Is vintage porn from reputable studios safe?

[roadhog2001 0]

Is vintage porn from reputable studios safe? I found out that in the 60s and 70s, pornography with underage (below 18) people was "legal." So I was wondering, are studios like Colt Studio Group, Falcon Studios, and Catalina Video Distributors, which were founded in the late 60s, safe to watch? I even read that videos from before 1995 were exempt from the 2257 law, and that weirded me out a lot.
I really don't want to accidentally see something illegal, so should I just avoid watching anything from these sites, or are they safe today because of their reputation?

[frostycab]

I have no knowledge about this within the parameters you describe, but I would imagine that if such material was made long ago then anything containing what we currently consider underage performers would hopefully have been purged from their libraries a long time ago, never to see the light of day. I would also hope that the same goes for any digital copies floating around in the ether.

As to the question of whether such material would be "safe" to watch simply because it is of a certain vintage then you should consider this: There are countries that do not legislate against what we regard as underage performers in any way, shape of form. Would it therefore be ok to watch such material simply because it was produced beyond the reach of the current law wherever you are?

Simplest way to deal with this question is "If in doubt, don't."

[ianfontinell 0]

Act Nº 2257 is not retroactive and content made prior to its passing can still be made available for distribution, but there are further laws such as the PROTECT Act from 2003, to avoid this from being used as a circumvention for distribution of porn featuring underage actors.

This law makes it illegal to knowingly distribute any material involving or appearing to involve minors, even without explicit recordkeeping. Notice the use of the word appearing. It is at the studios' discretion to distribute films with actors that are/look underage, but they are at risk of legal prosecution and if they fail to provide proof of age then they are screwed.

In theory, if a consumer in 2024 legally acquires a pre-1988 adult film, believing it involves only actors of legal age, and later learns some actors were underage, liability for the consumer could be somewhat mitigated if they had no reasonable way to know. The strict liability nature of child pornography laws, however, still generally means that mere possession is illegal, regardless of intent or prior knowledge.

If authorities become aware of such a scenario, they might evaluate whether the consumer could have reasonably known about the content's legality. Yet, strict liability can mean that even reasonable assumptions don’t fully exempt a consumer from risk.

tl/dr: if you want to avoid accidentally seeing something illegal, stay away from vintage porn.

[lololulu19]

@roadhog2001-0 I am not aware of any underage people in porn of the 60's and 70's from studio porn. I have never sought out underage porn mainly because I don't find them attractive. The only underage stuff I have seen is from Brent Corrigan of Cobra, Oliver Krist of Bel Ami and a webcam performer named Dillon. They lied and said they were 18 when they were actually 16 and 17. They got away with it because they looked 18+
I was never a fan of Colt movies, but as I recall, their performers are in their 30s.

There were some b/w movies made by some famous guy who I can't recall his name. There is a documentary about him. His movies were not explicit and pretty much r-rated.

Due to the expense of filming and other factors I don't think there is any explicit gay porn before about 1984. Even the first gay porn I saw - Cousins - is not that explicit. I don't think there is any video of an asshole in that movie.

i think the reason the old stuff has been purged from libraries is because it is so low quality and degraded. 8mm looks like crap, and anything recorded on VHS fades / degrades after a few years. Even CDs and DVDs degrade after a couple of years. The only way to store data without loss of quality is digitally. Any physical media is going to degrade.

If you are talking about the legality.. technically, porn of any kind is illegal in most places in the USA, but rarely enforced.

There was a famous case in the past couple of years in which a male and female actor were filmed in the nude in a movie they made several decades ago, and now those 2 actors are trying and failing to sue the director for filming them nude when they were underage. it was not a porn movie, but they were nude.