World Sex Sells News

A Hong Kong film, billed as the world's first 3-D soft porn movie, had a successful opening day in the city, a news report said.

The movie titled 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy drew 30,000 viewers and took 2.78 million Hong Kong dollars (357,000 US dollars) on its first day, according to the South China Morning Post.

The 3-D movie is a sequel to 1991 Asian erotic movie Sex and Zen which took a total of 18 million Hong Kong dollars.

The film was rated Category III, which bars anyone under the age of 18 from seeing the film.

Sex domain .xxx has been given final approval by the internet governance organisation Icann

The move to create a top level .xxx domain ends a 10-year battle over the virtual red-light district. Icann gave initial approval last year, but carried out further consultation checks over the application.

It is now poised to sign an agreement with the ICM Registry, which is backing the domain, to make .xxx a reality.

Supporters say the domain will make it easier to filter out inappropriate content. But many pornographers worry that the move could ghettoise their content. Religious groups have argued that giving pornography sites their own domain legitimises the content.

ICM said last year that it had more than 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains.

Update: Contracted

3rd April 2011. See article from business.avn.com

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number on Friday finalized its contract with ICM Registry to run the .XXX sponsored top-level domain. The announcement was made on the ICANN blog in a post by ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey.

In 2007, Herald Sun writer, Keith Moor presented an article about G Media [abbywinters.com] which aimed to blow the whistle on the adult film production corporation. The article utilised such terminology and descriptive phrasing as young women, naivety of young women, manipulating them to perform explicit sex acts, young impressionable women and immoral and exploitation of the young at its worst.

On 15 June 2009, G Media was raided on alleged claims of a breach of fifty four counts of making objectionable films for gain, one count of possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films and two charges of possessing child pornography.

Many of the initial charges were dropped. However, Garion Hall (CEO) subsequently plead guilty to charges of possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films it intended selling or exhibiting and producing an objectionable film in Victoria.

The issue was raised again in the media during 2009 while a subsequent trial in 2010 saw G Media targeted by two former models, Blaire and Melita. They claimed that the company was exploiting them and other nude models.

When analysing the sentence administered to G Media, the underlying subtext of moral debate is evidentiary. Hall pleaded guilty to charges of production and possession, and was subsequently charged on 28 May 2010. He received a $6000 fine.

The charges were significantly less than the original accusations. However, one can presume that the relatively-insignificant fine was swayed somewhat by Hall's statement of intentions to vacate Victoria (and indeed the country), by moving the company to Amsterdam.

...Read the full article

Montreal's infamous strip clubs might have to get a little less touchy feely.

Peter Sergakis, president of an association representing 700 Quebec bar owners, said a recent Supreme Court ruling has created a grey zone in the law.

In 2007, a Laval court found a local strip club was a common bawdy-house because it allowed its clients to pay for contact dances. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld that ruling in January.

In some strip clubs in Quebec, particularly in the Greater Montreal Area, clients are able to pay for lap dances where they can touch the body of a dancer, including her breasts and thighs.

The judge in the 2007 case noted prostitution can occur even if the individuals don't complete a sexual act. This means a public place that allows people to pay just to touch a woman can be considered a bawdy-house.

Sergakis said for more than a decade, police tolerated so-called contact dances at Montreal's strip clubs, but now bar owners fear police will use this decision to pick on clubs they don't like.

Sergakis owns several bars and clubs in Montreal, including Cabaret Les Amazones, a strip club that allows contact dances where the customer has the right to touch certain parts of a dancer and not others, Sergakis said.

I want to be clear, I am not saying I want prostitution in my club, Sergakis said. I'm saying we have to decide here in this country what we want so everyone knows what is accepted. I think the government should establish clear rules and enforce them. Right now there is total confusion.

According to court documents, plainclothed Laval police officers entered the strip club and were told they could pay $10 dollars for a private booth and touch the breasts, the buttocks and the thighs of a dancer. The judge in the case ruled that the dancers were clear and transparent in their offers of sexual favours for money for the sexual gratification of clients in a public place.

Porn Again
BBC Radio 5 live.
21:30 on Thursday 3 March

Jacqui Smith has made a documentary for BBC Radio 5 live looking at pornography in Britain today.

The ex-MP was embarrassed in 2009 when it was revealed that her husband had watched pornographic movies on paid TV, then she used parliamentary expenses to foot the bill.

