Attorney and FSC board member Reed Lee briefed the membership on the recent 11th Circuit decision in U.S. vs. Williams, which struck down the pandering provision of the Protect Act.
Although that case involved a man convicted of child pornography possession, Lee explained that the case was important to the adult industry for two reasons, namely that it directly followed the Supreme Court ruling in Ashcroft vs. FSC, which held that only material made with actual minors would be unprotected under the constitution. Second, Lee said that he believed the analysis used by the legal panel in the Williams case might be a harbinger of positive outcomes in the current 2257 litigation.
Tom Hymes, communications director for the FSC spoke generally about his trip to the ICANN meeting in New Zealand and his hope that the FSC’s presence signaled to some at ICANN that .XXX did not have full industry support. Hymes also urged the crowd to comment about .XXX on the ICANN website, which recently re-opened a forum on the contested top-level domain.
Stephen Rohde, an attorney on the FSC Utah litigation team spoke at length on the court battle to block the Utah Child Protection Registry law. Rohde has high hopes that the FSC will win a preliminary injunction in the case. While he discussed possible 1st Amendment arguments against the Utah version of Can-Spam, Rohde conceded that perhaps the best avenues for success lay with arguments grounded in the preemption doctrine (meaning that the federal government, not the states, had sole power in this area) and the dormant commerce clause — a doctrine that prohibits states from negatively impacting interstate commerce.
Filling in for attorney and FSC Board Chairman Jeffrey Douglas, who could not make it, were Lee and FSC Executive Director Michelle Freridge. Both spoke on HR 4472, a bill that would dramatically impact the current 2257 litigation. While Lee pointed out that mainstream Hollywood producers were aware of the bill via the Motion Picture Association of America, he stressed that the real burden in both litigation and lobbying would be shouldered by the adult community.
The new bill would resurrect secondary producer liability and flies in the face of a body of favorable court decisions, according to Lee. However, as to companies grappling with 2257 concerns, Lee stressed the importance of hiring counsel for advice, rather than relying exclusively on FSC opinions.