Creators working with adult content are reportedly being kicked off OnlyFans as the previously x-rated site booms in popularity during the coronavirus crisis.
Adult content creators claim they are being booted off the website which allows them to
monetize their interactions with fans because of a surge of new users.
Things have already changed and the top content creators are now no longer sex workers but celebrities/YouTubers, says Mrs. Hell, a model and dominatrix. That's very
problematic. Many adult content creators say they Many adult content creators say they're not breaking the rules but their accounts are still being deleted.
Creators are being removed with some unlikely sounding explanation citing
suspicious/fraudulent activity on their accounts but with no further details. Those affected described how they were unable to access funds owing after the deletion..
An anti-porn campaign group, misleadingly name Freedom United, has joined in the campaign against Pornhub. Several feminist groups are petitioning for banks to act as moral censors by refusing payment service to porn companies.
Thanks to Alan who
comments:
Take a look at this bullshit . As lovely a piece of authoritarian feminism as you could wish to find.
Pornhub directors might like to consult m'learned friends about defamation, especially in the UK.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on the US government to confront supposed harms wrought by the pornography industry, which has experienced a surge in website traffic because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an April 30 letter to
Attorney General William Barr, the Conference urged the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce obscenity laws, investigate website owners for criminality, and to encourage state and local governments to crack down on the industry.
The Conference
also accuses porn companies of exploiting people's growing sense of isolation and heightened levels of stress caused by the worst public health crisis in more than a century. The letter says:
As pastors, we frequently
see the pain that results from a pornography habit. Marriages that are injured or even broken by a spouse's pornography use, which some divorce lawyers report as a factor in over half of their cases, have a ripple effect on children.
As pornography becomes more mainstream, so do its potential dangers. Unprecedented, unlimited, and anonymous access to pornography via modern technology has led users to seek more and more extreme videos. Thus, non-enforcement or lax
enforcement of obscenity laws against producers and distributors may provide a gateway for this demand to metastasize, increasing the incidents of trafficking, child pornography, other abuse, and broader unjust conditions.
The porny Uncensored film festival has been forced to have a rethink for 2020 due to coronavirus. Rather than simply cancel it has come up with an interesting change of direction. Uncensored explains:
How are you
navigating intimacy, sex and desire in isolation? Have you ever thought of your home as a set for a porno?
It's time to be UNCENSORED and bring our sweetest and dirtiest fantasies to life. Let's laugh, lust, feel, play and
COME TOGETHER. Stay home...stay horny... Let's make it HOT!
Explore new erotic narratives... Reinvent and experience the space around you as a temple of pleasure, let your garden become the heaven of sin and transform your veggies
into sex toys.
UNCENSORED Festival is excited to launch an open call for pornos and erotic movies realised in isolation. Open to both amateur and seasoned filmmakers.
The US anti-porn campaigners Morality in Media (who now misleadingly name themselves as the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation) have been calling on international payment companies to censor the adult tube sites, most notably Pornhub. The group has
set up an international branch and recruited a few unknown morality campaign groups from around the world. Haley McNamara, director of the international branch writes in a letter to major payment companies:
Major credit card companies
continue to provide infrastructure to the exploitative pornography industry. As international anti-exploitation leaders, we urgently call on these financial institutions to cease processing payments and thereby refuse to aid human rights violations
We believe this decision would be in line with your corporate ethical commitment to processing legal purchases, and that it will advance your reputation by refusing profits from sexual violence, incest, sex trafficking, child sexual
abuse material, and other exploitation.
The pornography industry does not judge or verify consent in any videos on their sites, let alone live webcam videos. Tragically, this has resulted in worldwide cases of rape, child sexual
abuse, sex trafficking, and non-consensually shared pornography (or 'revenge porn') being uploaded onto mainstream pornography websites.
Further, we know that mainstream pornography is promoting themes of incest, rape, racism, sex
with youth, and sexual violence against women, which warps many users' sexual and neurological development. It is time for mainstream companies to stop propping up an industry that is inherently built on sexual exploitation.
