Pr0n-meistress Violet Blue says:

Tribe.net is *voluntarily* applying the 2257 laws to itself -- its members, the tribes and the very architecture of Tribe itself. Federal law 2257 now requires website owners to keep *physical* records documenting, among other things, that "a book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, digitally- or computer-manipulated image, digital image, picture, or other matter that contains a visual depiction of an actual human being engaged in actual sexually explicit conduct" is over the age of 18. Visual depictions *after* 1990, mind you.

According to Blue, 2257 would prohibit *everyone* in the US from seeing images such as the prison photos from Abu Ghraib. The law is so broad, it can include bloggers, publishers, television and Hollywood. A political or human rights tribe would be wiped off the Tribe.net map for failing to conform to the laws, by including an Abu prison photo in their photo album.

If this is all correct, does that mean that all dating sites would need to keep track of the ages of all it's members and all of their photos? Yahoo Personals asked me for my birthday yesterday, perhaps that's part of the new law.

Full text of the law. Link to quote may not be work-safe, Google her.

[tags: 2257, obscenity, trib.net]