Not quite the Oscars, but surely close enough, the US adult trade organisation AVN (Adult Video News) has handed out its annual awards. Its a very long list but here are a few selections.
Pornhub, the premier online destination for adult entertainment, today announced it has made a version of its website available on Tor, a privacy-focused browser that makes it more difficult to monitor users' online activity. Users can now access
Pornhub on the Tor Network via an Onion URL at http://pornhubthbh7ap3u.onion/ . The move serves to bolster user privacy, ensure network security, and alleviate concerns about
browsing habits among LGBT users whose preferences remain criminalized in certain countries. While certain site capabilities such as account login and consequently, the ability to upload content are disabled while using the Tor site, users are
nonetheless able to enjoy completely safe and anonymous browsing on the platform.
Corey Price, VP, Pornhub said:
Here at Pornhub, we are privacy-conscious and dedicated to ensuring the
confidentiality of our users. As ill-willed hackers and compromising surveillance practices become growing concerns, it's important that we set up internal safeguards to help anonymize the online activity and communication of our users and keep their
personal information and digital footprint free from prying eyes. Over the course of the past few years, companies like Facebook, The New York Times and the BBC have set up Tor mirror sites to encrypt and make individual connections on the Internet less
traceable. We wanted to follow in their footsteps and introduce a Tor mirror site for Pornhub users. This will help ensure their browsing experience is anonymous, private and secure
A Tor browser attempts to hide a
person's location and identity by sending data across the Internet via a very circuitous route and routing it through a series of other computers. Encryption applied at each point along this route makes it very hard to connect a person to any particular
browsing activity.
The launch of Pornhub's Tor browser follows a long list of efforts by the company to continue to ensure the confidentiality and privacy of their users, to protect them from hackers and safeguard against
unwarranted surveillance.
Yaroslav Suris is suing the popular porn site Pornhub claiming it's denied the deaf and hearing-impaired access to its videos that others can easily enjoy.
According to docs, obtained by TMZ, Suris says a lack of closed-captioning violates their
rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Suris says the deaf and hearing impaired can't understand the audio portion of videos on the websites.
Pornhub's VP, Corey Price, told TMZ:
... We understand
that Yaroslav Suris is suing Pornhub for claiming we've denied the deaf and hearing impaired access to our videos. While we do not generally comment on active lawsuits, we'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we do have a closed captions
category.
GirlsDoPorn recently lost a legal case where 22 young women were awarded $12.8 million over the claim that the girls were mislead into giving consent by the company claiming that the distribution would be limited, when in fact the videos were widely
distributed.
GirlsDoPorn.com has now been taken down. Porn-industry blogger Mike South published a post on 12th January pointing out that the GirlsDoPorn.com website was finally taken down, over a week after the verdict was reached. He also noted that
the domains have not yet been officially seized by the federal government but this is expected soon.
Cyber-security researchers claim that highly sensitive personal details about thousands of porn stars have been exposed online by an adult website.
They told BBC News they had found an open folder on PussyCash's Amazon web server that contained
875,000 files.
However the live webcam porn network, which owns the brand ImLive and other adult websites, said there was no evidence anyone else had accessed the folder. And it had it removed public access as soon as it had been told of the leak.
The researchers are from vpnMentor, which is a VPN comparison site. vpnMentor said in a blog anyone with the right link could have accessed 19.95GB of data dating back over 15 years as well as from the past few weeks, including contracts revealing more
than 4,000 models' including
full name address social-security number date of birth phone number height weight hips, bust and waist measurements piercings tattoos scars The files also revealed scans or photographs of their passport
driving licence credit card birth certificate.
The rise of the virtual girlfriend is changing the porn industry -- but the many downsides for performers may threaten its staying power. By Sofia Barrett-Ibarria
Webcam studios and streaming sites are capitalizing on the trend. But the payout for the cam girl isn’t always as lucrative. Since major credit card companies don’t process payments from adult entertainment sites, cam sites rely on third-party platforms
that often charge 5-10% of the model’s revenue. Also, cam sites that allow viewers to tip performers typically require a 65-75% cut of the model’s earnings, sometimes on top of other processing fees.
