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Big Brother is Watching…

Ren

especially if you are naked!

So, I wasn’t going to jump up on my soapbox here, I was going to be all civil and polite and stuff, but alas, I must break that promise….because this has caused me to become somewhat peeved…did I say “somewhat”?  I meant really, really peeved…

If I worked in a factory, or a diner, or in retail or waste management, if I worked in phone sales, or performed data entry, or my profession was office assistant…if I worked in a movie theater, or auto body shop, or a hair salon, the government would require four things of me…if that…

Proof of Legal Name
Proof of Age
Social Security Number
Completed tax forms

But, you see, I don’t work in any of those fields, I work in one that is, ahem, less savory.  I work in one where there is a legitimate concern to make sure myself and all my co-workers are over the age of 18.  There is already a law in place to insure this, a law known as 2257, which requires that any person who makes and/or displays pornography have, on file, proof of the performers age.  Anyone and everyone I have ever worked with or for has made sure of this, for obvious reasons. 

 However, now it seems 2257 is not sufficient.  Having proof of a performers age is just not good enough.  Now, it seems the government wants an official list of every porn star in America…and we’re not just talking the Jenna Jameson’s of the world here, but every person performing in any sort of porn…from Porn Valley CA productions to net sites that specialize in Lesbian porn for Lesbians (which, hey, generally already all comply with 2257), and along with proof of age, they want to know things such as a performers photos, stage names, professional names, maiden names, aliases & nicknames (read full article here, host site nsfw). Things that are rarely asked for in any other form of employment, really. 

Does the manager of the local bookstore have to keep photos and a list of all known nicknames, maiden names and aliases of his employees?  No, s/he most certainly does not.  Does all this information have to be compiled into a government database?  No, it doesn’t.  And while it is nice to see the government is willing to let folk like me retain a bit of privacy, after all, they aren’t demanding to keep my address and phone number on file (yet), I will say I find this new proposed law to be a bit unsettling.   

Yes, being able to prove that a person working in porn, any sort of porn, is over 18 is important, which is why 2257 was agreed to and complied with without much of a fight.  But does the government really need to know that as a kid my parents called me Attila and I once, ten or so years ago, worked under the stage name Jayne Jet?  No, they don’t really.  I, like every other working person in the US should have to provide my legal name, proof of age, and my SSN.  Hell, I even pay taxes.   

Then again, this is country where the government thinks wire taping is okay…and I do note that while this law is aimed at the porn industry, to protect underage people from working in the business, there is no similar mention of such laws for people who use migrant farm labor, or run clothing factories, or sell alcohol… 

Imagine that?

Posted in Law

21 thoughts on Big Brother is Watching…

  1. Is there any evidence that 18 USC 2257 records are inaccurate, or are not kept? Sure, there is probably a lot of child porn out there, but I expect they don’t pretend to keep records of the performers’ identities. I’ve never heard that, when some company claims to have the records required under 2257, that it didn’t; or that the information was falsified. Hell, is there a known case of a performer whose information was kept under 2257 being in fact underage? (Traci Lords predates 2257’s record-keeping requirements.)

    I’m no fan of the porn industry, but it seems to me that this is just a law to intimidate the performers. I want to see Vivid out of business, but not by abusing the sex workers’ civil liberties until they run away.

    (Commence only slightly paranoid fantasies that this is a list of people to punish when the Handmaid’s Tale becomes the actual government. Hell, the gun rights people employ the “list to round us up” rhetoric as a matter of routine; why shouldn’t we?)

  2. I, like every other working person in the US should have to provide my legal name, proof of age, and my SSN.

    You know what, fuck it, why should you even have to provide that much? Maybe I’m wrong here, but I’m guessing you’re technically considered a private contractor, right? Self employed, work-for-hire, whatever you want to call it? The only reason you should have to provide your SSN is if you’re paying into social security. Your legal name? Well, as long as income tax is being paid on every taxable dollar your employer reports, again what do they really need a legal name for? Which brings us to 2257. Yeah, child-porn is bad, but that isn’t really what 2257 is aimed at. Its pretty easy to tell an 18 year old from a 6 year old at a glance. 2257 is designed to try to prevent the moral outrage of another Traci Lords.

    Just because what you do for a living offends some mouth-breathing baptist in the deep south doesn’t mean you or your employers should be held to a higher standard. More importantly, just because what you do happens to be against the religion of some asshole in DC doesn’t mean your industry should be subjected to standards designed to reduce it’s numbers through harassment, intimidation, and compliance costs. Porn is mainstream, its a huge business, and it brings in an incredible amount of money each year. Perhaps its time to start throwing that weight around.