She has certainly captured the limelight with loads of publicity in the media. Fuelled by some ludicrous whingeing that people were picking on her over expenses because she is a woman.

For purposes of research I did watch the sort of pornography that's available on the internet, Smith tells Nicky Campbell: One of the most interesting things... the people that work in the industry, I liked them more than I thought I would.

Update: Counselling for those who can’t tell the fantasy from reality

27th February 2011.See article from dailymail.co.uk

Expenses fantasist Jacqui Smith will tell the sex industry: Put your money where your mouth is. Fund real sex education in schools, promote safe sex and invest in relationship counselling for those who can't tell the fantasy from reality.

David Turtle, of the anti-porn nutters at Mediawatch UK, retorted: The adult entertainment industry is only concerned about its profits. It's naive to think it is going to be effective in helping teenagers who are at risk from this material. If Ms Smith was so concerned about the issue, why didn't she do more to deal with it when she was Home Secretary?

Smith also talks in the show about rows over porn she had with her husband Richard Timney. She said: Somebody I care a lot about and who cares about me has watched pornography. I have argued with him about it and he takes a different view from me.

When it comes to the public discussion of sex there's a lot that's wrong. The main problem is misinformation, with biased sources spreading information that is at best poorly researched and at worst completely incorrect.

The main themes in this loosely-united area of public disapproval include pornography and adult entertainment, sex trafficking, the rights of people in sex work, and the possible sexualisation of children by exposure to all of the above.

It's known that there is no credible research tying adult entertainment to crime and violence against women. It's clear that the numbers surrounding the trafficking claims don't add up. The fact that sex workers deserve protection, not persecution, is self-evident. And to the critical reader, it's apparent that the people pushing an anti-sex agenda are ignoring vast swathes of ethical and commendable research into sexuality.

Sexualisation of children, in particular, is a lightning rod for many of the public anxieties surrounding sex. I'm particularly interested in this topic for a few reasons. First, because the claims surrounding it bear little relationship to demonstrable reality; second, because both the right and the left appear to have reached consensus on the topic. Last, because so many people are parents, it's an issue that has more power to influence the voting population than, say, what a few misguided feminists think about pornography they never watch anyway. Now maybe I read The Handmaid's Tale just a few times too often as a girl, but when the feminists and the bible-bashers agree on something, my bullshit meter goes into the red.

...Read full article

Those who celebrated the death of New Labour puritanism may yet live to regret its successor: the new Tory obsession with sexualisation. For this is a moral panic that looks set to be even wider in scope, even more finger-waggingly repressive in effect, than anything the last lot came up with.

Its been coming for a while. The turning point, that is. We've had a decade of new Labour nannying on sex and sexuality. In hindsight, though, that may turn out to have been preferable. For whilst New Labour may have been concerned with sexual exploitation, they appeared still to believe that once that particular issue had been sorted out, sex, on the whole, was not a bad idea.

Of course, the ultimate exploitation, which government rightly reacted to, was exploitation of children. Yet the battlecry --- think of the children --- now pervades every aspect of our thinking about sex.

...Read full article

French politicians and feminists are requesting the closure of a French cleaning company website which uses young women dressed as French maids in sexy lingerie to clean houses. The Sensual Clean Service company directed at fulfilling male fantasies as part of their service, has sparked nutter 'uproar' in France.

The company offers maids to clean clients houses dressed erotically, fitting the French maid bill. They only recruit women with impeccable bodies and good looks, to fit the role which charges between 95 and 150 Euros per hour, which feminists have said distorts and insults the female image.

The 'cleaning' is performed in a sensual way to please the client. It is, however clearly stated on the website that it is not a sex service, nor do they offer any illegal activities, insisting that the Lady Clean (the maid) stick to a strict no touching policy.

The service, which is run across France is highly popular with their male audience, however French women are 'enraged'.

City mayor for Venissieux, Michelle Picard described it as the objectification of young women, declaring the company to determine how legal their services are.

Police will soon be able to crack down on sexy fun at so called host bars, where male staff fulfill the desires of female customers.

Representative Yoon Sang-il of the  Future No Hope Alliance said that he is seeking a revision of the Food Hygiene Law, which currently defines those engaged in such entertainment as women who drink with customers or who entertain customers with singing or dancing.

