US Sex Sells News

Alabama State Representative Jack Williams has proposed a 40% sales tax on receipts from the sale of sexually oriented materials as a desperate measure to help fill the $250+ million black hole in Alabama's General Fund budget.

Sexually oriented materials are described in the bill as:

Any book, magazine, newspaper, printed or written matter, writing, description, picture, drawing, animation, photograph, motion picture, film, video tape, pictorial presentation, depiction, image, electrical or electronic reproduction, broadcast, transmission, video download, telephone communication, sound recording, article, device, equipment, matter, oral communication, depicting breast or genital nudity or sexual conduct.

The tax hike would be in addition to the state, city and county sales taxes already in place, which usually runs up another 10 percent in costs.

Williams said:

We have created a class of products in this state that you have to be 18 to purchase and they have excise taxes on them. The state is broke.

Montgomery insiders say it has a realistic chance to pass, as Williams has accrued 26 co-sponsors for his bill, including Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard

The US adult trade grouo, The Free Speech Coalition has commented on the first and small fine issued by California for transgressions of local laws mandating condom usage in porn production:

Yesterday, Treasure Island Media announced that their six-year investigation with Cal/OSHA over the use of condoms had concluded with a whopping $685 fine for the company.

In a press release, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which initiated the investigation, tried to save face by calling it a landmark ruling, and it was--for the adult industry. AHF had hoped that Cal/OSHA would consider the lack of condoms on an adult set to be a serious fine, and had pushed for fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, Cal/OSHA rebuked them.

For the past several years, Michael Weinstein has been siphoning non-profit money for a campaign of harassment, while communities in need suffer. In doing so, AHF has effectively become a lobbying organization, spending political money profligately while many people in L.A .and across the country die for lack of treatment. So we ask again: why is Weinstein focusing on so many millions of dollars to patrol the country's roughly 1,500 adult film workers when there is not an issue with HIV in adult film?

For those in the adult industry, there is reason to celebrate. The $685 dollar fine--the same fine that a company might get for not having a full stocked first aid kit--is precedent-setting. Weinstein is free to bring more and more cases against adult companies, but the outcome is already known.

Cal/OSHA resources should be used to investigate actual workplace safety regulations brought by workers, not imagined violations of some moralist's fevered mind. He is wasting state resources and preventing state workers from helping those in need.

Treasure Island should be applauded for their tenacity, and attorney Karen Tynan should be congratulated on a case well argued. We look forward to more such landmark rulings.

A panel of New York state appeals court judges have ruled that sex shops are legal in New York City. his is the climax so far of a 14 year long legal battle.

The decision by the court of appeals is not going to be sending us back to Times Square in the 1980's, said First Amendment attorney Erica Dubno. She argued for city sex shops, and won, based on an argument that a city effort to ban sex shops was based on a study carried out in 1994.

Beginning in 2001, the Giuliani administration had attempted to shut down all sex shops, including those that were operating within what came to be known as 60-40 guidelines, where at least 60 percent of their merchandise and displays were not X-rated.

Dubno and other attorneys got the state courts to block the city's shutdown order until a formal legal ruling on the matter could be made. One was made two years ago in favor of the 60-40 sex shops.

The city appealed and on Tuesday evening a state supreme court appeals panel, by a 3 to 2 vote, upheld the ruling.

The case is not over. The city can appeal and has not yet said whether or not it will.

A measure mandating condom use on all adult film sets in California will appear on the 2016 ballot after organizers gathered the required number of signatures last week.

The anti-porn campaign group, The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said it had acquired 371,000 signatures for its proposal, slightly more than the 366,880 required by the state to place the measure on the ballot, according to Reuters. In a statement , AIDS Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein said:

In 2012 in Los Angeles with Measure B and with our initial polling for this measure, voter sentiment favoring safer sex in adult films was clear: unlike most politicians, voters were not squeamish about this issue. seeing it as a means to protect the health and safety of performers working in the industry.

Californian voters have already approved a similar measures requiring condom use for adult film productions in Los Angeles.

In a blog post , the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry advocacy group, blasted the measure, saying it would install Weinstein as the state's porn czar because of a provision that would allow him to personally enforce the law.

A study by digital analysts Juniper Research has concluded that adult smartphone users will each watch an average of 348 porn videos on their devices in 2015.

In total, the researchers estimate that 136 billion sexually explicit videos will be watched on smartphones this year. They go on to predict that the number will increase by a further 55%over the next five years, to 193 billion videos.

According to the Juniper report, titled Digital Adult Content: Market Trends, Forecasts and Revenue Opportunities 2015-2020 , the increase will be more significant in developing markets, as Wi-Fi and 4G technology become more widely available. The rise will be less steep in western Europe. However, net growth will be at its greatest in the United States.