
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991                   TAG: 9102240035
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

GROUPS ASSAIL SEX-RECORD LAW

A coalition of publishers, artists groups and the American Library Association has filed suit to challenge a new law that requires the keeping of records listing the ages and names of any models or actors used to depict sexual activity in books, film or videos.

The law, drafted by the Justice Department, was enacted by Congress last year and is to take effect Wednesday. It is intended to discourage child pornography, according to its legislative sponsors. But the plaintiffs, who sued in U.S. District Court in Washington on Friday, contended in court papers that the legislation - a revision of a law that was struck down last year - was unconstitutional and would do nothing to reduce child pornography.

Rather, they contended, it would become an onerous burden on publishers and artists who deal with sexually oriented material involving adults.

The law would require, for example, that magazines and videos state that the producers have records with the ages and identities of the models or actors shown and that they say explicitly where the records can be inspected. Failure to maintain the records would be a felony.

Ann Kappler, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said it would be onerous for a magazine to have to ascertain the identities and ages of all the models used in its pages, even those clearly in middle age or older.

Maintaining such records would also be difficult for a free-lance photographer who sold such pictures to a magazine, she said, and the law is unclear as to which of them, the magazine or the photographer, would be responsible for keeping the records.

Kappler said that the way the law was written suggested that "the Justice Department and Congress were trying to discourage the production and distribution of sex-oriented images of adults, an activity that is protected by the Constitution."

Dennis Burke, counsel to Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., one of the law's sponsors, said the aim of the requirement was "to make producers responsible for who they're using in their films, for example."

He said the new law had been drafted to overcome problems that the earlier legislation encountered last year, when U.S. District Judge George Revercomb ruled that it violated the Constitution's free-speech guarantee.

Burke said that unlike the old law, the new one did not make a presumption that someone who failed to maintain the records was guilty of child pornography. He said it also made clear that distributors and retailers were not responsible for maintaining the records, only a producer or publisher.

But Kappler said that the vast majority of child pornography was produced by an underground network that would be unaffected by the law.

Gordon Conable, an official with the American Library Association in Chicago, said, "The law creates so many burdensome restrictions that it will halt the production and distribution of mainstream books, magazines, motion pictures, photographs and medical texts."

A hearing on the suit is scheduled Monday, two days before the law is to take effect.

by CNB