite a ruckus within the online adult industry, with quite a few websites initially shutting themselves down--an effect which pretty much every person with a brain agrees was exactly the intent of the revisions.
However, attempting to apply the record-keeping rules to ordinary films and TV shows is truly getting into the realm of extremism. There was a time in America when the social climate was so conservative that movies depicted married couples sleeping in separate beds. With this new broadening of the laws, it seems that many conservatives actually want to return us to those times, and they're using their tried-and-true ploy of "we must protect the children!!!" to do it. Don't be fooled. Protecting children is not the issue here, and it never has been.
The ostensible reason for enactment of the 2257 record-keeping requirements was to prevent underage people like Traci Lords from appearing in porn movies. Lords was one of the most popular performers in the adult industry in the mid-1980's, and in 1986, she revealed that she had been underage in every single adult film in which she ever appeared but one. Video stores across the country frantically trashed all their Traci Lords titles, and the adult industry, meanwhile, got started on the effort of re-editing many of the movies she had appeared in, to cut out her scenes. This included not just re-editing the films themselves, but in many cases, redesigning boxcovers (and need I mention that this was not done on computers back then?). It was a tremendous mess, and the entire industry was incredibly pissed off. But they cooperated, because nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of the law, which already contained pretty serious penalties for use of underage performers. How did Lords manage to appear in so many movies prior to turning 18? She had a fake ID. In other words, it was her fault, and hers alone. She committed fraud, and got away with it because she was underage. The irony, which must have been pretty bitter for adult producers, who were at risk of being jailed for this, was that Lords herself couldn't be prosecuted, or even sued.
A similar situation occurred a few years later. Alexandra Quinn was discovered to have starred in a number of hardcore films when she was 17 years old. She had been using an ID that stated she was a few years older. Once again, the entire industry went through the same rigamarole it had before, although this time it wasn't so bad because Quinn was not all that big a star, and she hadn't appeared on very many boxcovers. Nevertheless, such excellent features as Curse of the Catwoman (an early Rocco Siffredi classic) had to be gutted to remove her scenes. (Strangely enough, though, Quinn kept on performing after this. Go figure.)
Anyway, 2257 was supposedly enacted to prevent this sort of thing from happening. The fact that it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in either of the aforementioned cases was ignored. Nobody bothered to notice that porn producers were already checking IDs of their performers, and that no law in the universe could prevent a sufficiently resourceful teenager from obtaining a properly convincing fake ID. Many lawmakers maintained that 2257 would prevent porn producers from deliberately using underage performers and then later on claiming that they had no idea their stars were underage. This is bullshit, of course. If such materials were actually produced, they would have to be marketed as featuring performers over 18, otherwise their producers would immediately be jailed and no retailer would stock them in the first place. There would be no way to distinguish them from every other adult video or magazine on the market, because they would all claim to feature performers over 18. What would be the point of risking jail time to produce a product that would be indistinguishable to the marketplace? And did anyone seriously think that porn producers would be dumb enough to use performers who were obviously underage?
Nevertheless, it was decided that this sort of imaginary problem, along with the "problem" of ID fakers like Traci Lords and Alexandra Quinn (and I maintain that having two teenage girls using fake IDs to appear in porn movies is hardly the end of the world) was significant enough to warrant placing a substantial bureaucratic burden on the entire adult industry. In fact, that was the whole point. Smaller producers, newer producers, and those using amateur content would be especially hard hit. No lawmaker or court was ever willing to admit that the law was clearly bullshit, and they pointedly did not care that porn producers were not out recruiting talent in schoolyards or anything like that, nor that the porn industry was already making reasonable efforts to exclude underage performers and models. No--the real reason for 2257, the reason that could never be publicly admitted, was that obscenity prosecutions were too expensive, too difficult, and too likely to result in an acquittal. Social conservatives and their mainstream dupes (hello Bill Clinton!) needed an easier way to make things difficult for the adult industry, and the record-keeping requirements were it. The hope was clearly that somebody would screw up their record-keeping and be busted for it, and that others would go out of business rather than bother to try complying with the law. Luckily, this didn't happen--at least until the recent revamping done by Ashcroft and Gonzalez, which actually succeeded in silencing a handful of websites. [I should also mention that the new Ashcroft/Gonzalez interpretation of the law makes it considerably more difficult for new adult business enterprises to start up. No longer can a person take pictures of himself fucking the local college girls, outsource the recordkeeping requirements, put the photos up on a website, and run it all from a home PC. Now the recordkeeping requirements have to be met by the actual content provider, and the records have to be available for 20 hours each week. This means that a content provider must have an actual office, and must actually keep it open at least 20 hours a week, which means paying somebody to staff it. And, as any entrepreneur can tell you, a start-up business has more than enough problems to worry about, without also having to worry about hiring and paying for employees. See this for more details and commentary on these revisions--skip down to the third or fourth paragraph.]
While it's pretty clear that both the original and the revamped Ashcroft/Gonzalez versions of 2257 were out of line, Congress is now entering whole new territory by trying to extend this law to the mainstream media, which is a whole different animal than the adult industry. The most significant difference is that the mainstream media are influential enough to kill political campaigns if they want to. So there are a couple of questions that need to be asked. Will the mainstream media go along with this, and, assuming a law is passed, will it be upheld in court? The original version of 2257, not including the Ashcroft/Gonzalez revisions, has already been upheld (which is proof positive that you don't have to pay attention to logical reasoning, or even have a functioning brain, to be a federal judge). Will a much broader and more restrictive law be upheld? I expect not, and I think members of Congress are aware of this. Note, from the above linked article:
Changes in the Pence language that allow the motion picture industry to "self-certify" their compliance have made the provision more palatable, say industry officials.Note that "industry" in that quote is referring to the film industry. I am not sure what "self-certify" means, but it's clear that, if the mainstream entertainment industry can get themselves a "lite" version of the 2257 law, they are actually considering going along with it.
Of course, all this is fabulous news, for prudes who thinks human sexuality is not an appropriate topic for entertainment to cover. But that leads back to a more basic question, namely, “Why the hell not?” Time and time again, conservatives have demonstrated that they are simply not interested in the will of the people when it comes to sexual matters. In this case, the will of the people is clearly that sexual entertainment is something they want, and the only evidence that is needed is to take a look at what’s popular. Even discounting the absolutely gigantic adult industry, sex sells, and it sells because people want it, and because people like it. And who the fuck are the wingnuts to say “no!” to that?
posted by cke at 4:10 AM
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