2257 and Live Cam Sites

I posted this under the 2257 thread, but in fear of it being overlooked, here is my post in here. I know this affects more people than just me. I can think of a handful of US sites that use Emulive.

Okay, here's MY problem. As you all may or may not know, I run a few live cam sites. Here is some dialogue regarding my portion of the business:

Thirty-five commenters also commented that the requirement to keep
copies of each image is impossible to comply with due to the vast
amount of data involved in storing digital images, especially, e.g.,
producers of live streaming video. The Department declines to adopt
these comments. Maintaining one copy of each publication, production,
or depiction is critical to making the inspection process meaningful.
Commercial publishers and producers can reasonably be expected to
comply. Furthermore, modern computer and disk storage capacities make
digital archiving and back-up relatively inexpensive and space-
efficient. Finally, reviewing identification records in a vacuum would
be meaningless without being able to cross-reference the depictions,
and having the depictions on hand is necessary to determine whether in
fact age-verification files are being maintained for each performer in
a given depiction.

Now, we use Emulive to run our streams and our models are located remotely, meaning that they are literally thousands of miles from me, the server or even each other and broadcast from their homes. Currently, the Emulive Server 4 software does not allow recording of the video feeds from the server. Each Producer (cam software) console on a models computer is able to record, but if it is in record mode, the video will not connect to the server or broadcast. So other than setting up a camcorder pointed at a computer screen during live shows, how can I comply with this and record each and every show as it broadcasts?

Rocky

Hi Rocky,

I'm in a similar situation, but I am able to save streams with our windows media server. Now to archive each and every one of those streaming shows forever, in a second "record keeping" location is a bit silly. I'll keep a sample for each guy, I guess, and then let 'em justify any fines or whatever.

If its not technically possible or practical for you to save the streaming shows, then it would appear to me to be unreasonable to have them all for every performer. If they were at least 18 when they appeared in one streaming show, I'd say they were 18 at any point afterwards. Right?

The goal of the law is to prevent the production and distribution of C*P. If you have proof of age for your cam guys, and jump through most of their hoops, then they would be hard pressed to justify any kind of penalties as long as you are complying with the intent of the regulations, limited to the technical restrictions of emulive.

Of course I'm not an attorney, and I'm sure someone will bring this subject up as the deadline draws near. I'm sure even emulive will try to address it, because if it effects all emulive adult site users, then they would essentially have to go out of business.

I have a feeling this is going to be one of the major records keeping points that the FSC bring up in their injunction.

Will defintely be interesting to see how many of these new regs play out over the coming months.

Hopefully this is going to end up like COPA did.

Regards,

Lee

There's another problem with this part of the law.

What happens if you find out one of your models used a fake I.D. and was underage when you recorded the stream? Under the current law, you could simply destroy all known copies in every format of the the underage model and not be held accountable. But the revised 2257 requires you to maintain a copy of what would then be considered child pornography.

Could you be brought up on charges under current CP law if you don't destroy the copy? Or, if you do destroy the copy, would DOJ come after you for being out of compliance? And if you do maintain a copy, the new 2257 would, in effect, compell you to be a witness against yourself by forcing you to gather and maintain evidence of criminal activity against yourself. Wouldn't this violate our Fifth Amendment rights?

Any law that would require a person to break another law is unacceptable.

These revisions completely miss the point of 2257, which is to protect minors from exploitation in the adult industry. But in cases where you have an actual underage performer, that person would be exposed to further harm because of some of the new requirements.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lee

Hopefully this is going to end up like COPA did.

---

I'll drink to that! This one seems to have more problems that COPA, I don't think COPA ever went into effect because it was tied up in litigation before it got overturned.

i didn't see any fines mentioned in 2257 - only jailtime.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MWCren

Hi Rocky,

I'm in a similar situation, but I am able to save streams with our windows media server. Now to archive each and every one of those streaming shows forever, in a second "record keeping" location is a bit silly. I'll keep a sample for each guy, I guess, and then let 'em justify any fines or whatever.

