World Sex Sells News

Canada's foreign strippers claim they will go underground if Bill C-38 becomes law and ends work permits allowing non-residents to work as strippers across the country.

The bill, now headed for its second reading in Parliament, will mean up to 700 strippers in Canada on work visas will have to return home since they won't be able to extend their stays. Either that, or they will seek illicit ways to earn a living, including massage parlour work.

The stripper visa dates back to 1998 and allowed hundreds of foreign dancers into the country each year. In 2001 for example, 660 foreign dancers, mostly from Eastern Europe, were admitted. All they had to do was provide a Canadian job offer from a strip club and prove they were qualified for exotic dancing.

While the Tories essentially axed that program soon after taking office, roughly 100 of those visas have been renewed each year since 2006.

Under the new regulations, all existing temporary work visas to foreign-born strippers will be cancelled, all new applications will be denied and all open work visa holders will be barred from working in the adult entertainment industry.

Three high-end nightclubs are among the 48 entertainment venues shut down in a crackdown between April 20 and May 30 for safety violations, prostitution and pornographic activities, Beijing police said.

The three renowned Beijing nightclubs - Mingheng, Youtang and China Town - engaged in prostitution, while four karaoke bars staged pornographic shows, including striptease dancing, police said.

Beijing police also closed six clubs for supposed safety issues and vowed zero tolerance for fun activities in entertainment venues.

The nutter women's rights group known for their provocative protests of world affairs, has taken to the streets of Hamburg Sunday continuing their colourful disapproval of the city's sex trade.

According to reports, FEMEN arrived in Hamburg's red-light district known as Reeperbahn armed with painted faces and strap-on sex toys. The group marched their way from Spielbudenplatz to Herbert Street, their bodies painted with Swastikas and Hitler mustaches, gesturing their way down the streets in similar fashion to Hitler's regime nearly 70 years ago. As the women marched, they were reportedly chanting, Sex slavery is fascism.

About 200 demonstrators, mainly women's rights nutters marched against Montreal's biggest annual tourist draw, Formula One's Grand Prix.

Marchers hit the streets behind a huge banner slamming the prostitution they see as a parallel Formula One of Sex Exploitation, as their banner read, stopping near several hotels where they claimed prostitution was common.

In my opinion, prostitution is still a paid rape, Laurence Fortin, a graduate student and sociology researcher, told AFP.

The economic crisis is affecting the sex industry, Dutch BNR radio reports. Sales of sex toys, DVDs and edible underwear are down sharply due to changing tastes, a lack of cash and competition from internet.

In particular, the vast number of free online porn channels and footage uploaded by amateurs is proving strong competition.

Hanni Jagtman, founder of the Amsterdam sex shop Mail & Female said:

The situation in the porn industry is disastrous, The industry must look at where it is going or decide to call it a day.

Jagtman also cites changing society attitudes saying:

Women are demanding control over their own sexuality. This means they want more quality, responsible products rather than dirty books.

Greece's once-thriving sex industry has become the latest victim of the country's debt crisis as Greeks spend less on erotic toys, pornography and sexy underwear.

About 50 people, almost all young men, lined up on Friday as the Athens Erotic Dream - Greece's biggest sex fair - opened its gates in a nondescript building squeezed against a highway on the outskirts of the capital. The annual show attracted big crowds when it opened in 2008, at the height of Greece's debt-fuelled economic bubble. But interest has wilted alongside the Greek economy, mired in its fifth consecutive year of recession. The sex industry is feeling the hit. The number of exhibitors has fallen by half since 2008 to about a dozen.

Only a quarter of the 300 to 400 sex shops that once existed in Athens have survived the crisis, and business looked bleak for those who brought their wares to the sex fair.

The troubles of Greece's sex and pornography trade echo those plaguing its wider economy. The industry largely consists of small family businesses that depend entirely on foreign suppliers and face tough competition from abroad. Unlike other western European countries, where sex shops can be found in central avenues and shopping streets, Greek sex shops have failed to go upmarket and struggle to shake off a seedy image.

Just as other manufacturers have suffered from soaring wage costs since Greece joined the euro, local makers of erotic underwear have found it difficult to compete with cheaper rivals abroad.

The Chinese and the Turks are killing us, said Lefteris Papadopoulos at his stand at Athens Erotic Dream. Appealing to customers' patriotism, he has called his stand Products Made in Greece , with plastic Greek flags stuck on the shelves.

