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The porn industry is in a bind

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Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#71

Post by TeMPOraL »

jenmcewen wrote: post #68
TeMPOraL wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right this moment I'm sitting in an office in the place that represents our hope, a capital of continued progress[0] - Shenzhen, China. Everything Facebook, Google and Microsoft designs gets built here (or nearby) anyway. China has a... quite healthy attitude towards copyright and trade secrets. That is, they don't give a flying fuck here. There was even a term for that, that eludes me at the moment, which described…

"China has a... quite healthy attitude towards copyright and trade secrets. That is, they don't give a flying fuck here." haha, I used to live in Dongguan.. Well, actually, Changping Town, Dongguan. It was impossible to get software that wasn't pirated.

When I was a kid you could hardly get any legal software in Poland too, and whatever there was available legally, was priced beyond reach of a simple low-to-middle-class family. Quite honestly, I owe my entire career to software piracy. Now that I work and earn money I buy everything I need legally if it's available, but I still support policies and technologies that give cheap or free access to tools, knowledge and culture to youth. Fortunately the current situation in IT is much better now, thanks to the Internet and companies realizing they can get more paying customers later if they give personal-use licenses for free.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#72

Post by anigbrowl »

jenmcewen wrote: post #67
anigbrowl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for joining in. How do you feel about the marginalization of porn by the primary platform vendors?

it's unethical. I love Android because it's open and am happy that Google kept it that way... to an extent. Some of the things they do are backhanded. For example, there's a strong campaign to condition users to only trust Google for apps. Downloading any third party APK from Chrome brings up a scary warning: https://v5j7s7h5.ssl.hwcdn.net/v2/mkstatic/chrome-warning.pn... If you do a mobile search for porn apps, half…

Thanks for the comprehensive reply! I'll look through those links tomorrow and may drop you a line. This is a political issue I care deeply about so I'd like to stay in touch.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#73

Post by anigbrowl »

sandworm101 wrote: post #37
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kink is actually relatively tame as far as "violent porn" goes. Insex set the standard in hardcore S/M during its day and was actually forced to close over scrutiny from its perceived obscenity. Many modern S/M sites owe their style and aesthetic to Insex's grisliness. Speaking of which, a documentary I'd recommend viewing on the topic is Graphic Sexual Horror . Be sure to watch it during the day. Of course, I'm not…

No doubt insex had a profound effect on culture. Frankly, I would say it is almost comparable to Playboy. The Hostile and Saw film franchises are direct outcomes of insex. What Kink has done is to take insex and add lawyers. They dropped some of the more legally-dangerous aspects (plots/scripts) and added comical "interviews" with all involved. But heaven help the attorneys who might have to defend Kink against obsce…

Hostile and Saw film franchises are direct outcomes of insex

Absurd. I'm sure it was an influence, but let's not forget that the century kicked off with videos of things like Al Qaeda terrorists sawing off Daniel Pearl's head and horrific ethnic cleansing abuses in the Balkans. To think that these would not have been on Eli Roth's radar and ascribe it all to a porn site strains credulity.

legally-dangerous aspects (plots/scripts)

Do please explain your theory of what makes these legally dangerous. I am sure you have more legal knowledge than I, a law school dropout, but I'm interested enough censorship and first amendment issues that this claims seems highly questionable.

Also, it's wrong unless it's based on some very recent news. I may as well admit I'm somewhat into SM myself and so I'm familiar with Kink.com's output, though I don't consume much porn. Last time I looked they were still doing things with plots, albeit the very rudimentary plots that amount to little more than verbal foreplay to set up the scene for the sexual activity. Now, I have no professional or personal relationship with them (although I have loose acquaintances with several people who have worked or performed for the firm) and don't find their offerings very erotic, but I fail to see why you would think it falls outside the bounds of first amendment protection, unless you are of the opinion that no sane person could consent to engage in sadomasochistic practices.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#74

Post by dang »

Axsuul wrote: post #60

It was interesting to see this post on the front page a minute ago and then get pushed to the third page just now. Is this type of content discouraged from being discussed here?

No, it's not that. HN's software misidentified the thread as a flamewar. It was actually a remarkably substantive, active discussion. We've turned the penalty off.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#75

Post by anigbrowl »

sandworm101 wrote: post #49
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if Insex was that influential that it influenced the modern "torture porn" films. Those were brewing for a long time since the exploitation films of the 70s onward. The interview was definitely an Insex plot device, as well. Though my point was the S/M subculture should not really be viewed negatively or marginalized. I somewhat received that sentiment from your parent post.

