from www.thedomains.com – As part of the AVN show in Las Vegas, there was a Legal Seminar held yesterday on issues of import to the adult community.
According to AVN.com, One of the speakers Paul Cambria [pictured], who is one of the leading 1st amendment attorneys in the country, who has represented such diverse clients as Larry Flynt, DMX. and Marilyn Manson, spoke about the Escorts.com case and sites that carry ads for adult services.
“”Cambria spoke specifically of the recent bust of Escorts.com, whose offices were raided by over 100 Philadelphia police and FBI agents in October, although no federal indictments have yet been issued, and Cambria’s own sources have indicated that the Justice Department has no interest in the case.””
“It’s really new [legal] ground,” Cambria said of the raid, observing that courts around the country have held that advertisements posted on a host website are merely “republished” material, with the host having no responsibility for the ads’ contents.””
“”However, he noted, the FBI has taken the position that allowing such ads to be posted on the sites amounts to “facilitating prostitution,” and that the web host could be charged with criminal facilitation and even money laundering—both very serious federal felonies.””
So while Mr. Cambria had some words of encouragement for National A-1, (although certainly this is just based on what he has heard and nothing official has been released on this case) he had cautionary words for sites that carry ads which the government might deem the advertising of prostitution and although most domainers do not operate adult sites most use landing pages on which ads appear and therefore any adult domain owner should pay attention to the ads that appear on its domains.