Greece was once home to a small but successful pornography production industry. But much of that scene has disappeared after local producers were undercut by free internet pornography and movies from Eastern European countries.  Only one company is left at the fair to promote its latest production.

Lebanese killjoys have closed a movie theater in the North Lebanon in the city of Tripoli for screening pornographic films that supposedly promoted 'inappropriate' behavior.

Policeman Bassam Al Ayoubi ordered the closure of the Al Hamra Theater, and said that further investigation is underway and the owner and those in the films screened will be prosecuted. The police had received reports that Al Hamra Theater was screening porn films, promoting homosexuality and illegal drug use.

Journalist Joe Marouf devoted an episode to discuss the theater on his misleadingly name TV show Inta Hur (You are Free), aired on a Lebanese satellite channel. An undercover team from the program went on a killjoy mission to the theater and were suitably 'shocked' as to what was going on inside.

LUSTICUs owner Lisa Mooney is claiming police harassment following the confiscation of 56 allegedly illegal adult movies by detectives from her Armidale sex shop.

Armidale detectives raided the Lusticus business, after a tip-off that Mooney was selling X-rated 18 years-plus classification films.

The items were taken to Armidale Police Station and will be sent to the NSW classification review board to have their classifications confirmed.

Detective Sergeant Matt Crotty of New England Local Area Command told The Express that if they are confirmed as being of that X 18-plus classification, we'll be laying charges against the owner of the premises.

Update: Charged

19th June  2012. See  article from  armidaleexpress.com.au

The owner of an Armidale adult shop has been charged over the alleged sale and exhibition ofl X-rated DVDs. She was charged with one count of selling or publicly exhibiting films classified X 18-plus.

The shop was the victim of a police raid in May this year. Detective-Sergeant Matthew Scrotty said police investigations led them to believe the DVDs in question were illegal for sale in NSW.

The Australian Sex Party has accused state and federal governments of directing Customs and police forces to crack down on sexually explicit material, wasting valuable resources that should be used to track firearms and other weapons coming into the community.

Customs officers now routinely intercept every shipment of X18+ films and Category 1 and 2 restricted magazines that come into Australia. One in every 10 people are either searched or questioned regarding the question that is asked on the Incoming Passenger Cards about pornography . Federal censorship authorities write over 20 letters each month to state police forces asking them to raid and prosecute businesses for selling federally classified X18+ films and in Queensland, Restricted Publications.

Sex Party Public Officer, Robbie Swan, said that the waste of enforcement resources on victimless crimes like non-violent erotica was in direct proportion to the lack of resources in tackling gun crimes. Every week state police forces will send an average of six police officers into an adult shop to raid and pack up an average of 4,000 X18+ films and document them for a court case , he said. Before the case gets to court an average of 100 police hours would be spent on processing the material and the paperwork to prosecute. Customs officers spend more time looking for porn than they do looking for firearms. We have attended Customs briefings where they bring out magnifying glasses to examine pornography with up to six Customs agents in the room.

Swan called on the federal Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, to implement the recommendations of the recent Australian Law Reform Commission's enquiry into censorship laws in Australia. If accepted, these reforms would free up large amounts of Customs and police hours, to focus on more important problems.

While it's difficult domain to penetrate, hard numbers are few and far between, we know for a fact that porn sites are some of the most trafficked parts of the internet.

According to Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites.

Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. LiveJasmin isn't much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub, they're all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet.

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Organic lubricants, silicon vibrators and whips recycled from old bike tires, a Berlin sex shop has taken a growing trend for clear-conscience consumerism to its most intimate extreme. Other Nature sells purely organic and vegan sex aids.

While a wide range of dildos to suit every demand for color and size are set out, they all have one thing in common, they contain no animal substances, nor were any of the products used to make them tested on animals.

We are a sex shop, only we do it better, Anne Bonnie Schindler, one of the shop's co-managers, said.

Next to a display of tubes of lubricants, a small sign explains that they are glycerine-free and contain no parabens or allergens.

The whips on sale in this shop, which opened in October in the trendy Kreuzberg district of Berlin, are never made of leather, while sex aids are certified as both organic and vegan.

