How do we make for a more ethical production and distribution of pornography?
Freedom of speech or license to harm? Regardless of what we see pornography as the lucrative industry will always exist given its profit margin and high demand. With the introduction of technologies such as the Internet, pornography has emerged into the 21st century as a billion-dollar industry, exerting major influence over popular culture (Evans, 2012). However with the growth of the Internet, inevitably has come the rise of easy accessibility to free pornography. Although the ethics around gender depiction in pornography have already received extensive coverage, little emphasis has been placed on how the rise of free and often pirated pornography has created power hierarchies within the industry. The expansion of domains such as pornhub or redtube, both privately owned by Mindgeek, only give evidence to the monopolistic hold that the tech world has over the adult entertainment industry (Auerbach, 2014). So what are the hidden economics of pornography? How has the introduction of free Internet pornography enriched the tech world, whilst depressing the wages for the actors involved? These are questions that need to be asked to make for a more ethical production and distribution of pornography.
The proliferation of technology, not only made pornography ubiquitous by the late 2000s but also brought about increased opportunities for the expansion of privately held tech companies to capitalize on a newfound market – free internet porn. Mindgeek is one of these privately held companies based in Montreal, which is estimated to own 8 of the 10 main tube sites including Pornhub, Gaytube, YouPorn, and Redtube (Pinsker, 2016). With more traffic than Facebook or Amazon, the company has been reported as one of the top 3 consumers of bandwidth (Bindel, 2020). Through first, acquiring ownership over key adult entertainment websites and production studios, then buying out the competition, Mindgeek quickly became the world’s primary porn provider (Medium, 2016). Mindgeek’s dominance is indicative of how one tech company can monopolize an entire industry, and its success perhaps presents the repercussions of consolidating production and distribution in a sole monopolistic owner (Auerbach, 2014). A distinguishing feature of aggregator tube sites is that most of the content they host is pirated, and consequently this is the overarching issue with Mindgeek (Pinsker, 2016). It is estimated, that pirated and reuploaded content costs the adult entertainment industry around 2 billion dollars per year in revenue, widely depressing the levels of financing available for production (Pinsker, 2016). Today sources find that performers only make a third of what they did previously, with actors earning as little as $300 per scene (Morris, 2016). If compensation doesn’t already seem low given the nature of work, this discrepancy only becomes more evident when ex performers like Mia Khalifa come forward, recently disclosing that she was only paid a total of $12,000 for 3 months of work. This means that she received no residuals, despite attracting 784 million views for Pornhub, and being the most searched for adult actress of 2016 (Horton, 2019). The pervasive effects of a technological monopoly can be seen as industry workers bear the brunt of it, working longer hours for less, with many female performers finding they need to take on more extreme and physically strenuous gigs in order to stay working within the industry. Others have turned to escorting and prostitution outside of porn as they face the dilemma of having to work for the very establishment that profits from the piracy of their work (Lubben, 2008; Bisley, 2017). This is all whilst tech corporations commonly based throughout Montreal and Silicon Valley, often detached, and operating far from production processes make billions, as they capitalize off the hard work, and labor of sex workers (Bisley, 2017). By 2013, most primary production studios within the adult entertainment industry including Reality Kings, and Digital Playground, were purchased by Mindgeek, further solidifying the existing power hierarchies within the world of porn (Pardon, 2012). Allowing one enterprise to situate such power puts industries at risk of being homogenized and has meant that porn industry workers are now too afraid to speak out for fear of being blacklisted (Auerbach, 2014). Although there are now provisions in place to help combat piracy, these are often costly, resource-intensive, and time-consuming, making copyright takedown requests primarily exclusive to a small pool of people within the industry (Schultz, 2018).
So why does our culture appear to be turning a blind eye to this monopoly? This is most likely due to a multitude of factors that all stem from the stigma around sex work. "Shira Tarrant suggests researchers and academics have been quick to dismiss investigations into the economic side of porn, due to the perceived frivolous nature of the industry."
So why does our culture appear to be turning a blind eye to this monopoly? This is most likely due to a multitude of factors that all stem from the stigma around porn. Author and professor at California State University, Shira Tarrant suggests researchers and academics have been quick to dismiss investigations into the economic side of porn, due to the perceived frivolous nature of the industry (Pinsker, 2016). Tarrant goes on to discuss how this has meant that official financial records from productions are difficult to come by, as many refuse to view porn as the ‘serious economic and financial matter that it is’ (Tarrant, 2016). Persisting inequity within the adult entertainment industry probably does not receive the same amount of scrutiny as any other industry might, due to the fact that when we interact with porn, we enter a different mental state almost characterizable as a trance, where the ethical switch in our brain turns off. Tarrant states, “People are getting sexually aroused and they just kind of go into a political or economic denial about what they're doing.” (Pinsker, 2016). Our culture’s apathy towards this monopoly also ties in with how societal perceptions can fuel power hierarchies. Author Jon Ronson highlights how hierarchies within porn reflect discourse around reputation. There is this general disdain for sex workers who are seen as disreputable, heavily contrasting with adoration for the tech world of Silicon Valley, which is often seen as reputable (Bisley, 2017). It becomes increasingly evident that the winners here are the corporate ‘tech’ players, who are able to remain reputable, whilst simultaneously faceless, their success ultimately founded upon the reuse of stolen content. Unfortunately for the performers, negative traction has also made it difficult for them to transition out of the industry and pursue ‘normal’ jobs (Kohn, 2017). But how much can we really blame Mindgeek or its founder Fabian Thylmann for the ramifications that follow the tech takeover of the porn industry? The inequities within porn do mirror those of many other industries, and in the wake of the post 2000s Internet boom, we have seen tech monopolies repeatedly achieve market dominance (Rogoff, 2019). With the Internet being immanent to late capitalism, perhaps this outcome within porn was only inevitable given the manifestation of how sex intersects with capitalist economies (Moreno, 2018). It is futile to tackle issues of this nature without taking into account pornification within the framework of neoliberal economies, and hyper consumer culture today (Emanuele, 2012). Given basic principles of supply and demand and the absence of market regulation, if Fabian did not monopolize an entire industry, it is likely that someone else would have.
