Adult Content Liability?

[JCphotog]

Hi.  I value all of your efforts and appreciate the attention.  I see several people have posted about separating adult content.  How about record keeping? Are there any thoughts about developing a feature to deal with record keeping?

Recently I've become aware of a changes in US law related to Sexual Content and Image hosting. 
Read about it here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002257----000-.html

I'm curious about the impact on those who run galleries where we allow users to upload images.  I've spoken to a few lawyers who have varying opinions about our responsibilities. 

Our installation of CPG allows local artists to upload examples of their work.  A few artists (just a few) choose to include nude images or use portions of them.  I'm curious about our responsibilities in that situation.  This may impact many US CPG users.

Further are we responsible for record keeping of images that we didn't create?

[Joachim Müller]

That legal issue can hardly be "fought" with technology if you ask me: if you allow uploads of others, enable upload approval by the admin to be sure that no illegal content shows on your site. Require your uploaders to provide the needed data with their uploads. If they don't provide it, don't approve their uploads.
I can't see what feature we possibly could implement to help you with your legal issues in particular countries. If you have actual suggestions for technological details that might help, please elaborate.

If it helps: I come from Germany, where we don't have stricter laws on sexual content, but stricter laws on recording all changes and revisions (e.g. when archiving emails). The laws are there, but nobody is enforcing them, because the authorities have no idea how to accomplish that. The fact that the lawyers are not sure about the impact of those laws shows imo that we can not react yet, as nobody knows what exactly needs to be done to respect the changed legal aspects.

[JCphotog]

You do make a good point.  This is a tough issue to fight with technology.  I would love it if a CPG gallery owner / lawyer could step in and tell us what we need to do.  Requiring approval would work, but I see users complaining about the hassle in the delay.  You're right.  There are a lot of unanswered questions about these laws.  There's no precedent set on how they will be handled.  The impact is unknown.

My reaction, I've removed all of my personal figurative art off the web.  I don't want to deal with the hassle.  Maybe in the future.

For technology, maybe allowing images in the comments section, so a user could upload a copy of their model release.  Then for security issues, only allowing this specific set of comments to a specific user group, ie the admins and the feds.

Any other thoughts?

I'm really hopping there's a US lawyer on this forum who could shed some light on what we need to do either with operating procedure or a technological solution.

[phill104]

It doesn't take long to google the answers.

http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/adult

I am so glad I don't live in the States.

[JCphotog]

Yeah, there are a lot of sites with comments on the subject. 
Search engines are our friends.

It will be quite interesting to see the impact this has on art. 

I would like some discussion related specifically to our situation where we aren't the creator of the images.

[armus]

In addition to this, it is better to not consult with "a few lawyers" a good lawyer do not tell anything if it is not in his experting are though... but directly consult a lawyer agency whom are expert on adult market, there are many agencies just workingfor adult material sincluding copyrights ect,.
I know an agency where you pay only $100/m. and you can ask anything about your web-site's adult material questions but i can not remember nor i can be able to find its post now.

[JCphotog]

There's never a single expert in the field, it's valuable to view different opinions.  On the other hand, yes, I do agree that it's quite important to speak with someone who works in our field of interest.  From what I've been told by expert's, there's no precedent set, so they are all trying to figure out what the court's response will be.