  4. yeah, what is the rationale?

    they were proposing something similar in new york a few weeks back, for strippers. it would have required them to get a stripping license, essentially. it was allegedly for their protection, or to curb underage stripping, or something. men quoted in an NYT article about it were all salivating over the fact that now, if they got “swindled” out of their money while drunk, they could report a stripper to some sort of licensing board ….

  6. William Says:

    “Yeah, child-porn is bad, but that isn’t really what 2257 is aimed at. Its pretty easy to tell an 18 year old from a 6 year old at a glance.”

    Yeah, but not always easy to tell an 18 year-old from a 16 year-old at a glance, hence the present requirements for 2257 documentation. Which beat the hell out the old system, which was to attempt to get child porn convictions based on the fact that the model “looked” under 18, usually on the basis of the testimony of some “expert” who would testify that somebody with such-and-such physical features would be somewhere around 16 years old (like that doesn’t vary enormously between individuals). There was even one such case in the post-2257 era, with some guy in the army who was being court-marshaled for pictures of young-looking 20-something porn star Melissa-Ashley on his computer. (She was good enough to show up in court and clear the whole thing up, BTW.)

  7. they were proposing something similar in new york a few weeks back, for strippers. it would have required them to get a stripping license

    Las Vegas did it. They now have licenses for strippers. The publicized rationale was to curb prostitution. But it’s really just another way for the city to make money. They nickel and dime you.

    —

    It sounds like it’s aimed at protecting children. The obvious problem is that only the pornographers who are already legit will comply with this law.

  8. It can be hard to tell a 12 year old from an 18 year old, as my daughter’s work history shows. She never worked in porn, but she did work as a pot”boy” in a casting plant at the age of 12. The boss found out only when he wanted to promote her, because she was the best potboy they had ever had. I suppose she should have been “protected” from this exploitation, even if it did not involve porn, but she wouldn’t have appreciated it, because as an emancipated minor, she needed to be earning a living. But I suppose there will be no emancipated minors in the New World Order. Hell, it’ll be hard enough to be emancipated for those of us over 21.

  9. The official reason for doing it is to keep miniors out of porn (of course).

    My cynical nature suspects it is a good way to drive small time pornographers without IT departments out of business…which are rarely the mainstream big time het porn companies, but the smaller gay/lesbian/feminist erotica/ fetish porn companies.

  10. Ren, I think you’re right on the money about the reason, as 2257 already does every worthwhile thing that this would do.

    As an aside, I know who Melissa Ashley is, and her experiences just confirm my disgust with mainstream porn. She was raped on camera. Some guy did something that she wasn’t ready for and that hurt a lot, and she yelled and tried o get him to stop, but they just kept rolling. And that’s not some third-hand story: I read it on her blog. After that, she was taking some time off.

    And that’s also the reason I don’t extend my condemnation of the Valley porn industry to all corners of porn: I just cannot imagine Sir C (a woman, btw) or Violet or PD at the old Insex ignoring a safeword. In fact, I watched them cut short live scenes, that paying subscribers were watching, where they felt the bottom was in a bad place.

  11. Actually, you don’t just have to provide an SSN for most jobs, you have to provide proof of your legal status in the U.S. Nearly all employers are required to document their employees’ immigration status using an I-9 form. (Link is to the PDF form). So, this is hardly unique in requiring proof of some fact of particular interest to government prior to employment. And since it’s a field with a fair history of abuse of minors, it’s not as though there’s no reason to be extra-vigilant here.

  13. Thomas, I don’t really know much about the new law other than what’s in the post above (the link Ren provided turned out to be the opposite of safe for work, which would have been nice to be warned about, actually, so I didn’t read that article in any detail). But given what the new law asks for–“performers photos, stage names, professional names, maiden names, aliases & nicknames” I’m guessing that they have problems with people evading 2257 through the use of aliases or fake ID, which wouldn’t shock me in the context of the porn industry. That’s just speculation, though. In any case, I’m not sure what kind of nefarious use Ren imagines that the government is going to make of her stage name from 1999 that it wouldn’t make of the information collected in most positions for immigration purposes. In fact, I worry a lot more about the immigration laws as they apply to employers, since they do, in practice, tend to promote discrimination. I also think that Ren’s repeated comparisons–to, say, bookstore owners–are pretty misplaces, since bookstore employees are far less likely to go by multiple names and minors aren’t placed at risk by working in bookstores the way that they are by working in porn.

  14. I do hate how many forms for this and that casually ask you for your SSN (for instance, paying for a particular doctor’s appt. out of pocket the other day; why do you need to know? they didn’t insist. it was just there).

    and yeah, Daisy brings up a good point. that’s certainly going to be part of it, although not, I think, all of it.

