Since Trump got re-elected, What do you think the future of porn will be? I know a lot of people are talking about it. I don’t see a full ban of porn passing but something possibly. I think it is important to not freak out and have a plan.
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I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m currently working on a contingency plan to base the company in Europe (and myself too, if necessary).
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No one knows and there’s arguments both for and against porn ban happening. I tend to have a negative view… however I can’t really face up to the reality of a full porn ban, it would be the end of the porn business. Except for onlyfans I guess, but even they could be in danger if (as they said) made porn illegal… then it won’t matter if you age check or not.
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Just look at Texas and that’s whats going to happen. 18+ is going to be the blocker.
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I don’t think you will ever get rid of the porn in the US. It will go back into the darker recesses like the stag parties and frat parties of the 50s and 60s. The religious zealots will always fight against it, but then they always have. It’s way too easy to get around the geographic right now with VPNs.
When I lived in Texas, you had a hard time finding Adult stores. It was illegal in my county to own dildos and vibrators. I believe there was also a cap on how many adult videos you could own. The police simply looked the other way. I understand things have changed, but laws usually just get bent out of the way in too many areas - unless they don’t like you. What Paxton doesn’t understand is his law doesn’t measure up to technology.
I actually feel better being based in the EU instead of the US. I noticed that most of my sales come from the EU, so we must be doing something right. Life is short enough - let people enjoy it as they will as long as they are not harming anyone/anything else.
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Why is it that the ‘most free country in the world’ has some of the most historically regressive laws around personal freedom? No vibrators, but all the guns your kids can shoot themselves with. lol
Serious response though: This week, I attended this Zoom webinar. It was pretty informative. Not a lot of concrete answers, but a lot of sane ‘could come to pass’ insights and what the limits on those are likely to be.
It was recorded and it should be on Xbiz I think in the next few days if anyone wants to take it in.
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What was the conclusion from that?
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A lot of uncertainty (an outright ban on porn in the USA is very very unlikely though). It was re-assuring to hear opinions from people who are actually on the front lines of this and not have to pick through a lot of fear-based theorizing.
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It’s called Blue Laws, and you find them all over the place especially in the Southern states. When I moved from California to Colorado, I learned you can’t get your hair cut on a Sunday or buy alcohol. You have to thank the religious zealots from decades ago for these. Texas goes further, making a county-by-county patchwork (258 counties). Alcohol can be sold in some, but not others. Some counties have package stores for the hard liquor with a maximum of one store per city. You can buy 3.2 beer in most places, but not on Sundays. But you are free to buy those guns and ammunition any day of the week! In my county, Wal-mart couldn’t sell you beer on a Sunday, but they could sure sell you firearms so that you can go hunt for whatever. Go figure. I left that crazy place 13 years ago and have never really looked back.
I will watch for that video…
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I was also on the Xbiz seminar, what I picked up from it is that it’s very unlikely there will be a porn ban or prosecutions against legal pornographers. There was a lot of talk about FOSTA-SESTA which honestly I didn’t know much about before. That was an anti-sex trafficing law that affected a lot of dating sites, forums etc. and much of it got struck down recently for violating the first amendment. They think that the same would hold for porn, though they could argue against porn as being “obscene” like they did some years ago. It would however be very costly for them and they went down that road before and lost a lot of cases so they don’t think prosecutors would do the same thing again. That said, I think we can continue to see the push for age verification depending on what happens with the Texas supreme court case, and they did of course mention that donations to the FSC to help them combat that would be very helpful!
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Perhaps it’s more of a threat with credit card processing. Seeing how Epoch and Verotel dropped affiliate programs and CCBill making it harder to get paid (excluding or dropping all their EU affiliates) perhaps that’s a sign of something to do with that. If it gets harder to process payment then age verification or porn ban isn’t going to matter.
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True, I could also see payment processors forcing us to implement an adult verification system (or offering one themselves) before allowing us to accept payments. The issue is a lot of porn consumers aren’t comfortable handing over their ID to a porn site, so it would definitely make things more difficult. But then again, people show their ID’s for things like gambling or drinking, so maybe they’d get used to it.
So Trump nominated Brendan Carr, author of the FCC Chapter in Project 2025, to be Chairman of the FCC… what does that indicate?
It’s certainly not a good development, I hate to sound gloomy but I’m preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. We’ve decided to move our business (and ourselves) to Europe early next year and are already working with Lawyers on our new company formation.
Welcome to Europe, eventually…
Prepare for a whole set of different rules to comply with… accounting is more strict for one but in all honesty I’ve run businesses in 3 different European countries and its really not too bad (Sweden, Spain and the UK). Banking… well similar issues but depending on country they are more accepting or look the other way, the UK probably being the worst though and Spain the best. While Sweden… well it’s sweden, its tiny, strict tax rules, less than a handful of banks and very expensive.
Just contact me if you need some information or have questions.
I think they will be too busy keeping trans athletes in their ‘correct’ bathrooms and kicking out all the illegal workers from Trump’s vineyards and hotels to make us such a high priority for a while…
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I think we are an easy target. Carnal is creating a European company as we speak.
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Probably wise to do so, specially for larger more well known brands.
We’re basing ourselves in Cyprus, lots of other adult companies there so looks like we’ll be in good company!