Adult Web Hosting: Legalities

Adult web hosting is not without its inherent risks. In fact, probably the most significant issue one should consider before embarking on an adult hosting enterprise is the law. It's crucial you be aware of the possibilities before deciding to get into the adult web hosting business.

Laws on adult web hosting vary from locality to locality, which is a big problem with an internet enterprise that, by its very nature, is global. The most you, as webmaster can do, is make every good faith effort, with your adult hosting site, to stay within the confines of the law. This means avoiding content that can be considered obscene or harmful to minors - quite a tall undertaking when you consider the diverse and disparate reactions people have to pornography.

What is even meant by obscene? Quite a large number of people consider adult web hosting in general obscene. They find any form of pornography objectionable. And while that's not what's meant by "obscene" as used above, if an angry parent is determined to press charges against you because his/her 12-year-old son snuck a peek at the girl on girl action on your website, you'll still need the protection of a good lawyer to get you off the hook, and even then there's no guarantee.

So, the word "obscene" in the context of adult hosting refers to things like child pornography, bestiality, rape, and incest. Now you'll see plenty of sites claiming that they contain scenes of "rape" and "incest". 99 times out of 100, these are fake, play-acted scenes. If they are real, the webmaster is signing up for a whole world of trouble. Don't you follow their lead just to get the extra flow of cash from any of those niche markets.

There is a popular test for determining, according to the law, the obscenity of an adult hosting site (or a magazine, etc.). According to this test, called the "Miller Test", if your product (your site) when taken as a whole is considered without any artistic, literary, scientific, or cultural merit according to the mores of the local community, it is considered obscene. By including non-adult content in your adult web hosting site (just like adult magazines that have articles on politics, cars, etc.), you significantly reduce your risk of having an obscenity charge stick.

For all webmasters, of adult hosting sites or otherwise, legal statute 18 U.S.C. § 2257 states that records must be kept of documents proving legal age verification for every model depicted on the site in a sexual explicit manner. You must hire no models under the age of 18, nor can you hire any models over the age of 18 if you can't obtain copies for your records of documents proving such. This also means you should use no stock footage either without having first verified the age of any models depicted. Just because a jpeg appears on one adult website, do not assume that its webmasters did their due diligence.

The best way to start an adult hosting website is with your own personal lawyer on board to walk you through the sticky legal steps. While a lawyer can help you avoid the legal pitfalls and reduce your risk of prosecution, there are no guarantees in the adult web hosting industry and you need to be aware of that from the beginning.

You will need to have on your site, a "Warning Page", a start page that site visitors come to first before getting to view any of your adult content. The Warning Page can be as simple as a disclaimer against a plain background stating that your site contains adult material and should not be viewed by anyone under 21 years of age. It should also mention that if, perchance, viewing such material is illegal in the visitor's area, then they must not enter your site.

The Warning Page on your adult hosting site does not relieve you of the responsibility of keeping minors from viewing your adult material. It merely shows a good faith effort on your part to keep them away. Nonetheless, you could still get prosecuted, and your Warning Page alone would make for an extremely weak defense.

You must also use some sort of Age Verification System (AVS) as a gateway for visitors to enter your adult hosting site. Though it is far from perfect, the concept behind an AVS is that if someone has a credit card in his/her name, there is a good chance that cardholder is at least over 18 years old. You see how flimsy this argument really is. Therefore, an AVS, while an absolute necessity in an adult web hosting environment, is no real protection against a minor entering your site anyway.

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