“Camming is growing because
it’s live,” says Rickey Ray, assistant manager of Studio 20, a 24/7 webcam studio franchise with 20 locations worldwide including Los Angeles. “You’re typing and she’s responding to you directly. There’s a real-life relationship with that person that
you’re not going to get from someone watching a video.”
Elspeth Howe announced her intentions in a House of Lords debate about the Queen's Speech. She said:
My Lords, I welcome the Government's commitment to introduce its online harms Bill to improve internet safety for all, but, equally,
stress that I remain deeply concerned by their failure to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act. The rationale for focusing on the new Bill instead seems to be a desire to put attempts to protect children from pornographic websites on the same
footing as attempts to protect them on social media platforms. It is entirely right to seek to promote safety in both contexts, but a basic error to suggest that both challenges should be addressed in the same way. The internet is complicated and
one-size-fits-all policies simply will not work.
The focus of what I have read about the Government's plans for online harms revolves around social media companies and fining them if they do not do what they are supposed to do
under a new legal duty of care. An article in the Times on 31 December suggested that Ofcom is going to draw up legally enforceable codes of practice that will include protecting children from accessing pornography. This approach may work for social
media platforms if they have bases in the UK but it will be absolutely useless at engaging with the challenge of protecting children from pornographic websites.
Initially when the Digital Economy Bill was introduced in another
place, the proposal was that statutory age-verification requirements should be enforced through fines, but a cross-party group of MPs pointed out that this would never work because the top 50 pornographic websites accessed in the UK are all based in
other jurisdictions. One could certainly threaten fines but it would be quite impossible to enforce them in a way that would concentrate the minds of website providers because, based in other jurisdictions, they could simply ignore them.
Because of that, MPs amended the Bill to give the regulator the option of IP blocking. This would enable the regulator to tell a site based in say, Russia, that if it failed to introduce robust age-verification checks within a certain
timeframe, the regulator would block it from accessing the UK market. Children would be protected either by the site being blocked after the specified timeframe or, more probably, by the site deciding that it would make more sense for it to introduce
proper age-verification checks rather than risk disruption of its UK income stream. The Government readily accepted the amendment because the case for it was unanswerable.
I say again that I welcome the fact that the Government
want to address online safety with respect to social media platforms through their new Bill. This must not, however, be used as an excuse not to proceed with implementing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Bill, which provides the very best way of dealing
with the different challenge of protecting children from pornographic websites.
The failure to implement this legislation is particularly concerning because, rather than being a distant aspiration, it is all there on the statute
book. The only thing standing in the way of statutory age verification with respect to pornographic websites is the Government's delay in relaying the BBFC age-verification guidance before Parliament and setting an implementation date. Having the
capacity to deal with this problem204thanks to Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act204yet not bothering to avail ourselves of it does not reflect at all well on either the Government or British society as a whole. The Government must stop procrastinating
over child safety with respect to pornographic websites and get on with implementing Part 3.
Mindful of that, on 21 January I will introduce my Digital Economy Act 2017 (commencement of Part 3) Bill, the simple purpose of which
will be to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act .
I hope that that will not be necessary and that the Minister will today confirm that, notwithstanding the new online safety Bill, the Government will now press ahead
with implementation themselves. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have written an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health special February issue arguing against the claim that pornography is a public health crisis, and explaining why such
a claim actually endangers the health of the public.
The movement to declare pornography a public health crisis is rooted in an ideology that is antithetical to many core values of public health promotion and is a political stunt,
not reflective of best available evidence, write Dr. Kimberly M. Nelson and Dr. Emily F. Rothman, both faculty in the Department of Community Health Sciences at BUSPH.