"Persisting inequity within the adult entertainment industry probably does not receive the same amount of scrutiny as any other industry might, due to the fact that when we interact with porn, we enter a different mental state almost characterizable as a trance, where the ethical switch in our brain turns off ." "The inequities within porn do mirror those of many other industries, and in the wake of the post 2000s Internet boom, we have seen tech monopolies repeatedly achieve market dominance" "With the Internet being immanent to late capitalism, perhaps this outcome was inevitable given the manifestation of how sex intersects with capitalist economies."
The relationship between sex and technology is an ever-evolving one, which has forced pornography to transition from material to online spaces, reconfiguring our understanding of sex within digital economies (Daneback et al., 2012; Attwood, 2010). The advent and growth of free online porn have created power hierarchies within the adult entertainment sector, enabling institutions such as Mindgeek to quickly monopolize entire industries. The monopolistic hold that the tech world has over the adult entertainment industry cannot be viewed in isolation from the ascendance of market-based neoliberal policies. Mindgeek’s dominance is symptomatic of the commodification of sex within a hyper-commercialized culture and perhaps is indicative of our obsession with hedonism in the pursuit of self-expression and hyper-individualism. Regardless of opinion, a market for online porn will always exist given its demand; therefore we need to ensure there are provisions in place to create more equitable outcomes for the workers involved. It would not be legal nor would it be socially acceptable to walk into the supermarket and steal, however, this is essentially what we are doing when we watch pirated Internet pornography (Pinsker, 2016). Understanding where porn comes from, and the labor conditions under which it was made is crucial, in order to make for more ethical decisions around consumption.
References Feona Attwood Book Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography Book David Auerbach 2014 Vampire Porn https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mindgeek-porn-monopoly-its-dominance-is-a-cautionary-tale-for-other-industries.html Julie Bindel 2020 The Truth About Pornhub https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-pornhub Alexander Bisley 2017 How free porn enriched the tech industry — and ruined the lives of actors https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/10/6/16435742/jon-ronson-butterfly-effect-internet-free-porn Kristian Daneback, Sven-Axel Månsson and Michael W. Ross. 2012 Technological Advancements and Internet Sexuality: Does Private Access to the Internet Influence Online Sexual Behavior? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4559163/ Vincent Emanuele 2012 Pornography and Gender Politics Within Neoliberalism https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/07/pornography-and-gender-politics-within-neoliberalism/ Michelle Evans 2012 Book Review: Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (Spinifex, 2010) http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlGendLaw/2012/5.pdf Alex Horton 2019 Mia Khalifa is among the world’s most-watched women. Yet the porn industry is keeping the profits. The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/16/mia-khalifa-is-among-worlds-most-watched-women-yet-porn-industry-is-keeping-profits/ Isabelle Kohn 2017 Former porn stars explain how porn screwed up their lives https://therooster.com/blog/how-much-does-doing-porn-actually-affect-your-future Shelley Lubben 2008 Ex-Porn Star Tells the Truth About the Porn Industry https://www.covenanteyes.com/2008/10/28/ex-porn-star-tells-the-truth-about-the-porn-industry/ Medium 2016 The Porn Monopoly https://medium.com/five-guys-facts/8-19-16-davis-ce6771141589 Joseph Moreno 2018 Arizona State University Hope, Possibility, and Cruelty: Porn Consumption and Neoliberalism's Everyday Affective Subjects https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/158457061.pdf Chris Morris 2016, Porn’s dirtiest secret: What everyone gets paid https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/20/porns-dirtiest-secret-what-everyone-gets-paid.html Rhett Pardon 2012 Manwin Acquires Digital Playground https://web.archive.org/web/20130512031646/http://www.xbiz.com/news/143303 https://www.xbiz.com/news/147369/manwin-rk-netmedia-file-plan-to-merge Joe Pinsker 2016 The Hidden Economics of Porn https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/pornography-industry-economics-tarrant/476580/ Kenneth Rogoff 2019 Big tech has too much monopoly power – it's right to take it on https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/big-tech-monopoly-power-elizabeth-warren-technology Grayson Schultz 2018 Don’t Let Them Trick You – MindGeek, PornHub, and YouPorn are Bad News https://www.chronicsex.org/2018/03/mindgeek-terrible/ Shira Tarrant 2016 Book The Pornographic Industry
