You know how it is. You just can't have people engaging in voluntary, consensual non-violent activity for fun and profit without the government intervening.

I guess the Soviets really did win the Cold War.

The motion picture industry must keep records on identity of performers for IRS, OSHA, and INS (and their Calif. equivalents) purposes.

Why would the porn industry expect to be exempt from such regulation?

This is the first time I've seen child pornography referred to as "voluntary, consensual non-violent activity for fun and profit."

But we do need to carve out a wide shoulder to make sure we protect the core First Amendment purpose of stopping the government from regulating political speech, or else the government could stop whole groups of people from running political ads in the run-up to an election. Hey, wait...

John,

They don't expect to be exempt from anything. They just want to be treated like any other part of the entertainment industry and be free from the constant intervention of censorious bluenoses who have too much time on their hands.

David,

Don't be childish. This is about the government targetting pornographers when it should be looking for terrorists. You can go to any high school and see girls, who are clearly under the age of consent, that could put on a little makeup and pass for 25. Getting a phony ID is easy enough. Traci Lords did it.

If we were talking about sex with prepubescent children and its filming, I would be at least as outraged as you purport to be but that is not the issue here.

"If we were talking about sex with prepubescent children and its filming, I would be at least as outraged as you purport to be but that is not the issue here"

"The regulations, which were approved by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in May, requires producers to keep detailed information that verify the identify and age of their performers, including their date of birth, legal name, and copy of a picture identification card. The rules were approved in an effort to stop child pornography and ensure the performers are not minors."

If child pornogrphy isn't the issue here, then what is?

Kiddie porn is an infinitesmal percentage of the industry in the US. Latin America, Eastern Europe and East Asia have that niche sewn up.

The concern of the porn industry is getting buffaloed by fake IDs and the like, as in the Traci Lords case. Pretty much every major distributor has language on its product that states that none of the performers is under 18 and that the requisite information is on file. These regulations have existed for years and the porn industry has had no qualms about compliance. Since the Traci Lords case, the system is working and the additional regulations are just an onerous burden to the porn industry and a sop to the religious right and other busybodies.

There are two related issues. The government doesn't want minors working in the porn industry. It also doesn't want the porn industry catering to pedophiles by using actors who look underage, even if they're not on the related theories that (a) this makes pedophiles more likely to act on their perversion and (b)pedophiles and those who cater to them should be harassed as much as possible.

The Supreme Court has limited the government's ability to act when it comes to fake pedophilic porn. Bart's probably right in suggesting that these regulations are more an attempt to come as close as the government can to limiting pedophile service porn than an attempt to avoid underage actors. I don't have a problem with that. Bart does.

Yes, Bart, we bluenoses feel compelled to try and stop train wrecks instead of just shrugging and turning away. It has something to do with what kind of society we want to live in and it isn't the libertarian model we are going for. Of course, if pornographers can't operate in any manner they see fit, than the terrorist have won. Or the Soviets. Or the Taliban. Or...darn, I just know somebody bad won.

David,

'It also doesn't want the porn industry catering to pedophiles by using actors who look underage.'

So, when precisely are all those Brittany Spears wanna-bes going to be taken off the air?

And does the phrase 'thought police' have any meaning to you?

Buttercup,

Train wrecks? Spoken like a true mullah.

Let's punish actions not thoughts. There are plenty of real pedophiles to be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed who are currently employed as Catholic clergy in any medium-sized diocese in the US. We don't need to waste scarce judicial and law enforcement resources on witch hunts and fishing expeditions against the porn industry.

You want to live in a world without porn. Saudi Arabia is only a plane flight away. I'm sure you'd just love it.

So, when precisely are all those Brittany Spears wanna-bes going to be taken off the air?

Geez, my position looks better and better. Also, buying porn because it simulates underage sex is an action, not a thought.

And a world without porn would immediately translate to a forced burqua wearing religious theocracy. I didn't know I was just one Traci Lords film away from total oppression. Who knew that Larry Flynt and Hef were such safeguards of my freedom?

Bart seems to like the slipperly cliff argument, where any and every step goes right over the edge, without even a broken bottle and weed covered shoulder to cut and abrade first.

Except that the steps he wants to take never lead downhill, eh?

David,

Buying underage porn is not engaging in pedophilia, any more than reading The Communist Manifesto makes one a violent revolutionary. Imagining and doing are not the same thing.