Samantha Fox, a New York City porn star who performed in 94 adult movies between 1976 and 1985, died at her home in the city's East Village on April 22, reportedly of natural causes. She was 69 years old.
During the course of her career, she
worked for all the major New York studios, including appearing in several films for Arthur Morowitz's Video-X-Pix and Howard Winters' Command Video. According to the Internet Movie Database, she also appeared in the loops Anal Party and Three Star Love
in the late 70s with Vanessa del Rio, Jesse Adams and Dave Ruby.
A few of her movies that I remember:
Roommates 1982 Amanda by Night 1981 Outlaw Ladies 1981 Fascination 1980 The Filthy Rich 1980
Afternoon Delights 1980 Co-Ed Fever 1980 Bon Appétit 1980
Popular Stars from Pornhub's Model Program Come Together to Create Instructional Video Series To Encourage Fans to Embrace Social Distancing
As part of the campaign, Pornhub has launched a dedicated site featuring the full collection of uncensored
instructional videos, as well as a safe-for-work versions of these same videos, available on the brand's YouTube channel, complete with a campaign video summarizing the project. Top models from around the world, including Danika Mori, Leolulu (who were
featured in Pornhub's Dirtiest Porn Ever Campaign), Mary Moody, Josy Black, MySweetApple, Solazola, Gabby Ferrer, June Liu (SpicyGum) and Pornhub Brand Ambassador Asa Akira, will be featured in the series which begins with safe-for-work health
instructions before starting an uncensored scene.
Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub said:
Despite the tragedy that's resulted from this deadly pandemic, it's great to watch people from all over the world
come together to support their communities. We're grateful to our models for joining in this effort to help prevent the spread of the virus. Instructional videos can be dry and boring, but this entertaining series proves that social distancing can still
be sexy.
The Mississippi House of Representatives quietly let die two unlikely bills that targeted online porn.
Mississippi bills, House Bill 1116 and HB 1120 , would have relied on neighboring Southern states -- Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama,
Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Oklahoma -- to enter into an interstate compact for the purposes of banning online pornography and related marketing campaigns on social media platforms.
The bills would also have established a Southern
states commission on obscenities prohibition and prescribe its powers and duties.
The bills proposed by pastor Tracy Arnold were designed to find an area of moral decency for the Internet.
The tube site XVideos is kicking off its new social media presence with its first video in a forthcoming series, beginning with "a clandestine exchange of an alluring briefcase" between two women.
The company said the content in the campaign
will advance the story of the mysterious briefcase changing hands multiple times--all while featuring several top adult industry talent.
Julie Bindel is a British anti-porn campaigner. She has had a whinge about OnlyFans website in the Spectator. She writes:
OnlyFans.com (OF) is the latest kid on the block to be billed as a safe, consequence-free way of
selling sex and home-grown porn that empowers women. The social media site is similar to Instagram, but users pay to subscribe to creators' feeds.
The top earners on OF are women whose subscribers are male. These men pay between
£5 to £20 a month to view images considered too pornographic for Instagram. Subscribers can also direct message women and pay tips to get personalised videos or photos, depending on his individual sexual tastes.
OF is a huge money
machine and is doing extremely well during the Covid-19 lockdown. It now has around 17.5 million users worldwide and over 70,000 content creators, who have received over $150 million (£119 million) since its launch. Content providers keep 80% of their
income, while the company takes the remaining 20%.
OnlyFans' subscription-based model has led some to claim that it is somehow empowering women. Outlets like the New York Times say it has put X-rated entertainment in the hands of
its entertainers and means content creators perform fewer sex acts. Others think that because OF has reduced physical sexual exploitation, it does not put women in danger.
