Did you know that COPA officially died on January 21, 2009? That's right. The US Supreme Court finally put a stake in the heart of a bad law that's been plaguing adult webmasters since it was signed into law in 1998. Do you even know what the Child Online Protection Act was? Are you paying attention to the laws and the social attitudes of those that want to put you in jail? What are you paying attention to besides porn and money?
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"Tubes sites? We didn't think of that. We're exploiting it now but we certainly don't own the concept. Blogs? The adult web ignored blogs for far too long and now, there are still adult webmasters playing catch up." |
Hey, it's cool. Porn and money are pretty damned relative to the adult webmaster. I'm not slamming you. Keep making the porn. Keep making the money. All I'm asking is that you set aside a little of your time to consider the hostile outside forces that want to end you and your career. As well, I am hoping you're watching out for new technologies and trends that affect the Internet as a whole. It may be true that the adult Internet paved the way for the mainstream Internet but these days, we're following the mainstreamer's lead and that's not good.
Tubes sites? We didn't think of that. We're exploiting it now but we certainly don't own the concept. Blogs? The adult web ignored blogs for far too long and now, there are still adult webmasters playing catch up.
How about that 2257 stuff? That drama is far from over. You might have missed this but the FEDS threw a new wrench in our works when they passed The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006 - thereby making all of us Primary Producers of porn, again. That law is being challenged in the courts but you never know when moralists in Congress will slip another new piece of legislation that sounds wonderful to the populace because it's "for the kids".
How about the laws in your state or your town? Ten years ago, five years ago, it was fun to laugh at law enforcement because they were Luddites. These days, even small towns have a Cyber Crimes department. And never forget, there's always some politician or anti-porn group just itching to go after the sex industry. Is your Mayor or Governor cranking up a re-election campaign? We pornographers are historical targets when it comes to getting out the vote.
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When was the last time you pulled yourself off of your keyboard and stepped outside to take an overview of the political climate of the city in which you live? Federal laws are important but local law is more important to you. If some District Attorney wants to make an example out of you, how will you defend yourself? Can you afford to defend yourself? Are you living in a region of the country that's toxic for adult webmasters?
How about that broadband? Did you know that broadband reach has far surpassed 50% in the US? Are your sites still static? Are you still operating under the mistaken assumption that most surfers are on dialup? How about your design in reference to browsers? Are you still building sites for IE users and hang the rest? Did you know that Firefox is now 4 points away from 50% usage among surfers? What about your trusty HTML? Do you continue create layouts of tables and basic tags? I know it isn't fun to learn new languages and code but seriously, if you're making old-fashioned webpages, you're losing out on the advantages of PHP database applications, CSS and RSS feeds.
Adult Webmasters are my favorite people. They're smart, they're funny and they're as open-minded as any others I know. Just the same, I'm aware how absorbed we can become in the daily business of building, submitting and marketing porn pages. It's hard to take our eyes off our monitors long enough to eat properly, much less get schooled in the ways of the world outside our workstations.
I don't need to tell you what your core concerns are. You want to sell porn and make money. That involves hard work and long hours. But please, I beg of you, don't neglect the other stuff I've written about. I worry about you. I don't want you to lose everything you've gained because you failed to see the forest for the trees.