If its not technically possible or practical for you to save the streaming shows, then it would appear to me to be unreasonable to have them all for every performer. If they were at least 18 when they appeared in one streaming show, I'd say they were 18 at any point afterwards. Right?

The goal of the law is to prevent the production and distribution of C*P. If you have proof of age for your cam guys, and jump through most of their hoops, then they would be hard pressed to justify any kind of penalties as long as you are complying with the intent of the regulations, limited to the technical restrictions of emulive.

Of course I'm not an attorney, and I'm sure someone will bring this subject up as the deadline draws near. I'm sure even emulive will try to address it, because if it effects all emulive adult site users, then they would essentially have to go out of business.

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After going through this, it seems as though only one show per performer would have to be recorded, dted and kept for 7 years:

Thirty-two commenters commented that the requirement that a copy of
each depiction be maintained would be unduly burdensome, leading to
vast stocks of magazines and videotapes, and even storage of computer
images would be unmanageable and prohibitive for small businesses.
Thirty-five commenters also commented that the requirement to keep
copies of each image is impossible to comply with due to the vast
amount of data involved in storing digital images, especially, e.g.,
producers of live streaming video. The Department declines to adopt
these comments. Maintaining one copy of each publication, production,
or depiction is critical to making the inspection process meaningful.
Commercial publishers and producers can reasonably be expected to
comply. Furthermore, modern computer and disk storage capacities make
digital archiving and back-up relatively inexpensive and space-
efficient. Finally, reviewing identification records in a vacuum would
be meaningless without being able to cross-reference the depictions,
and having the depictions on hand is necessary to determine whether in
fact age-verification files are being maintained for each performer in
a given depiction. In addition, without the depictions, inspectors
could not confirm that each book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape
or other matter has affixed to it a statement describing the location
of the records, as required by the existing regulations. Exceptions
cannot be made for producers of digital depictions, and indeed, it is
likely less onerous to store digital images than paper images. Children
are just as easily exploited in live streaming video as in any other
visual medium. Therefore, an exception cannot be made for producers of
live streaming video.

Can someone tell me if I am wrong? I have two civil rights attorneys calling me back today, as well as an entertainment attorney. Hopefully they will help shed some light on this.

Rocky

Rocky, I think waiting for your legal advice is the best at this point.

As I look at the portion of the rule you quoted, it seems that they expect us to keep each and every streaming show ever made viewable on a site, and that show has to have the 2257 information somehow affixed to it. LOL..are they fuckin nuts?

1 cam guy can do 3 shows a week, the same solo guy, over and over...what a stupid crock. If the streaming show is not recorded, or not recordable, then how the hell can they even prove the person was ever on a live cam to begin with. Just keep your age verification records and do what you are able to do.

They can haul my ass to jail, and I'll be happy to be a test case on this stupid rule. "Over reaching" is a good phrase to ask your attorneys about. I don't think anyone really knows what all of this means yet. Because of all the questions and dumb components, I think someone will get a TRO pretty easily.

The more I think about the keeping of every streaming video ever displayed on a website, to prove no under age persons ever appeared is amazingly similar to "guilty until proven innocent". The assumption of the rule is that you have under age models on your site, and you are forced to prove otherwise. There has to be some kind of "just cause" before you are assumed to be a producer of under age material.

I'll do my record keeping, within reason, and make sure everyone on my site is of legal age. Their justification for that part of the rule is simply wrong.

Try this analogy. If I sell auto parts, its possible that I could be re-selling stolen parts from stripped cars. Do auto parts stores have to keep every invoice from every supplier for 10 years, cross referenced to daily sales receipts, to prove that they have never recieved stolen parts and re-sold them?

Another reason a TRO or complete rewrite of the new rules.

If someone has the intent of distributing under age material, how stupid would they be to keep copies of it. This rule is targeting the law-abiding site owners, without any possible way of catching the bad guys.

