How Are Porn Sites Not Illegal?

[Isabelle]

... how is 99% of what you see on various porn sites NOT illegal prostitution?

1. Prostitution: I call a guy up and ask him to come to my house so that I can have sex with him and for this I will pay him $250.

2. Porn Site: I call a guy up and ask him to come to my house so that I can take pictures while having sex with him and for this I will pay him $250 and possibly publish the results on-line for the world to see.

Apparently, the only difference is the presence of the camera or do I remove the illegality if I at least PROMISE to publish the results? The same holds true for the production of adult films. What is the defining issue here that makes one of these activities illegal and the other legal?

[Otto]

It's the same reason that performing a sex scene in a movie isn't illegal. Many of the things shown in sex scenes in mainstream movies (hand on breast, mouth on breast, etc.) are legally defined as "sexual contact" in many jurisdictions and no one would suggest that, say, Michael Biehn should be arrested for kissing Linda Hamilton's nipple in Terminator. The people in porn films are not being paid for having sex. They are being paid for acting in a movie or posing for a photographer. The movie/photograph happens to involve having sex, but it's still a job of acting/modeling and not an exchange of sex for money.

As to where that line is drawn legally, I don't know, but IMHO any slack there can be needs to be given to the pornographer on First Amendment grounds.

I seem to recall hearing of case law on this from California but I don't recall the specifics. I'm sure a real lawyer will be along in a moment with his hand on his...citation.

[Isabelle]

I could have sex with you OTTO and it would not be illegal. I could pay you for your time and expenses to come visit me and it would not be illegal. I could have sex with you during your visit and it would not be illegal (as long as I take pictures anyway). In fact, there are so many ways for me to pay you for something, get 30 minutes alone with you, have sex, and it still not be illegal. Frankly, I'm amazed that women are ever arrested and charged with prostitution.

So what's the defining difference? Man gets an erection makes it illegal?

In fact, I submit that prostitution is already legal, it's just the morons that get arrested for it. So what IS prostitution? One person selling some personal service to another?

[MrTuffPaws]

Well Isabelle, you hit on the interesting notion that prostitution should not be illegal.

In reality, the prostitutes are rarely ever arrested. The johns get fined and then released to deal with their families. Consider it a money making revenue for the prostitutes and the local government.

John pays up front, act starts, cops move in and bust john, then john gets fined by gov. Wash, repeat, wipe hands on pants. A way to tax the feral needs of men.

[handy]

" 1. Prostitution: I call a guy up and ask him to come to my house so that I can have sex with him and for this I will pay him $250."

This topic comes up alot. To make a legal porn film you need a permit. There are only two places in the USA you can get a permit. (At least that's what I remember). Amazon.com has a few books on how people can make legal porn films, ya know, 'How to be a porn Director'....

Of course, alot of those porn sites are probably in foreign countries too.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally posted by handy
To make a legal porn film you need a permit. There are only two places in the USA you can get a permit. (At least that's what I remember). Can we get a cite for this, please? 'Cause it sounds like absolute BS to me.

I seem to remember a little document in the USA that goes "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...".

[umop ap!sdn]

I think they should legalize prostitution, and save all the trouble of defining it. It's legal in Nevada. So let's extend that nationwide - or even worldwide.

[Musicat]

I'ts legal as a local option in Nevada, I believe. Vegas and Reno have not decided to allow it.

[joshmaker]

George Carlin
I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal, fucking is legal. So why isn't it legal to sell fucking? Why should it be illegal to sell something that's legal to give away?

[Musicat]

Originally posted by handy
To make a legal porn film you need a permit. There are only two places in the USA you can get a permit. (At least that's what I remember).
Don't think so. There is a very large market out there of amateur or semi-amateur videos where some guy with a home camcorder signs up a girl and a guy and they go to a motel and make a movie. Doubtful if there are any permits involved except for a model release.

Now if you plan on doing it in the streets and frightening the horses, you probably need a badass permit. Except in the San Fernando Valley, where everybody does it.

[Sternvogel]

Originally posted by Musicat
It's legal as a local option in Nevada, I believe. Vegas and Reno have not decided to allow it.

