Looknsee Photography wrote:
Wouldn't that imply that Big Brother is monitoring one's Internet activities?

I wouldn't be surprised.  The government here (Philippines) tried to block the big named porn sites.  Not sure if they were successful.  Most of the streaming sites are not allowed to show a list of things as well.  Some of these are eating a banana in a sexy way or playing with objects in a sexual way even not showing nudity.  Not really sure how all of it is monitored but I think the blocking of adult sites would be pretty easy to do.

A Thousand Words  wrote:
There's no way that would stand up to legal scrutiny. The First Amendment alone would seem to cover it.

Yes, but the under 18 issue could take care of that. Since there is no airtight age verification possible without submitting proof like a scan of a drivers license or birth certificate, they could easily be charged with delivering obscene material to minors.  Approaching it from that angle would stand up I think.

People could be charged the fee for having their age verified, which could be profitable to the agency regulating access.

Looknsee Photography wrote:
Wouldn't that imply that Big Brother is monitoring one's Internet activities?

martin b wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised.  The government here (Philippines) tried to block the big named porn sites.  Not sure if they were successful.

I would think that those are two different things.  Blocking a site from the entire country would be stopping the URL from being resolved in all the web content providers of the country -- one step & you're done.  Monitoring on-going usage in the tiniest state in the continental USA is an on-going activity, and since the sites aren't blocked, there has to be some kind of filter applied 24x7x365, with accounting.  What if I access the sites via VPN?  What if I get my web content from a neighboring state?

I don't think the legislators know how technology works, and even if they did, I would hope they could find better issues to tackle than on-line porn.  For example:  making the "Do Not Call registry" work better, stopping (and prosecuting) phone fraud, etc. 

Charging folks for on-line porn is an invasion of privacy.

空 wrote:
http://www.providencejournal.com/news/2 … nline-porn

Rhode Island residents will have to pay a $20 fee to access sexually explicit content online if a recently introduced bill passes the General Assembly this session.

1. There is no end to the greed of government and the parasites who infest it;

2. This idiocy is probably unconstitutional for many reasons

Looknsee Photography wrote:

thanks for the explanation,

goofus  wrote:
that would entail a rather large office set up where everyone was monitoring porn all day and night long

that would be  a sitcom that writes itself

That has already been done during the Bush administration.  No joke.



This is snapshot of my server logs showing the Department of Justice searching for porn and finding my little art nude website.  The DOJ returned several times... just in case they missed something.

Part of the 2257 regulations mandate a label on the top-level page.  Google quietly filters these websites from most searches to make the Internet more family friendly.

kickfight wrote:
This article from Reason magazine (we're subscribers to the print version) points out the myriad flaws in this misguided and technically-flawed "bill".

I would like to point out that this stupid bill is proposed by two "D"s, not the commonly assumed conservative or so-called Right-Wing Republicans.

Eye of the World wrote:
I would like to point out that this stupid bill is proposed by two "D"s, not the commonly assumed conservative or so-called Right-Wing Republicans.

It is so noted. Both parties seem equally and utterly clueless on the matter.

Looknsee Photography wrote:
I would hope they could find better issues to tackle than on-line porn.  For example:  making the "Do Not Call registry" work better, stopping (and prosecuting) phone fraud, etc.

Better things like Arie Luyendyk ban from Minnesota ?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sol … aa3d68cc31

Eagle Rock Photographer wrote:
2. This idiocy is probably unconstitutional for many reasons

That never stopped the Govt before from instituting stupid or immoral policies

goofus  wrote:
that would entail a rather large office set up where everyone was monitoring porn all day and night long

It would be a dirty job but someone would have to do it!

Jeff Cole MFA ASMP wrote:
My opinion is that Prohibition ended only when politicians learned how much tax revenue alcohol could generate.

A way to get tax revenue out of the wildly successful US pornography industry could be a governmental dream.

The US pornography industry is not remotely wildly successful. What in the world would make you think that?

Check the financials for any publicly held alcohol company and every year, all by itself, it grosses more than the whole porn industry.

Six Alcohol Industry Stocks to Consider for Your Stock Portfolio

Amelia G wrote:
The US pornography industry is not remotely wildly successful. What in the world would make you think that?

https://medium.com/@Strange_bt_True/how … c1ac78091b

According to various reports, currently, the porn industry’s net worth is about $97 billion. This money is enough to feed at-least 4.8 billion people a day. Every year, Hollywood releases roughly 600 movies and makes $10 billion in profit. And how much porn industry makes? 13,000 films and close to $15 billion in profit. The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined.

hbutz New York wrote:

Amelia G wrote:
The US pornography industry is not remotely wildly successful. What in the world would make you think that?

https://medium.com/@Strange_bt_True/how … c1ac78091b

All of this "information" sounds bizarrely inaccurate.  Like it's from 15 years ago.  For example, the story references Jenna Jameson who basically retired over ten years ago.  Which is probably about how long it's been since someone actually purchased a porn DVD.

