Making A Porn Site Legal Guide

Making adult content and distributing it online are two separate issues. Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States and has had relative legal approval since the 1970s when obscenity laws were challenged in several landmark rulings. The Supreme Court established that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment in 1957. They defined obscene as "utterly without redeeming social importance." Since then, what is obscene has been changing. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court left it to local municipalities to define it using a three-part test (Miller v. California 1973). However, in the 1990s, the Internet made these prohibitions on porn distribution relatively moot. Congress attempted to limit porn on the Internet in 1996's Communications Decency Act, but that was found to be unconstitutional.

Communications Decency Act (CDA) criminalized the dissemination over computer networks of obscene or indecent material to children, and it was ruled unconstitutional under the First Amendment in 1997. Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) of 1996, and key parts of this were overturned but several were upheld. The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998 was then passed as a response to these setbacks. It too faced the same fate as it was eventually overturned. That said, having any adult videos with minors under age 18 can land you in jail, so you definitely want to have proof of age for each of your adult actors.