In fact, Las Vegas officials "convinced the legislature in 1971 to pass a law prohibiting the legalization of prostitution in counties with a population above a certain threshold, ta[i]lored to apply only to Clark County", of which Las Vegas is the county seat. Even in areas where prostitution is legal, many regulations apply (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Nevada).

As Musicat mentioned, the San Fernando Valley is a hotbed (pun acknowledged) of porn filming.
Here (http://chblue.com/artman/publish/article_3029.shtml) is an article about the pending U.S. District Court case involving Lizzie Borden and Rob Black, a husband-and-wife team devoted to filling the fetishist niches that the more mainstream pornographers shy away from.

[umop ap!sdn]

I did a double take on that one! :eek:

She's obviously not the same Lizzie Borden as the one who took an axe...

What an unfortunate moniker.

[Otto]

I could have sex with you OTTO and it would not be illegal. Illegal? It would be apocalyptic!

[Isabelle]

Oh Otto wild and unrestrained? Your place or mine?
Tomorrow is my birthday, perhaps you want to give me a little gift? <eg>

[Homebrew]

I'm guessing Isabelle doesn't know about Otto's orientation.

[Isabelle]

<blushing>

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Homebrew
I'm guessing Isabelle doesn't know about Otto's orientation.

Apparently not.

[Otto]

ohgodohgodohgodwheredidIputthatbrainbleachohgodohgodohgod

If anyone needs me I'll be in the corner hugging my knees, rocking slowly back and forth and weeping.

[Isabelle]

Ok. How about we just go shopping for a birthday present? <g>

[Homebrew]

::laughs and points::

Otto was mistaken for straight! What kind of gay guy are you. ;)

[Cervaise]

Time to give back the toaster, O-man.

[Geobabe]

Originally posted by aryk29
I did a double take on that one! :eek:

She's obviously not the same Lizzie Borden as the one who took an axe...

What an unfortunate moniker. I strongly suspect that's not her real name. In fact, now that I look through the article again, it's not. Most porn stars use "stage" names rather than their real ones.

[Ferret Herder]

Originally posted by Homebrew
::laughs and points::

Otto was mistaken for straight! What kind of gay guy are you. ;)
Maybe there's a market for a new show - Queer Eye for the Queer Guy? :) Either that, or a gaydar repairman...

[handy]

"I seem to remember a little document in the USA that goes "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...".

Yeah, if you want to say 'ohohohohoh aaaaaaaaaaah!' fine, no permit needed :-)

Otherwise you have to deal with: Section 18 United States Code # 2257: The Federal Adult Disclosure and Labeling law; The Obscenity laws; (Both State and Federal) The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, The regular copyright laws; Licensing laws; Trademark laws; Laws of Publicity and Entertainment law, plus a bunch of state regulations and laws. You can look it all up if you want. I don't want to go through 45,879 porn sites to find it for ya.,

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally posted by handy
Otherwise you have to deal with: Section 18 United States Code # 2257: The Federal Adult Disclosure and Labeling law; The Obscenity laws; (Both State and Federal) The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, The regular copyright laws; Licensing laws; Trademark laws; Laws of Publicity and Entertainment law, plus a bunch of state regulations and laws. You can look it all up if you want. I don't want to go through 45,879 porn sites to find it for ya., Yes, I'm sure these, and all the other regular commercial laws, down to minimum wage & workers comp apply to porn producers. And, no, I don't expect you to look thru 45,879 porn sites.

I'd just like a cite for your original statement To make a legal porn film you need a permit. There are only two places in the USA you can get a permit.

[hlanelee]

Laws governing porn (actually most things) are left to state and municipal jurisdictions. What's legal for me may not be legal for you. I don't know where in the world you are, Isabelle. WWW means World Wide Web.

[Atrael]

Originally posted by Isabelle
Ok. How about we just go shopping for a birthday present? <g>

Given the nature of this thread, you'll probably only get offers to buy you sex toys. But happy birthday anyway.

:D

[handy]

t-bonham@scc.net, Im pretty sure that one of those (might be more than two cities now) was Hollywood but anyway, if you read the books on amazon.com they can give you the rest of the info.

