Lawrence G. Walters
Trending Legal Issues With Dating Sites
While modern adult content producers struggle with issues like piracy and waning profitability, the online dating market continues to grow in popularity. Although the business model has been around for years, widespread accessibility to webcams and high speed broadband connections has allowed dating sites to become richly populated with homegrown erotic content. The insatiable human desire to connect, flirt, find romance, or just plain “hook up,” has continued to drive the popularity of both adult and mainstream online dating sites. Dating site operators encounter many of the same legal concerns as typical adult content producers, such as obscenity, 18 U.S.C, § 2257 compliance, age verification, and child exploitation concerns, but they must also wrestle with a host of independent legal issues that are unique to their industry.
Dangerous Intersections
Could a webcam model also be a paid escort and an active member of a “hookup” dating site? Naturally, the answer is “yes,” but at what costs? Blurring the lines between these adult-themed user categories creates an uncharted hybrid of legal exposure, for both, the individual model/escort and those operating the associated websites. However, more and more frequently, we’re seeing this sort of crossover in the live webcam, escort and casual dating industries.
The Gold Standard
The U.S. does not control the Internet. This basic precept should be common knowledge by now, but since the inception of online communication, American lawmakers have attempted to impose a variety of legal regulations directed specifically at Internet commerce.
Mandatory Condom Law Spurs Potential Exodus
In late January, 2012, the city of Los Angeles passed a landmark law requiring all adult content producers to mandate the use of condoms by performers as a condition for obtaining a filming permit. This first-of-its-kind, mandatory condom law sent shock waves through the adult industry, and represented a huge victory for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which pushed for passage of the law by gathering a sufficient number of signatures to force the city to hold a special election on the issue. Instead of spending four million dollars on a special election, the City Council decided to pass the law on its own.
DMCA Safe-Harbor Burden is Global
Our law firm is often asked by clients, and potential clients, whether they should designate a DMCA agent for their site, and how to go about doing so. While that is an important first question to ask, particularly for any site that contains material provided by third parties, it is only the beginning of a somewhat complicated analysis leading to a determination of whether a particular website can avail itself of the “safe harbor” protections against copyright infringement claims, as provided by federal law. Regardless of the geographic location of the website involved, compliance with U.S. DMCA safe harbor obligations is becoming essential for global online service providers.
Trouble in Polk County
Last month, days after Kimberly Kupps was arrested on 13 obscenity counts for content distributed over the Internet, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd declared war on the manufacturing and distribution of porn in his county.