The lawmaker seeks to change the word women to people to include men, establishing the legal grounds to harass bars that offer male prostitution or 'other illegalities', presumably referring to lady boy bars.

The current law only governs females, and the loophole in the law leads to the proliferation of bars with men offering illegal services, Yoon said.

The Ministry of Miserable Gender Equality and women's groups welcomed the move but the health ministry is showing a more cautious approach, saying social consensus is needed on the issue.

According to a recent report by the Seoul Shinmun, about 100 host bars are currently operating in Gangnam, attracting some 10,000 customers a day, many of which are engaged in male prostitution. The total sales in the area are estimated at 30 billion won ($26.9 million) per year, and the figure may be much higher if the illegal sex trade is included. Some 3,000 men work there serving female customers.

The compilation of evidence against Alexander Baldacchino, who is accused of projecting unlicensed pornographic material at the City Lights Cinema in Valletta, continued before Magistrate Edwina Grima.

Although people in the court room could be seen smirking and laughing quietly to themselves as the hearing was going on, the penalties for showing unlicensed pornographic material are quiet serious, and if found guilty the accused could face up to two years behind bars.

Baldacchino, who told the police that he has been running the City Lights Cinema for over 20 years, was arraigned in court over the same charges in 2009, but the case against him is still pending.

Persecuting Police Inspector James Grech told the court that Baldacchino showed both soft and hard porn videos in a run-down cinema with the intent of making money. He would charge clients a nominal entrance fee of €4, allowing them to stay and watch as many videos as they liked during the day.

Investigating the cinema a police sergeant noticed that there was a switchbox near the screen. When he flicked the switch, a hard porn movie started showing, entitled Lost Connection, and when he re-flicked the switch, a soft porn video would start showing.

The police found that the City Lights Cinema did not have a permit to even shown licensed porn videos.

A German man has been sentenced to four years in prison and fined $10,000 for engaging in un-Islamic behavior by creating porn videos and photos of him having sex with a local women.

Gunter Bischoss, who has lived for several years in the breakaway northern region of Somaliland, is married to a Somali woman and worked for international relief agencies.

AllVoices.com reported earlier that Bischoff could have faced a death sentence. The state's director general of the ministry of religion, Ibrahim Ismail Mohamed, said, with usual islamic bloodlust, that Bischoff's alleged crime required that he be killed.

The court was ultimately allowed to proceed without any government or religious interference, and the 4 year sentence was handed down. It could have been much worse... he could have been tried in Somalia.

A top Russian porn producer is suing the Culture Ministry for approving the content of his adult films but then banning them for their racy titles.

The producer, Sergei Pryanishnikov, has asked the Moscow Arbitration Court to lift the ban on the 146 movies.

A Culture Ministry group of experts approved distribution licenses for the films last year, but the ministry overturned the decision in December, citing vulgar titles as the reason.

The ministry said in December that it had acted on orders from the Prosecutor General's Office, which said the titles breached decency and contained vulgar language. The titles include Anal Supremacy and Brave Female Masturbators.

Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev has praised the orders, saying prosecutors' involvement helps the ministry to deal with a sad situation where officials have no legal grounds to ban adult content.

Russian legislation provides no definition of pornography, which means that the government has no legal grounds to act against porn producers, a ministry official said.

France's official hoard of erotica and pornography, lovingly assembled by the Bibliothque Nationale over a period of 170 years, will be thrown open to the startled eyes of the public for the first time this week.

More than 350 books and prints from the forbidden section of the state library officially known as L'Enfer (hell) will be presented in an academically meticulous, but often frankly filthy, exhibition in Paris for three months.

How strong can this stuff be? Given what appears daily on the internet, on cable TV, or in the pages of the Daily Sport, is it possible to be shocked by exquisite, but explicit, 17th-century porn?

The answer is, yes. The exhibition is an eye-opener: a quietly and intelligently displayed but garish cornucopia of sadism, masochism, bestialism, scatology, bums, tits and staring genitalia. It is also a fascinating, and sometimes beautiful, expedition through the dark, winding corridors of the human psyche.

The exhibition L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque, Eros aus secret is open at the Bibliothque Francois Mitterrand in the 13th arrondissement from 10am to 7pm on Tuesdays to Saturdays and from 1pm to 7pm on Sundays from tomorrow until 2 March. It cost 7 Euro (£5) to get in. Under 16s are banned.

...Read the full article