Starting a new venture is exciting and even a little scary. The
anticipation is even more intense when you know you're involved in
something that has been proven to be successful.
You who are new to the adult Internet know that you have found the one
area of Ecommerce where money has actually been made. It's easy to fill
your head with visions of yacht parties populated by gorgeous models and
slobbering admirers. You've probably spent your millions in your
fantasies in countless ways and countless times.
Hold your horses there cowboy. Before you go riding off onto the trail
with your herd of busty porn stars, you better stop off at the sheriff's
to make sure that marshals won't be hunting you down and stringing you
up in the middle of the night.
Have you taken the proper steps to make sure your adult site is in
compliance with the law? Sure, you may have licensed content from
providers and are applying it to your pages within their terms of
service, but the law doesn't just stop with legally obtained content.
Sure, I think porn is good and you think porn is good, but a hell of a
lot of other people in this world think porn is evil and many of them
work in law enforcement. Before you go riding off into the sunset, you
might want to read this little checklist of things you can do to protect
yourself from the long arm of the law:
Warning Page:
A warning page is a special page you put at the front of your adult
site, usually this page would be your index.html page. On a warning page
you would post a bit of text that warns potential visitors that your
site contains adult content and is forbidden to minors or those who live
in areas where viewing adult content is illegal. Sure, your site may
have a domain name that explicitly infers porn but nevertheless, a
warning page tell surfers and law enforcement types that you only want
adult aged visitors within the realm of your web.
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Parental Control Filter Links:
NetNanny, Cybersitter and ICRA are all companies that offer parents a
way to protect their children from viewing content that is beyond their
age. You as an adult webmaster, would visit the sites of these companies
and add your page to their database of websites. In turn the filtering
software the companies provide would disallow its users to accidentally
open up your adult page in a keyword search or direct type in. If you
sign up with these filters, you would then add direct links to their
sites on your warning page. That allows parents a chance to go to the
filters companies and download their software and it once again tells
the powers that be you are and honorable adult webmaster.
US Federal Law 18 USC 2257 Compliance:
This law basically concerns the adult webmaster when it comes to the age
of the models contained within their sites. You have to be able to prove
that your models are of legal age even if you did not make your content.
If you've purchased your content from a legitimate adult provider, one
of the things they will give you along with your images or videos is a
statement of compliance. They have to have on file their model's ID and
signatures on release forms. If you have a site that features teen
content, then you are probably dealing with models that look underage
but are not. You are strongly advised to make sure you get content that
has legal aged models not just to protect you, but to protect younger
girls or boys from the devastating exploitation of child porn.
There other things you should check into to make sure you are operating
within the limits of the law, but the above mentioned are pretty much
mandatory. You should also make sure you live in an area where it's
legal to even run a porn site. Some places will allow softcore but not
hardcore. Some places make it illegal to sell marital aids such as
vibrators within their borders. You should also make sure your are
hosted at a server that is adult friendly and that you are incorporating
sponsor programs that allow their product to be sold from adult
websites.
Wearing the outfit doesn't make you a cowboy and believing in the
goodness of sex doesn't make your site legal. Cozy Academy suggests you
mosey on over to our Legal Primer lessons and Legal Help guide to learn a little
about the laws affecting adult pages. You can also check out our
Resources area in the Webmasters section to learn more.
Sure, you want to be a cowboy or a porn mogul, who doesn't? Just make
sure that before you set off on your journey into this exciting
territory, you won't have to be looking over your shoulder for an angry
posse.