Internet Pornography - Legal Status

Legal Status

The Internet is an international network and there are currently no international laws regulating pornography; each country deals with Internet pornography differently. Generally, in the United States, if the act depicted in the pornographic content is legal in the jurisdiction that it is being distributed from then the distributor of such content would not be in violation of the law regardless of whether it is accessible in countries where it is illegal. This does not apply to those who access the pornography, however, as they could still be prosecuted under local laws in their country. Due to enforcement problems in anti-pornography laws over the Internet, countries that prohibit or heavily restrict access to pornography have taken other approaches to limit access by their citizens, such as employing content filters.

Many activists and politicians have expressed concern over the easy availability of Internet pornography, especially to minors. This has led to a variety of attempts to restrict children's access to Internet pornography such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the United States. Some companies use an Adult Verification System (AVS) to deny access to pornography by minors. However, most Adult Verification Systems charge fees that are substantially higher than the actual costs of any verification they do (for example, in excess of $10/month) and are really part of a revenue collection scheme where sites encourage users to sign up for an AVS system, and get a percentage of the proceeds in return.

In response to concerns with regard to children accessing age-inappropriate content, the adult industry, through the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP), began a self-labeling initiative called the Restricted to Adults label (RTA). This label is recognized by many web filtering products and is entirely free to use.

Most employers have distinct policies against the accessing of any kind of online pornographic material from company computers, in addition to which some have also installed comprehensive filters and logging software in their local computer networks.

One area of Internet pornography that has been the target of the strongest efforts at curtailment is child pornography. Because of this, most Internet pornography websites based in the U.S. have a notice on their front page that they comply with 18 USC Section 2257, which requires the keeping of records regarding the age of the people depicted in photographs, along with displaying the Name of the company record keeper. Some site operators outside the U.S. have begun to include this compliance statement on their websites as well.

On April 8, 2008 Evil Angel and its owner John Stagliano were charged in federal court with multiple counts of obscenity. One count was for, "using an interactive computer service to display an obscene movie trailer in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age."