Will New Porn Law Kill Vertical RSS Communities?

2257 regulations are set to go into effect June 23rd that require web sites to keep physical records on all models, specifically their ages, that they feature. While this is meant to combat child porn, the industry itself is very concerned – something as simple as record keeping might destroy many porn outlets on the web and raids might start to take place over record keeping.

If I understand correctly, sites that feature RSS aggregators like Philly Future could be at risk. Publishers of other sites post pictures in their feeds. We feature feeds direct from Flickr as well.

If Philly Future is required to keep track of the ages of every picture we display from feed publishers we are going to have to disallow pictures – we just don’t have the resources for keeping records on every picture shown. More at he American Constitution Society for Law and Policy weblog.

2 thoughts on “Will New Porn Law Kill Vertical RSS Communities?

  1. What does “feature” mean? If PF continued to have the photos posted by other people in the Wire would that be considered featuring it? It’s not on the front page [which can easliy be monitored].

  2. You’re right – we don’t allow the picture flow to simply go to the homepage without editorial review – however – The Wire page is open to all and directly accessable – without warning – one click away.

    I don’t know if we are at risk – but that we could be. Research needs to be done. Chilling stuff.

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