That's true. And unfortunately the act itself usually gets tied to other issues every time it's discussed. Human trafficking for example.
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.
The primary reason why human trafficking is often tied to prostitution is that human trafficking must happen underground.
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.
Criminalizing prostitution also further victimizes the victims of human trafficking.
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?
I believe prostitution should be legal, but I think the issue is still tied to trafficking.
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.
We have legal prostitution in my country (Aotearoa).
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.
It's an official name for the country, he should have probably put (NZ) in brackets though.
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.
> It's a lot more difficult to ensure that people are there consensually when brothels are driven underground.
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.
If people are sufficiently economically stressed that they'll do things they hate for money, I think that's primarily a problem with the society. It might seem more acute when it's prostitution, rather than cleaning a toilet, but ultimately it's the same problem.
I know a lot of people who do work they don't enjoy. Does entering a career only for the good pay become bad, and something we must outlaw, or attempt to stop all the time, or just for professions that involves sex-related activities?
> 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.
You can't advocate for radical liberties without having a serious discussion about the externalities created thereby, and who's going to pay for them. Handwaving human trafficking as something inconsequential "that rarely happens" is the beginning to a position centered on "muh freedoms," than on personal responsibility.
Prostitution is illegal now and human trafficking exists now. Making prostitution legal cannot "create" human trafficking as an externality, because it already exists. How is adding government oversight to prostitution going to make illegal activity more likely rather than less? Is it somehow going to be easier for a brothel to engage in human trafficking if they have to be licensed and inspected by the government?
While I think legalising prostitution would be beneficial, I think there is an argument that doing so would lead to more trafficking, which should not be ignored. Namely, that legalising prostitution may increase demand much more than it increases consensual supply, thus creating a larger market for trafficked prostitutes.
You make a good point and this point has indeed been argued. I can't speak for the quality of the research, but one conclusion was that if demand exceeds domestic supply, legalization will increase trafficking in high income countries. Which makes sense from an economic point of view.
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.
I mostly just wanted to raise the point so it doesn't get ignored, and indeed, your argument is the one I would make against that point.
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.
How is making something that is happening between consenting adults legal causing externalities that don't already exist by it being illegal?
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.
You seem to be approaching this as if every human that has been trafficked is doing so willingly. Are you suggesting that people should be empowered by the law to take young people and rent them out to people as sex toys? And that such a move would actually decrease the number of, say, young girls are forced into prostitution against their wills?
Or, put another way, do you really believe that human trafficking exists because child prostitution is illegal?
> Are you suggesting that people should be empowered by the law to take young people and rent them out to people as sex toys?
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.
You don't seem to understand the parents argument at all. None of your rhetorical questions characterise their argument.
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.
Making something illegal is not regulating a market. It is completely ignoring a market. I'm pretty certain that most people who are in favour of legalised prostitution are in favour of heavy regulation, which should help to stamp out human trafficking.
Note that I'm not myself in favour of legalised prostitution, I just think your argument is a bad one.
Indeed, and that proposition is not at all what it appears to be at first glance. Voters in California should definitely do some due diligence researching that before voting or they're going to be in for a nasty shock at the outcome.
Oh yeah, just like Prop 1 in Olympia WA this year.
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.
Because then the proponents of the measure finance lawsuits / campaigns against the City, saying that it is legally obligated to do its utmost to implement measures that have been passed. More money down the toilet.
I don't pretend to be an expert in City politics, but I believe that there would be grounds for a lawsuit if the City could be shown to ignore a Proposition. Certainly, I would assume that the grounds are reasonability - not "fight to the death".
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.
Agreed, and the same thing goes for Prop 61, which was also written by the same man who wrote Prop 60.
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.
If it passes, then a married couple that films a sex tape and posts it on a pay-per-view tube site can be personally sued by any California resident for a share of the profits unless they can prove that they used condoms while having sex. It also provides a way for civilians to discover the real names and residences of adult film actors.
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
If I read and interpreted Prop 60 correctly too, it also looks like you can sue for any video re-posted regardless when it was originally released, and it becomes the responsibility of the defendant to prove the video was produced before Prop 60 came into effect (assuming it passes).
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.
There is a statute of limitations. It is 1 year from the date of the violation, or 1 year from the date the violation is discovered, or through the use of reasonable diligence, should have been discovered.
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.
It's been a while, but doesn't California have a bad on private laws? The listing of Michael Weinstein by name in the bill looks like a poisoned pill, something that everyone knows is unconstitutional but they are leaving it in so they can kill it later.
Considering people trafficking and sex slavery are things, you can't ever be sure that the adults on those videos are consenting. Especially the women.
Lots of people think heroin should be legal. I'm one of them. Keeping heroin illegal creates a lot of the harms associated with it - contaminated product; unsafe injecting; acquisitive crime and prostitution.
Plenty of harmful stuff is legal. The solution isn't to make it illegal, but to do better at educating people about harm reduction.
Saying that prostitution should be legal is like saying that drugs should be legal. Lots of people applaud because they only understand the issue in terms of their perspective.
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.
> Should prostitution be legalized, should people be able to settle debts with their bodies?
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.
So we are OK with creditors asking for payment in sex?
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.
> it seems like it would be no worse than a glassworker being allowed to pay off his debts by making you a window
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.
