It’s tough to be a webcam girl

by Tessa , Live Webcam Girl

I mentioned before that I’m mostly a non-conformist. More specifically, I mean I don’t conform to society’s rules, but I do obey the law as best I can. Sure, I occassionally go over the speed limit and don’t always wear my seat belt, and I occasionally smoke something other than Salems. It’s not that I really give a fuck about some of these laws - I’d love to stop paying taxes, for example - but I have no desire to go to prison or get hit with huge fines.

Live Amateur Girl Webcam Laws Get Tougher

That said, there are new, stricter laws concerning adult websites. The laws used to be more vague and amateur personal sites really didn’t have a lot of rules to follow. As long as you (and anyone you showed on your site) were of age, the only thing you really had to worry about was making sure your webhost was okay with adult materials. It was always kind of understood that if you did any bondage or S&M stuff, you couldn’t do any sexual stuff at the same time. In other words, I couldn’t be bound and gagged, and then getting fucked by a guy at the same time. Getting fucked was okay, and being bound and gagged was okay, but no combo platters.

Then the US government decided to get tough on porn.

They’ve enacted new laws and the laws are strict as hell. It’s all gone back and forth for a couple of years, with legal wrangling here and there, but as it stands now, the law is the law, and if you’re an American doing any kind of adult website, you are required to follow those laws. It’s complicated and requires a lot of reading. If you’re smart, you’ve hired an attorney to assist you, but some of this stuff is open to interpretation and two attorneys may say two different things.

It affects every single person who runs a website with any adult content, if they’re in the US.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an expert on these laws. I’ve only tried to keep up with them so I stay legal and don’t end up fined or worse…in prison.

What does this mean for webcam girls? Well, it’s the record keeping that is killer. You can still do all the fucking and sucking you want, but you’ve got to keep insane records. What’s worse is that every time you do a webcam show, you have to record it, file it, make records, and keep copies.

It used to be that you just turned on the fucking cam, guys called, you had fun and that was that. Now, to stay within the law, we have to record every fucking camshow. It not only takes some of the spontaneity out of doing cam, it turns it into a hassle, and it takes up a lot of space on your hard drive if you cam all day long.

But, like taxes, it’s the law. And like taxes, there are a lot of people out there just skipping it, saying fuck it. And there are, I’m sure, a number of girls out there who don’t even know because they just do their thing and don’t talk with others and don’t read adult news sites.

Maybe by the time the feds decide to start inspecting records of cam girls, the law will have evolved into something less restrictive, or injunctions will have put a stop to some aspects of it, or a new administration will decide to put those resources into hunting for terrorists instead of inspecting the bedrooms of webcam girls.

I’m being a bit dramatic, because as far as I know, no webcam girl or Niteflirt girl or amateur site owner has been inspected. The inspections have started, but they’ve been limited to porn video producers and mega huge professional porn sites. That doesn’t mean, though, that tomorrow they won’t put me or others on their inspection list.

I’ve consulted an attorney to help me figure out what I need to do to stay compliant, and it’s a bigger headache than income taxes. And income taxes when you’re self employed are a HUGE headache. No 1040A for us.

We can continue to hope things will change, but for now, the choice is to get and stay legal or run the risk of a bad outcome. I hate being a conformist, but I’d hate prison life even more. And a ten grand fine just isn’t in my budget right now.

So what does it all mean? The bottom line is that it’s scared some girls away from doing cam altogether. There’s just too much you have to do to stay legal. I actually considered that myself, but I like camming too much (and I make more money, don’t kid yourself, we aren’t doing this as a social service). Therefore, you’ll see fewer girls doing cam. Fortunately, phone sex doesn’t require recording and keeping records of every call. Yet.

On the flip side of all this, it’s got to be a bonanza for girls in other countries. This is US law, and as far as I understand, does not apply in any way to Canadians, Brits, etc. I know some Canadians have decided to go complaint with US law because their sites are hosted on US servers, but I don’t think the feds are going to cross the border and inspect Canadian bedrooms.

Since I don’t keep up with laws in other countries, Canada and the UK may follow and enact similar laws. I’m clueless.

I only know what affects me, I don’t like it, but I’ve chosen to follow the law and record every fucking cam show I do. Every time I stick something in my ass…..it’s now in a video file on my computer, tagged and labeled, cross referenced four thousand times and every t is crossed.

It all blows, but then so do taxes.