In an incisive piece on Salon, adult performer Lorelei Lee writes about her concerns with the condom ordinance that the city of Los Angeles recently passed. Like many in the adult industry, Lee questions the motivation of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which set into motion the events that would culminate in this ordinance. She takes AHF president Michael Weinstein to task, along with his vocal supporter, Pink Cross-founder Shelley Lubben.
It’s hard to say how much revenue the porn industry has lost to free porn tube sites. No matter what they do, they can’t seem to bring their sales back to levels before these sites made access to porn so easy. Tired of fighting, adult video production company Pink Visual is joining them.
We’ve gotten word that AfterDark LA, the LA Weekly’s sex blog, is pivoting from its L.A. focus to a national one in order to appeal to a wider audience. This no doubt includes taking a step back from adult industry happenings to an extent, which is a damn shame since most other mainstream media properties online have a tendency to be unabashedly sex-negative. But don’t be sad, we have you covered. To satisfy all your civilian cravings about what’s happening in Porn Valley, we present Porn Valley Vantage, a great blog run by eminent pornologist Dr. Chauntelle, a visiting scholar at USC’s department of sociology and academic whose primary interest is in the expansion of women’s rights and opportunities in the adult film industry.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation wants porn stars to use condoms and they will not be persuaded that the industry knows better, and, after the support they received for their initiative, neither does the L.A. City Council. It was the overwhelming support that the condom measure received that prompted the City Council to vote on it, so certain were they that voters would approve it come June when it was put on the ballot. On Monday, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed the initiative — called the City of Los Angeles Safer Sex in the Adult Industry Act — into law.
There is a lot of misinformation floating around the web about the Porn Wikileaks story. In the interest of informing the dialogue and helping performers understand their legal options, we have summarized the four most common allegations against Porn Wikileaks and provided some information about what the law actually says in regard to HIPAA, 2257, defamation and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Director and Taboo editor Ernest Greene speaks out about the Adult Industry Medical leak that has rocked Porn Valley: “I’m not surprised, given the increasingly heated and complex politics of disease-hazard mitigation in porn currently roiling the industry, that this vile act has been appropriated as an excuse to yet again attack one of the most effective community-supported HIV prevention programs in the world by those who covet AIM’s credibility for their own attempts at seizing control of the testing and monitoring process for financial gain.”
Somewhere out there, a journalist is crying. She probably suffered through years and years of media law, communications theory, belligerent editors, a seemingly endless series of obits, the most mind-numbingly boring local beats — all in the hopes that she’d get a column one day. Has she a column? Nah, but our favorite porn doll just landed one.
Not to be alarmist, but the face of porn may be about to change forever. Four Los Angeles council members are backing a motion that ultimately seeks the denial of permits to any porn company that doesn’t practice safe sex. Permits, if the motion succeeds, will contain safety requirements for “shields” to prevent “contact with potentially infectious material,” i.e., condoms, dental dams, face shields, goggles, etc.
Things have been heated between the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM) and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) since 24-year-old porn performer Derrick Burts tested positive for HIV in October. Among questions of whether monthly tests are sufficient to protect performers, AIM faces claims that it did not respond to the positive result in a timely fashion and that it denied Burts appropriate services.
