Jamie Reidy comments on an, uh, inspiring article regarding the porn industry.
Did you know the porn industry is in trouble? I did not.
But after reading Dominic Patten’s article on the wrap.com, I am extremely concerned.
I’m ready to run around like Doc Brown in BACK TO THE FUTURE screaming, “Save the clock tower!” only I’m screaming, “Save the Kim Kardashian sex tape!”
In fact, exactly five decades after Hugh Hefner brought the skin trade into the mainstream with the introduction of the iconic rabbit and the opening of the first Playboy clubs in Chicago, the industry is in deep trouble. Yes, it’s more more acceptable, and seen by more people that ever. The problem is, not many of them are paying for it.
Thankfully, Mr. Patten has 5 ways to save it.
btw, I would TOTALLY vote for Tera Patrick to be the face of anything. Holy hottie.
Are you worried about porn’s future?
Photo by: yellowblade67
About Jamie Reidy
I had foreseen this some years ago. Way to go internets! You did what could not be done. Defeated porn!
Woo hoo!!!!
I agree with everything but the ban it part…. save porn!!!!
Oh dammit. I can already hear the movie industry (MPAA) using this to back up their claims that “piracy is killing the movie industry”.
im surprised that the porn industry hasnt yet cracked the piracy problem. is this the end of the 30 year narrative that had porn driving certain hard and software innovations?
It might be killed the PAID industry but believe me, there is no shortage of fresh amateur content. And that content is getting more and more popular!
It’s in as much trouble as the music and movie industry, maybe a little more. They probably should start enforcing their copyrights, but I remember reading somewhere were an actress said she didn’t do porn for the money. It was promotional materials for her shows, where she made more money.”High end” porn with actual movie plots like Flesh Gordon may disappear in favor of low budget amateur pron. I remember a case of a doctor who produced porn not for the income potential, but because he featured himself having sex with the actresses and it was more like “legal prostitution”. Guys will likely pay for the right to star in their own films.
It’s not in trouble for the lack of sueing people, it’s in trouble because it’s trying to sell something people can get for free anywhere they want. It’s like trying to sell pebbles or leaves.
I think copyright enforcement may make some difference for the high end porn industry. I think that there will always be some market for the super hot porn actress, but that does bring up an interesting question. If mainstream porn and the sex industry as a whole utilize this amateur model and use more “normal” women, how does that affect women’s body image?
You misunderstand me, the only way copyright enforcement could save the porn industry is if the industry remodeled it’s business plan to focus on suing people. Unless the internet dies it will never be able to sell porn the way it used to.
You know, I wonder if it might not be the other way around. Anyone can do low budget stuff, with crappy production qualities and uninspired casting. I can’t help but wonder if there will be a split between amateur-produced stuff and high-end stuff you can only get via PPV sites.
I also wonder what this means for the hotel industry, who often provide in-room WiFi and must be seeing an erosion of their PPV revenue. Maybe that’s why the mid-price hotels have been reluctant to offer “free” WiFi like their low-price counterparts.
Why would anyone ever pay for porn again, there are so many sites out now that provide free user created content
Meh, porn is dying because people are doing it for themselves. The days when you needed a whole studio to make nekkid pics are long gone, every bedroom can be a porn set if it’s occupants want it to be. The market has chosen, I sincerely doubt harsher copyright laws would make a jot of difference at this point.
Silly internet. It’s not like porn will go away, it’s just the studio porn will go away. Good riddance, perhaps. Amateur porn I think is at least a little more real. People aren’t performing to make a buck, they’re having sex on camera because they want to. I think that’s hotter than studio made porn.
But then I’ll have to change my unrealistic expectations of women. How is that fair?
Thinking of that, I wonder what women will complain about in porn then? The women look too much like regular people and I can’t compete? Only young hot regular women do this?
Hmmm….
I look forward to the future controversies!!!
The Wet One
Yup!
word
I believe the porn industry underwent a similar revolution with the advent of photography. Before then you had to etch images and make prints of them. Interestingly, early photography had a negative connotation as many folks associated it with porn. Manet’s Olympia is a reference to this, with the figure of the every-day looking nude woman having the flattened appearance of flash photography. It’s kind of an interesting comparison, the idealized venus women depicted by earlier artists (they didn’t have pubic hair back then either) and the flawless bodies of women in the modern porn industry. Manet’s Olympia looked more like an average woman, as most of the people posing in the photographic porn of the time were–just your average naked person with imperfect proportions. No matter what the form I think that porn will always be around.
