Phatforums News Room and Blog

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles City Council has passed a resolution in support of amending Section 5193 of the California Code of Regulations to specifically include the word condoms as a form of barrier protection. The proposal is slated for the 2011-2012 State Legislative session. The resolution also states that Los Angeles County Department of Health and the Department of Industrial Relations enter into an agreement in writing to create a mechanism of local enforcement for occupational safety in the adult industry. The resolution was in response to a report presented by the City Attorney’s office regarding the ability for the City of Los Angeles to enforce condom use on adult film sets. Back in April, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's office recommended to City Council to leave language regulating permitted porn shoots unchanged because it lacks jurisdiction to control them further. "Based on the current permit language, along with the jurisdictional concerns in regulating workplace safety issues, our office recommends the permit language remain unchanged," the recommendation letter said. In February, City Council unanimously voted to instruct the city attorney to investigate mandatory condom use in porn movies. Councilmembers in December, with the insistence from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, introduced a motion that would require production companies to have performers wear condoms in order to receive film permits. … [Read more...]

CANOGA PARK, Calif — The Free Speech Coalition will outline details for Adult Production Health and Safety Services at an industrywide meeting slated for Thursday. The new program, also known as APHSS, has been created to fill the gap left by the closure of the AIM clinic earlier this month. FSC Executive Director Diane Duke will explain the APHSS rollout, and FSC Board members Peter Acworth of Kink.com and Christian Mann of Evil Angel also will discuss aspects of the new database, APHSS advisory board, testing facilities and health protocols. Performer privacy issues will be addressed, as well. “We encourage industry members to attend Thursday’s meeting and learn about the new program, as well as ask questions. Performers and producers will have a chance to fill out applications for the database,” FSC Executive Director Diane Duke said. “This meeting is also important because we will have information on the CalOSHA Advisory Committee meeting to be held in Los Angeles on June 7,” Duke added. “That may be the last public CalOSHA meeting to discuss adult production health and safety, before the committee makes suggestions for new regulations that are expected to be handed down in September. We encourage industry members to attend that meeting, also.” Following the meeting, Dr. Gary Richwald, a public health and communicable disease expert, and attorney Karen Tynan will be on hand to speak to the media. Duke, Acworth and Mann will also be available to answer questions at the press conference. The APHSS meeting is to be held Thursday at 1 p.m. at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, 12833 Ventura Blvd, Studio City, Calif. 91604. Producers, performers and any industry members with concerns about production health and safety issues are encouraged to attend, the FSC says. The meeting is for industry members only and is not open to the general public. … [Read more...]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — A Google webmaster video released today tries to answer the question why porn sites are at the lower end of PageRank. Google's Matt Cutts fielded a question relating to the topic from Studio 3X in New York: "What are the technical reasons porn sites have such low PageRank? None go over PR6. A lack of links from trusted sites? Rampant link exchanges with low quality sites? Penalties for affiliate links? Or is there a general penalty on the industry?" Cutts, who says the search giant doesn't have an antiporn rule, theorizes it has to do with popularity vs. links, saying PageRank looks at the number of links and the quality of those links to a site — not the popularity of the site. “People very rarely link to porn sites, even though a lot of people visit a lot of porn sites,” he says. "Not that many link from within the adult industry." … [Read more...]

SEOUL — Korean researchers say they have discovered a better way to detect porn by filtering content through sound. Rather than looking at video imagery, which has a high 90 percent accuracy rate, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Sciences and Technology keyed in on audio from pornography, which is distinct and easy to detect. Researchers Hoirin Kim and MungJon Kim created spectograms of audio clips using a radon transform to represent the voice, music and sound effects along a parallel path. Results proved a clear distinction between porn audio, which is high-pitched, quick changing and repetitive, and that found in other forms of media, including music. When tested across multiple soundtracks, the Kims achieved a 93 percent success rate and believe they have found a way to increase detection rates and lower false positives. The Kims noted that by using sound, they avoid the problem of visual porn-identifiers (pornifiers) that can get tricked by any expanse of skin, like closeups of the face or other not-inappropriate body parts. … [Read more...]

REDMOND, Wash. — Facebook is teaming up with Microsoft and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to scan for child porn online and images of missing children. The social network giant will use photo-fingerprint technology called Microsoft PhotoDNA to search for pictures matching those in the center’s data base. Tim Henning, ASACP’s interim director, told XBIZ that this technology began a few years ago with a data base of child pornography images, including those provided by ASACP’s reporting hotline. “Today this technology has evolved into something much more sophisticated where images can be matched even if they have been altered digitally by recognizing similar patterns within the images themselves,” Henning said. “This tool has already been very successful in locating child pornography images stored in a universe of data that is the Internet. As more ISP's and ESP's start to use the technology, provided by Microsoft and NCMEC, we will see increasingly impressive results, which will greatly benefit child protection efforts.” Microsoft PhotoDNA technology is currently being used at search engine Bing and online file storage service SkyDrive. The technology has already evaluated more than 2 billion digital pictures at Microsoft services, finding 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing. … [Read more...]

CANOGA PARK, Calif. — The Free Speech Coalition has announced that it is calling all industry stakeholders to preview plans for its Adult Production Health and Safety Services (APHSS) program. Performers, producers, agents and other industry members who are concerned with STD testing protocols and workplaces safety are encouraged to attend, the FSC said. The Free Speech Coalition's board of directors voted to support the creation of APHSS as a result of conversations with producers, agents and performers and in response to the closing of AIM. “FSC has been in contact with numerous industry professionals and sexual health providers. Together, we are developing a solid program that will fill in the gaps resulting from AIM’s closure,” FSC Executive Director Diane Duke. “If you’re affected by the production side of the industry this is an essential meeting for you to attend.” If you are an industry member or a media representative and planning to attend, send an email to joanne@freespeechcoalition.com, so that FSC can estimate how many will be in attendance. The FSC meeting is scheduled for May 26 at 1 p.m. at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, 12833 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA, 91604. … [Read more...]

BRUSSELS, Belgium—European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and U.S. Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling met in Brussels yesterday to discuss “a wide range of topics dedicated to ensuring the sustainability of the multi-stakeholder private sector-led model of Internet governance which both the EU and the US have stoutly defended over many years,” according to a statement on the European Commission website. “In their constructive discussion,” the statement continued, “they agreed that reforms are necessary inter alia to reinforce the transparency and accountability of the internal corporate governance of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), to enhance ICANN's responsiveness to governments raising public policy concerns in the Governmental Advisory Council (GAC) and to improve the way decisions affecting country-code Top Level Domains are made. In addition, they discussed the upcoming award of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions contract.” The high-level meeting was scheduled following an exchange of letters between Kroes and Strickling that addressed concerns regarding the manner in which ICANN approved the .XXX top-level domain, among other things. Three specific issues Kroes said she intended to bring up at the meeting were: • ICANN's responsiveness to governments raising public policy concerns in the ICANN Governmental Advisory Council (GAC); • The transparency and accountability of ICANN's internal corporate governance; and • The handling of country-code Top Level Domains for its most concerned public authorities. Following the powwow, Kroes and Strickling agreed to work closely in the run-up to the next ICANN meeting—June 19-24 in Singapore—“to stress the need for the ICANN Board to adequately respond to GAC advice when considering the expansion of generic top level domains (gTLDs) and to make a priority of speedily implementing all recommendations prepared by the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (which finished its work at the end of December 2010).” The US Government had invited opinions from the global stakeholder community as to how the IANA functions contract can be used to improve global domain name management. The comment period closed March 31, but Kroes offered to host an open forum in Brussels later this year to discuss ICANN-related issues with interested stakeholders. “In the meantime,” the statement concluded, “the EU and the US will be reaching out to other nations to exchange views and forge consensus.” … [Read more...]

CINCINNATI — A federal judge today ruled against Jimmy Flynt's argument that he owns 50 percent of LFP Inc. and dismissed his case. In the case at U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, Larry Flynt's brother, Jimmy Flynt, said he was a partner in the business and asked a judge to give him half the company. But U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman said Larry Flynt has been the clear leader of the company for most of its 40 years and that he officially became its sole shareholder in the 1970s. "After a trial to the court sitting without a jury and the filing of extensive briefs by both parties, the court concludes that Jimmy has adduced no credible evidence that there ever was a partnership," Bertelsman said in his ruling. "Further, any interest claimed by Jimmy was released as part of a global settlement between the brothers in 1988." Bertelsman said that he believed Larry Flynt’s testimony that there was never any partnership agreement, noting that Larry Flynt’s testimony on the issue was "positive and unambiguous." "Jimmy’s testimony, on the other hand, was vague, evasive and inconsistent, and impeached by his own sworn testimony in other court proceedings," he said. Bertelsman also noted that Jimmy Flynt admits there were never any tax returns filed as a partnership, nor was there ever a written partnership agreement. Michael Klein, president of LFP, told XBIZ that the company is pleased with the ruling. "Obviously, we are happy with the decision and we believe it is the right one," he said. "We proved victorious, and this puts to bed the question who owns LFP. And that would be Larry Flynt." … [Read more...]

LOS ANGELES — More adult entertainment professionals would prefer to call in the lawyers to fight rampant content piracy rather than do nothing about it, according to the results of a new XBIZ Research poll. The adult entertainment industry in the past few years has seen bottom lines sharply eroding because of illegal streamed content, leading to growing discontent over online thievery. That discontent is so strong that one-third of those polled also feel that end-users should be held liable for poaching and sharing videos. The results are based on opinions of members of XBIZ.net, the adult entertainment industry’s leading social network. XBIZ asked community members, "Should legal action be taken against end-users involved in content piracy?" XBIZ found that 33 percent of respondents said, "Yes, any and all end-users accessing pirated content." Another 38 percent said, "Yes, but only those who share and distribute pirated content. But 29 percent of those polled said, "No, legal action against end-users is ineffective." Pirated adult content can be found everywhere over the Internet, particularly through BitTorrent networks and file-sharing lockers. In fact, some companies' entire catalogs are available online. "Piracy has affected our entire industry," Burning Angel's Joanna Angel says, "but in our case we are a small company, and we would have been a bigger company if piracy weren't so rampant." Piracy extends well past BitTorrent networks and file-sharing lockers. Some tube site operators, too, poach and republish adult content. Being clubbed so hard by piracy, adult companies are fighting back with litigation, bundling defendants in large numbers, and going directly after tube site owners and file-sharing locker operators with multimillion-dollar suits. Adult companies Corbin Fisher, VCX Inc., Grooby Productions, Titan Media, Lightspeed Media, BlazingBucks, Elegant Angel, West Coast Productions and Axel Braun Productions have been the most prolific in filing porn BitTorrent claims. And Private Media Group and Pink Visual have taken the strongest legal approaches against tube sites posting content online illegally. … [Read more...]