Gov't attack on adult social networking freedoms!

The following is a partial repost from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

The federal government is proposing regulations that would effectively kill adult social-networking sites. This is being done under the guise of fighting child pornography. You have until September 10 to object to these regulations. It’s easy to do and essential. A sample e-mail comment is at the bottom of this page. Please forward this information to your friends!
What’s the Deal?

The Department of Justice is proposing regulations to implement a federal law designed to combat child pornography, known as Section 2257. The law was first enacted in 1998 and was amended in 2006 and significantly expanded to include regulation of the Internet.

While many of the regulations pertain to companies that produce adult entertainment magazines and videos (and are extremely burdensome), they would also affect anyone who uses an adult social-networking site. Here’s how:

* The regulations would require the people running a site to get and maintain personal information from every user (that means you) who posts a “sexually explicit” photo, including your photo ID (driver’s license, passport, or military ID).
* The regulations would allow the Attorney General to conduct warrantless searches at will on the sites’ records, including your personal information.
* There are few safeguards over what the FBI can do with the information it obtains.
* If a site operator fails to comply with the regulations, he or she would face a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
* For more detailed information on Sec. 2257, go to the task force fact sheet.

Obviously, none of this has anything to do with child pornography. Instead, it is a blatant attempt to end the ability of consenting adults to use adult social-networking sites to meet other people for sex. Obviously, if these regulations go into effect, they will kill this industry.
What You Can Do

The Department of Justice has published these proposed regulations and the public has until September 10 to comment on them.

We need to generate thousands of comments objecting to the proposed regulations – and it’s easy to do via e-mail. Just follow the instructions below...
____________________

A sample letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Justice is provided on the bottom of this link. The fact that the Justice Dept. can't handle increasing the prison population will hopefully save us from this grand save-the-children idea. Jeeez, what next? You can always join Playboy's new social networking site (college only) that surprisingly shows little skin.

Podcast interviews: The stars of ISSTDR '07

I'm a little tardy with this one, but in early August Eric Whitney, ISIS' associate director, had the pleasure of going to the ISSTDR (International Society for STD Research) conference this year in Seattle. In this podcast interview Eric highlights the Sex::Tech conference (coming soon in January '08) as well as our tried and true, Inspot. Yay Eric.

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Here are the stellar voices of Doug Richardson from the Denver Public Health Department and Rachel Kachur from the CDC discussing the early days of the STD and Internet Center of Excellence (a Sex::Tech sponsor) and the future of mobile prevention tools.

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In this podcast, Don Clark, director of NCSD, bring us up to speed with national efforts to integrate HIV/STD/TB/Hep, STD funding fights in Washington and the state of the internet guidelines project of which two chapters may be released this fall at the annual NCSD meeting in New Orleans.

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The robot reel in

Coming back to work after a long vacation is never easy. So, while I haven't done many useful things in the last day or so, my co-workers certainly have. Check out one of our new youth oriented Sex::Tech Conference flyers.

Behold the LoveBot:
We are currently accepting abstracts and registration is still in the "early bird" zone.