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Originally posted by Mike AI@Jun 29 2004, 10:50 PM
What a nightmare this could be!!
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Indeed! It has always been a sleeping monster. I think the DOJ themselves know that and that's one reason they have themselves never acted upon it. Yet.
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that means if they find a questionable picture on your site....you better know where EVERY copy of that picture is...and be able to prove EVERYONES age in that picture with a hard copy of their verification.....
to me this seems like the secret backdoor they are going to use to cripple this industry...
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Hardly, Jim. The law has always made a point of producers and creators (content providers) and publishers and distributors (webmasters). Ok, let me rephrase that, the "secondary producers" wording was part of the (illegal. IMHO) DOJ changes to 2257 get webmasters. That term has always been ambiguous and a matter of lengthy legal debate. As the DOJ never used it, it never got the point for court ordered judgement, so the debate has always been theoretical with legal minds figuring out the best course of action to advize their clients, webmasters and companies.
All have agreed that as long as the content provider has the records, webmasters are safe. Webmasters themselves are not required to have the records themselves; this is why you see the 2257 law on many paysites to point law enforcement to any questionable content. While webmasters are not (to my knowledge) required to put that on a website, if contacted a webmaster must be able to say where they got the image(s) in question, and point them to the custodian of record, namely the content provider they purchased it from.
What if a content provider does not have proper records? Then they as producers, not the webmaster publishers, are at fault. The content provider would face penaltie; the worse they can do with webmasters is force them to take down the content if the provider has no records for that model. Bad as that might be for a lot of folks it still beats jail time, monetary fines or both.
This new wording you mentioned seems to continue the same thought as before established by saying (my emphasis added) "computer site OR service producers". In saying that, the DOJ themselves are aware that they can't get webmasters alone or put the onous of proof solely on the webmaster or site owner.
Next you're going to say "but it says OR", who is to say they don't choose the webmaster over the producer? For the answer to that one, read up on the Safe Harbor laws for further reference and precedent.
