http://blogs.enotes.com/decision-blog/…

In a major constitutional ruling, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit has struck down a federal statute that requires producers of sexually explicit images to keep records on the names and birth dates of the persons who appear in the images. The producers must make the records available for government inspection and place a compliance notice on the image that includes a street address for where the records can be found.

These record-keeping provisions, which are part of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, are intended to ensure that pornographers are not using minors and make it easy to weed out legal images from illegal child pornography. But the photographers, publishers, filmmakers, and website operators who are subject to the record-keeping requirements claimed that they were too onerous, and that they violated the First Amendment.

This is good news. This statute wasn’t as bad as the DOJ wanting a list of every porn star but it’s death gives hope that similar ridiculous laws will be shot down. It’d be really entertaining if there was an organization which waited for these types of rulings and attempted to get those who supported the bill impeached for breaking their oath.