LOS ANGELES—The USC School of Cinematic Arts, Wicked Pictures, and Takedown Piracy invite all adult industry members and supporters to attend a special discussion titled "The Piracy of Sex." The event will feature anti-piracy activists Jessica Drake and Nate Glass, and the conversation will be hosted by David Lerner, Ph.D..
The event will take place at 7 p.m. on April 30—tonight!—at the Ray Stark Family Theater, SCA 108, USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, 900 W. 34th St., Los Angeles, CA 90007. Admission is free to all, but an RSVP is required.
The growing trend of digital piracy, from music to movies to books, has led many to accept it as a way of life and the norm for releasing content online. The same people who would never steal lipstick from the pharmacy disregard their ethics and attempt to rationalize illegally downloading a song. The problem is even more prevalent with sexual content. While the autonomy of the Internet helps generate a larger audience, including women, for porn, fetish videos, and live sex shows, it also allows people to hide behind aliases and justify their actions. The stigmas still surrounding sexuality contribute to the rampant pirating, as do performers' lack of funds and resources. Mainstream corporations like Microsoft, NBC/Universal, and Sony have billions of dollars and teams of lawyers on their side to protect their content, but what do sex workers and adult entertainment producers have? Anti-piracy expert Nate Glass and adult performer/director/producer and sex educator Jessica Drake discuss the effect of piracy and how independent content producers can fight back and protect their copyrights.
Most in the adult community are well familiar with Wicked Pictures contract star Jessica Drake as a performer, writer, and director of the Jessica Drake's Guide series, as well as a global humanitarian and emerging sexual wellness authority; and Nate Glass, founder and COO of Takedown Piracy, a leading anti-piracy service born in April of 2009, which since then has been listed by Google as one of the top five reporters of digital violations in the world, with over 22 million infringements removed.
Less well-known in the adult community is David Lerner, who received his doctorate from USC's School of Cinematic Arts, and currently teaches film and television courses at University of Southern California, Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University, and CSU – Fullerton. His doctoral dissertation, "A Taste for Trash: The Persistence of Exploitation in American Cinema, 1960-1975," explores key aesthetic, economic, and legal developments in the post-war American film industry filtered through the lens of exploitation film practices. His areas of scholarly interest include independent cinema, criticism and the construction of taste, representations of sexuality, and media industry studies.
It should be a rousing evening for anyone who is concerned about the amount of pirated adult material available on the internet, and the effects of that piracy on adult content production.