While 17 U.S. states have introduced nonbinding resolutions
declaring pornography a public health crisis, the authors write that pornography does not fulfill the public health field's definition of one. Pornography use has increased steadily over time rather than spiking or reaching a tipping point; it does not
directly or imminently lead to death, disease, property destruction, or population displacement; and it does not overwhelm local health systems.
Instead, Nelson and Rothman write, the existing evidence suggests that there may be
negative health consequences for some people who use pornography, no substantial consequences for the majority, and even positive effects for some (for example, through safer sexual behaviors such as solo masturbation). Motivating people to use less
extreme pornography, and less frequently, are reasonable harm reduction goals, the authors write, instead of trying to end all use. Increasing pornography literacy would also be useful, they write; Dr. Rothman and colleagues outline their pornography
literacy program for Boston area adolescents in a paper in the same journal issue.
What is the harm of calling pornography a public health crisis? Nelson and Rothman argue that this mischaracterization can lead to unwarranted
policy or funding shifts, rather than saving the power to mobilize the public health workforce for real crises. Moreover, pathologizing any form of sexual behavior, including pornography use, has the potential to restrict sexual freedom and to
stigmatize, which is antithetical to public health, they write.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he will legislate if necessary to get parental controls in place to block kids from porn. He said in a speech to UNESCO:
We do not take a 13-year-old boy to a sex-shop, not
anything goes in the digital world.
We will clarify in the penal code that the simple fact of declaring one's age online is not a strong enough protection against access to pornography by minors.
The
measure will give the websites a period of six months to set up parental control by default . I know it hurts a lot of platforms, a lot of digital operators, but if in six months we have no solution, we will pass a law for automatic parental control,
Macron's reference to age 13 is not casual, because that is reportedly the average age of access to erotic content for the first time in France.
Poland has became the latest country to propose a national age verification law for porn.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, of the country's center-right Law and Justice Party, claimed that 60% of Polish boys between ages 13 and 16 had been exposed
to pornography.
Morawiecki made the remarks to a meeting of the Family Council, a group of parliamentarians, policy experts and leaders of non-governmental organizations whose mission is to support, initiate and promote actions that will benefit
traditional families.
Morawiecki did not specify what method might be used to check the ages of Polish people attempting to view online porn.
Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Bihar is blaming rising incidents of sexual crime against women in the state on porn. He has written to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to ban all porn sites and inappropriate
content available online. He wrote:
It will be my request to take appropriate action to ban all porn sites and inappropriate content available on internet immediately after giving due consideration to the serious issue, he
wrote.
The incidents (of gang rape and crime against women) take place in some cases because of the impact of these sites.
People make videos of heinous acts (rape) against girls and women and get them
uploaded on social media such as Whatsapp, Facebook etc. Such content, which seriously affect the minds of children and youths, have been found as factors responsible for crimes (against women).
Long-term use of such content
negatively affect the mind of some people, which gives rise to social problems and increases the number of cases of crime against women.
The New Zealand Classification Office has been surveying popular porn on Pornhub and writes:
New research shows that while the most popular porn in New Zealand is not highly aggressive there is a concerning trend of people
watching step-porn.
The Classification Office has released its analysis of the 200 most popular videos that New Zealanders watch on mainstream porn site Pornhub. Last year the Office released the first stage of its Youth and Porn
research and further research is underway which will be released next year.
This separate analysis was done to break down and analyse the content of porn that is commonly watched in New Zealand.
Chief
Censor David Shanks said:
While porn is supposed to be restricted to adults, our research shows a significant number of young people watch it too, and this analysis of popular videos on Pornhub helps us understand what
they are seeing.
As regulators in this space we've been analysing explicit content for over 20 years. The porn industry's move online means that there is more porn available to a wider audience than ever before. Some of this
content can be extreme and illegal.
Our break down of content indicates that New Zealanders generally prefer content that is not so extreme. Of the top 200 clips analysed, just 10% showed physical aggression, 3% showed verbal
aggression and 9% contained derogatory language.
