
Why America's Outdated Morals Won't Let Porn into Mainstream Business - scholia
http://www.nerve.com/features/why-americas-outdated-morals-wont-let-porn-into-mainstream-business
======
btipling
I'm an atheist and I still think porn may be a valueless, happiness destroying
exploitation of the way the human brain works in a way that makes zynga appear
to be an angel of virtue. The less of it there is, the better.

~~~
sentenza
I think nobody doubts that the porn industry is a very exploitative business.

However, an easily overlooked aspect of porn is that it canalizes and binds a
lot of "useless" energy. A few years ago I heard this tongue-in-cheek
hypothesis about male sexuality: Once they manage to reliably eliminate all
porn, it will take two days before mobs with clubs and pitchforks roam the
streets making political demands.

~~~
contacternst
Can you provide any evidence at all to this point? I understand that you're
just providing a possible potential benefit of porn, but it seems totally
unfounded to me.

~~~
sentenza
In truth, no. I've heard this stated by various people, among them Tim
Pritlove, who said it in one of his podcasts (I think it was NSFW, but I'm not
sure). Nobody I've heard it say has pointed to evidence. It is one of those
things that appears plausible to a lot of people from personal experience.
This of course means, that it might be wrong.

There seem to be some people trying to collect data about the correlation
between availability of pornography and the level of some crimes, but I'm
still waiting for something conclusive.

Not that it's easy. Quantitative sociology is, due to the interconnectedness
of the system in question, a mess.

------
ig1
There's three underlying issues here that drive these decisions:

1) Legal and financial risk, the adult industry sees a vast amount of
fraudulent transactions. That's the primary reason that most financial
institutions won't deal with it, but there are specialist payment providers
who will.

2) Ethical reasons. Many companies won't work with tobacco, alcohol, gambling,
porn and other vice industries because it doesn't fit with their corporate
objectives.

3) Marketing reasons. Even if a company doesn't intrinsically oppose vice
businesses, being involved can clearly impact public perception of the
business. This is a much bigger deal if you're running a multisided business
like a social network or an app store because it can cause your entire
business to shift because of the feedback loop.

~~~
wereHamster
To your second point. Aren't the corporate objectives of all US companies to
make a shitload of money for their shareholders? If so, they should be jumping
on all those businesses like horny teenagers, because those businesses make a
_lot_ of money.

~~~
ig1
You're mistaken, there's virtually no money in the online adult entertainment
business. The entire market size is only a few billion in annual revenue and
it's primarily long tail, the majority of the larger players (ala Playboy) are
losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

It's a small fragmented market which is shrinking every year.

~~~
olalonde
That's true. From Wikipedia: "In 2007, Bang Bros generated a sales total of
$1.9 million." That's very tiny given that BangBros is a pretty big player in
that industry (2,898 Alexa rank for a paywalled site).

------
m_ram
There's a mob of religious (and some non-religious) activists waiting around
for any excuse to raise hell as soon as one of these companies makes any
attempt to legitimize porn.

~~~
krob
Porn is legal. You are thinking more of any attempt to make porn non-censored
and relaxing regulatory restrictions on the distribution of porn. Yes,
feminists & the religious "right" will raise hell because they're the primary
reason porn is so inflammatory in this country.

~~~
drdaeman
> Porn is legal.

In some jurisdictions. In some it's in "gray" area (laws are uncertain or
badly worded), and it some it's completely illegal.

Also laws usually make distinction between production, distribution and
consumption of porn.

~~~
quantumpotato_
In the USA, I think it's only legal to be created in California IIRC.

------
quantumpotato_
Killing people good, fucking people bad.

------
krob
This is the beginning of the plot of the movie Strange Days. Essentially the
ability to record the thoughts of people during extremely intimate periods of
their lives.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/)
It only took us 18 years to get to that point.

------
venomsnake
_Alex Petralia specified he was prohibited by PayPal’s privacy policy from
divulging information on accounts_

I love how the companies use the "privacy policies" as excuses to not answer
question even when the question is asked from the media on behalf of the
person asking.

Do they think we are idiots?

~~~
tomp
If you had a company, how would you feel if PayPal shared the information with
the kind of business they do with you?

~~~
venomsnake
Except here the company has gone to the media. That is very different. The
company wants to share the data , PayPal no ...

------
schoper
All the people reproducing themselves at replacement rate in your society
(religious people) say that porn interferes with their social patterns.

------
trotsky
Wow, if this is the class of insert you get after paying what I presume are
not insignificant amounts of fund, I'd hate to see the budget for a compelling
one.

Reading between the lines, he sounds butt hurt to me due to dismissals from
the sand hill road set. Well, no shit. Everybody (there) knows that adult
content can be cash positive very close to day one, and due to their strong
balance sheets they are hardly the likeliest M&A targets.

The rest (bulk) of the article seems to riff on mainstream acceptance nay open
discussion. But it's far from jerking off that many people have an aversion to
speaking frankly about. Go talk to some random guy on the streets about his
bowel movements, or if his daughter is still on anti-psychotics and get back
me.

If you want "respect" go do a social/mobile/whatever the new hotness is and go
to the big firms hat in hand. They'll probably give you the money assuming you
keep the crazy bottled up for the duration. Then you'll have no problem
getting those business critical speaking gigs and becoming a go to react quote
of some 3rd rate blog like tech crunch. And your friends will all be suitably
impressed and jealous (to your face).

But after the money runs out all that goes away. Personally I'd just take the
cash positive business for what it is ( a gift) and stop trying to validate
yourself through others. Or just take up lying.

(yes, I know this doesn't have a lot to do with the specific points raised,
but if you let them frame the conversation tehy've already done 90% of their
job)

------
cft
My favorite is when I read about litigious porn companies suing for copyright
violations (like Perfect10 vs Google image search), calling their copyrighted
images _INTELLECTUAL_ property!

~~~
jiggy2011
What is weird about that? IP refers to anything that is a product of
intellect, it doesn't make judgements about whether something is high brow or
not.

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wprl
Obviously people have a right to create and consume smut, but it doesn't make
it right or beneficial or erase the harm it does.

~~~
drdaeman
> harm it does

And, to be more exact, what kind of harm you're talking about?

I could think of some very real and large issues that are usually linked with
pornography (human abduction, treating [usually] females as sexual objects,
etc), but after some thinking (not very deep, I must admit) I've concluded
none of them are caused by pornography itself (in a same way knives aren't the
cause of homicides, although many people died stabbed with a knife). But I may
be missing something.

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danso
Does anyone else think there's just an upper-limit to how much porn can be
consumed by the average person? I think it's just assumed that if porn were
suddenly as acceptable as mainstream programming, it would suddenly become the
most popular thing, ever. But would it? People can read books for hours.
People can watch Game of Thrones/Breaking Bad/Mad Men/Downton Abbey/James Bond
movies in a marathon fashion. Hell, people can run _marathons_ in a marathon
fashion. But watching porn, _constantly_? Besides porn/sex-addicts, how big of
a market is there for porn watching in excess of 10min-1 hour a day?

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tomohawk
Why is this on HN?

~~~
radio4fan
Yeah, who here is interested in articles about startups, the internet giants,
VC funding, etc?

