A federal appeals court has ruled today that the 2257 record keeping laws that have beleagured the adult industry for years now are in direct violation of First Amendment rights, specifically in regard to the definition of “sexually explicit conduct”.
Denne loven, på folkemunne kalt bare 2257, men hvis fulle navn er “18 USC 2257, the Federal Record Keeping and Labeling Requirements”, har lenge vært en varm potet i USA. Loven er nesten 20 år gammel, og kom til som et resultat av President Reagans konservative kamp mot pornografi:
The adult entertainment industry has been in the sights of the federal government for years. The Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (“Meese Commission”) was established at the request of President Ronald Reagan in 1985. The Commission was tasked to “determine the nature, extent, and impact on society of pornography in the United States, and to make specific recommendations to the Attorney General concerning more effective ways in which the spread of pornography could be contained, consistent with constitutional guarantees.” One recommendation that was made, and is the cause for concern for all in the adult entertainment industry, was Recommendation 37.
“Congress should enact a statute requiring the producers, retailers or distributors of sexually explicit visual depictions to maintain records containing consent forms and proof of performers’ ages”
This recommendation resulted in the enactment of 18 USC 2257 in 1988.
Nettsiden fleshbot.com skriver:
As you know, this language has been spookily ... nay, ridiculously vague in keeping porn makers and the wide variety of so-called “secondary producers” on their toes; when you never categorically know what you're doing is against the law, it becomes just another scare tactic to keep porn peeps afraid that they're doing something wrong.
Dette minner meg om min egen blogg-artikkel “Om barneporno og tankekontroll” hvor jeg selv skriver:
Den såkalte “pornoloven” er nå også blitt enda strengere. Mens man tidligere måtte besitte barneporno for å bli straffet, er det i dag nok å besøke nettsteder som inneholder barneporno, dvs bilder/tekst som seksualiserer personer som kan være av en hvilken som helst alder men som kan tolkes å være under 18 år. Dette utgjør i praksis nesten hver eneste pornoside på internett! Hva er det myndighetene prøver å oppnå? Er målet virkelig at man skal føle et sterkt ubehag når man surfer etter porno, fordi man aldri kan være sikker på at man ikke beveger seg inn på en webside med materiale som er ulovlig etter den meget diffuse norske pornolov? Man får inntrykk av at målet ikke så mye er å beskytte uskyldige barn, som å kunne stigmatisere og kriminalisere vanlige menneskers seksualitet.
Fleshbot fortsetter:
As we've explained, 2257 was a piece of law that was added to the Adam Walsh Child Obscenity Act of 1988. Ostensibly “for the children”, it put a good number of law abiding porn businesses out of business, did nothing to protect any children, and made it seem as though anything could be “sexually explicit conduct”. Let's just hope that if push comes to shove after this and it's taken up on review, our *cough* open-minded Supreme Court jutsices care more about the First Amendment than using strongarm tactics to intimidate law-abiding porn makers—and that someone reminds them that last time we checked, it's still legal to make porn here in the good old US of A.
Amerikanske myndigheter har hevdet at 2257 kun regulerer handlinger, ikke ytringer, men dommeren i saken, Cornelia G. Kennedy, kjøpte ikke dette:
“This argument is unpersuasive,” Kennedy wrote. “While the government is indeed aiming at conduct, child abuse, it is regulating protected speech, sexually explicit images of adults, to get at that conduct. To the extent the government is claiming that a law is considered a conduct regulation as long as the government claims an interest in conduct and not speech, the Supreme Court has rejected that argument.”
Kennedy also noted that the child abuse, “the actual conduct in which the government is interested, is already illegal.”
“Child pornography, while speech, can be considered more like conduct because the conduct depicted is illegal, and if that illegality did not occur, no images of child pornography would be created,” Kennedy wrote. “Adult sexual conduct is not illegal and it is in fact constitutionally protected … The regulation of visual depictions of adult sexual activity is not based on its intrinsic relation to illegal conduct. It is, therefore, a regulation of speech, because both the photograph and the taking of a photograph ‘bear … [a] necessary relationship to the freedom to speak, write, print or distribute information or opinion.’”
Kennedy said the court was not unaware of the serious scourge of child pornography — it just believes that there has to be a less burdensome option for attacking the problem.
