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Legendary Lars, Adultriendfinder - Do They Worry About Child Porn?

4/28/05

Legendary Lars' operation cams.com and Adultfriendfinder.com (AFF) have merged.

AFF is about the biggest advertiser in porn. They have a text ad on my site that sets them back about $5:00 a week: "F--- Sexy Singles! Find Hot Sex, Casual Sex and More!"

I bet they are AVN's biggest advertiser and XBiz's biggest advertiser.

Neither AFF nor Legendary Lars are allowed to join ASACP, the anti-child porn organization.

AFF is like match.com but with explicit photos. AFF doesn't have 2257 paperwork for these photos. Anyone can post a nude picture, including 14-year olds. You sign up with AFF, and put up a picture of yourself having sex and it is there for the world to see.

Cams.com is another legally risky site, say critics, who tell me they believe that 14-year old girls could be making $300 a night playing with themselves in front of a camera and getting money through their PayPal account.

I took up these concerns by telephone Thursday afternoon with Ira Rothken, who is an attorney for AFF and Cams.com.

Ira: "I have represented Friendfinder since the inception of that company. I have represented Steamray since Lars' involvement with this industry. I can assure you that tremendous steps have been taken historically and passionately, whenever it came to anybody's attention that there was any type of material that was inappropriate on those sites, to come down.

"Every single person who has ever appeared through Steamray's cams, we have full and total 2257 compliance. We have pictures identification, licenses, for every single person who has performed."

Luke: "It appears from the site that anyone can sign up and start streaming on there."

Ira: "No. To stream through Steamray, you have to fill out a contract and a model release. You have to say that you are over the age of 18 and that you warrant that everything you are doing is lawful in the jurisdiction that you are doing it. Furthermore, as a precondition for anyone to be able to stream ever, we have to have full 2257 documentation, which includes government-issued picture identification. That applies wherever you are located in the world.

"It's a slow process. It's a tremendous barrier to entry -- the enormous effort [to put together] those materials. If you don't put together those materials, you don't stream. We have a database that tracks all that. We have back-ups located in other states in case that database ever gets corrupted and we have to provide that to a governmental entity."

Luke: "Wouldn't it be easy to send in fake documentation?"

Ira: "That's something that would plague the industry as a whole. I don't know a way around that unless we get DNA samples. The legal requirement isn't perfection because nobody could ever be perfect. I can tell you that we make a good-faith attempt. It is possible for someone to commit fraud on us but I can't imagine that being any rational-legal standard. If it is, then it is statistically likely that one person has committed such fraud against every major adult company in the world. But we don't know of anyone, and if we did, we would immediately remove their ability to stream."

Luke: "What about AFF? Can't anyone just put up naked pictures without 2257 [paperwork]?"

Ira: "With AFF, we have contractual warranties from every person who posts that they are over 18 and they not committing any unlawful acts. For many, but not all, we have other types of age verification mechanisms.

"We have looked at the case law and for dating services, they are different than, say, Streamray. Dating services are not creating a performance. It's not like creating an adult video.

"It would make a dating site for adults difficult to maintain if it was a condition before proceeding that there had to be 2257 compliance.

"It's something we're looking at. If it ever came to our attention that that was a requirement for entry to a dating site, where we are an enabling device, we would do it."

Digipimp posts on GFY: "If asking for id's and pics isn't age verification enough to model then what is? maybe you think they should travel to each girls home, arrange a meeting with her parents, go get a copy or her birth certificate, take her to a doctor, get her fingerprinted, do a dna test, a retina scan, go verify she has a webcam, get her id, get her passport, go to the DMV with her to ask someone if they took the picture."

Da Burglar writes on XPT:

CAN o' WORMS that is completely under-reported. Go to any "public" sites, like Yahoo Chat or games. Suppose you have Yahoo Messenger, and u get an IM from some 16 year old girl trapped in her home the middle of Oregon surrounded by Giant redwood trees 20 miles from her High school, let alone the nearest "fun" place or friends house.

You start talking, she turns on the cam, takes off her clothes and starts fiddling and diddling with a empty Corona Longneck, and of course, you watch... NOW if you DON'T know she is under 18, then so far you haven't done anything legally reprehensible. But if at some point during the chatting, she TELLS you "I am 16", well . . . .turn it off man....cuz if the folks or someone finds out (like checking the logs), or if the girl decides to go psychotic and says "Some Man Made me Stick things up in my ...... boo hoo hoo"...you could remotely be in trouble. Not likely, but its one of those things that if u do get caught, life can effectively be over dude. Its a hush hush thing here in the Silly Valley....I have a friend who is one of 73 LEGAL Advisers to Yahoo. Its messed....what people, including teens do and see in their own home should be private if it involves un-solicited or spontaneous private actions.

Joan Irvine, director of ASACP, replies to my inquiries:

They are a Supporter, not an Approved Member since based on advice from our pro bona attorney Larry Walters and the ASACP Advisory Council, the Best Practices require adult dating sites to adhere to 2257 Disclaimers to become an Approved Member.

The Supporter level does not have this requirement, although these sites are still visually reviewed before being accepted as Sponsors and regularly monitored via the spidering for unacceptable terms.

From multiple discussions with a number of the top adult dating sites including Adult Friend Finder, they all review photos before posting; they verify age, some by photo ID, another uses a service that checks public data bases. If someone is a Sponsor, Approved Member or a Supporter (and have all the sites entered into the ASACP database), when a surfer clicks on the ASACP button on that site, the ASACP systems verifies their status.

Inthestars writes on GFY: "On ifriends.com, there were a few incidents in the past where people slipped through. I remember in '99 there was a case where a 14 year old girl was forced to participate in sex acts with a grown man and solo for Ifriends.com webcam shows."