The Free Speech Coalition is trade group representing, amongst others, US porn producers. The group has just published its interpretation of Utah's recently passed anti pornography law that requires a warning label on products distributed in the
state of Utah. The group writes:
In March, the State of Utah passed a law requiring anyone distributing obscene material in Utah to affix a warning label -- and, in the case of streaming video, a five-second pre-roll -- warning
potential viewers of the dangers associated with showing such content to minors. Failure to do so can result in a $2500 fine (plus court costs and legal fees).
The law has caused a fair amount of confusion, both within the state
and among adult producers. While we can not provide legal advice or specific guidance about any business' potential liability under the law, we hope we can provide some context for understanding the new law.
Some of the confusion
comes from the previous versions of the bill. When the original bill was introduced in early February, the proposed law applied not just to obscene content, but to any representation of sexual activity. Thanks to the work of ACLU and objections raised by
FSC, the law has now been significantly narrowed. Currently, the requirement to label content only applies to legally obscene material.
What Is Obscene?
While the word obscene is often used casually
to describe any explicit material, for more than 50 years it's been a fairly narrow legal category.
Unfortunately, there is no clear definition for obscenity under US law204in order for a work to be declared obscene, a prosecutor
must bring an obscenity case and secure an obscenity conviction. It is a very high standard to prove obscenity. There have been relatively few obscenity prosecutions in the last two decades, and even then for fairly extreme material.
Given this, it's unclear how the law can or will be applied to individual distributors or website owners. In theory, until a work is deemed obscene by a court, it would not be subject to the labeling requirements of this law. However,
could the Attorney General bring a case regardless?204and assume most adult companies would rather pay a $2500 fine than fight a lengthy and costly First Amendment case, even if they would likely prevail? We don't yet know.
What Are The Requirements?
You should read the text of the bill for yourself here. In addition to the warning, you're required to insert code so that prosecutors can easily detect if you are using the warning.
Is This
Constitutional?
FSC believes the warning is compelled speech'204essentially, the government forcing you to express a specific message204 omething the First Amendment protects against. However, until someone challenges the law
in court, and wins, it remains the law.
Does It Apply to Companies Outside of Utah
Yes. Anyone with material publicly available on the web (or otherwise accessible to citizens of Utah) is subject to
this law. You need not market or otherwise sell anything specifically to Utahns in order to be subject to it. (A previous lawsuit over a similar labeling law successfully challenged this point, but it does not automatically extend to this law.)
How Should My Business Proceed?
As with many new laws, your degree of compliance will depend on your tolerance for risk. Will the law actually be enforced, or was it merely a political stand? Is it
constitutional? We can't answer those questions yet. Nor can we answer if the content hosted on your site is likely considered obscene in a court of law. For these questions, we can only recommend you speak with an attorney well-versed in First Amendment
law.
After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered into a nationwide shutdown, reports out of that country indicated that at least some of the hundreds of porn sites blocked there since October of 2018 were quietly coming back online .
AVN.com reported
that though there was no official lifting of the porn ban, PornHub quietly became accessible to Indian internet users just a day after the stay-at-home order went into effect, albeit via the site's .org address.
Locked-down Indian citizens have
been accessing PornHub content at a record rate since Modi's shutdown order, according to a report by India's Free Press Journal. Pornhub has reported a staggering 95% increase in traffic from India as of late last week.
The tube site xHamster
reported a 20% rise in Indian traffic over the first three weeks in March .
Some online commenters theorized that the government had quietly relaxed the national porn ban as an added incentive to keep Indians in their homes during the scheduled
21-day lockdown.
A bill that requires porn producers to put a warning label on their products has gone into law without the governor's signature.
State governor Gary Herbert allowed House Bill 243 to take effect but opted not to sign it himself.
The bill was
significantly watered down from its original version. It first required a label on every pornographic video and publication declaring it was harmful to minors. By the time the bill passed the Utah State Legislature, it was modified to only cover what is
obscene.
That sets a different legal standard and requires someone to take an adult site, studio or publication to court to have something defined as legally obscene.