I doubt any down-on-their-luck glassworkers would feel humiliated and degraded by accepting an offer to make a window.
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.
Comparing glass blowing to prostitution is ridiculous. Calling them both professions is an academic approach to a very non-academic industry. I'm reminded of recent debates about whether female porn stars should be allowed to reject working with male stars on the basis of race or religion. That isn't allowed in other professions, at least in some states. But sex work is not subject to the same rules as other professions because it just isn't comparable to any other profession.
I guess in the case of pornography, both participants are being paid by a third party (the producer) for taking part in the sex act. This is different from a typical prostitute/client relationship, where one is paying the other for sex.
(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.
So, I can't believe I'm about to say this: this kind of presents a prostitution loophole, no?
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?
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?
So, yes? The author incredulously assumes that "it's not worth it" in which case it actually might be worth it for someone and that is an avenue to do it.
Law is not code, prostitution as a concept is illegal. This is sort of like wondering if you could avoid income tax by just doing a bunch of favors for your really good friend, and then getting a totally unrelated Christmas present from them.
Except for when it is code. If you do something that is legal under the letter of the law or when the law is ambiguous you are supposed to be given the benefit of the doubt and granted leniency. If this wasn't the case then lawmakers would have no reason to write laws precisely.
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).
My point is that laws are often intentionally not written precisely, because it's impossible to enumerate every type of violation in advance. Looking at my own state's prostitution law, you would need to define the following things to get a precise law:
"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.
It's disappointing how many people here imagine that an incredibly transparent ruse will get them out of legal difficulties no problem. It's like they can't conceive that yes, other people have thought of it before, and yes, it's transparently obvious, and no, you can't get away with a crime with a "gotcha!".
It's because of things like the following scenario, which as a 17 year old with a lead foot, I was "lucky" enough to have happen to me.
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."
Don't rich people basically do exactly that to pay fewer taxes than they're supposed to because favors and gifts aren't taxed like income?
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.
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.
A friend who claims to have watched a fair amount of free online porn suspects that many of the "POV" sites are basically just fat ugly trust-fund dudes paying for intercourse with attractive young women, in those particular locales in which lots of attractive young women are interested in "getting started in porn". (SoCal, Miami, Eastern Europe, etc.) The "producer" and "camera operator" and "actor" seem all to be the same person.
I've watched some of the porn that's like what you describe, and yeah, it seems to be the same camera guy every time - and nobody else but the girl - but I think the key distinction is that they market themselves, they do sell the videos, and they are actually producing porn that a lot of people end up watching.
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.)
"A" buying for minimum wage + $X won't pass the smell test. Judges aren't automatons blindly following a set of rules, they're (usually, pretty clever) human beings with both the capacity and the authority to use their best judgement in interpreting the law.
Just for the sake of debate, maybe there's an argument against prostitution since, presumably, it would take place on a much larger scale? This could lead to things like faster spread of STDs?
But the government can also mandate frequent STD tests and safety reqirements. AFAIR Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, has the lowest STD rates.
What it really shows is that prostitution should be legal.
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.
I would argue it's more a case of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.
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.
Numbers are great! I did overestimate support for my opinion (I live in the Silicon Valley bubble), but the poll numbers show there would not be enough affirmative votes to outlaw prostitution if it were voted on today and were not already the default.
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.
And there you go, 59% to 30%, showing who fears a loss of power if a scarce service suddenly becomes less scare, dropping in value. With greater availability of alternatives, power relationships change.
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.
All true. I actually took a class in Prostitution in college (no, there was no homework!). The main theme was the double standard for women. For instance, most prostitution laws are enforced against the prostitute, but not the "john". Also, historically, women were considered a man's property, but they could not sell themselves. It also studied legal prostitution in the Netherlands. There, the prostitutes are taxed, regulated, and protected. There is less disease, violence, and exploitation. Seems better all around to legalize it in my opinion.
> courts that have considered the issue of porn v. prostitution acknowledge that you can't just add a camera to a crime and call it "art." Otherwise, criminals would just strap on a helmet cam and go act like super-predators that haven't been brought to heel, right?
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 is no legal form of performance art that destroys/takes other people's property without their consent. I can't smash up a corporate sculpture with a sledgehammer (without consent) and call it 'art' to avoid prosecution.
> There is no legal form of performance art that destroys/takes other people's property without their consent.
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.
Switching from a legal debate to a moral one... we may as well go back to first principles and ask why is prostitution illegal in the first place? Plenty of places have legal prostitution and better quality of life for the prostitutes (eg Australia or Germany) than in places where it's illegal.
But there is a lot of porn I suspect that is not made in the USA or other countries with these legal frameworks in place and I suspect most people viewing it realistically do not really care where it is made (be honest!).
Prostitution on the other hand is always in the country where the service is provided. Big difference.
Porn is more pleasing when the girl sounds and looks like girls that you know. It gives it a more realistic feel. So consumers actually do care where the porn is made.
Great write up. Thanks for sharing this. Did you do any research into how states differ in terms of porn / prostitution laws? It seems like the porn industry has been having an exodus from California. Especially with prop 60. A lot are moving to Nevada so I'm wondering what the situation will be like there. My understanding is that prostitution is legal in certain counties but porn does not yet have enough precedent there. Anybody else know more?
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 ... ?
