revjim.net

Ladies and Gentlemen:

One-by-one our government is taking away our freedoms and liberties in the name of homeland security, reduced alcoholism, the war on drugs and other projects. In most cases, we've sat by and watched the freedoms slip away. But now, under the false pretense that they are protecting our children, our government and the new "Obscenity Prosecution Task Force" is "taking away our pornography":http://web.morons.org/article.jsp?sectionid=1&id=6351. Recent reevaluations of US law ("18 USC 2257″:http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=2257) written to keep minors out of pornography has made it nearly impossible for any consenting adult to view pornography on the Internet.

In short, these new evaluations require all websites to hold very detailed and well indexed records of the name, address, and all aliases of all persons appearing nude on any website. With this in place, all anonymous sites like ratemyboobs.com, mobog.com, and tangotime.com will either shut themselves down or run the risk of being "caught". Further more, it is now much more difficult for honest-to-goodness professional porn markers to distribute their work online as the stipulations for record keeping are hard to maintain and the business must keep it doors open to the government at any time for evaluation and records checks.

Luckily, at least for now, posting a picture of yourself on your own website (provided you are of age — I'm not sure what the stipulations are about minors publishing nude photos of themselves) is still legal. Or, at least, it would be fairly trivial for you to produce a record of yourself if it were required of you. But, under the right circumstances, our great government can now search your home for those records and will be free to prosecute you for other offenses that it happens to find evidence of while searching your home. So, if you happen to be an individual that does anything else the government might take offense to (which, in Texas, in some cases, includes simply owning a dildo, or practicing oral sex) posting nude pictures of yourself might not be a good idea any more.

Photographers, like myself, who happen to have a few nude images in their portfolios are now burdened with retroactively locating, and documenting all models that appear nude on their site. Or, you know, I could just take it all down to save me from the work. Of course, that's exactly what our government wants.

This is just one more little step. There are "many, many more federal statutes":http://my.execpc.com/~xxxlaw/federalstatutes.htm just waiting to be reinterpreted in a way that affects you. Isn't it time that we as consenting, mature adults determined what is and is not obscene for ourselves?

I'm as guilty as you are. I've sat and watched them take away my freedoms one-by-one. I willingly live in a state that refuses to allow me to purchase alcohol on Sunday morning because… well.. that's bad… or something. Thankfully, this matter is being "fought in court":http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67991,00.html?tw=rss.TOP by people who care more about your freedoms than you do — mostly, of course, because they require these freedoms to make money.

This evaluation is taking place in the Justice Department, mostly by officials that were appointed by leaders that we've elected in the past. In other words, in most cases we didn't actually elect them. Therefore, we can't exactly just not reelect them next time. But, we can let our men and women of congress know that we will not tolerate our freedoms being taken away and that, if they don't actively pursue the reinstatement our rights, then we will not actively pursue their reelection. We can let our judges and court officials know this as well. We can write our mayors, and our governors asking for more freedom in the interpretation provided at thier respective levels.

At the very least, if you must sit by and watch your freedoms go down the drain, take a few pictures of yourself and "send them to me":http://revjim.net/page/distractions while you still can. I'll protect my right to look at them and your right to send them with everything I have in me.