Lee, your post is so incredibly cynical, but then I shouldn't be surprised.

So what I hear you saying is that when a respected industry attorney makes a report that he has credible evidence that child pornography is being distributed, that people should just sit on their hands and wait until a court determines if it's true? That the studio is within its rights to sit back and ignore the situation?

Obviously everyone who had the titles or ads for them and pulled them disagrees with you. Whether for ethical reasons or out of concern for legal liabilities, this is not something that ANYONE in the industry should be questioning or fucking with.

Unlike our industry, lawyers are bound by their bar membership to a very high ethical standard. Chad has, in every way, shown himself to be a person of high ethics and standards in the way he conducts his business. He told AVN that he's personally examined the birth certificate and drivers license, that the birth certificate is a state-certified copy and not a photocopy, and obviously he feels confident that these are authentic documents.

Contrast this to what Cobra has said... basically that they have some photocopies of IDs that an apparently underage 17 year old kid sent them. Notice they AREN'T saying unequvocally that Brent was 18 when the videos were made, only that he told them he was and provided some photocopies.

Who do you want to believe? Who has better credibility?

Consider the legal as well as disciplinary ramifications to Chad, let alone his client, if he were publically making untrue statements against Cobra. I for one am betting that he's way too shrewd to get sucked in to a situation like that.

Of course, no one knows all of the facts. But I don't understand why you're so keen to jump to the defense of a studio that so far has not acted at all in a way that promotes a view of our industry as responsible and responsive to legitimate issues that arise. I'm not defending Brent, and I'm not saying that Cobra is the villan.

I'm simply looking at this from a business perspective. If we give a fuck about the industry, about maintaining the self-regulation we have so far, then each of us working in the industry HAS to take responsible actions when situations like this arise.

Sure, it's easy for a producer to bury his head in the sand and hope that the accusations aren't true, but that definitely isn't the way to show the justice department that we know how to handle these situations when they arise.

In a situation like this, when you have a credible member of our industry saying that he's verified that the kid was underage, and a non-denial-denial from the other side, it seems that the benefit of the doubt should go to the person with more crediblity. If you want to put more stock in the credibility of an adult video producer who has had other issues in the past than in one of our industry's better recognized legal specialists, then I guess that's your choice.