Now It Could Be Words

Posted On: 2007-04-27

Wow, another month has almost come and gone and we're coming up to a very interesting time for us all. Not only are we getting closer to the summer slowdown but we're also coming up to May 1 and that's the day we can expect to hear something about the 2257 regulations.

Whether that's good or bad for us remains to be seen but I think it will be hard for those who are representing the adult industry to obtain a positive outcome for us. It seems to me that we're going to get rolled on this one. At the same time over in New York State there's been another worrying development for this industry.

The industry has always worked on the basis that the Constitution, and the protection for free speech provided in that document, would protect us. If we couldn't advertise and provide content for advertising through the use of images there were always good old-fashioned words to fall back on. But perhaps that belief was built on somewhat shaky grounds and the ruling in a New York court could be all it takes to start the ground shaking.

While this ruling from New York's highest court has a very narrow focus on a very unpleasant criminal activity it wouldn't take much to move from that narrow focus to a broader focus that would include us.

ALBANY - Reversing earlier rulings, the state's highest court Thursday ruled prosecutors can charge someone with disseminating indecent materials to minors over the Internet even when the materials are limited to words, not pictures.

In a 5-2 decision, the Court of Appeals said that the crucial word at the heart of the case, 'depict,' does not only mean images. A lower court had dismissed the charges against Jeffrey Kozlow, who was arrested as part of a Westchester County sting operation in 2004, because his e-mails contained graphic language but no images.

The high court said, in effect, the lower court was being too technical.

'Nowhere in the history of the statute do we find evidence of such narrow intent,' Judge Eugene Pigott Jr. wrote for the majority. 'On the contrary, it is clear that the legislators intended to criminalize the activities of adults who engage minors in sexually infused communication.

'Moreover, the Legislature was surely aware that a sexually explicit text may be used as a means of seduction just as effectively as a sexual image,' Pigott continued. 'They could not have thought that this process was limited to the transmission of pornographic images. Indeed, the logic of communication dictates just the opposite - that images alone would not enable the sender to entice a minor to a meeting.'

 Now you may see that as being too narrow a focus to affect us and you may think that the right to free speech will never be taken away from us. But then there was the case recently of the person who was charged and tried after she wrote some stories for her paysite that were so extreme and revolting that most people in this industry thought she deserved jail time.

So how long will it be before the written words that we produce and use are no longer protected by the Constitution? Of course, it may never happen but it certainly is something we should be considering in our future business plans.

Broadband conquers the world
That was the headline in a marketing email I received today. It was certainly eye-catching and got me interested. It seems that the latest figures - for 2006 - indicate that as many as 78% of Internet users are now on broadband connections.

If that was all you read and you were thinking of launching a new website then it would certainly encourage you to focus your efforts on delivering something for the broadband market. You might even consider turning your back on those on dial up because ... well ... there aren't that many of them according to what you might have just read in the survey.

But wait ... there's more ... and it's in the detail ... you know, the fine print down at the bottom of the neat graph and it's the detail that might slow down your rush to focus entirely on broadband users.

The survey that returned those figures didn't rely on figures provided by the Telcos and ISPs around the world. Instead it relied on users who took the time to respond to the survey and it didn't really take a snapshot of the whole world. The survey also looked at some countries differently to others. In some countries only the urban areas were surveyed - perhaps that's delivered a result that isn't quite as accurate as we might think

So it's obvious that broadband is becoming far more popular. But as for conquering the world? Maybe not just yet.