[Otto]

OK, let's play the "correct handy's bullshit" game again!

deals with record-keeping requirements for people who produce sexually explicit material after November 1, 1990. It contains no provision requiring a permit of any kind to produce such material, nor does it limit in time or place the production of such material.

"The Federal Adult Disclosure and Labeling law" is the same as 18 US 2257; it's unclear whether handy is citing it as a separate reference or the same reference.

[url=http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/pIch71.html]The Obscenity laws; (Both State and Federal) (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2257.htmlSection 18 United States Code # 2257[/url) are found on the federal level in Title 18, chapter 71 of the US Code and contain no reference to permits for producing obscene material. This chapter deals with the possession, distribution, broadcast and transportation of obscene material, not the production of it. I did not check the obscenity laws of all 50 states to see if any discuss permits; perhaps handy would care to enlighten us which states have a permitting process for making obscene materials?

The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR:) appears to be silent on the subject of permits for producing pornographic material.

"The regular copyright laws; Licensing laws; Trademark laws; Laws of Publicity and Entertainment law" are so vague as to be laughably useless.

Once again, handy has babbled out complete nonsense on a topic about which he clearly knows nothing.

[handy]

"Once again, handy has babbled out complete nonsense on a topic about which he clearly knows nothing."

Me? Naw, I got the info from a website on how to do legal porno by someone who was into that, so I don't doubt it's complete nonsense Otto. You're certainly entitled to your opinion of their information. I had to put the info into my words so I wouldn't have to quote & give a link to a porno site.

[Bricker]

At least handy is in the right forum for offering his opinion. I hope he can acknowledge the correction, however, since it's not true that "To make a legal porn film you need a permit."

handy is of course entitled to continue to keep that as an opinion. But I would hope that other readers understand the opinion is not based on any particularly solid ground.

- Rick

[Otto]

Naw, I got the info from a website on how to do legal porno by someone who was into that, so I don't doubt it's complete nonsense Otto.

I don't doubt it's complete nonsense either. It's been shown to be complete nonsense.

If you don't want to post the link, email it to me; my email address is public to these boards. And it is not my "opinion" of their information. The information has been proven false by reference to the actual laws cited.

But please, feel free to explore the non-porn links I provided and supply the cites from the actual law which support your contention that To make a legal porn film you need a permit. There are only two places in the USA you can get a permit. Please provide the names of these two places, along with a link to the law which authorizes permitting and describes the permitting process. Laws are widely available on the internet and are easily accessible without clicking on even a single porn link.

Or in the alternative you could acknowledge your mistakes, admit that you were wrong and promise to stop padding your post count by posting demonstrably false, factually unsupported information which serves no purpose but to confuse people and foster the spread of ignorance.

[Otto]

In my haste to disprove yet another of handy's errors I screwed up the links so let me fix those, because I'm sure handy will be desperate to check them out...

Section 18 United States Code # 2257 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2257.html)

Federal obscenity laws (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/pIch71.html)

The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR:)

[handy]

"Section 18 United States Code # 2257

Federal obscenity laws

The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act"

So, what is your point, are you saying these don't apply to pornographic films?

If you're going to be like this:
"OK, let's play the "correct handy's bullshit" game again!"
you should respectfully take it to the Pit Otto, where it's more appropiate in my opinion.

[mske]

Originally posted by handy
"Section 18 United States Code # 2257

Federal obscenity laws

The D.M.C.A. Digital Millennium Copyright Act"

So, what is your point, are you saying these don't apply to pornographic films?

If you're going to be like this:
"OK, let's play the "correct handy's bullshit" game again!"
you should respectfully take it to the Pit Otto, where it's more appropiate in my opinion.
He has (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=214515). But we know you won't go.

[Otto]

So, what is your point, are you saying these don't apply to pornographic films?
Um, no, I'm saying that your citing them to support your claims that there are only two places in the country where you can legally make porn films and that permits are required to make porn films is incorrect.

It has been pointed out to you several times that there are more than two places in the United States where producing pornographic films is legal. It has been pointed out to you that there is no permitting process for making a pornographic film. It has been pointed out to you that the cites you list in support of your inaccurate statements do not support your inaccurate statements.

