VANCOUVER, CANADA – The attorney for a Vancouver-based Sweet Entertainment Group (SEG) has asked Canada’s Privacy Commissioner to determine whether United States record-keeping laws aimed at the adult entertainment industry violate the privacy rights of Canadian performers. SEG attorney Paul Kent-Snowsell claims that American record-keeping laws offend Canadian privacy laws, and might even violate international trade agreements.”The U.S. is trying to assert its jurisdiction outside of its borders,” Kent-Snowsell said. “It impacts on the privacy, obviously, of any adult performers and the effects of the privacy acts and what a Canadian corporation may be obligated to do to comply with the U.S. regulations.”
Under 18 U.S.C. § 2257, adult companies publishing sexually explicit images in America are required to keep records that include copies of an “identification document” or “picture identification card” for each model performing explicit acts. The problems stems from the fact that most Canadian adult entertainment companies also license their content to American companies. Since the American companies, under § 2257, are required to keep the model records themselves, that means they can only legally use Canadian content if it also comes with copies of model IDs. Yet any Canadian company that supplies model IDs to other companies might be in violation of Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
And since § 2257 keeps Canadian performers from working in the United States if they don’t have a US-issued “picture identification card,” Kent-Snowsell thinks it might also violate international trade treaties.
“I know that our legislators aren’t thinking about the adult industry when they are working on free-trade agreements, but there may be something to that, under restraint of trade,” said Kent-Snowsell.
