this place has little if anything to fear from American law.
But, as LabRat and others have pointed out over and over, the law is far from the only reason these systems developed. Helga's right; when this fandom started there were a lot of under-18s around. There were - and still are - a lot of parents of young kids. For those reasons, people wanted to have the adult fic that they wrote available only through a system that meant there was control over who had access.
In the beginning, it was distributed by means of an email list - you got it
if, and only if, you wrote to Debby Stark promising that you were over 18 and that you would not redistribute it to anyone. Again, you may say that anyone can claim to be over 18; that's true, but - as LabRat said - those emails may be kept as proof in case of irate parents complaining that someone's sent their little darling adult fic. And, yes, it happened. And, yes, those emails have come in useful a time or two.
So it's protecting site owners against complaints from parents, and protecting authors of stories who don't particularly want their adult fic - whether you view it as 'vanilla' or otherwise - available freely at the click of a button.
But you've had this explained to you
ad nauseam now - I know that many of the posts in this thread are now repeating themselves. So I'm wondering what's left that you don't understand about the reasoning? The system's not going to change - particularly as there seems to be no demand at all for it to change, other than your own suggestion. Is this now a case of flogging an extremely dead horse?
Wendy