Please acknowledge your errors.

If you would like to join me in the Pit, where this has been taken, I welcome your participation.

[Isabelle]

Phoebe's sister "Ursula" made porno films in her own apartment <g>

[Bricker]

Handy:

The laws you cite all apply to porn films. They do not say that you need a permit to make a porn film, though, do they?

They also don't say anything about there being only two places to get a permit. No surprise there -- there is no such thing as a "porn film permit" required by any federal law. The laws you quote require record keeping. They protect copyrighted material. They don't require permits.

You said that a permit was required, and that there are only two places to get such a permit.

Why would you lie like that?

- Rick

[handy]

"You said that a permit was required, and that there are only two places to get such a permit.

Why would you lie like that?"

I said 'that's what I remember'. Did you read the full paragraph of what I said? I guess not. Can you prove that in no time in history that there was not two places to get a permit or that a permit was required? It seems certain people think the laws are the same all throughout history. I wouldn't want to hire them to defend me.

I might not be a lawyer & I wouldn't want to be one, but I know enough about law that they vary from area to area & time to time.

Can't we just get along without all this nitpicking?

[Bricker]

Originally posted by handy
"You said that a permit was required, and that there are only two places to get such a permit.

Why would you lie like that?"

I said 'that's what I remember'. Did you read the full paragraph of what I said? I guess not.

OK, fair enough. You did say that, and this thread is in IMHO, which is, after all, a place to offer opinions as opposed to concrete facts.

I guess my ire arose when, after a correction was offered, you didn't acknowledge that your memory might have been a bit off base.

But as you correctly point out, you did qualify your statement with "That's what I remember."


Can you prove that in no time in history that there was not two places to get a permit or that a permit was required? It seems certain people think the laws are the same all throughout history. I wouldn't want to hire them to defend me.


I assure you that if I were still practicing law, I would ascertain the time period in which the acts I was concerned with occurred, and then discover what the state of the law was at that time.

Here, there's no real reason -- other than your memory, I suppose - of presuming the discussion centers around anything but the present state of the law. What leads you, handy, to believe that the question involved some period in the distant past?

In any event, it's not incumbent on me to prove anything. Youare the one making the claim; it falls to you to prove the accuracy of your statement -- or, as you seem to be wisely doing now, withdrawing it.

Can't we just get along without all this nitpicking?

On a message board devoted to a columnist who has made a career out of exposing the Straight Dope -- nitpicking about truths great and small - I would venture to say that nitpicking will be the order of the day. An off-hand assertion isn't taken as fact -- it's rigorously checked. This is a bad place to toss out unverified "I heard somewhere that..." stories.

- Rick

[Papaveraceae]

Meow guys, Meow.

Sheesh.


As for the San Fernando Valley porn industry...:rolleyes:
Lets just say that my neighbor occasionally places little "we are filming unspecified movie at so and so address" fliers on mailboxes and fences in the area once every few months.

If I am home during the day occasionally I get to hear quite a show. It is really amusing to hear:
"uuuuhhh, uuuuuhhhh, obabyobabyuhhhhh...."
"alright, stop, what if you put your legs up over his head, that's it, now roll."
"UUuuhhhh, uuuuhhhh, yeah, baby...."

And the parties....:eeek:

[umop ap!sdn]

Originally posted by Isabelle
Phoebe's sister "Ursula" made porno films in her own apartment <g>

Are they available? :D

[International Playboy]

law enforcement sometimes try to bring up adult film producers on pandering charges. One woman I met while she was modeling at glamour photoshoots in Phoenix, Stevi Secret, was arrrested in Las Vegas on that charge. But according to this page (http://www.amazingtails.com/PornStar/SteviSecret.htm), A free speech activist, Stevi won a famous legal victory over turning pandering laws in regards to adult video production in Las Vegas in 1995.

[International Playboy]

Just found this site after posting the above, Making Porn Movies vs. Prostitution (http://www.sexwork.com/legal/pornorprostitution.html).

[International Playboy]

Oops! Probably should have put a warning with those links. Though there are no explicit images on the pages in my above posts, clicking on links featured on those pages may expose you to images you would prefer not to see.