5210, is part of a United States Act of Congress which places record-keeping requirements on the producers of actual, sexually explicit materials.
75 (also known as the 2257 regulations), specifies record-keeping requirements for those wishing to produce sexually explicit media, and imposes criminal penalties for failure to comply.
The case was against Mantra Films, Inc., based in Santa Monica, California, and its sister company MRA Holdings (both owned by Joe Francis), who are the originators of the Girls Gone Wild video series.
[5] However, Francis and the company entered guilty pleas on three counts of failing to keep the required records and seven labeling violations for its series of DVDs and videos before U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak, agreeing to pay $2.1 million in fines and restitution.
Also in 2006, the FBI, under the direction of United States attorney general John Ashcroft, began checking the 2257 records of several pornography production companies.
[6] The final regulations implementing Congressional amendments to 2257, termed 2257A, were updated December 18, 2008 and went into effect on the same day as the inauguration of Barack Obama.
On that same day, January 20, 2009, President Obama, through Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, requested by memorandum that heads of departments allow for review by the incoming administration of all regulations not then final.
The same plaintiffs challenged the amended statute and accompanying regulations, but the new version was upheld by American Library Association v. Reno, 33 F.3d 78 (D.C. Cir.
1998), the Tenth Circuit rejected the regulation's distinction between primary and secondary producers and entirely exempted from the record-keeping requirements those who merely distribute or those whose activity "does not involve hiring, contracting for, managing, or otherwise arranging for the participation of the performers depicted."
In June 2005, the Free Speech Coalition (an advocacy group for the adult entertainment industry) sued the Department of Justice to enjoin the regulations until they could obtain a court hearing.
[10] On March 30, 2007, District Court Judge Walker Miller issued an interim ruling, which dismissed some causes of action and allowed others from the initial 2005 case to proceed in light of the Walsh Act amendments.
[11] The actual trial phase had not yet begun.On October 23, 2007, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the federal record-keeping statute unconstitutional, holding that the law is overly broad and facially invalid.
[12] The Sixth Circuit subsequently reheard the case en banc and issued an opinion on February 20, 2009, upholding the constitutionality of the record-keeping requirements, albeit with some dissents.