COLUMBUS, Ga. – It’s easy to read articles about online stalker and would-be killer Brian Blankenship and dismiss his behavior as the ramblings of a walleyed lunatic or just another loudmouth internet troll who found out the hard he wasn’t as anonymous and untraceable when surfing the web as he believed himself to be.

You shouldn’t have to put yourself in Malena Morgan’s shoes, however, to see how threatening the  situation really was, or how it boldly underlines an oft-forgotten aspect of the debates surrounding issues like 2257 recordkeeping regulations and the handling of performers’ personal information by health professionals and other third parties.

When most people in the adult industry talk about past (and current) legal challenges to 2257, the general perception is the industry has outright lost every such case, because the regulations and the statute that created them still stand. While it’s true the industry’s challenges failed to overturn the statute or significantly change the burden on producers and record-keepers under the law, there were two small-but-important victories along the way.

First, the U.S. Department of Justice took the position it’s OK for producers to redact certain identifying information, including things like addresses on drivers licenses, within the records they’re required to keep under the law. Second, the DOJ also concurred with the Free Speech Coalition’s reading of the law in saying it was permissible for records to be stored remotely (meaning not necessarily at the company’s primary place of business) by designated third parties, like an attorney or other duly designated custodian of records.

These were important concessions from the government for an obvious reason; Without such redaction and remote-storage capabilities, the list of people who could potentially get their hands on the sensitive information contained in 2257 documentation would be immense.

Prior to the government clarifying producers could provide redacted records to those with a need for copies, producers with affiliate programs that offered promotional content were faced with a tough choice: distribute copies of their 2257 records to all their webmaster affiliates who displayed or redistributed the promotional content, stop offering promotional content altogether, or fail to comply with the law.

This really was a dilemma for anyone who gave it much thought, because the sensitive personal information in 2257 documents represents an absolute treasure trove for stalkers, con men, scam artists and most seriously of all, unhinged screwballs like Brian Blankenship.

Granted, even with the limited information available in redacted 2257 documents, truly determined and capable people might still be able to ferret out the rest of what they need to know in order to track down and harass performers (or worse), but without the redaction, the bar isn’t just lower — it’s not there at all.

Frankly, I don’t know enough about testing protocols and the keeping of medical records to say one way or the other how the industry should (or could) go about maintaining them in a more secure fashion. What I do know is the more people who possess sensitive information, and the more people who have access to sensitive information, the more likely it is the sensitive information in question will wind up out in the open where it isn’t supposed to be.

For as much as AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein claims to care about the welfare of adult performers, he’s been dismissive of their privacy concerns — as he has been for any concern that falls outside his parochial interest in using the porn industry as an amplifier for his agenda, for that matter.

Sadly, judges haven’t been sympathetic to performers’ privacy concerns, either. During the pretrial hearings for one past round of challenges to 2257, one jurist dismissed the industry’s concerns about stalkers and harassment as “purely hypothetical” because, while he had been presented with evidence concerning past incidents, nobody could prove any of it stemmed from access to 2257 records.

Given no producers had started distributing 2257 records to affiliates at that point (for years prior, everyone operated on the assumption affiliates didn’t need to hold the records themselves), it was a curious argument on the part of the judge, akin to arguing it’s no problem to permit a psychopath to own a gun because he never tried to shoot anybody prior to owning a gun.

It’s fortunate Blankenship trumpeted his intent so belligerently, rather than simply acting on his murderous impulses. It’s also fortunate Malena Morgan didn’t blow off Blankenship as just another loudmouth nut and instead alerted law enforcement – and even more fortunate law enforcement took her seriously and swooped in before Blankenship could screw up the gumption to make good on his threats. It’s still a terrifying story from Morgan’s perspective, but clearly it could have been far, far worse.

At the end of the day, no policy or protocol can completely secure the personal information of performers — but that’s no reason not to take every reasonable measure to prevent the open distribution of such information.

Whether you like porn, hate porn, or are indifferent to it, some things transcend the moral, ethical, legal and constitutional arguments that shape policies applicable to the adult industry. Obviously, one of the things ought to be the right of performers to be reasonably protected from harassment, threats and the specter of assault by the likes of Brian Blankenship.

So, as we all take up our various positions on questions of performer health and wellbeing, let’s try to make sure we don’t create new threats in trying to mitigate existing ones. If we’re going to be saddled with the sort of onerous, invasive regulations AHF wants to impose on porn production — and increasingly, it seems this is going to be the case — can we at least see to it the regulations don’t expose talent to risks that can’t be treated with antibiotics?

Time will tell, I suppose.

Come to think of it, time might also tell whether Weinstein actually gives a single, miniscule shit about what happens to porn performers when they aren’t on set — or sitting next to him at a press conference.