Raoul,

It's nothing to do with slippery slopes. There is a principle at stake here. We should limit our criminal sanction to acts, not thoughts, not imaginings, not musings, or the like. Someone watching a film where women dress up like schoolgirls and engage in sex acts isn't hurting anyone, so there is no reason to punish him. Let's punish the rapists and the molesters and the pedophiles not those who do not translate thought into action. It's simply no one's business what we do in our private lives.

bart:

Like buying Jews' hair to stuff mattresses with wasn't participating in the Holocaust.

OJ,

There is a difference between what is disgusting or shocks the conscience and what is criminal.

This regulation will be upheld. It does not affect "consumers" of porn at all, just the commercial purveyors.

Bart: Were people in the US in 1890 or 1920 or 1935 less free? They didn't have ready access to porn. Certainly courts hadn't yet upheld the "rights" of porn producers.

Bob,

Drugs were legal in 1890. Porn was certainly available. Ten percent of American women in the Victorian era spent at least part of their lives in the sex trade.

I'd like to see a source for that.

In any event, this regulation won't have any effect on any type of porn that was available in 1890.

David,

It is in the book published by the Deadwood Historical Society, and was referenced in the Real West TV show on History Channel. Don't forget. Life was pretty desperate for most people in those days.

My guess is that there was no effective prosecution of porn in the 1890s. Since the advent of motion pictures, pretty much every type of porn has been available.

In 1920, at the beginning of Prohibition, people certainly were less free.

bart:

But shouldn't be, which is the point of the law.

Bart: In your first post the sex trade is "voluntary, consensual, non-violent activity for fun and profit" but in your last post it has changed into something much less desirable engaged by people living when "life was pretty desperate for most people." You also sound fairly disapproving that 10% of Victorian women were in the sex trade.

So, which is it? Fun and profitable or activities engaged in by people who are desperate? Watch out, the Dark Side looms ;)!

Bart: I also forgot to ask about what is up with your implication that there should be no burden on the porn industry because under age high schoolers can wear lipstick? So the onus should be on the minor rather than on the porn purveyor who stands to profit by it? Strange way of ordering the law, isn't it? I thought we usually strive to protect the minor.

This nonsense is no different than hate crime legislation.

Bart, I would bet, is against both.

And he is right.

Jeff:

Watch snuff films where they lynch blacks?

Bart: I think freedom is more than porn and drinking.

Jeff: You are comparing apples to oranges to say the least. Hate crime laws involve poliical speech which is what the First Amendment is about. Porn involves no speech at all.

To paraphrase Ninotchka, under Comrade Bart's rule, there will be fewer but more porn-obsessed Americans...

Buttercup,

There has always been a sex trade and when economic conditions are difficult more women engage in it, but even if economic conditions were flush, some people would become prostitutes. That is their choice and not the government's.

A reasonably clever minor can fool a porn producer or anyone else for that matter. If you had ever seen a Traci Lords porn tape made while she was a 'minor' you would understand. Why should that be the porn producer's problem? Like the industry, I have no real objection to requiring proof of age but additional regulations are unwarranted as the problem is really non-existent. Undoubtedly, one would find more active pedophiles at a meeting of the National Council of Catholic Bishops than at any convention of porn producers.

Jeff,

You are correct and I have on several occasions voiced my strenuous objections to 'hate speech' laws and even 'speech codes' on public college campuses on this site.

Bob,

The issue is a simple one. When we aren't doing anything to other people, we have the absolute right to do pretty much anything to ourselves. Thus, I oppose drug laws, smoking laws, age restrictions on booze, tobacco and the like, laws against usury or prostitution or gambling, etc. It's a consistent principle. The government exists to protect us from the predations of outsiders and from those of members of the polis, and that's it.

There's lots of stuff I don't like from loud noise to cigar smoke to body piercings and tattoos to men's fragrances, things that if I were given Divine authority I would do away with. However, I do not have, nor should I have, the power to impose my tastes and preferences on anyone else.

b,

Given my choice there would be a lot fewer people but in a world where people had easy access to porn, where possessing it was no different from owning a box of Kleenex, there would be less of it rather than more. It would lose its cachet.

In other words, majority rule is of no moral weight whatsoever and may be trumped by our merest whim.

In areas where we aren't affecting others, yes. It's nobody's business what we do in the privacy of our homes, certainly not the government's. If someone chooses to engage in sex for money or to snort coke, it ain't my problem.

Ugh, Bart, I am so glad you have no divine power. Your world sounds like h*ll.

If a minor fooled you into thinking they were of age and entered a contract with you, for whatever, would that contract still be valid? I think not. Plus, wasn't a huge amount of Traci Lords appeal the fact that she was a minor? Seems to me people were only pretending to be fooled by her.