It was positive to find that extreme content does not seem to be what most New Zealanders are seeking out. However we were concerned to find some non-consensual behaviour in 35% of
the popular clips assessed.
We also found that 46% of the most viewed videos featured 'step porn' narratives involving sexual activity between blended family members. In these scenarios, initial refusal or reluctance by one
partner would often be shown as being overcome by persistence and pressure by the other.
Affectionate behaviour was spotted in around a quarter of the clips studied, and only 3% involved the use of condoms.
This analysis provides an important companion study for our initial NZ Youth and Porn research. That research established that porn is a fact of life for many young New Zealanders, and that they may view it for a variety of reasons, including to learn
about sex. Many of the young people we surveyed expressed concern about how porn might impact sexual beliefs, expectations and behaviour.
It is clear from this latest work that porn provides a very poor model for young people who
are developing their understanding of consent and of what a healthy sexual relationship looks like. They need a real counterpoint to the fictional and confusing stories that porn offers. Now it is more important than ever to give our young people the
information and education they need in this space, David Shanks said.
The reality is young people are seeing porn -- it's time to start talking with them about it.
Update: Let's not get too prudish
about pornography
First, let's look at the content of porn: is it that bad? Three studies are cited relating to the aggression that is apparently rampant in porn.
The first , and purportedly most cited study, found that 88.2
percent of porn scenes contained physical aggression. The numbers seem big. But it depends on what you consider aggression.
Spanking (35.7 percent), gagging (27.7 percent), and open-hand slapping (14.9 percent) were the most
frequently observed physically aggressive acts.
To be honest, I'm not clutching my pearls at this revelation. It's certainly not nice and lovely in a kittens-and-ponies kind of way. But I guess, considering all the handwringing, I
was expecting something a lot uglier and a lot more violent (although even the thought of gagging makes me want to sympathy gag).
Perhaps then, the problem isn't the aggressive acts per se, but the treatment of women. But as it
turns out, in most cases, (95 percent of the time) women reacted to aggression with pleasure or neutrality.
Former Australian 'eSafety Commissioner' endangers Australian porn viewers by suggesting to the government that age verification for porn should be biometrics based
The former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), former 'eSafety Commissioner', Alastair MacGibbon, has told the House of Representatives Standing Committee On Social Policy And Legal Affairs looking to age verification for online wagering
and online pornography , that any form of online age verification would require a biometric component. He said:
I think biometrics -- with all of the problems associated with biometrics, and they are not a silver bullet --
is the only way you could really have an online system.
A scenario relying solely on Home Affairs' Face and Document Verification Services to provide proof of age would not work on its own, due to the ability for children to be
able to take, for instance, a driver's licence and verify it with the system.
What will be harder for the child is to get my face in front of the camera and use it for the purposes of proof of age, he said on Friday.
I'm not advocating for it to be used as such ...BUT... it could be used as a way of saying, 'This face that's now in front of this camera is attached to a driver's licence and a passport in Australia, and that person is
over the age of 18'.
He was not very sympathetic to porn viewers who may end up being victims of hackers, fraud, identity crime, or blackmail. He added
Australians need to accept that there is no
such thing as a completely secure connected device, that there will be failures, and everything in life is about balancing value and risk.
You do run the risk that Australians who have a privacy concern will be forced into darker
parts of the web to avoid online verification and that will be an unintended consequences any such scheme.
Well with an 'eSafety Commissioner' like that, I think Australian internet users should be getting a little bit nervous.
The annual No Nut November online event which is supposedly designed to encourage people to stop masturbating, at least for the month of November, appears to have been a massive failure, according to data research by the site Mashable.
The No Nut
meme, along with the similar NoFap online movement (which advocates swearing off masturbation on a permanent basis) are basically anti-porn campaigns.
