Private Porn Shoots
popehat.com
popehat.com
The law also specially names the author of the law (Michael Weinstein) and requires the state to pay for his legal bills in "enforcing" the law.
The reason this is even an issue is that Michael Weinstein (whom I liken to "Jenny McCarthy meets Martin Shkreli"[0]) was pissed that OSHA didn't rule his way in his lawsuit against porn studio Treasure Island Media[1][2], so he took this statewide as an act of vengeance.
[0] Aside from being virulently anti-science, he's also behind Prop 61, which ostensibly reduces the price of HIV drugs, but in actuality includes a special carve-out for the HMO he runs, locking in guaranteed profit for himself.
[1] OSHA basically said "okay, you didn't use condoms when filming, but that's only worth a $100 fine, just as if you didn't have a first-aid kit on-site".
[2] If you're at work right now, you Google that name at your own risk
After reading https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_60,_Condoms_i..., I found out that, yes, this proposition really is that terrible.
I was surprised by this, too, so I dug up the full text. The only places I can find Weinstein's name are in the letterhead and the signature on the cover letter. Search for yourself: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/15-0004%20%...
In other words, someone pirates an old (pre-prop60) video, uploads it to a sharing site, someone can use it to sue the producers and the producers have to prove the video was produced and released before Prop-60 was enacted.
Am I reading that right?
I don't know enough about CA law to interpret what the second rule means--it sounds like it should mean at most a year from the date the video is posted, but the wording makes it imply that there's effectively no statue of limitations. It truly is horrible if you read the actual text.
At first glance, it's presented as a way to reduce the price of HIV drugs. In reality, it's a way for Michael Weinstein to pad his pockets, at the expense of the VA. (He wrote the bill and included a special provision that guarantees his HMO a special exemption from the price cap).
Michael Weinstein, you may remember, is the same man who committed $20 million in Medicaid fraud in LA county a few years ago. He then claimed that the federal case against him had no legal standing because the federal government cannot prosecute for fraud against state-level agencies (Medicaid). Fortunately, the judge was not convinced by that reasoning.
Prop 1 is an initiative to "help educate the children of Olympia", using a little tax to help pay for college tuition. So noble!
Except: it proposes a levy on households of $200K or more (not constitutional in Washington), is an income tax, also not constitutional in Washington, requires the city of Olympia to fund the administration with no enforcement clauses, and multiple groups have already announced that they intend to sue the City if it's passed (which it will, because it's a 'think of the kids' measure), and the City knows it won't win but could not get the measure struck off so is already budgeting for constitutional lawyers. Hell, the City doesn't have the authority to see these people's tax statements, so it'd rely entirely on self-reporting. It's just a mess.
So you look a bit closer, and who is pushing this bill? A bunch of locals concerned about local education.
No. A bunch of multi-millionaires from Seattle who want to use this as a proving ground for their challenges to state taxation law. Of the top ten donors, not one has ever lived in the County, let alone the City, nor does any of them have any children who attended school in either. (Olympia, like most state capitals, is far smaller than the largest city in the state), which makes you wonder why they're not pushing this in Seattle/King County - probably because they don't want their own taxes going to fund the defense of a proposition that's very specifically unconstitutional.
"Think of the kids" at its worst.
Bear in mind, too, that the City did try to get it struck off on admin grounds as it was being proposed and I believe a court agreed that it was unconstitutional, but that the law didn't allow for a Proposition to be preemptively stuck down on those grounds.
I wish people were more willing to separate the act of "consenting adults doing a financial transaction" from all the surrounding "badness" but that rarely happens.
> radical liberties
Also, I wasn't insinuating that human trafficking is inconsequential, or that it's even rare, I don't know if it is or isn't. I was merely stating that it is a separate act/crime. Not all prostitutes are created as a result of human trafficking. I'm all for stopping sex that is not consensual.
Also, I see "muh freedoms" and personal responsibility as intertwined ideas, I'm not sure I see why you think they are opposed. If I'm free to fuck whoever I want, and another is also free to do the same (regardless of whether or not there is a financial transaction at the same time), then we are responsible for our own sex lives, yes? The state is not involved (I get "muh freedoms").
If we can't even agree that the phrase "[something] rarely happens" means to say that something is rare, then I don't think there's any hope for further debate.
My point is that prostitution and human trafficking are two separate activities. The frequency upon which either occurs in society is unknown to me.
I am attempting to convey that I think prostitution should be legal. Human trafficking should continue to be illegal. And society in a general sense seems to have trouble separating the two when discussing this topic.
I still think the problem is the trafficking and not the prostitution so much, and that all efforts should be put towards combatting trafficking by any means possible.
Even if protitution was legalized, I have no problems convicting johns for enabling or benefiting from human trafficking, if done so knowingly. This isn't much different from age of consent and could be solved in a similar way.
When prostitution is legalized, the distinction then exists for demand.
What has to happen for this to increase trafficking is that non-consensual demand must be bigger than the totality of demand beforehand.
However, I don't think it's that simple either. If lack of supply drives up the price significantly, I think it's possible some people will be convinced to visit cheaper illegal establishments on the promise that it's totally consensual, they just don't want to pay taxes etc.
It's a lot more difficult to ensure that people are there consensually when brothels are driven underground. How can we possibly police every single 'massage parlour'.
On the other hand, legal brothels could have an extra tax that paid for social workers that ensured the brothels were compliant - that sex workers weren't intimidated by their customers or bosses.
It will also lead to healthier outcomes - we can then test people to make sure diseases weren't being spread.
Unfortunately people learn nothing from sex-ed stats - 'abstinence only' makes thing worse.
Then why would an underground "massage parlour" want to go legal?
It wouldn't, but why would a person go to an underground "massage parlor" when there are cleaner, less skeevy, fully legal alternates? Just like legit legal music sources online cut back music sharing, legit brothels may cut back the demand for underground alternates.
We do have some problems with trafficked sex workers, but the police investigate them as crimes. The other prostitutes can cooperate with the police without fear.
Practically nobody knows what Aotearoa is.
I'd like to see a private members bill for a referendum to get rid of the name New Zealand much like how Australia got rid of New Holland. Probably to coincide with the country leaving the commonwealth and becoming a republic and getting a new flag.
However, on topic, legalising prostitution means that prostitutes operate from licensed facilities that must confirm to workplace safety and health codes, it means the prostitutes and clients both have protection under consumer law as well as regular law and can go to the disputes tribunal or police if there are any issues.
You control underage prostitution and human trafficking because people who operate must be licensed and audited. Most consumers would go to licensed facilities because they operate completely in the open (even as crass as having big neon signs with SEX written on them), and are easy to find, street prostitution is illegal as are unlicensed brothels and both seem to have disapeared.
What is consent? Early in my taxi driving career I had a passenger who was certainly a 'working girl', and she didn't seem to have enjoyed herself much... And she certainly wouldn't have spent the night at that hotel if she wasn't economically stressed.
Usually women who enter that profession do so because they
need the money - not always, but usually. I sent some non-verbal
compassion and understanding her way. Indeed, some of Jesus
of Nazareth's ("who became the Christ") best friends were
working girls.
In contrast, in countries which have legal bordellos the employment, management, taxation, and state governance of prostitution is much more transparent. If prostitution is legal and open it's more difficult to use it for human trafficking. Making prostitution illegal is like making rain illegal: there have always been and there will always be people who
Then, on the other hand, the cases where prostitution is abused for human trafficking we can actually ram down on the human trafficking issues directly as prostitution itself won't be another question.
Prostitutes that have been human trafficked risk arrest and/or deportation just for stepping forward and exposing the human traffickers. Guess whose interest that plays into?
It's one thing to say that pot should be legal, but ask a doctor about the thousand other drugs you don't know about. There are some scary things out there. The same is true of prostitution. There is a safe way of doing it, but there are some big areas that the general public doesn't think much about. That;s why those countries that do allow it, including a tiny part of the US, heavily regulate the trade. As with drugs, the end result of legalization shouldn't be the ability to pay anyone for anything.
Something to think about: Should prostitution be legalized, should people be able to settle debts with their bodies? Instead of paying rent, could a college girl just have sex with her landlord? Doesn't that create perverse intensives? The answer in many countries is to mandate brothels so that the girl is paid in money, not in relief of a debt held by the person having sex with her. That way you cannot suggest, or insist via contract, that anyone who owes you money might settle the debt via sex.
It would be indentured servitude if a court ordered it be done to satisfy a debt, which I believe is illegal.
Otherwise, it seems like it would be no worse than a glassworker being allowed to pay off his debts by making you a window. We do have reasonable bankruptcy laws and other tools for handling debt-related disputes.
I think that ignores many realities. Those deemed sexually attractive, mostly young women, will be the target of any number of scams meant to force them into a financial corner so that they work off their debts. That may happen often today, but we use words like blackmail or rape to describe it. Nobody should want to legalize the practice by saying it a perfectly acceptable way for a young women to satisfy a creditor.
You might think so, and yet my understanding is that people who are forced into prostitution by poverty find it a though choice that impacts their self-worth. I doubt any down-on-their-luck glassworkers would feel humiliated and degraded by accepting an offer to make a window.
Clearly your reductionist approach is losing vital differences.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, you can find many ordinary houses in working class neighborhoods with small stained glass windows. There was an influx of German stained glass artisans, and there were so many of them, that they sold to ordinary working people. Apparently, the whole Cincinnati scene died out because of the industry practice of the time -- preferring mercury containing solders -- caused so many mental health problems. There may have been such glassworkers in that environment.
I'm not the one who made the comparison. I'm just offering data.
Calling them both professions is an academic approach to a very non-academic industry.
https://www.ted.com/talks/toni_mac_the_laws_that_sex_workers...
would human trafficking be so prevalent if it were easy to sell your own body?
Or, put another way, do you really believe that human trafficking exists because child prostitution is illegal?
More like individuals should be empowered by the law to charge money in exchange for sex. That's the thesis, the whole thing. "Party X paid Party Y for sex" becomes not a crime.
> do you really believe that human trafficking exists because child prostitution is illegal? And that such a move would actually decrease the number of, say, young girls are forced into prostitution against their wills?
It doesn't matter, it's unrelated to the central thesis. It's possible to agree people should be free to charge for or pay for sex, while also condemning human trafficking and other forceful restrictions of personal agency more generally.
They did not say all prostitution is consensual (and certainly not all trafficking, since that's pretty much defined not to be consensual). And they said absolutely nothing about child prostitution.
Gut feeling: legality doesn't matter much - trafficking is used to fill supply.
Would be interesting to see numbers.
Note that I'm not myself in favour of legalised prostitution, I just think your argument is a bad one.
Plenty of harmful stuff is legal. The solution isn't to make it illegal, but to do better at educating people about harm reduction.
I never really thought about that distinction before. The author's answer makes sense. What it really shows is that prostitution should be legal.
(I don't know if this is addressed in the article - the site seems to have fallen over.)
Another one is legal forms required for producers and actors - there are forms that each actor must fill out, these must be verified and kept. Not doing so is a felony.
As long as a 3rd party is involved, and "films" it (still, unmanned camera in the room) and everyone fills out the paperwork, and the 3rd party handles the payment (minimum wage for party A, minimum wage + $X for party B), party A "buys some porn" at the curious cost of minimum wage + $X.
Am I missing something? Did I explain this poorly?
There is a gift tax, but it's paid by the donor, and they can give up to the annual exclusion amount a year without hitting it. This year, the limit's $14,000.
Once a gift goes past that for the year, the excess starts counting against the donor's lifetime exclusion and needs to be reported on the donor's taxes. Gift taxes come into play once the lifetime exclusion limit is exceeded, and it's $5.4 million.
Remembering this would put a stop to 90% of legal "discussions" on HN.
A police trooper pulled me over for ~80 in a 65 (deserted highway at night). He somehow transposed the last two numbers in my license plate, so I obviously assumed I was home free. Until, while I was on the stand, the judge just looked at me for about 10 seconds, said "Were you driving the car?" "[pause] Yes, your honor." "[gavel slam] Guilty."
It's the other situation where law stops being code. If you do something that is technically illegal but probably oughtn't be then the law can be reinterpreted in your favor.
Assuming you followed the absolute letter of the law with your totally-not-a-brothel then you would be fine (until the law is amended).
Select parts of laws may have the rigor of a programming language, but the greater portion expresses things for humans, with human ambiguity.
"money or its equivalent"
"offers"
"adultery"
"fornication"
etc.
The law is written in terms of broad concepts that a judge can interpret. In most cases there is no such thing as "absolute letter of the law", partly because English makes that impossible, but mostly because legislating such strict specific definitions would be a bad idea. I think the impossibility of bug-free software makes it clear that we wouldn't want laws written like code.
I'm not sure your example was the best for showing there aren't loopholes based on overly literal interpretations, given that the tax code is notorious for them.
I hope the point was clear though, that the "spirit of the law" is a real thing, and most clever loopholes will not work with a human judge.
I get a handful of calls per year from guys who think
they're the first geniuses to come up with the great
idea of setting up a "Freeman Brothel" and calling it
a "film studio."
They're all disappointed when I tell them that they're
not getting away with this "brilliant plan" unless they
take so many steps to make it look legitimate that it
will, in fact, become a legitimate porn production
enterprise — in which case, why bother with the ruse in
the first place?One of the things the article points out is that if you're going to "exploit the loophole", it's going to take about as much work as actually running a production company. This seems to be the case here.
(And, presumably the guys in question are also keeping records of the actresses, filling out all the paperwork, etc. No fun going to prison for fucking a 17 year old on camera.)
That's not going to happen easily. And that's partly because it will take away an avenue for filling up prisons. And undercover cops doing the prostitution beat are not going to like it.
But I'm sure if politicians see a tax benefit from legalizing it, they will show some interest.
Prostitution is kept illegal mostly because that's what the majority of voters strongly prefer.
I doubt most people strongly want to outlaw adult, consenting prostitution. But the religious (socially conservative, etc) lobby is loud and participates when the law is challenged. The majority if people don't, so they tend to get what the anti-protitution lobby wants.
"44% of Americans think that prostitution should be legal while 46% think that it should be illegal. Democrats tend to support rather than oppose legalization (50% to 40%) while most Republicans oppose rather than support legalization (54% to 34%). Independents are evenly split, 45% to 45%."
As I expected, men are more pro legalization (59%) than women (30%).
I think you underestimate the left's anti prostitution fervor. Their stated arguments are around exploitation and trafficking.
I think polls usually undervalue how motivated people are to act politically on their stance. In the presidential race, this is related to how "energized" people are to go to the voting booth.
Either way, I think Americans have tended to outlaw borderline issues, but I suspect in the coming 1-2 decades, there will be a significant pushback against over-criminialization of non-violent crimes. There is a book called "Three Felonies a Day" which explains how ridiculous our laws have already become.
In the USA, porn has been largely protected under the 1st Amendment. It is important to note that some pornography is not legal. This is usually called "obscene" and the standards are judged by your local community. There was a famous SCOtUS decision whereby the opinion used the test of "I know it when I see it"[1] to judge the threshold between legal porn and illegal porn, which I find problematic to the point of not being a useful law. You are at the whims of the delicate sensibilities of your neighbors on a jury when you are accused of consuming illegal porn.
Side note: there is a great scene in a movie on the Muhammed Ali SCOTUS case where the justices spend one day a week reviewing "evidence" of another ongoing case involving porn. [2]
Prostitution is usually prohibited because American protestantism (typically in the form of social pressure or local laws) is largely prudish. This is the same social pressure that brought about the alcohol prohibition (with the dubious distinction of being the only Amendment to have been repealed). It is hyperbolized in the movie Footloose in the form of drinking (which leads to unplanned non marital sex, of course!) and dancing (the horror!).
Prostitution, specifically, is usually outlawed because of the effects on public health (both medical health and the mental/social health of men who use prostitutes), and fear of the unknown (violence and other associated crime). Many communities in the US already legalize some forms of sex work (phone sex, video and still camera pornography, bikini waitresses, strip clubs, etc) or perhaps better worded, can not outlaw them. NIMBYs are largely to credit for the threshold of where a community draws a line on local sex work.
Nevada brothels are still legal in many of the less populated counties, but the legal brothels are regulated, the girls must register with the sheriff's office, and they are all tested for medical issues frequently.
The US has had a long history with using the law to outlaw "socially undesirable" behaviors (put another way, the prevailing social cohort is able to control other unapproved cohorts with the law, creating something of a tyrant of the majority). I firmly believe that marijuana is much less dangerous than many other, more acceptable drugs which have been legalized (like alcohol and tobacco). Even legal gambling is a much larger risk to public health than marijuana. But marijuana (which I don't use) prohibition has, in the past, been a convenient tool to outlaw to control non-white populations in the US and to prevent a drop in the insane work ethic protestants require of their community, similar to how the alcohol prohibition was sold to other WASPs by controlling those "unruly" Southern Europeans during a generation when the US was becoming increasingly fearful of its changing demographics.
Like many other prohibitions, prostitution is hard to police and the side effects of the prohibition are probably worse than if the action were legalized. Modern prostitution is a fund-raising tool for drug cartels, people smugglers, and has contributed to a rise in modern slavery.
This is a very weird argument to make. There isn't a legal form of videotaped burglary or murder. There is a legal form of videotaped paid sex. 'Strapping on a camera' theoretically turns prostitution into pornography, but turns burglary into... ? Murder into... ?
With murder, it's harder to make a case, but a videotaped burglary by someone who is a skilled burglar could certainly try to make the case that it's art. There is a number of film scenes that are basically that, except the burglary is faked, at which point you're left arguing that this one artistic expression involves harm to people and this other one does not... and the analogy to the porn/prostitution situation is pretty clear at that point, I think.
There are most certainly legal forms of performance art that steal people's time without their consent [1]. How is stealing an hour of someone's time (e.g. by worsening traffic during their commute for a week) qualitatively different from stealing $2 from the same person? I mean in a moral/ethical sense; legally these are different because the law generally doesn't do a good job of treating time as a limited commodity people have and that can be taken away from them, as far as I can tell. That's a problem with our laws, I will grant that.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/us/californias-1970s-conce... cites an example. If it's _too_ egregious as in http://hyperallergic.com/332844/why-did-the-tree-cross-the-r... it can in fact lead to legal charges, but note that if the tree had just stopped the performance at the first police request it would still have stolen time from people and gotten away with no consequences. Even as it was, I doubt the punishment will be what it would have been if the same person had stolen a few dollars each from dozens of people.
Equating porn to prostitution is like equating a stunt driver to that crazy asshole that ran you off the road.
The porn industry is pretty heavily regulated, requiring std checks, identification, consent forms, and witnesses.
Legal prostitution would attempt to achieve the same level of regulation, but due to the scale it will just result in more trafficing and abuse.
Prostitution on the other hand is always in the country where the service is provided. Big difference.
Unless you're attracted to women you consider "exotic", in which case the girl-next-door look would bore you.
Its authentic and everyone is having a good time.
I would think there would be hard data on this by now.
The John has to audition for the porn shoot (which in practice will take 5 seconds) but an administrative charge of $200 has to be paid by him to the film studio company. The film studio pays then $100 to him and $100 to the actress as salary for the porn shoot. At the end the resulting porn flick is encrypted, stored in a super secured data vault and offered for sale at the price of $1,000,000,000 ... ?
I think I hacked the law!