Decency Laws and Video Production

Since the obscenity standards have been lessened since the 1950s, several definitive cases define what is specifically not legal. Child porn is never legal, and that was codified by New York v. Ferber (1982), which says child porn is not a form of expression, and Osborne v. Ohio (1990), which upheld laws against the possession of underage pornography.

With this in mind, you always want to make sure you have adult actors who are aged 18 and older, and have documentation and signed consent forms from each worker. If you’re in doubt or someone’s IDs are questionable, do not proceed with that person. You can always find more adult actors but getting out of prison or lawsuits is a whole different matter.

Sex Trafficking and Porn

People who don’t get consent and force and coerce aren’t making porn, they’re sex trafficking, according to the feds. Girls Do Porn is an example of a large-scale internet porn operation that was shut down due to claims of fraudulent and coercive techniques used to get women for porn videos. The website was active from 2009 to 2020, when six people involved were charged with counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion in November 2019.

Max Hardcore is another example of a porn entrepreneur who spent time in jail. The acts in his videos often went to extreme places and portrayed women acting as underage girls, with his urinating on his female co-stars, fisting them, or inserting specula into their anuses or vaginas and widening them to extreme degrees.

In 2007, Max and his company were indicted by the United States Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section with five counts of transporting obscene matter by use of an interactive computer service and five counts of mailing obscene matter, relating to five movies showing fisting, urination, and vomiting. Despite wearing a cowboy hat, the federal government found that his doing gross stuff is obscene. Again, check with your lawyer before you do stuff even close to this because Max went to prison and you might too.

How to Host Porn Legally Online

Contact your web host for advice on what they host. They don't want to go to jail either and usually have good guidelines. At the end of the day, you should also check with an attorney, as this isn't legal advice.