Does California’s Prop 60 Come With A Magic Wand?

by Calico Rudasill at Sssh.com Porn For women

When supporters talk about the reasons to vote for California’s Proposition 60, there often seems to be an expectation that requiring condom use in porn is going to change the habits of porn viewers in their own sex lives, leading to more consistent use of condoms and more safe sex taking place throughout society at large.

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For instance, in an opinion piece for the Modesto Bee, Yes On Prop 60 communications director John Schwada notes that “Some also believe the sexual habits of porn viewers are shaped by the condomless sex they routinely observe in adult films.”

“So condoms in porn is not just a workplace safety issue,” Schwada argues, based on this idea ‘some’ believe, “it’s also a public health concern reaching deep into the American heartland.”

You know what else reaches deep into the American heartland? Broadband internet connections – connections which, no matter whether California voters approve Prop 60 or not, will continue to be used by heartland-based Americans to watch condomless porn 24/7.

They Make Porn In Other Countries Too, You Know

One of the reasons a lot of people in the porn industry don’t support Prop 60 is they know with each new regulation making it harder and more expensive to produce porn in California, the more porn is going to be produced in places where there’s no meaningful regulation at all.

For example, whether or not a California porn studio follows the existing laws requiring condoms to be used in porn production, a rival studio in Prague, or Budapest, or wherever-the-fuck, doesn’t even have to consider the question.

Such foreign studios don’t give a single shit about Michael Weinstein’s endless cavalcade of press releases, or his dog and pony show press conferences, because they don’t have to give a shit about them. In fact, until or unless similar regulations are enacted in their neck of the global woods, they’ll never have to give a shit about any of this.

Let’s assume Prop 60 passes, and further assume the law will be followed by California producers in order to avoid incurring liability and inviting lawsuits by random citizens trying to cash in on a provision of Prop 60 which allows any California resident to sue noncompliant producers (if state agencies fail to act upon complaints themselves) and collect 25% of the eventual penalties paid by the offenders; what’s to stop foreign producers from continuing to author condom-free porn and put it on the web for all to see?

The answer, currently, is nothing.

You wouldn’t know that from reading the literature from the pro-60 crowd, though, because it seems in their view, California IS the porn industry. This has never been the case, of course (ask any of the millions of Americans who rented Private Media Group titles on VHS back in the day, or who watches their current releases online, for that matter), but it’s really, really not true here in the Internet Age.

Just Like Bareback Porn, Content Piracy Is Global

If Prop 60 passing has an impact rating somewhere between ‘jack’ and ‘shit’ to foreign porn producers, it will mean even less to the content pirates who gleefully upload videos to tube sites on a daily basis – and have fun finding these people to serve them with a lawsuit filed by a citizen under the new law, or talking an American judge into the idea such a pirate is within her jurisdiction, for that matter.

It’s also safe to assume that if the porn consumer market doesn’t cotton to porn with visible condoms in it, then the pirates aren’t going to bother with ripping and uploading such porn. Why would they, after all, when studios outside the U.S. are continuing to flood the market with the kind of porn viewers actually want to see?

Setting aside the question of yet to be produced porn, it’s also inarguably true there’s terabyte after terabyte of existing condomless porn already out there – more than any single viewer could watch in a lifetime, most likely. Do Prop 60’s proponents really think consumers who don’t want to see condoms in porn will be so drawn to new material (simply because it is new) that they will ignore the enormous universe of existing porn, when the older material is more in line with their viewing preferences?

This isn’t professional sports we’re talking about here; a porn fan doesn’t worry about having a scene he hasn’t seen yet ‘spoiled’ by a friend describing the cumshot at the end, as he might with a DVR’d football game.

In short, if the goal of Prop 60 is to cripple the American porn industry to the benefit of foreign producers, it’s well structured to accomplish the goal.

On the other hand, if the goal has anything to do with eradicating bareback porn in general…. Well, good luck with that, folks; I think you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

[Image Credit: Kink.com, from “Star Trek: The Next Penetration”]