US porn producers are unlikely to add warning labels to their products and
will challenge the constitutionality of the law if challenged,
Adult Time, which is widely considered the Netflix of Porn, plans to launch its own XXX late night show to provide subscribers with even more steamy content as they remain self-quarantined at home.
The late night show, Super Horny Fun Time , will offer
ask me anything sessions with the site's most popular performers, as well as solo masturbation shows= in the name of social distancing.
Adult Time founder Bree Mills explained that Super Horny Fun Time will air every day, seven days a week
and will be available all subscribers.
British MPs have claimed that that measures to reform and regulate the porn industry have faltered, putting vulnerable people at risk.
Last year attempts to introduce age verification systems into open access porn sites to stop children being able to
access extreme online content stalled, and MPs are warning that regulation proposed in a new online harms bill, currently at consultation stage in parliament, does not go far enough.
Tracy Brabin, the shadow culture secretary, whinged:
The online harms bill doesn't go far enough. We have to get control over this industry, said We have a duty of care to young people whose videos are being shared who might not want them shared, and ... to potential
victims of sex trafficking and rape.
MPs from both sides of the political divide agree. Conservative MP Maria Miller, chair of the women and equalities committee, said: These are hugely important issues and [the online harms bill] is
taking too long, we have been talking about this for two years now. She said the promised duty of care should include a way to hold companies to account if unlawful material is posted.
Activist Laila Mickelwait, part of a group of activists at Exodus
Cry, told the Guardian: Pornhub handing out 'free' premium content is a way for them to cash in on those around the world impacted by the pandemic. Pornhub is collecting an incredible amount of user data including IP addresses by allowing web beacons and
other special information targeting technology on all user devices, and monetising it for their own gain.
The popular porn website Pornhub has made its premium services free till April 3. Initially the offer was restricted to covid hotspots Italy, Spain, and France, but noe the service has been made free all over the world.
PornHub has has also announced
that it will be donating a portion of its income to helping out with the coronavirus crisis.
Pornhub also released a chart showing how porn viewing has increased at the time of lockdown.
Adult studio Evil Angel announced that the company is temporarily suspending production, effective Monday, March 16.
Evil Angel founder John Stagliano stated, The spread of the COVID-19 virus is unknown at this point. Evil Angel is stopping production
as of Monday morning, pending testing being available to performers. One thing the industry does well is testing. The company stated that its paramount consideration is the safety of performers and crew members.
A toned down version of a Utah bill requiring nonsense warning labels on pornography emerged from the Senate on Friday, one vote away from heading to the governor's desk.
Under the modified legislation, an adult content website would have to display a
now shortened , one-sentence statement: Exposing minors to obscene material could damage or negatively impact them. Alternatively, the website could embed in its metadata the searchable text, utahobscenitywarning.
Those who violate the mandate could
face fines of up to $2,500 per infraction. But pornography distributors wouldn't face repercussions for the occasional slip-up -- as long as they could prove they'd complied with the warning label mandate at least 75% of the time over the past six
months.
The original bill did not include the metadata allowance and required a much lengthier denunciation of pornography that warned the material could impair brain and emotional development and cause low self-esteem and relationship problems if
shown to minors.
The Legislation was passed 20 - 6 ans now heads to the House, which will consider the changes made in the Senate.
The bill has now passed both the Utah House and Senate.
The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a US adult trade group, has released a statement regarding Utah HB243, which would require all adult content in the state to include a warning label:
The Utah legislature is attempting to pass a new
law, HB243, that would require all obscene material distributed in the state to come with a five-second warning label stating that such material may damage or negatively impact minors. Anyone who does not comply can be sued by the Attorney General of
Utah, for a penalty of $2500 per violation.
Despite changes to the bill, HB243 remains a land mine of First Amendment issues. Affixing a state-mandated warning to an adult film, which enjoys First Amendment protections, is
fundamentally different from doing the same to a food product, which does not.
The bill's author, Rep. Brady Brammer, says that the labelling law will only apply to obscene content. However, there is no established legal
definition for obscenity 204 each case would have to be worked out through a lengthy and expensive legal process. However, the chilling effect on legal speech would be substantial.
