Mia Khalifa says she regrets the adult films she made at 21, and now almost 1.5 million people have signed a petition demanding they are taken down from porn sites.
Khalifa made 11 videos during her three months as a porn star in 2014. Despite
retiring from the adult industry six years ago, her videos - for which she says she was paid $12,000 - remain extremely popular in places such as Pornhub and she is one of the site's most searched-for performers.
A video in which the Christian Mia
wore a hijab, which she claims she was pressured into doing, has gotten her death threats from ISIS.
Mia's supporters recently created a Change.org petition demanding the films be taken down from porn sites. Titled Justice for Mia Khalifa, it has
attracted more than 1,392,000 signatures.
Pornhub has launched a new premium couples service billed as helping lovers spice up relationships while stuck in coronavirus quarantine.
The site's new initiative will allow couples to share a membership account and a lover's playlist. The playlist
offers the opportunity for members to exchange their favorite action clips based on the genres their partner likes. Users will also be able to enjoy standard Pornhub Premium features such as exclusive and high definition videos and an ad-free experience.
Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said in a press release that couples who play together, stay together. He continued:
We decided to introduce our Premium Lovers membership in order to provide couples with a resource
that can not only help spice up their relationships in quarantine, but also to help each partner learn even more about their lover on a sexual level.
Pornhub's Premium Lovers membership has a seven-day free trial. The shared account
will cost $14.99 a month once the trial period ends.
Utah was one of the first states to pass legilsation promoting a modern day morality message that porn harms public healthl. The state went on to pass a somewhat watered down bill requiring porn producers to add a warning to any porn films sold in the
state.
Now Pornhub has responded to the new legislation by pre-fixing a warning to its porn films, at least for those reading from Utah. The websites also requires a tick box consent that a reader is over 18.
As adult performers realize they can create their own content and make money sans studios or dangerous agents, directors and performers, the future of porn may be worker-driven. By Aurora Snow
Following discussions with Black performers concerned about representation in the industry, AVN is revising its process for nominating and judging Award season categories, as well as creating a liaison for talent and selecting a Black performer as host
for the 2021 AVN Awards in Las Vegas.
Earlier this month, AVN banned the use of the term interracial in its publications, and removed race-based categories from the AVN Awards. AVN will be increasing the representation of Black members on its judging
and nomination committee, to help make sure that Black performers, directors and producers are better represented in all categories.
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.
Pornhub has launched a new premium couples service billed as helping lovers spice up relationships while stuck in coronavirus quarantine. 
Utah was one of the first states to pass legilsation promoting a modern day morality message that porn harms public healthl. The state went on to pass a somewhat watered down bill requiring porn producers to add a warning to any porn films sold in the
state. 
Following discussions with Black performers concerned about representation in the industry, AVN is revising its process for nominating and judging Award season categories, as well as creating a liaison for talent and selecting a Black performer as host
for the 2021 AVN Awards in Las Vegas. 
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. 