Consulting with the leading porn tube sites PornHub and xHamster, the Mashable reporters found
that traffic during November either showed no tangible effect, or in xHamster's case, actually jumped by 10%.
xHamster Vice President Alex Hawkins speculated:
Trying to energize a whole population to
not masturbate only results in them thinking about masturbating more.
Mashable also checked Google trending data to learn whether searches for the word porn showed any significant dips or rises in November. But for three straight
years, Mashable found, porn as a Google search term held mostly steady during No Nut November.
In October last year, an Indian court had ordered the government to reinstate its earlier ban on 827 porn websites including PornHub and xVideos. Porn companies initially put up a fight, launching mirror URLs such as pornhub.net after pornhub.com
became inaccessible. But a few months in, major internet service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio also started blocking out the mirror URLs tool.
However Indians haven't been taking the censorship lying down. Mobile downloads of virtual
private network (VPN) apps in India grew 405% to 57 million in the 12 months starting October 2018, as analysed by London-based Top10VPN, a website that reviews VPNs.
The vast majority of users in India are using free VPN services, which are in
effect not free--they often fund operations by selling user data. But the use of paid VPN services remains limited in India.
But not all Indian users have caught on to VPNs. Nearly half of the visitors of the banned websites have merely shifted to
other adult content sites that aren't blocked in the country, such as RedPorn and SexVid, according to research from the analytics firm SimilarWeb.
I always wonder if this response is one of the reasons why age verification for porn was cancelled
by the British Government. The security services surely didn't want vast numbers of people to start using VPNs. They needed the AV services to be easy and safe enough for porn users to be willing to use. And in the end most of the methods on offer were
anything but.
Hundreds of porn stars and sex workers had their Instagram accounts deleted this year, and many say that they're being held to a different standard than mainstream celebrities.
I should be able to model my Instagram account on
Sharon Stone or any other verified profile, but the reality is that doing that would get me deleted, says Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild and one of the leading voices in the battle that adult stars are waging to stay on the
platform.
Ms Evans' group has collected a list of more than 1,300 performers who claim that their accounts have been deleted by Instagram's content moderators for violations of the site's community standards, despite not showing
any nudity or sex.
They discriminate against us because they don't like what we do for a living, Ms Evans says.
Yaroslav Suris is suing the popular porn site Pornhub claiming it's denied the deaf and hearing-impaired access to its videos that others can easily enjoy. 
GirlsDoPorn recently lost a legal case where 22 young women were awarded $12.8 million over the claim that the girls were mislead into giving consent by the company claiming that the distribution would be limited, when in fact the videos were widely
distributed. 
Webcam studios and streaming sites are capitalizing on the trend. But the payout for the cam girl isn’t always as lucrative. Since major credit card companies don’t process payments from adult entertainment sites, cam sites rely on third-party platforms
that often charge 5-10% of the model’s revenue. Also, cam sites that allow viewers to tip performers typically require a 65-75% cut of the model’s earnings, sometimes on top of other processing fees. 
Elspeth Howe announced her intentions in a House of Lords debate about the Queen's Speech. She said: 
Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have written an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health special February issue arguing against the claim that pornography is a public health crisis, and explaining why such
a claim actually endangers the health of the public. 
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he will legislate if necessary to get parental controls in place to block kids from porn. He said in a speech to UNESCO: 
Poland has became the latest country to propose a national age verification law for porn. 
Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Bihar is blaming rising incidents of sexual crime against women in the state on porn. He has written to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to ban all porn sites and inappropriate
content available online. He wrote: 
The former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), former 'eSafety Commissioner', Alastair MacGibbon, has told the House of Representatives Standing Committee On Social Policy And Legal Affairs looking to age verification for online wagering
and online pornography , that any form of online age verification would require a biometric component. He said: 
The annual No Nut November online event which is supposedly designed to encourage people to stop masturbating, at least for the month of November, appears to have been a massive failure, according to data research by the site Mashable. 
Hundreds of porn stars and sex workers had their Instagram accounts deleted this year, and many say that they're being held to a different standard than mainstream celebrities. 
