"It would be a mistake to view this as anything other than a big victory" for porn webmasters, said J.D. Odenberger, an adult industry attorney based in Chicago. He predicts that the Department of Justice won't actually prosecute anyone, pending court hearings this summer.

It wasn't immediately clear how the agreement will affect the many websites that removed adult content or shut down entirely in anticipation of the new enforcement effort. Affiliates of Rotten.com, including RateMyBoobies.com, and Fleshbot.com took down photos, as did some featuring celebrity nudity.

Even non-porn online publishers like PlanetOut.com, a gay website, temporarily removed all photos from its personal ads, even though it bans pictures with adult content. Sister site Gay.com, which had allowed more explicit content, dropped personal ad photos too.

A hearing had been scheduled Thursday afternoon in federal court in Denver for the online porn industry's arguments against broader enforcement of the federal law known as 18 U.S.C. 2257. But it was cancelled after a last-minute agreement between the Free Speech Coalition industry trade group and federal prosecutors.

The agreement forbids prosecutors from targeting members of the coalition until Sept. 7; a hearing is scheduled for Aug. 8 to determine if the Free Speech Coalition actually has a valid case against the government.

Why weren't non-members of the coalition included? According to Odenberger, the judge didn't have the right to approve an agreement forbidding U.S. attorneys from prosecuting sites not involved in the case.

As of press time, Free Speech Coalition officials couldn't be reached to confirm how many porn sites are members of the group.

At issue is the government's right to make sure that anyone seen in an explicit pose on a U.S.-based website is legally an adult. Under the law, photos and videos of everything from intercourse to masturbation are fair game.

Previously, the government only targeted people who actually produce sexually explicit content. That's why the boxes containing porn videos feature notes in fine print confirming that performers are of legal age.

But the new interpretation allows investigators to go after so-called "secondary producers," including webmasters who buy or steal content from someone else. Critics claim that the government could even target online museum exhibits or news coverage of the pictures from the Abu Ghraib scandal. (Images created before July 3, 1995 are exempt.)

The Justice Department's new interpretation raises a slew of issues. Adult performers fear their real names, addresses and ages will end up in the hands of countless webmasters who must now keep these records. "We deal with stalkers now," said Bill Rust, webmaster of Arikaames.com, a soft-core site featuring his wife. "We've had people who join the site and try to track her down, send cakes and candies to her parents' house."

Rust said he stopped providing the site's content to hundreds of affiliates because he wasn't willing to give out his wife's personal information to comply with the new rules.

There's another potential problem with the regulations. According to Odenberger, the law would require websites to store every explicit image they ever post. The government, he said, doesn't realize "there are such things as 19-year-old (live web) cam girls sitting in a trailer with $200 in their bank accounts, going online solely to support their child. To require them to buy terabytes worth of storage puts down an impossible barrier between them and internet access."

In court papers (.pdf) filed Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney General's office argued that the new enforcement powers are necessary to combat child pornography. The prosecutors dismissed the arguments of the Free Speech Coalition about privacy violations, free-speech restrictions and the heavy burdens of record-keeping.

"One plaintiff is an internet pornography publisher who is capable of publishing tens of thousands of pornographic photographs on more than 600 websites, but who somehow lacks the 'computer programming ability' to store age-verification records electronically," the prosecutors wrote.

They were apparently referring to plaintiff Dave Cummings, a 65-year-old adult industry entrepreneur in San Diego who touts himself as the world's oldest male porn performer.

Under the new regulations, sites that post his weekly sexual exploits would need to prove he's over 18.