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Get set for the Bush regime's impending crackdown on the porn industry and internet sex.

Starting June 23rd, new US Justice Department record-keeping rules come into effect so complex, burdensome, and illogical that few will follow them exactly. And that's just the idea: using their main weapon-- obscenity law-- the feds have little luck stanching the sex industry, which dwarfs Hollywood dollar-wise and has found in the net its natural medium. Under the new rules, the feds can invoke technicalities and throw porn-makers, porn sellers, and webmasters purveying legally-unimpeachable content into prison for years.

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Unveiled May 24th, the rules cover sexually-explicit images on the web available to surfers in the US. They require that a site hosting such images have on file, for each person shown, a copy of an approved government-issue photo-ID-- the level of documentation needed to, say, buy a plane ticket and make it through airport security at O'Hare. That fundamental demand-- burdensome though it be-- is nestled in a thicket of additional provisions as complicated as the instructions to the 1040 tax form.

The record-keeping rules apply to every model on every DVD cover on a porn-sellers catalog page, to every hard cock or spread buttocks in the personals profiles on a cruising site. Moreover, in apparent violation of previous court precedents, the rules cover not just "primary producers"-- the company that shot a photo or film-- but distributors and resellers all the way down the line. Messy or missing paperwork is a felony carrying five or ten years in prison for each violation.

Since on the internet anyone can be their own pornographer, the rules have an impact far beyond the porn industry. Already gay internet hookup sites have been warning members to censor photos in their personal profiles, submit documentation, or are simply erasing pictures showing penetration, erect cocks, or "lascivious exhibition of the genitals"-- the angels-on-pinheads threshold of explicitness above the record-keeping demands come into effect.

Cut red tape-- except...

Ironically, what the Christian Right is burnishing as its silver bullet against internet sex isn't based on any new law. Rather, the new rules just extend-- by Justice-Department fiat-- regulations following from a 1988 statute requiring documentation on every model in commercial pornographic imagery. The address where the records are available has to be printed in every magazine and inserted into every film.

The push for new regs came with passage of the 2003 Protect Act-- a draconian bill that was to American sex law what the Patriot Act was to the Bill of Rights. Among the Protect Act's manifold provisions was one requiring the Justice Department to report to Congress on its inspections of pornmakers' model-ID records. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had to report that there hadn't been any inspections. The reason, Ashcroft claimed, grasping for a fig leaf, was that the regulations were outdated, written before the dawn of the commercial internet.

But in extending the regulations to the net, the feds are pretending they don't know how the medium works. The new rules require that records list every URL on which a given model's image appears. Given that a single image can appear on a potentially infinite number of pages that are served up on-the-fly, the demand could be theoretically impossible to meet.

For streaming video sites, which often feature numerous performers on different "channels," the requirement for continuous recording of all transmissions means storing hundreds of terabytes of data for up to seven years.

The rules even go so far as to specify the number of hours a business involved in sexually-explicit imagery must be staffed and available for unannounced visits by federal agents-- 40 hours a week-- unless the businesses files with the Justice Department prior notice of its hours, which must number no less than 20.

The regulations don't cover noncommericial entities-- such as libraries and archives-- which may have holdings of porn: odd, some lawyers say, because the underlying law makes no such distinction.

Sitting ducks?

Gay hookup sites so far seem to be responding cautiously. "We ask you to remove any photos that show 'cum' or any type of anal penetration into a rectum-- fingers or dildos," says a notice posted June 9th on a site catering to bears. "'You can still be as naked as you wish just don't have anyone in the photo with you' is a safe rule of thumb."

A major gay personals site is telling customers that it will not remove explicit photos, but requests people who've posted them to fax in copies of their driver's licenses or passports.

Resistance in the face of censorship is always admirable, and with thousands of sex sites out there, it's a reasonable bet any given business can afford to sit back and see how things unfold. But counter-measures such as these hardly begin to satisfy the new rules. Copies of IDs are not acceptable-- businesses must inspect originals and personally copy them. And case law has determined that "lascivious exhibition of the genitals" covers everything from crotch-shots in tight underwear to a photo of a nude person sporting a come-hither grin. By the logic of the rules, it's hard to see how anyone in the US will be able to post explicit pictures of themselves to a commercial site ever again.

"In the immediate future, you're going to be seeing inspections and arrests, not because of 'illegal' content, but because [the producers] don't have the records, they never had the records, or they're trying to be cutesy," civil-liberties attorney J.D. Obenberger told Adult Video News. "Maybe the DOJ [Department of Justice] will proceed gently, but I don't really think they have any reason to."

Attorneys with the Free Speech Coalition, a porn business group, are planning to challenge the rules in court, but everyone expects inspections and raids to go ahead no matter what.

Prosecuting legal sex

The record-keeping rules hang a Damocletion sword above any business that puts sexually explicit images on the internet. The rules show the feds craftily effecting an end-run around the Constitution, and its broad protections for sexually-explicit speech.

The major obscenity prosecution of Bush's first term was launched in August 2003 against Extreme Associates, a California porn video company. It was the first obscenity case against a video producer in more than ten years. But the case is failing, with a federal judge ruling in January that the obscenity law prosecutors used is unconstitutional. (The feds have appealed.)

Such difficulties for the Justice Department show why the new record-keeping rules are such a powerful means of censorship. Why go through the trouble of an obscenity trial, when by finding a filing error, prosecutors can prove Endangerment of (nonexistent) Children, and win a longer sentence and a sexier headline?

Since the rules apply to any website serving up images to surfers in the US, they lead to seemingly unenforceable absurdities. Will, say, Argentina really extradite a webmaster whose personals site shows pictures of eager Buenos Aires housewives spreading their legs for lonely Pampas vaqueros? Without having records on file, the Argentine would be breaking US law-- and the major international internet-law treaty requires extradition even if the underlying "crime" isn't illegal in the accused's home country.

Or maybe the regs will spawn a renaissance of nonprofit personals cooperatives, for now exempt from the rules.

No matter what, sex on the internet will continue to flourish. The purpose of the wars on terror, drugs, or porn isn't to stamp out these phenomena, with which the warmongers are always perversely intertwined. The deeper purpose is making money, grabbing power, and piling up bodies. To a certain theocratic cast of mind, a soul justly condemned to damnation is almost as rich a prize as a soul saved. It's the mindset that now dominates American politics, and makes our bulging prisons-- Attica to Guantanamo-- feel like victories in themselves. For the further extension of the grip of America's anti-sex theocrats, June 23rd is a red-letter day.