The Little Adult Webmaster

[sarettah]

Originally posted by Dravyk@Aug 3 2004, 01:02 AM
Especially when they are meant to hurt people, and with Asscroft (no typo) that is the case, and we are the people.

The irony is this is the "justice department". More and more that is becoming an oxymoron just like "military intelligence".

As far as I am concerned (and this is only imho of course)

This is a prelude to a full frontal assault on the web side of the industry. Kind of like taking out the mob by going after them for tax evasion.

The punishment for non compliance with 2257 is pretty steep:

"Whoever violates this section shall be imprisoned for not more than 2 years, and fined in accordance with the provisions of this title, or both. Whoever violates this section after having been convicted of a violation punishable under this section shall be imprisoned for any period of years not more than 5 years but not less than 2 years, and fined in accordance with the provisions of this title, or both"

Although the law has been in place for a loooonng time now, it has mainly been interpreted as webmasters being "distributors" or secondary producers thereby putting the record keeping requirements squarely on the primary producer.

The changes spell out clearly that webmasters are scondary producers and have to have the records. For sure.

I believe that this was spelled out so that they could scare a shitload of people out of business and then have the tool they need to go after anyone else.

Basically an "If we can't get them for obsenity, lets get them for poor paperwork" type idea.