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Males in the News Boy next door could now be an escort in these times
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Porn modelling in the economic crisisTo find out how the current economic crisis was affecting the porn models in the industry I did some online searching for articles and interviews, and found very little. Does this suggest that there is no problem or simply that people are not talking about it? I checked out some details with a few folk I know who hire models and make porn, though few of them replied to my questions, those that did said that things were more or less staying the same at the moment. The crisis hasn’t yet affected their porn industry, and memberships to sites, and sales of DVDs etc., was ‘hanging in there’ with the usual seasonal ups and downs. So that left me with my own thoughts, which is what comes next: I read an article in The Economist recently that quoted some names from the porn world (gay and straight). I picked up on the fact that some porn models have not dropped their prices, some younger models – not yet top stars – are being paid less for their work, and that some producers are simply making less porn. So that led me to conclude that there has been an effect on the porn market thanks to the meltdown in the global economy. Although that was only one article, and one or two people’s personal experiences. The thing that interested me most though was the Piracy Affair, which sounds like the title of a movie. The thing that came out from my trawl around webmaster boards and other places was that there has recently been a huge increase in the amount of Piracy on line. Basically, there are ‘webmasters’ out there who set up sites, as anyone can do, and then who steal content from existing and copyrighted sites. They set up a Tube style site, for example, and allow anyone to post their favourite movie clips, or photos. Then they say that it is member driven and hey don’t have any control over content – which is rubbish as, of course, they do, they actually have to physically put the content online and they should check the copyright before they do it. There was a train of thought (among some bone fide webmasters) that blamed ‘middle European countries’ as being the worst for this, but without searching every site and every ownership how do they know? Anyway, the point is that people are out to make a buck without spending a buck, and the easiest way to do this, as always, is to steal it. There are now whole organisations set yup to stop this kind of piracy. I know that you will know about the things you see at the start of a released DVD, where you are asked to report piracy, ‘piracy is theft’ and so on – but do you see this kind of opening at the start of a porn flick? I haven’t, not yet. But amongst themselves on their boards and chat rooms, porn webmasters are keeping a close eye, and there are organisations specifically for porn piracy theft and companies who will prosecute pirates through the courts. Bravo them. But piracy continues. Someone sets up a site, calls it ‘My Stolen Porn dot com’ (or whatever, luckily there was no site by that name found when I wrote this, though there were others with ‘stolen videos’ etc. in their title), and then that site starts making money through other people’s work. An owner of the clips contacts the site and threatens legal action. The site is taken down and… Hey presto! A week later it is up again under a different name. It’s rat catching where the rats are fast and slippery. And my self-concluding point is this: in some aspects of the industry things remain the same; top models charge what they always have, some companies are making less of the same, some models are being paid less. But the economic crisis seems to be pushing others more into piracy so that they can make their money from other people’s hard work. Which will, in turn, mean less money for the producers, and thus less opportunities for the models.How to become a porn model |
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