There's an excellent analysis and discussion of this rule over on
Boing Boing today, and that post links to the actual regulation, if anyone is interested. The article is SFW, but it is well-formatted and linkfull, so I didn't try to copy it in here. Many websites are preemptively shutting down, rather than deal with the rule.
From an AVN article linked within the BoingBoing article:
Quote:
But the main charge in the suit is to the entire concept of 2257: that protected sexual speech has been burdened with a regulation that, in essence, requires it to prove itself innocent of using minors in its creation, rather than requiring the government to meet its constitutional burden of proving the speech guilty.
"18 U.S.C. §2257 has created a presumption that otherwise lawful expressive works containing visual depictions of adult performers engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct cannot be lawfully produced or disseminated to adult consumers unless the dossier and label required by 18 U.S.C. §2257 are created and maintained," the lawsuit states, "... thereby burdening constitutionally protected speech with a presumption of unlawfulness that may be overcome only by the producer’s production of the dossiers and label mandated by law."
"Indeed, requiring twenty-, thirty-, forty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-old performers to divulge personal information and identification documents to producers of regulated expressive works is not a narrowly tailored means of promoting a legitimate and compelling government interest in child protection," the suit continues, noting also that the requirement "is not a narrowly tailored means of promoting a legitimate and compelling government interest in child protection."
|