MN Photography wrote:

All of this "information" sounds bizarrely inaccurate.  Like it's from 15 years ago.  For example, the story references Jenna Jameson who basically retired over ten years ago.  Which is probably about how long it's been since someone actually purchased a porn DVD.

I was thinking the same thing
Porn was big $$$ in DVD days but Digital freebies killed all that

Lisa Everhart wrote:
The young congressman looked up from the spreadsheets he had been studying that were laid out on the gleaming mahogany conference table. He beamed broadly at his fellow committee members and exclaimed, "Hey guys. I just figured out how we can tax masturbation!"

The head of the committee, a wry and grayed lifetime member from the great state of Utah, smiled back approvingly at the junior member from California and replied, "And I thought we were doing good a few years back when we proposed taxing the weather. Jerking off is much more predictable and the rubes won't even notice the twenty bucks after they jizz themselves. Let's test it in Rhode Island first. Just make sure when you write the Bill to bury the exclusion down in the fine print somewhere. Or better yet, we can just give ourselves a raise to cover the additional outlay and they will never know the difference. Ten k a year outta cover it."

The committee head leaned back in his big button and tucked black leather chair and grinned, a wide satisfied cat who ate the canary shit eating one and thought...yes, it really is good to be King.

I love your post!!   

Jerry Nemeth wrote:
I love your post!!   

Hehe. Thank you. The sad thing is, that it is probably more truth than fiction.

hbutz New York wrote:

https://medium.com/@Strange_bt_True/how … c1ac78091b

Edit: I like your use of cig smoke to achieve noir effects in your port. Lotta nudity in what you shoot though. Are you raking in millions from that or able to pay models thousands of dollars? I feel safe assuming that, no matter how nice your work is, you are not.


Re: that anonymous Medium post: That is wildly hilariously false. In every way. Among other things, tube sites which steal content from photographers and video producers and stream it for free are not really accurately called "providers" or at least shouldn't be viewed that way in a creative community like Model Mayhem.

IBIS pegs the industry at $3 billion and I think that is high. (IBIS is a tool for serious professional financial analysts, management consultants, banks, and such, so a bit more reliable than random stranger with zero credentials hiding his identity on Medium, although still imperfect for privately held companies.) $3 billion would mean Major League Baseball alone does more than three times the volume and that doesn't even take shrinking margins into consideration.

Here is something I wrote a while back, when "porn" online was making more than it is now and people were throwing around ridiculous numbers:

http://www.blueblood.net/2009/09/zak-sa … -did-porn/

Most notably, he claims that porn is bigger than the mainstream movie industry and bigger than the automotive industry. Okay, a while back, an adult industry magazine told a newspaper reporter that the adult industry accounts for fourteen billion dollars of business gross every year. Many sources have repeated that the porn industry accounts for ten to fourteen billion dollars in the United States and fifty-seven billion dollars world-wide. Every year. First of all, these numbers are fictional. Playboy has a market cap of a hundred million and grosses about three hundred million a year. Even if you figure that Penthouse, Hustler, Vivid, and Private all do much bigger numbers than those, there is no way porn accounts for that much financial activity.

But let’s say, for some reason, we believe that porn moves $14 billion in the USA annually and $57 billion globally. Toyota has a market cap of one hundred thirty billion and an annual gross of more than two hundred billion. Ford has a market cap of twenty-three billion and grosses around a hundred fifty billion annually. Porn biz is not even a blip compared to the auto industry. It is more difficult to determine precise numbers for companies which produce non-porn movies, as many also sell alcohol or other fairly unrelated products, however I think Box Office Mojo is an excellent source for how movies are charting. They estimate around an average of ten billion in box office yearly and their site explicitly states that, “Box office tracking refers to theatrical box office earnings. Additional sources of revenue, such as home entertainment sales and rentals, television rights, product placement fees, etc. are not included. All grosses published reflect domestic earnings, i.e., United States and Canada, unless otherwise noted.” Heck, all told, with everything factored in, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen alone might do more dollar volume than the entire global porn industry.

Lisa Everhart wrote:
The young congressman looked up from the spreadsheets he had been studying that were laid out on the gleaming mahogany conference table. He beamed broadly at his fellow committee members and exclaimed, "Hey guys. I just figured out how we can tax masturbation!"

The head of the committee, a wry and grayed lifetime member from the great state of Utah, smiled back approvingly at the junior member from California and replied, "And I thought we were doing good a few years back when we proposed taxing the weather. Jerking off is much more predictable and the rubes won't even notice the twenty bucks after they jizz themselves. Let's test it in Rhode Island first. Just make sure when you write the Bill to bury the exclusion down in the fine print somewhere. Or better yet, we can just give ourselves a raise to cover the additional outlay and they will never know the difference. Ten k a year outta cover it."

The committee head leaned back in his big button and tucked black leather chair and grinned, a wide satisfied cat who ate the canary shit eating one and thought...yes, it really is good to be King.

+1