  15. and yeah, exactly, the het mainstream pornographers are gonna be fine; it’s the small indies who are often actually -less- misogynist/reactionary in many ways who get caught first with shit like this.

  16. Thistle, I don’t think people are getting around 2257 with aliases since they are already covered. It provides in relevant part:

    (b) Any person to whom subsection (a) applies shall, with respect
    to every performer portrayed in a visual depiction of actual
    sexually explicit conduct –
    (1) ascertain, by examination of an identification document
    containing such information, the performer’s name and date of
    birth, and require the performer to provide such other indicia of
    his or her identity as may be prescribed by regulations;
    (2) ascertain any name, other than the performer’s present and
    correct name, ever used by the performer including maiden name,
    alias, nickname, stage, or professional name; and
    (3) record in the records required by subsection (a) the
    information required by paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection
    and such other identifying information as may be prescribed by
    regulation.

    (c) Any person to whom subsection (a) applies shall maintain the
    records required by this section at his business premises, or at
    such other place as the Attorney General may by regulation
    prescribe and shall make such records available to the Attorney
    General for inspection at all reasonable times.

    My concern is that this will 1) increase the recordkeeping burden, which will be no problem for the big companies I have a problem with, but will be a burden on some independent producer of lesbian films working out of a loft in Long Island City; and that 2) what they are really doing is to create a database that can be held over porn performers’ heads.

    But how much of this is a real concern depends on the language.

    Ren, do you have a more substantive source for the proposed changes?

  17. Daisy Says:

    “Is this also possibly a back-door effort to curb illegals? Sounds like it to me.”

    Except that most American porn stars are not immigrants. Asian and Latina “race fetish” videos might have a higher percentage. But other than that, the only obvious foreigners I’ve ever seen in US porn are established European porn stars, probably here on some kind of work visa.

    Thomas Says:

    “As an aside, I know who Melissa Ashley is, and her experiences just confirm my disgust with mainstream porn. She was raped on camera. Some guy did something that she wasn’t ready for and that hurt a lot, and she yelled and tried o get him to stop, but they just kept rolling. And that’s not some third-hand story: I read it on her blog. After that, she was taking some time off.”

    That’s truly fucked up. Did she say who it was or what company was in charge of the production?

    belledame222 Says:
    August 22nd, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    “and yeah, exactly, the het mainstream pornographers are gonna be fine; it’s the small indies who are often actually -less- misogynist/reactionary in many ways who get caught first with shit like this.”

    Yep.

  18. Thistle:

    “(read full article here, host site nsfw). “

    Which would mean Host Site Not Safe For Work…. so yeah, I did warn ya.

    What you’re missing here is porn production companies already pretty much demand not one, but usually two, valid forms of ID- such as a drivers licenses, a passport, so on, which HAVE the performers legal name and age on them. Those same two things are on file for whatever company that is already 2257 compliant that they work for. There is NO need for a Governement database listing maiden names, aliases, and stage names, so on. It is excessive and an invasion of privacy, and people who make child porn are likely to IGNORE any law ever put into place to keep minors out of porn…so why waste the time and money of the government and impose this on performers and producers who are already willing to provide proof of legal age and name? It won’t stop the illegal child pornographers, it will just intimidate the hell out of the legal ones and possibly force them out of business.

    Also, as we’ve seen right here in blogworld, anyone with enough computer skills can hack a site or a date base. Porn performers often use stage names for a reason. They don’t want people knowing their real, legal names, because then all of their other personal information is easily dug up. Do they not deserve to have SOME sense of security and privacy?

  19. Ren, you’re right, you did warn me about the link, and I just missed it–sorry.

    So is the only difference between this law and existing law that the there will be a government database rather than just the employer holding the information? Because it sounded like you were complaining about having to provide new information, but I’m not entirely seeing that.

  20. thistle:

    Yes, there is also new information which will have to be provided (all stage names, maiden names, aliases, so on) and I don’t like that.

  21. I know the real reason they do this: to make it come up in background checks, so women who’ve worked in the sex industry won’t be able to find employment elsewhere.

    I am not kidding. I wish this weren’t true. There are states with “stripping license” systems, and I’ve encountered a woman online who’s a dancer but goes out of Texas to dance, because she’s trying to earn a degree in a medical field and doesn’t want to be blacklisted from work once she earns it. I’ve heard from other women who’ve tried and failed to go into other industries because of Big Brother measures like this. The message is “once a whore, always a whore.” And it makes me so mad I could chew through someone’s head.

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