Page 48 - Payout Magazine Online Volume 10.02
P. 48
Adult Industry Looks Ahead
To “NEW WAR ON PORN”
By LynseyG crime to host online content that “promotes or
facilitates prostitution”, but which recognizes no
With a presidential election looming amidst difference between consensual work and sex
scandal after scandal, and conservative trafficking.
anti-porn sentiment running high, a week after
AVN 2020, Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason. Knox cited email list management and photo
com took a long look at how adult entertainers storage as areas made problematic because
were viewing “the New War on Porn.” many popular sites won’t accept accounts
related to sex under FOSTA. “Even though I
First, with anti-porn Bill Barr as the current was just accepting tips or tributes through [a
attorney general and a bunch of conservative payment] system, or selling panties or content,
lawmakers recently calling on him to go after whatever, the platforms have taken a much
“obscenity” in porn, the industry is wary of a new tighter stance and will shut you down merrily for
wave of obscenity prosecutions coming down existing.”
from conservative forces in power.
And now, with AB 5 on the horizon in
Brown harkened back to 2010, when California, pamphlets handed out by FSC
Bush-era anti-porn efforts had just sent Max and APAC at AVN warned that AB 5 “could
Hardcore to jail and John Stagliano was fighting reclassify any performer working for a studio
federal obscenity prosecution. Will these cases as that studio’s employee, no matter how many
become a problem again? different studios you shoot for.”
“Any time a conservative politician starts It’s an uncertain time for porn. But director
thinking they’re going to lose [or] needs to rile and performer Steve Holmes told Brown:
up the base, they start thinking, ‘Well, where can “Change is constant, and the laws are going
we go that isn’t going to hurt our interests?’ And backwards and forwards... You have to adapt.
pornography is usually pretty high on that list,” You have to adjust.”
said attorney D. Gill Sperlein during a panel on
legal issues, according to Brown. Performer Dee Siren held her head
But that’s all in the future. The present is high when she told Brown that
difficult enough for people in porn, with law after
law already targeting their livelihood. stigma, prosecutions, legislation,
or not, porn isn’t going
anywhere.
“Beyond the anti-porn culture war,” wrote “The far
Brown. “Adult entertainers and those advising right - just like in
them also have more immediate, practical the ‘80s - wants a
concerns, like the effects of FOSTA, a 2018 war on
law that’s had a chilling effect on online
content related to sex, and new labor laws everything,
like California’s AB 5, which could upend porn including a
economics.” war
“FOSTA most definitely is designed to target, on
among other things, adult entertainment... It’s porn,”
censorship legislation,” said performer Maitland said
Ward, one of the industry’s most loquacious “it Siren.”But we will not
girls” at AVN this year. go away and will fight
for our freedoms.”
“Even though I am not a full-service sex
worker... I have had to deal with the censorship
that came along with FOSTA,” said Allie Eve
Knox of the 2018 law that makes it a federal
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