HB243 is remarkably similar to a 2005 Utah
labeling bill, HB260, which was struck down in 2012 after a costly seven-year court battle. In the ensuing case, Florence v. Shetloff, a federal judge ruled that Utah could prosecute a person in communication with a specific minor, but could not
prosecute generally accessible websites. We don't know why the State of Utah would want to waste precious time and taxpayer dollars fighting an already-decided battle.
FSC supports the limiting of adult content to adults. That's
why we've worked closely with adult content filters to register adult content, and why adult sites carry the Restricted to Adults Label, which allows them to be easily blocked. If Rep. Brammer wants to limit access of adult content by minors, consumer
filters are a much more effective solution 204 and one that doesn't trample First Amendment protections.
About two Hundred anti-porn campaigners protested outside Pornhub's headquarters in Montreal on Sunday. They were calling for the platform to be shut down for a supposed role in sex trafficking.
The gathering coincided with International Women's Day.
Among those in attendance was Megan Walker, the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre, whilst the demonstration was organized by Lalia Mickelwait, director of abolition at Exodus Cry, a group devoted to the abolition of sex
work.
Mickelwait also started an online petition against Pornhub that has about 400,000 signatures.
Utah's lawmakers are calling for mandatory warning labels on all pornography distributed within the state.
House Bill 243, sponsored by Representative Brady Brammer requires the following warning label:
Exposing
minors to pornography is known to the state of Utah to cause negative impacts to brain development, emotional development and the ability to maintain intimate relationships. Such exposure may lead to harmful and addictive sexual behavior, low
self-esteem, and the improper objectification of and sexual violence towards others, among numerous other harms.
Perhaps porn producers could add the note:
However it should be noted that any harms
supposedly caused by porn are as nothing compared to the harm that religion causes around the world.
The enforcement mechanism is based upon anti-porn activists complaining to the state's attorney general.
Compliance details
include the clear display of the warning label for 15 seconds on all videos, along with a prominent display on printed publications and websites, with the 15 second display requirement valid for all online videos and individual images.
The move is a
follow-up to 2016's declaration by Utah lawmakers that porn constitutes a public health crisis.
Comment: The bill is unsupported by scientific facts, and very clearly unconstitutional
The Free Speech Coalition representing the US adult trade has issued a statement responding to the Utah proposal:
A proposed bill in the Utah legislature would require adult content to carry a warning attesting to the
alleged dangers of viewing, or face a $2,500 fine. The bill is unsupported by scientific facts, and very clearly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that such requirements are compelled speech, and a violation of First Amendment
rights. The government can not force its citizens or organizations to convey a specific message, especially one political in nature.
The proponent, State Representative Brady Brammer, likens his proposal -- which would mandate a
fifteen-second clip before any video featuring nudity -- to warning labels on toxic chemicals. However, toxic chemicals are highly regulated, and not a form of speech. They possess no First Amendment protections. Videos, photographs, and live
performances are speech, and their creators are protected. (As for the dangers, the bill quotes no science or studies -- in fact, there is no credible evidence to support the legislator's claims.)
When it comes to adults,
consumption of adult entertainment has been shown to decrease stress, increase tolerance and produce more egalitarian attitudes toward women. Over the past two decades, the availability to adult content has skyrocketed, and yet the rates of divorce, teen
pregnancy and sexual assault have all fallen dramatically.
The scope of the bill is dangerously broad and would open not just explicit content, but mere nudity. All manner of film, video, and social media content could be subject
to prosecution. Under the bill, individual citizens are financially rewarded for bringing lawsuits against such content -- from a Game of Thrones clip to a Kim Kardashian selfie -- if it shows so much as a bared breast and does not carry a warning of the
dangers.
We have no doubt that should this bill be passed, the likely targets would be a long list of targets social conservatives regularly deem obscene -- from feminist art and LGBTQ film to comprehensive sex education texts.
