Quote Originally Posted by John
Thanks all for not beating me up over begin to wordy, and thanks for your kind words.

to graphicsbytia, I'm not all that sure it is actually "within their rights" Yet another complexity of the law I suppose.

On Friday afternoon I spoke with two attorneys. One is my local guy, who admittedly is not an expert on adult internet law but has a lot of experience with the DOJ. And in his view...I'm paraphrasing here ...the DOJ would more likely than not view the refusal as an attempt to circumvent responsibilities of the primary under the law thusly giving them probable cause for a warrant on that primary.

The other I spoke with is an internet law specialists. She commented that the DOJ already made a point to reference their view on a primary who refuses to release the records to a secondary.

It's on page 29614 of the posting at the Federal Register under "Burdensomeness"

"Three commenters commented that the record-shifting requirements
under Sec. Sec. 75.2(a) and (b) are impermissibly burdensome.
According to the commenters, primary producers would resist turning
over records that contain trade secrets, such as the identities of
performers. The Department declines to adopt these comments. The D.C.
Circuit Court clearly held in American Library Ass'n v. Reno that the
record-keeping requirements were not unconstitutionally burdensome.
Any primary producer who fails to release the records to a secondary
producer is simply in violation of the regulations and may not use the
excuse that the records contain alleged trade secrets to avoid
compliance."

In effort to find three attorneys who agree (or almost agree), and since I have had prior communications with Larry Walters and J. D. Obenberger, I emailed both to get their take on this. I'm waiting to hear back from them.... I'm sure they are both VERY busy with all this 2257 stuff so it got to give them some time to write back.

And if they agree then what....I suppose that opens up the option of filing legal papers / complaints against those primaries whose refusal most negatively effected the business of secondary.

What a shame....what a miss....a nightmare for all.

John
I hope they see this thread John.. that may light a fire under them, maybe you should send them a link so they can make things right with you.

good luck I hope you get your docs