On October 23, 2007 a federal appeals court finally took action to stop the harassment of the porn industry. The law known as 18 USC 2257 has come to haunt adult webmasters like a ghost from our puritan past because it’s record-keeping requirements seemed more aimed at preventing law-abiding citizens from making money selling legal pornography than protecting children from becoming victims of kiddie porn.

Finally a three-judge federal appeals court in the Sixth Circuit decided to put an end to it. The ruling is being celebrated far and wide throughout the industry. While there are some great articles on the legal details, I find many of them full of legalese that seems confusing at times. I have read through enough of them to help affiliates and adult webmasters get the simple top five reasons to celebrate the death of 2257*:

1. The Ruling Is Final (practically)! By this I mean that the next step for those who would try to revive it is to take it up with the Supreme Court! They don’t take on many cases so it would seem like a while before we will be harassed by the law again.
2. The Court Noted the Difference Between Child Pornography and Legitimate Adult Porn. They noted in their opinion the chilling effect the law could have on free speech by requiring users of cam and adult dating sites to keep records and fear imprisonment from simply trading nude pix with other adults and pointed out that the law is overly burdensome and “sweeps a lot of protected speech.”
3. They ruled to abolish the entire law, rather than narrowing who it applies to. Funny, they use the term “facial invalidation” in some bizarre pun, they declared that the only fix is to go back to the drawing board and not modify the law in some way.
4. Get ready for a Hick Porn explosion! Well, maybe not, but since the court that made the ruling is in the Sixth Circuit, 2257 is explicitly no longer in effect in Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio, we can expect the Department of Justice to avoid inspections under the law in those areas until this resolved.
5. the net of 2257 was cast so wide that the judges in this case declared that it applied to anyone who takes photos and videos and posts them online, not just commercial producers. By recognizing this they virtually insured that future attempts to revive this kind of law will have to make clear distinctions between those types of activities. So we can hope that this means that they will also distinguish between primary and secondary content producers, further narrowing who has to collect and store all this data. This is a big deal for adult webmasters, many of whom are waiting to see if the 2257 proposed regulations from July of 2007 were indeed going to shut down adult affiliate marketing. This ruling seems to be one point for our side, making it less likely that this will in fact be the case. In fact, one of the judges actually mentioned that he felt that the statute could work if secondary content producers were not required to perform all of the functions of primary producers. This may be a factor in any re-writing of the law if Congress takes it up, or in other court’s interpretations of 2257 if cases come up in other districts in the meantime.

* Disclaimer: this is not legal advice. If you are in business in the adult industry you should seek out and retain a good attorney to review your specific situation and make sure you are protected. Oh, and donate to the Free Speech Coalition!