PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA – AdultFriendFinder.com, the leading social network site for people seeing intimate relationships, has offered a $10,000 matching grant to the Free Speech Coalition, in addition to its sustaining membership, to help overturn a new provision of the U.S. code governing record keeping for sexually explicit content used in magazines, films and the Internet.

“A handful of lawmakers succeeded in slipping a draconian provision into the 2257 law that goes way beyond what is acceptable in a free society,” said AdultFriendFinder marketing director Legendary Lars. “The only organization actively fighting this provision is the Free Speech Coalition and we think they deserve support.”

Legendary Lars said AdultFriendFinder.com and its parent company, Various, Inc., would assist in a fund-raising effort being mounted by FSC on the web site www.gfy.com. “Anyone concerned with first amendment rights and keeping the government out of our bedrooms should consider a contribution to help FSC in their 2257 battle, and we’ll match donations up to $10,000,” he said.

Diane Duke, Executive Director of the FSC, said the organization had successfully challenged a provision of the original law, 18 U.S.C. § 2257, which required so-called secondary producers to acquire and maintain records of every performer in every sexually explicit image that a secondary producer used.

“Unwilling to accept defeat, a handful of Congressmen added amendments to 2257 in the Crime Bill passed last year aimed at correcting the flaws that were the basis of the FCS victory over the original law,” Ms. Duke said. “Sometime this year, the Department of Justice will issue final regulations implementing the new changes to 2257, including requirements that ‘secondary producers’ acquire and maintain records, as well as be subject to inspection by the FBI. Complying with the anticipated changes in the law would cost millions of dollars in additional staffing, filing and computer resources, apart from the cost of defending prosecutions. We will challenge these changes to the law but we need the industry’s help,” she noted.

Ms. Duke says the AdultFriendFinder.com matching grant will be helpful in the organization’s attempt “to prevent the implementation of the new and worsened 2257.”