Thanks for the recommendation of the Lords porn, but I think I shall pass.

Also, I'm not buying the whole porn will lose its cache so there will be less of it the more readily available it is. It has been way more acceptable than it ever was when I was a kid and it is far more prevelant. Just check into a nice hotel and look at the movie menu.

Interesting, too, that your perfect world would have a lot less people with a lot more porn. But I am repeating my first statement.

bart:

Yes, it is.

Buttercup,

The rules concerning minors and contracts are matters of civil not criminal law and it is well-established that a minor is on the hook when he contracts for 'necessaries.'

Traci Lords, when she was underage, regularly played women who were thought to be 21-25.

Porn is simply tedious and repetitive. If people had ready access to it, they would lose their taste for it rather quickly as it is for the most part repetitive and boring.

oj,

Why?

Just because I have a horror of people coming away from the blog thinking that they've received legal advice, I note that Bart's description of the contracting rights of minors, while not misleading in the context of this discussion, is not technically correct and does not capture the subtleties of the law, which, in any event, varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Bart: In areas where we aren't affecting others, yes. is a conclusion, not an argument.

It's a statement of principle. An axiom used as a standard with which to frame the argument.

yes, it's the principle that enables evil.

Bart: For the jaded porn viewer the demand for more extreme porn will just grow, hence the apprehension about kiddie porn. And, Lords actually illustrates my point here. She becames well known when it was "revealed" that she was underage. That became the lure of her "work."

Sex sells but so does the innocent corrupted. Even more so. Look at all the pop stars (Britney, Christina, J. Simpson) who know how to play the whole "I'm wholesome and innocent, but let me display my wares" card. The more we mainstream porn the more acceptable it will be sexualize kids.

Once you have kids you realize how much of raising them is not a go it alone project, no matter how much libertarians may wish it were so.

So, Buttercup, it takes a village to raise a child? LOL!

Lords was clearly a few hundred grand a year before the fact that she was underage became known. No serious person could possibly ever see Brittney Spears and her imitators as 'innocence corrupted.' They are merely trailer-park trash, who if it weren't for their looks would be the sex toys of biker gangs and the like. And even their acts aren't the stuff of 'kiddie porn.' The age of marriage with parental consent in many states is like 14 and without consent is 16, in New Hampshire it used to be 12 with consent and 14 without.

I don't like the attempts to sexualize kids any more than you do. But this is still more or less a free country.

OJ,
It's sad that you can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. Most people are capable of reading Frankenstein and not going out, robbing graveyards and medical schools and creating a human being. One can read Nabokov's Lolita and refrain from dropping out of one's life and taking up with a sexy 14 year old girl. I regularly fantasize about shooting people in the express lane at the supermarket who can't operate the credit card machine or have significantly more than the requisite items, but I also know that the criminal law prevents me from living out my fantasies. That is what distinguishes us from the lesser animals, that I am capable of making that choice.

I have no problem with executing rapists and pedophiles. But I just don't see how impinging on everyone else's freedom in order to try to achieve a desirable result is something we need to do.

bart:

Of course it takes a bvillage to raise a child. What's the alternative?

Parents? Families? Voluntary associations of people with common ideas about how children should be raised, like religious denominations? Pretty much anything but the State.

That's the village.

Then why do you insist on imposing a bunch of laws when people can voluntarily choose to engage in 'right behavior' without them?

Because they don't choose to.

Then there is no consensus, so there is no basis upon which to impose your Weltanschauung on others. If I choose to introduce my kids to porn at an early age, as I was, and you choose to bar anything in your house more prurient than the old Superman TV show from the 50s, those are our respective choices in a free society.

The only thing that matters is how we behave in society, how we treat others, not how we act in the privacy of our own homes.

You want to ban porn, I'd like to ban tattoos. I guarantee you that a lot more violent crime is committed by the median tattoo wearer than by the average porn viewer. So, by your logic, society should be banning tattoos before the question of porn even comes up.

consensus? what's that have to do with good and evil?

I agree we should ban tattoos--they aren't kosher.

Because outside of a few broad parameters, it is impossible to agree on what constitutes good and evil, it is imperative that we refrain from legislating areas where there is legitimate disagreement. My view provides a simple, easy to understand framework, i.e. focus on the impact of an action against other people. Yours appears to be all over the map, without a unifying ethos, a kind of cafeteria morality.

No, it isn't. It's just hard not to behave evilly.