MWCren, the entire point of the new 2257 regs is to get some of us out of the business, and to be able to tell the right wing christians "we put adult websites out of business".

maybe you'd win in court, but i can see where you might not. considering we're talking about 5 years of your life, plus court time, and you can store the i.d. on external harddrives, it's worth keeping all your copies.

btw, did you send a comment during the comment period?

Ummm.... 10 streaming shows a week, 60Mb each, 52 weeks a year for 10 years... the math on that one boggles the mind. Since its the same guys, over and over and over, keeping them all is just dumb. And that is just one part of the cam site. I'll keep some of each person, but no way I will keep all of them.

I didn't file a comment, I didn't even know a revision/tightening of the rules was in the works.

So, now I dig in my heels and put my faith in the common sense that should prevail. If not, I get free medical care and room and board for 5 years.

One of my very trusted tech guys said to try Camtasia or Hypercam for capturing streaming video from the web, instead of recording it from the source.

What we are going to do is use this software to record an entire day's worth of shows, then break them up into individual shows using Pinnacle or Windows Movie Maker or whichever video editing software we can use, then burn them to CD and label them with a date of production, model stage name, model real name and URL they were being accessed from. Then put the cd in our cabinet and store it for 7 years. It's going to take about 5000-6000 cd's per year. Thank god I have a storage unit.

Rocky

(PS: Word has it that Emulive is going to address this and add a record feature to their server in order for US companies to comply with the law)

I'd like to know what places such as iFriends are going to do. At this very moment there are over 2,000 models live.

My guess is that ifriends won't survive in that case. I don't know the management or owners so I can't make a fair judgement, but 2,000 models is a lot to cover!

On another note, we used the Camtasia software to record our live feeds tonight as a test with amazing success. I think we found a way to archive every single show and be 100% compliant with the new regulations.

Rocky

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeachBoi_Rocky

One of my very trusted tech guys said to try Camtasia

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Yea I was gonna suggest that but I see someone else just did kewl.
Camtasia is great it will record your screen or a selected area of your
screen (the streaming video) live as it happens.
http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/default.asp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curiousbunny

Yea I was gonna suggest that but I see someone else just did kewl.
Camtasia is great it will record your screen or a selected area of your
screen (the streaming video) live as it happens.
http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/default.asp

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I have a question, it will record what is on your screen, but only 1 cam window appears at a time, how will you record the other streaming cam windows? If you have 7 models, and you are looking at model Joe, how will you record model Matt? It records what is on your screen, but you can only have 1 cam window open at a time most likely?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeachBoi_Rocky

My guess is that ifriends won't survive in that case. I don't know the management or owners so I can't make a fair judgement, but 2,000 models is a lot to cover!

On another note, we used the Camtasia software to record our live feeds tonight as a test with amazing success. I think we found a way to archive every single show and be 100% compliant with the new regulations.

Rocky

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Rocky,

Let's get together and figure this one out, we have the same sort of setup, where we contract our models out and have them spread through out the country. Email me if you can Jacob@ParrishStanley.com. Thank you.

You need to record the show as it happens, not all cams simultaneously.

For example, I have 4 cam sites, so I need 4 computers recording each site as the shows are live. THen, I need to break up the recordings into individual shows, burn them to cd and label them with the cross reference information in order to calatlogue them properly.

It's a huge pain in the ass, but it isn't impossible.

If I am not mistaken, you have one cam site with 7 cams. So you need to record each show and only need one version of the software. You don't need to record 24 hours a day. Only when the shows are live so that there is proof on file of your performers being over 18.

I think I have this part of it all figured out. We started recording shows last night and it wasn't that difficult to create the records needed. It was just time consuming.

Rocky

Hi Rocky,

Ok so you only have to record the show, not 24x7, some people have told me 24x7. Odd it would just be the shows, sense they are streaming the entire time. If someone underage is their reason for doing this, then the underage person could be on cam at any time, not just during scheduled shows. I have 2 sites LiveTwinksCam and BlackShots. Thanks for the info.