Porn is undergoing the same transformation as journalism, and now entertainment, with the advent of the Internet: the rise of free amateur content replacing professional, paid work.
It’s sad in many ways–the quality is bound to drop and you’ll have to wade through a whole LOT more worthless junk to find the good stuff–but it’s also liberating, in that anyone can contribute and no perspective can be stifled by political or corporate interests.
This bring two interesting things to mind:
1) Some of the most vocal anti-porn activists talk about how extreme has become mainstream and guys are all looking for DADV gang rape humiliation scenes. If it’s true that amateur is ascendant perhaps it’s an indication that most people’s tastes are rather more vanilla. The last survey I had read about amateur porn indicated it was mostly vanilla couples doing vanilla stuff and webcam female masturbation. Not sure if that’s still the case, but that doesn’t sound extreme to me at all.
2) If amateur is gaining in popularity over pirated clips, it supports a hypothesis of mine that people want authenticity in their porn, and if given the choice the majority of viewers are going to want to watch real people enjoying themselves having authentic orgasms instead of over-the-top acting by women who appear to be doing their best just to stay awake and men whose heads barely make it into the frame more than five seconds at a time.
2) If amateur is gaining in popularity over pirated clips, it supports a hypothesis of mine that people want authenticity in their porn, and if given the choice the majority of viewers are going to want to watch real people enjoying themselves having authentic orgasms instead of over-the-top acting by women who appear to be doing their best just to stay awake and men whose heads barely make it into the frame more than five seconds at a time.
Agreed. I think the advancement of technology has a lot to do with this (as others have mentioned I think). 20 years ago about the only way one could share amature porn was to actually meet and swap old VHS tapes (and this may have been happening in some underground way). But now anyone with a $1000 camera can make stuff that is of superior image/sound quality to what was being made professionally 15 years ago. And on top of that they can now circulate it to thousands of people with nothing more than a few mouse clicks and a little upload time.
Now I wonder.
Some of the folks around here have commented that porn is not about sex. Maybe the advent of amature porn shows that maybe it is about sex and now that its a lot easier to produce and circulate porn that is about sex the mainstream porn makers will either adjust or die out.
If that were to become the case what would the implications be of having a situation where, 10-15 years in the future, the adolescent boys (and girls too, but most boys it seems or maybe its just that boys are more open about it) of the day will be sneaking onto the net to look at “Dave and Amber’s Honeymoon: 02-25-2027″ instead of “Hometown Hotties 4,213″.
Oh, the irony of posting that on GMP…
I kinda feel that we have enough porn, I mean something shot in 2001 is EXACTLY THE SAME as the stuff shot now….
Why bother making more, it is not like one man can watch all of the porn in existence, then demand new stuff.
Porn has been around since humans first stated scratching on cave walls. The medium may change but porn is simply not going away any time soon.
Same with prostitution (heck, even CRABS engage in prostitution! CRABS FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!), but that won’t stop us from trying to stop it. It’s rather like having a moral issue with the sun rising in the East. Much as we might rant, rave and wail about the sun rising in the East, it won’t rise in the West because we think that’s better and more moral. It just won’t.
Same with all our ancient sexual pecadillos.
So it goes…
The Wet One
Is it just me, or is it odd that she’s shown with a fire hydrant? Are “hydrant shots” the new big thing? Is this what they mean by water play? I’m so confused right now.
The fire hydrant would have worked better if the other hand held a hose instead of a gun. Not to mention, if there’s anything more phallic than a gun, it’s a hose. I think it was just the simplest prop they could think of to have her standing with one leg elevated in that cardboard cutout, being easy to scale to the desired height, using a shape that wouldn’t require a lot more cardboard (like a person on all fours) or compromise the structural integrity (like a chair). A tree stump probably would have worked, too, but everyone knows tree stumps are a turn-off.
The only way the porn industry can save itself is to get beautiful women everywhere to cover up.
Oh the irony!