The State of Utah and its taxpayers would be on the hook for millions of dollars defending a law that is ultimately indefensible.
Adult content should be limited to adults, but this bill accomplishes little in that regard.
Instead, it punishes speech that is not in lock step with the moral views of the bill's proponent. If Rep. Brammer wants to keep minors from accessing adult material, he should work on a proven effective solution: helping parents be more involved in
their children's online lives and installing effective filters on their devices.
Update: Passed committee
12th February 2020.
Utah's House Judiciary Committee voted 9-2 in favor of the legislation, HB243 ,
after several strongly worded speeches about the harms of pornographic material.
Rep. Eric Hutchings said: I'm sorry, but if you want to threaten my kids, I'm not playing nice anymore,
And Rep. Travis Seegmiller said the bill's
proposed fine of up to $2,500 per violation didn't seem steep enough.
Representatives voted 60-12 in favor of HB243 ,
which seeks to curtail the prominence of pornography in the state -- and particularly its reach to children -- by requiring the inclusion of a warning label on printed materials or a 15-second advisory ahead of online content.
Failing to do so could
result in a $2,500 fine for each violation.
A bill that would impose civil penalties on pornography distributors who fail to put a warning label on obscene material passed through the Utah Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday.
However free speech
concerns have downgraded its purpose somewhat. The bill has been amended to replace a warning about 'pornography' , to be a warning about 'obscene material'.
The reason for the change is that obscenity is a higher legal standard and does not enjoy
constitutional protections. Bill sponsor Rep. Brady Brammersaid legal counsel has said that a narrowly tailored warning requirement like this would not violate the Constitution with respect to free speech.
However surely mainstream porn is not
considered to be obscene so the warning we be about material that is not generally available anyway.
A bill in the California state Assembly would require adult performers to get a business license and undergo a couple of hours of indoctrination in lefty PC issues
Creators working with adult content are reportedly being kicked off OnlyFans as the previously x-rated site booms in popularity during the coronavirus crisis. 
An anti-porn campaign group, misleadingly name Freedom United, has joined in the campaign against Pornhub. Several feminist groups are petitioning for banks to act as moral censors by refusing payment service to porn companies. 
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on the US government to confront supposed harms wrought by the pornography industry, which has experienced a surge in website traffic because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
The US anti-porn campaigners Morality in Media (who now misleadingly name themselves as the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation) have been calling on international payment companies to censor the adult tube sites, most notably Pornhub. The group has
set up an international branch and recruited a few unknown morality campaign groups from around the world. Haley McNamara, director of the international branch writes in a letter to major payment companies: 
Offsite Comment: Wake up and smell the coffee 
The Mississippi House of Representatives quietly let die two unlikely bills that targeted online porn. 
The tube site XVideos is kicking off its new social media presence with its first video in a forthcoming series, beginning with "a clandestine exchange of an alluring briefcase" between two women. 
Julie Bindel is a British anti-porn campaigner. She has had a whinge about OnlyFans website in the Spectator. She writes: 
The Free Speech Coalition is trade group representing, amongst others, US porn producers. The group has just published its interpretation of Utah's recently passed anti pornography law that requires a warning label on products distributed in the
state of Utah. The group writes: 
After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered into a nationwide shutdown, reports out of that country indicated that at least some of the hundreds of porn sites blocked there since October of 2018 were quietly coming back online . 
A bill that requires porn producers to put a warning label on their products has gone into law without the governor's signature. 
British MPs have claimed that that measures to reform and regulate the porn industry have faltered, putting vulnerable people at risk. 
Adult studio Evil Angel announced that the company is temporarily suspending production, effective Monday, March 16. 
The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a US adult trade group, has released a statement regarding Utah HB243, which would require all adult content in the state to include a warning label: 
Update: Passed in the House 
A bill that would impose civil penalties on pornography distributors who fail to put a warning label on obscene material passed through the Utah Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday. 