Give insex time. Playboy has been around for generations. Insex did interviews during, Kink cut those. Kink does interviews afterwards, out of character, as evidence that the violence was consensual. These are not normally reproduced in filesharing communities. So when someone downloads one of these via filesharing it often looks fare worse than it is. Some investigator (me) then has to dig up the interview to assure…

The ones I have seen do interviews both before and after. I sampled 10 kink.com 'films' via the Pirate Bay and none of them had been edited (in terms of removing the intro interviews, I didn't wait for the downloads to complete). It may well be that some providers or the viewer themselves edits these out, and I appreciate that if you are not receptive to such material then perusing it for legal purposes must be distressing. But I hardly think it's fair to blame the media creator for what happens to their content afterwards, given that the various 'porn tube' sites seem to reduce everything to 5 or 10 minute clips of the most explicit bits.

I certainly don't mean to make light of your concerns. I can appreciate that involuntarily dealing with this material is depressing at best and dehumanizing at worst, and have often made the case for censorship and government intrusion in regards to contraband material such as child porn on both legal and moral grounds. However, I am unable to understand your seeming animus towards an individual production company, notwithstanding its prolific output and the exploitative tone of its branding.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#76

Post by sandworm101 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #73
sandworm101 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt insex had a profound effect on culture. Frankly, I would say it is almost comparable to Playboy. The Hostile and Saw film franchises are direct outcomes of insex. What Kink has done is to take insex and add lawyers. They dropped some of the more legally-dangerous aspects (plots/scripts) and added comical "interviews" with all involved. But heaven help the attorneys who might have to defend Kink against obsce…

Hostile and Saw film franchises are direct outcomes of insex Absurd. I'm sure it was an influence, but let's not forget that the century kicked off with videos of things like Al Qaeda terrorists sawing off Daniel Pearl's head and horrific ethnic cleansing abuses in the Balkans. To think that these would not have been on Eli Roth's radar and ascribe it all to a porn site strains credulity. legally-dangerous aspects (p…

The use of plots, of backstories, risk moving the footage from BDSM into the world of kidnappings and outright rape.

Without getting too graphic, putting an actress in a cheerleader outfit is perfectly acceptable in porn, you can even throw in elements of BDSM. But give her the backstory of being kidnapped from her school and forced into sex ... that same BDSM imagery is now a graphic rape.

The same goes for age. Putting an actress in a schoolgirl outfit is one thing, giving her lines about being the the 9th grade (and therefore underage) is very different. Kink knows it's best to avoid scripting.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#77

Post by nicklaf »

mindcrime wrote: post #46
nicklaf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and compilers is something you can go to jail for if they see you trying to run it without credentials. I'm a little skeptical this will happen with software, but it is well underway in the case of hardware[1]. [1] https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Save_WiFi

You should submit that link as a top level story!

Well, there have been similar submissions every few weeks, and there was a pretty long discussion about it 7 weeks ago [1], so it'd probably be a dupe.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10139679

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#78

Post by hugh4 »

jenmcewen wrote: post #69
DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

Okay, so, silly question time: why can't we just have a Paetron for porn actors and actresses? Cut out all of the middle men, pay them directly?

Some performers do use Patreon. But if you want to promote your erotic work, Patreon doesn't accept accounts promoting porn with live actors, only drawn art.

So there's a huge gap in the market for a nsfw patreon? (Porntreon?)

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#79

Post by pandaman »

mindcrime wrote: post #16

Forget about the porn for a minute gang... this is, to me, the key insight in the story: VR and its cousin, “augmented reality,” are controlled by the big corporations. Facebook owns the Oculus Rift. Microsoft built the Hololens. Google does Google Glass. These will treat porn at least like Android treats porn—or maybe even like Glass treated porn when O’Connell unveiled his app. In other words, they won’t allow it t…

Just like in early 80s I cannot install an OS on my game console, watch or phone. Just like in early 80s I can install an OS on my PC. There had always been open and locked hardware, even in the blessed 80s. And no, I don't mean that smartphones did not exist. There had been mini-computers, mainframes, various embedded systems from calculators to microwave ovens etc etc.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#80

Post by leaveyou »

imglorp wrote: post #48
mindcrime wrote: post #16

Forget about the porn for a minute gang... this is, to me, the key insight in the story: VR and its cousin, “augmented reality,” are controlled by the big corporations. Facebook owns the Oculus Rift. Microsoft built the Hololens. Google does Google Glass. These will treat porn at least like Android treats porn—or maybe even like Glass treated porn when O’Connell unveiled his app. In other words, they won’t allow it t…

I think the next big thing after VR will be sexbots, as in, per Philip K Dick, "your basic pleasure model." The pieces are almost all on the shelf and coming together. The hard part of course will be the software, with the motivation of making it an increasingly realistic companion. The Dark Matter series placed an interesting spin on it, where the "entertainment android", in addition to sex, is also specialized for…

"in addition to sex, is also specialized for cooking, backrubs, songs, etc." Oh man, that market is a huge dormant monster..
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