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DENVER — The Free Speech Coalition entered into an agreement Thursday with the Justice Department to delay enforcement of re-issued federal record-keeping and labeling requirements for FSC members.

U.S. District Court Judge Walker D. Miller signed the order after the FSC and Justice Department officials struck an 11th hour deal Wednesday afternoon.

A U.S. Attorneys Office source told XBiz that the parties will hold a preliminary injunction hearing on Aug. 8.

A master list of members will be submitted to the special master on Wednesday, June 29, and will include all FSC members as of 2 p.m. (PST) on Saturday.

FSC spokesman Tom Hymes told XBiz that he has "mixed feelings” about the deal, but added that at no time will government regulators have direct access to the FSC membership list, which will remain under seal.

The new regulations, still intact, require producers to keep detailed information to verify the identity and age of their performers, including date of birth, legal name and a copy of a photo identification card. They apply to adult material dating to July 3, 1995. Violators face up to five years in prison for a first offense and 10 years for subsequent violations.

News of the agreement is a big coup for the Free Speech Coalition after it appealed enforcement of new rules relative to 2257.

The FSC lawsuit by attorneys representing three law firms — Denver-based Schwartz & Goldberg’ Sirkin, Pinales & Schwartz of Cincinnati, Ohio; and Buffalo, N.Y.-based law firm Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria — contained more than 20 claims.

In opposition to the FSC’s motion, government regulators said the adult industry trade group could not establish “imminent threat of irreparable harm.”

“[The] plaintiffs do not seek merely to enjoin certain new aspects of the regulations that they assert harm them. Instead, using the pending regulations as an entering wedge, plaintiffs ask this court to enjoin enforcement of the entire statutory and regulatory framework, which has been in place for well over a decade."

Justice attorneys pointed to one of the plaintiffs, Dave Connors, also known as Dave Cummings.

“[Connors] 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, or to hire someone to help him do so,” Justice attorneys wrote.

Justice attorneys also said that another plaintiff “is a pornography wholesaler who claims that the labeling requirements are excessively burdensome, even though he has been in business since 1986 and has been subject to the statute’s and regulations’ labeling requirements for more than a decade.”

“The only other assertions of harm come from a representative of the Free Speech Coalition describing purported burdens to unnamed businesses without identifying the harm, if any, that would occur in the limited period prior to a preliminary injunction hearing or a full hearing on the merits,” government regulators wrote.

In its argument, the FSC said that the new expanded rules are too strict, ignore the Constitution and violate the privacy of people depicted in the photos.