I was just reading an interesting article by an attorney in a recent XBIZ World magazine. His point was that most people in the adult biz have no real understanding of the 2257 laws, or if they do they are purposely breaking them.
He said that affiliates who publish x-rated photos or video clips provided by sponsors as marketing material are in violation of 2257 unless they maintain the age verification records of the models. Of course, this info is closely guarded by sponsors and not given out to affiliates.
But his next opinion was really interesting and something I never heard before: he said that a sponsor who refuses to provide affiliates with the age verification records of models could be considered equally guilty of violating 2257 laws since they are knowingly providing adult content for the purpose of making a profit without also providing the required age records.
This made me think of two questions:
For affiliates, have you ever asked a sponsor to provide you with a models age verification material and if so, what was the response?
And for sponsors, if an affiliate requested such age verification material from you, what would your response be?
Re: Are there any sponsors willing to provide 2257 records to affiliates?
Privacy laws in places like Canada, and the UK I believe, make it against the law to provide you with those records. We’d be in violation of our own privacy laws.
Re: Are there any sponsors willing to provide 2257 records to affiliates?
What Michael said. You can’t really break the laws of the country that you are incorporated in to please a US law. This is one of the main problems with 2257 as is written now.
Re: Are there any sponsors willing to provide 2257 records to affiliates?
That is so not correct! 2257 law states that a third party can be the “keeper of records”, you do not have to actually keep the records yourself. As long as the producer providing the content is the “keeper of records” you can use them as your source. You do technically have to include labeling to identify who and where the keeper of records is. As long as the clip itself includes the 2257 labeling statement, or you include the 2257 statement on your site you should be fine.
These days most all of the major VOD distributors are not keeping 2257 records from all the studios they distribute. They just ensure the content is labeled and refer back to the originating studio as keeper of records.
Re: Are there any sponsors willing to provide 2257 records to affiliates?
The privacy laws that have been referred to do not prevent compliance with US 2257. If the model release includes language where the model gives permission for copies of the model ID to be disseminated to affiliates and other third party types then there is no problem.
It is quite simple to comply with both Canadian/EU type privacy laws and US 2257 if the producer uses the right model releases.
Old content would not be able to comply with both sets of law, but new content should.