I cleaned out my office last week. No, I didn’t get laid off. It was just that my office was a mess. There were papers all over the place. A few coffee mugs, although I use them almost exclusively for tea, not coffee.I cleaned out my office last week. No, I didn’t get laid off. It was just that my office was a mess. There were papers all over the place. A few coffee mugs, although I use them almost exclusively for tea, not coffee. A few books. Perhaps a few CDs and some scattered office supplies. But the main culprit was paper. Paper everywhere. On my desk. On my shelves. Piled on my file cabinet. Stacked under my telephone. Paper.

It took me almost two hours to clean out my office last week. I didn’t like spending the time. It was a Friday evening, and I wanted to get away from my office. I wanted to have fun. Instead I was sorting and tearing and tossing. Receipts, bills, statements, advertisements I never wanted in the first place. Someone had to corral all that paper.

On Monday morning my office looked just like a virgin – shiny and new. It felt good to be in a clean and organized office. It provided no small peace of mind to know that I had conquered the paper. I had shown it who was boss. Productivity improved.

It’s Wednesday, and like an evil galactic empire after the loss of its flagship space station, the paper has struck back. It hasn’t reached its former glory, but it’s well on its way to triumph. It’s inevitable now. I’d like to say I’ll stop it before it completely takes over, but that would be a lie. I won’t. And on Friday night I’ll be forced once again to choose between my freedom and a clean office on Monday morning.

Perhaps you think I’m just plain unorganized? Well, that’s not true. I have four file cabinets, and I use them all. I think I’m too organized. The problem is time. What I don’t have is a lot of time. The only thing in business that rivals the importance of money is the importance of time. It’s like traffic to a Web site. How do you get it without buying it? Nobody knows.

Sure, I could stop with every piece of paper that comes to my desk and make sure that it immediately finds its proper place. Every receipt. Every bill. But usually when these things show up, I’m already engaged in another activity, see. Throughout the week, I’m usually spending my time thinking about all that work I need to get done and then doing it. I’m usually engaged in a project. Am I going to stop and sort that piece of paper? Or am I going to place that sucker on the nearest stack and deal with it when the opportunity presents itself? Right. The stack.

So what’s the point here? I’m glad you asked. The problem isn’t the paper itself. If the problem were merely paper, a good book of matches and a fireplace could solve it. The problem isn’t organization or productivity, per se. The problem isn’t laziness. The problem is paperwork. Paperwork and paper are two different things. While we might blame the paper for those hours we spend cleaning and organizing our offices, the real criminal is paperwork. Too much paperwork means more time filing, tossing, tearing and stacking. Less time working, and less time relaxing.

Yet paperwork has a way of being mandatory. We could shred all of our papers, but that IRS audit wouldn’t go quite so smoothly without that paperwork. We could just toss every paper that came our way into a large bin, but that act of laziness would just end up biting us on the ass when we were made to sift through all those papers to find that one receipt or that one bill that we needed for some accounting purpose. We hate paperwork, we curse paperwork, but we yield to it obediently – or we pay the steep price of rebellion.

Now we learn that the government isn’t satisfied. It seems that somewhere in between organizing receipts, paying taxes, filing corporate paperwork and entering bank account information into QuickBooks, some of us have had the nerve to find time to make money selling pornography on the Internet. Enter the proposed changes to 18 U.S.C. §2257.

Can it be true that all Webmasters will soon be required to print out every single image that they display on their Web sites? It might be true. Can it be true that each one of these images must soon be cross-indexed in such a manner that they can be looked up by image number, the model’s real name, all of the model’s stage names and every single URL where that image is displayed? It’s a nightmare. It’s overkill. And it’s absolutely unnecessary. Unnecessary, that is, if we believe the proposed changes are really and truly in the interest of protecting children.

Now nobody has ever accused me of being an optimist. It would be a fair statement that I often question the motivations of my government – especially when the likes of Attorney General John Ashcroft are coming up with rules that affect the adult entertainment business. Call me cynical, but does this guy have our best interests in mind? Or maybe a better question is, does this guy have fairness in mind? Any chance of an ulterior motive?

It occurs to me that more paperwork is a great way to decrease the profitability of this industry – or any industry. For every hour that you spend working for yourself, how many minutes do you have to spend keeping everything in order for your Uncle Sam? Imagine all those Webmasters. Tens of thousands of them. Each required to maintain their own model age records, no longer able to just point interested parties to the primary producers of the content in question. Of course, all in the name of protecting children. Yeah, sure.

What makes me say that? How can I be so sure that Ashcroft’s intentions aren’t pure? I admit, it’s part hunch. A quick look at this guy’s history as a public figure is, I think, quite telling. But there’s also evidence to back up my suspicions. The most damning evidence? Ashcroft has had three plus years to examine records under existing 2257 rules, and he has yet to do so even once. Need more evidence? There are a number of ways, all considerably simpler and of less burden to both the adult industry and federal investigators, to accomplish the same goal stated as justification for Ashcroft’s new 2257 rules. Why would he want to make the process more difficult for everyone involved? Oh gee, do I really have to spell it out?

If you are an American Webmaster and you run your business properly then you’re already spending an awful lot of time working for the government. Not just through the taxes you pay, but also through the paperwork that you’re required to keep. The more paperwork you’re forced to tackle, the less time you have to market and grow your business.

If I know that, and if you know that, does Ashcroft know that? Believe it.

Connor Young is Editor-in-Chief of YNOT News. He has been involved with the online adult entertainment business since 1997, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Internet Freedom Association (i-freedom.org); He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine.