Let’s face a few facts here: The adult industry is up against one of the biggest challenges it’s ever faced in the form of Proposition 60; the backer of this initiative, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has resources far greater than ours to push it through; and the voters in whose hands the fate of the bill lies—and in turn the fate of this industry—by and large have zero clue or probably even interest in what the ramifications will be of a seemingly-to-them morally righteous “yes” vote.
Yesterday a couple of interesting items concerning Prop 60 cropped up. One, which appeared in an LA Times article, was that AHF shelled out over $1.4 million solely on gathering the signatures to get the initiative placed on the ballot. The other, of course, was the “yes on 60” television ad the organization rolled out starring Cameron Bay—you know, the Cameron Bay whose contraction of HIV back in 2013 has been trumpeted by AHF ever since as a cautionary tale of shooting porn without condoms, despite the fact there is no evidence whatsoever that she was exposed to the virus on a porn set.
But that won’t matter. She is about to become, courtesy of AHF’s typical fact-poo-pooing tactics, the poster child for porn’s egregious mistreatment of its talent, and the general public will buy into it hook, line and sinker.
So what are we to do? How can we possibly beat back this fire? Well here’s one idea: enlist the help of Pornhub. Yes, Pornhub is controversial. It’s been one of the foremost promulgators of the “porn is free” principle this generation has adopted as an inalienable truth. But one thing cannot be denied: If any entity in all of adult has an equal if not greater reach than AHF, Pornhub is it.
Pornhub has become a de facto voice for the industry, in the sense that it’s easily the most referenced site, and its spokespeople the most oft quoted, in mainstream media. What’s more, it has a staggering U.S. Alexa rating of 53. By comparison, celebrity gossip site TMZ.com is ranked 243 and dating site Match.com is ranked 293.
With that kind of prominence comes great power. Imagine the impact of a simple pop-up message whenever someone logged onto Pornhub that read “Vote No on 60,” with a link to more info if one desired it.
Barring that, surely its all-knowing analytics team could provide some useful data on how much porn with condoms gets viewed on its site versus that without. You know, in case there was any doubt about what consumers prefer.
This would benefit Pornhub as much as everyone else. After all, if you take a gander at the fine print of Prop 60 (specifically Section 6720.5), Pornhub—at least by way of its Pornhub Premium subscription service—could very easily be found liable as a commercial distributor of “adult films filmed in California in violation of Labor Code section 6720(a),” i.e. ones in which condoms are not used, for which it could be “assessed a penalty of the greater of: (1) not less than one-half times, but not more than one-and-one-half times, the total amount of commercial consideration exchanged for any rights in the adult film(s); or (2) not less than one-half times, but not more than one-and-one-half times, the total cost of producing the adult film(s).”
So how about it, Pornhub? Help spread the word? To paraphrase Princess Leia, you may just be our only hope.