If I am not mistaken, the law is questioning the performers on your site who perform sexual acts, not people who are not performing a sexual act on cam, such as minors walking through the living room.

Rocky

PS: call Jory about this, too. He said if he gets enough feedback, he will make a feature on the Emulive Server to archive broadcasts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BeachBoi_Rocky

Thirty-five commenters also commented that the requirement to keep
copies of each image is impossible to comply with due to the vast
amount of data involved in storing digital images, especially, e.g.,
producers of live streaming video. The Department declines to adopt
these comments. Maintaining one copy of each publication, production,
or depiction is critical to making the inspection process meaningful.


Rocky

---

To me, that says you need to mainatin one copy of each depiction, meaning when your models are scheduled to do shows.

This does not pertain to non-pornographic material, such as an underage cousin visiting your cam model. Unless they are naked on cam and performing a sexual act or even interacting with your chatters, I wouldn't worry.

I handle it a different way: I make it mandatory for all models to have a release and ID on file for any guest that may appear on cam. If the guest refuses to sign or is underage, the cam is allowed to be turned away during their visit. This makes it easier for the models and myself to avoid anybody being caught on cam when they shouldn't be.

But back to the matter at hand: the way this is worded, it seems as though archiving and indexing a copy of each live show would be sufficient record keeping. Remember, the reason behind the extensive record keeping (if you have read all of the new regulations) is to make it easier for Federal Agents to locate an instance of supposed child pornography and isolate it to a certain day or time. They would not wish to sift through thousands of hours of video to find one infraction. They would want to walk in, look at the index file that you will be required to keep of each show, go to the file cabinet or wherever you store the information, pull the file and pull the model's ID and release to verify age. Hours of work in 5 minutes, basically.

So, yeah, I would say that recording each show as opposed to recording 24/7 is what you need to do.

Rocky

(PS: if you can record 24/7 and have the storage capacity to archive all of these for 7 years... god bless you! That's 61,320 hours of video!)

Thanks Rocky. That is why I was freaking out! 7 years of 24x7 cams, I was like no way! Great, we have figured out a way to do this now and will be compliant by June 23rd.

:P

Standard disclaimers (IANAL, etc)... but it seems to me that if you have live, 24 hour streaming cams of your models, you'll prolly want to record *everything* to cover your ass.

What happens if, for example, a model decides to get frisky with a bf or trick-of-the-hour in his bedroom, where the streaming cam happens to be on and streaming? It may not be a scheduled "show" per se, but it still is streaming content being provided to your viewers/sites/members, and if something in it is shady (friend of the model comes over who looks underage, for example) and some customer (or DOJ mole) happens to save said stream, and comes to you, and you can't produce the content and the IDs that go with it... as i understand it, instant jail time.

The other concern for us, as a website owner that uses plugin streams, is whether we are considered a secondary producer of cam content that is delivered to our members as a plugin, and therefore, whether we are required to keep 2257 records for all of the cam models. If so, then we will have to have copies not only of releases and IDs, but also of the streaming content.

I'm surprosed that JD Obenberger or Larry Walters or somebody hasn't scheduled a web seminar on this yet. I'd definitely pay a couple hundred bucks for a half-day web-based seminar with several of these guys giving their best interpretation of the regs and how to implement them.

Chip,

Just by the wording in the new regulations, we only need to record the depiction or publication. Since we have scheudled shows, that is what needs to be covered. Other 24/7 cam sites that rely on random acts of sexuality with no schedule (and I can think of a few) woud be subject to recording 24/7, but as I stated above: if a model brings somebody on camera, they need a release and an ID... otherwise, we turn that cam away until that person is no longer in the building. It has worked for us for 3 years with no infractions.

Recording the feeds 24/7 is excessive record keeping and would actually impair an investigation if someone were to be investigated. Like I was saying eariler: these new regs are to make the DOJ's job easier to find violators of the law. They don't want to sift through hours upon hours and hours of an empty room to find what they are looking for.

Rocky