Stuttgart tax inspectors are facing the task of measuring the floor space in all the Stuggart's brothels, after a new per square metre tax was introduced on the oldest profession.

The collectors initially resorted to extensive internet research to find all the sex businesses in the city, but found their computers blocked from the relevant sites. Once the necessary special permission was granted, taxman Rolf Kiener and his colleagues were initially shocked. It's rather eye-opening what's out there, he said.

The new tax means that all spaces in the city used to sell erotic pleasures will be taxed by the square metre, including strip clubs, porn cinemas and brothels. Establishments that offer both initial approach and completion of a transaction will be forced to pay as much as EUR10 per square metre per month.

To save embarrassment, tax inspectors will be measuring up the premises by appointment rather than turning up unannounced.

French adult producer Marc Dorcel has reported strong company growth of 10% in 2011 along with net sales exceeding $33 million. The company said its sales have doubled since 2007.

In 2010 Dorcel the company premiered its extensive 3D catalogue with 200 exclusive programs especially designed for 3D and produced with state-of-the-art recording technologies (3D cameras, side by side, full HD). It also launched 3D IPTV and SVOD platforms.

In 2011, the company also unveiled the Dorcel App for Smart TV especially developed and designed for TV manufacturers. The app allows viewers to access Dorcel content from their TV screens.

The company has also diversified with European adult concept stores dedicated to pleasure. The 4th Dorcel Store in France opened its doors in March, 2011. Designed for couples, the stores offer more than 3,000 adult products.

Plans are on tap to open 50 more stores in coming years and bolster its line of classy Marc Dorcel sex toys.

Dorcel also ventured into publishing in 2008 with the monthly Dorcel Mag that's distributed in France with a circulation of 30,000 issues.

With our magazine, our high quality TV channel, our chain of sexy concept stores, our collection of stylish sextoys and our soft production unit, we have settled our company in all different sectors of the adult industry, making it a major player of the sector and a global media group, CEO Gregory Dorcel said.

The Norwegian Media Authority (Mediatilsynet) banned three movies last year, one of them being Pure .

The censor described the film as a traditional hardcore movie with extraordinary violence and that it was the violence that invoked the ban, not the sex.

In fact the film is an Asian oriented feature on the US Prime Evil label. Director David Aaron Clark won the 2010 AVN Award Winner for Best Director for work on this film.

The film stars Asa Akira, Mr. Marcus, Jessica Bangkok, Destiny, Lana Violet, Valentino, Jake Malone, Keni Styles.

Promotional Material:

Pure is the last feature written and directed by the late David Aaron Clark a multiple AVN Award winning director.

It is a unique, visually stunning dark romance based on a controversial 1976 film called In the Realm of the Senses which was a fictionalized treatment of an infamous 1930s Japanese sex scandal between a former Japanese prostitute named Sada Abe and a rich hotel owner named Kichizo Ishida which ended with the death and castration of Ishida. The true story as well as their fictionalized treatments delve into struggle and exchange of power and class, particularly of that in Japanese culture and society.

Featured in the leads of this S/M drama are Japanese-American beauty Asa Akira and brash, new British/Thai actor Keni Styles making his American debut. They play the star-crossed lovers, Sada and Kichi. Sophisticated, fetish-driven hardcore turns by Jessica Bangkok, Lana Violet and luscious Chinese submissive Destiny help propel both the plot and the edgy, kink-filled sex scenes. Also featured in a rare cameo in front of the camera is Evil Angel director and legendary pervert Jake Malone.

Brazil's Tourism Ministry announced that it had notified over 1,700 websites which used its institutional logos to promote the country as a sex tourism destination.

According to the ministry, out of the 2,169 websites identified and notified for wrongly using the ministry's logos, 82% associated the Latin America's biggest country with sex tourism and prostitution. After being notified, 1,100 websites removed sexual contents or went off-line.

Besides notifying the websites, the Tourism Ministry delivered all the evidences of supposed crimes to the federal police, so that they can be investigated.

Tourism Minister Gastao Viana stressed that his office will continue the identification work, working with other public institutions such as the prosecutor's office and the police. According to him, it is necessary to fight the association of Brazil with sex tourism.

The sexual exploitation of tourism is a crime and the responsible must be punished, he said, We are capable of properly receiving tourists and hosting large events. Brazil has a policy of protection and defense of human rights and that is how other countries should see us.