The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recently stepped up raids of porn studios in the San Fernando Valley, saying it wants to ensure that children are not being sexually exploited.
About a dozen porn production facilities in pornography hot spots such as Van Nuys and Chatsworth have been taken by surprise in the last three months by a barrage of federal agents at their doors.
The probes come on the heels of a May 2005 change in the regulations that require producers to take two forms of government-issued identification from performers and keep them on file indefinitely. Those records must be referred to on the labels of all videos and DVDs sold. Violations are federal felonies and can carry a prison sentence.
The Justice Department has prosecuted only one company to date under the new law, said Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the department. In September, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire, Joe Francis, pleaded guilty to two felonies, and his production company pleaded guilty to 10 additional felony counts.
Industry leaders doubt that the FBI will find many other violators. Jeffrey J. Douglas, a criminal defense attorney and the chairman of the Free Speech Coalition, an industry trade organization, estimates that there have been only about a dozen occurrences of minors working in the industry in the last 25 years.
Public policy experts wonder whether the raids are the best use of taxpayer money. "The FBI has limited what they investigate since 9/11, so moving into this area does raise the question of resources," said Athan G. Theoharis, a professor emeritus of history at Marquette University who has written extensively on the FBI. "Is this at the expense of investigating the Enrons or the WorldComs that have far more effect on the lives of American citizens?"
Theoharis said the crackdown on pornography hearkened back to the bureau's early days, when J. Edgar Hoover boosted the FBI's reputation with a high-profile campaign of prosecution against pornographers and prostitutes.
"It was sort of a PR move at the time to burnish their image and it reflected American sensitivities," he said.
The current crackdown may not unearth the biggest violators, according to industry executives. The worst offenders of child pornography, they say, are not the well-established producers the FBI has targeted but the underground, fly-by-night operations that by all accounts escape examination.
