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The porn industry is in a bind

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Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#81
post #12

The fine article talks about the losers of the trade war. The winners are OK. If you look where the money is, it's with MindGeek (formerly known as Manwin), a company that has through the years bought bought most of the tube/cam sites, owns Brazzers and other content producers. For sure, tired unattractive content won't make it. But then you have the true artists of fucking, like James Deen, Pierre Woodman, and those…

You're absolutely right about the direction moving towards the more intimate relationship (or the illusion thereof).

This trend is not limited to porn actors but everyone - youtube celebs commenting on posts, livestreaming gaming where you interact directly and the audience feels right there with the streamer.

Loneliness is the largest cause of unhappiness in the developed world. Intimacy on demand is something people will pay well for as long as they don't feel to silly about it.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#82

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.

But even locked back then just meant, "locked for the typical user." We're getting to the point where like cars before us, we aren't working on Chevy small blocks anymore.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> When I was a kid you could hardly get any legal software in Poland too

True. Poland market was so small (and so far away, relatively - that was before fast Internet connections) that no one gave a "flying fuck" what was happening here. I remember buying pirated CDs in broad daylight at the mall circa '95, no one cared. A few years later I wanted to buy Visual C++ 6.0 (standard edition) and it took me half a year to finally get it - nobody had it for sale at all. You theoretically could buy software abroad, but then it was so expensive no one really did this. The only software distribution platform was sneakernet.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#84
post #12

The fine article talks about the losers of the trade war. The winners are OK. If you look where the money is, it's with MindGeek (formerly known as Manwin), a company that has through the years bought bought most of the tube/cam sites, owns Brazzers and other content producers. For sure, tired unattractive content won't make it. But then you have the true artists of fucking, like James Deen, Pierre Woodman, and those…

There was a comment posted here, that sadly got deleted. I think it raises an interesting topic. Let me reproduce it: --- > illusion of intimacy or a relationship Could that lead to sexrobots as a mass market in, say, five years? Or do you think it would go more into the VR direction? Could / should both be merged? Would that be useful? Perhaps AR would be better in that case. Thoughts on that? --- The response I tri…

if you are young and lonely and live with the parents, probably you can't afford sexbots anyway (or maybe you'd be secretly using dad's bot, ew..).

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#85
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Google and not Apple?

Apple was usually pretty bad (though remember, the Apple I and Apple ][ were demonstrated at Homebrew before Apple even existed as a company), but in my experience, Google is a whole different level of omerta . Don't get me wrong, there are great things about both Apple and Google, but I think the secrecy thing is super corrosive. (I guess I should confess that my objectivity can probably be called into question here…

Didn't Apple want to force all softwares to be signed by them to run on MacOS at one point?

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When I was a kid you could hardly get any legal software in Poland too True. Poland market was so small (and so far away, relatively - that was before fast Internet connections) that no one gave a "flying fuck" what was happening here. I remember buying pirated CDs in broad daylight at the mall circa '95, no one cared. A few years later I wanted to buy Visual C++ 6.0 (standard edition) and it took me half a year to…

Yeah. I was buying games on CDs in a particular market in my city around '97. Also VC++ 6.0 was my first real programming environment; I got it from a friend of my dad, I have no clue where he did find it, but it was what turned me into a programmer. I still have fond memories towards that environment.

Actually, I was on the phone with Microsoft once, applying for internship. I was asked what is my favourite dev software; I answered something along the way of "VS C++ 6.0, because the 200x editions kind of suck", just little more politely. I didn't get the internship eventually, but I want to believe this was for unrelated reasons.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#87

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…

So, tell me, how often did you install a new os on your smartphone, game console, VR device smart watch in the early 80s?

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#88
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Buenos Aires we have a lot of entrenched poverty too, in slums that are often only tens of meters from rich areas. What I wonder most about is: what is the relationship between the poverty and the prosperity? Are the people in the "labour camp" able to go out and shop for meat, fruits, and barber services? Can they go get another job? Or are they in some kind of debt bondage? Have they been forced out of thei…

I wish I could answer your questions. I keep asking them myself. I want to talk about it with someone local, but it's incredibly hard to find someone speaking English here outside work (and incredibly awkward to ask those questions at work), and my Chinese currently is limited to "hello", "thank you" and "goodbye" (I try to learn some as fast as I can; I only had a week's notice I'll be flying here so there wasn't ti…

How weird to think about only knowing English at that level. Even when I learned another language, it was conversational. I hadn't really given it a lot of thought about if you only knew the technical words. I can see how that would be difficult to work with, but it's hard to imagine.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But even locked back then just meant, "locked for the typical user." We're getting to the point where like cars before us, we aren't working on Chevy small blocks anymore.

And now "locked" means something else? There is no absolutely locked hardware that I know. If Apple can update OS on their phones it's not by some magical power that nobody else can possible posses.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Put…

I appreciate your taking the time to reply.

Obviously suggestions of being underage would be hugely problematic. While I don't see anything illegal about an adult performer pretending to be younger in a fictional context (but with the requisite 2257 filings in place) it would certainly border on commercial suicide due to adverse publicity, not to mention international problems (eg UK law is now considerably stricter on obscenity, banning the appearance of various acts as well as the performance thereof in real life).

Now I can certainly see how a fictional kidnapping and rape could be similarly problematic, and the material I've seen steers away from such themes (but there's some self-selection bias there as that's not erotic to me anyway). But ISTM you'd have a very strong defense under the first amendment notwithstanding the graphic nature of the amterial. I mean, I can watch films like Nymphomaniac or The Night Porter on Netflix or DVD even though they are both graphic and include scenes of sexual coercion. They're not as graphic as a porn movie, obviously, but differences of degree haven't usually been enough to get an obscenity conviction in US courts in recent memory, eg US v. Stevens being found overbroad.

You mentioned having written some articles and I'd certainly be interested in reading those even if they're primarily aimed at HR contexts. By chance I recently downloaded the Meese commission report to refresh my knowledge of the area so I would be interested in hearing more of your professional perspective (same name at gmail if you prefer). I eke out a living in indie film and have never worked in porn myself, but from a political and professional standpoint freedom of expression is a huge issue for me so I feel obliged to go to bat for other producers even where I find their output distasteful or straight-up trashy.

Thanks again for engaging with me on a difficult topic.

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