LOS ANGELES – As you have probably heard, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved new permit fees for adult video productions, with an initial charge of $1,672 and a renewal fee of $982 every two years thereafter.
While I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, the headline the L.A. Weekly chose for its reporting on the new fees underlines one of the most important critiques of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s efforts surrounding Measure B.
“It Now Costs $1,671 for Permission to Film a Porno,” the Weekly’s headline states. It’s an efficient means of communicating the gist of the story, I suppose, but the headline is also clearly missing three key words; “in Los Angeles.”
While many people, both inside and outside the porn industry, still think of pornography as being a crucially Californian enterprise, even the most casual perusal of the web’s most popular porn sites quickly reveals porn production to be a global effort.
Whatever fees the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors sets for filming permits, it’s safe to say no producers in Prague, Budapest, Miami, Las Vegas, New York, or any number of other major centers of porn production will ever pay those fees.
Make no mistake, the AHF certainly sees the establishment of these fees as a victory in its ongoing campaign to force pornographers to use condoms in their films – and to jump through various other AHF-approved hoops in the process, of course.
“We congratulate and thank the L.A. County Board of Supervisors for voting for this prudent public health resolution to protect the health and safety of those people working in the adult film industry,” Weinstein said. “With enforcement mechanisms now in place, we anticipate compliance with Measure B increases and that safety on set also increases.”
Weinstein can “anticipate” whatever he wishes; actual compliance won’t be anywhere close to 100% even within the jurisdictions covered by the permitting requirements, and outside those jurisdictions, the requirements will continue to be entirely irrelevant.
These requirements go beyond “adult studios,” of course, roping in small, independent producers and individual cam performers, as well. As pointed out by Free Speech Coalition spokesman Mike Stabile, “The cost is the same whether you’re doing a webcam show or if you’re shooting constantly.”
Beyond seeming like an excessive fee to charge individual webcam operators, the other implication of webcam performers being included in this conversation is an even smaller ‘compliance percentage,’ for lack of a better term.
If Weinstein anticipates cam models across the country, let alone the world, are going to somehow change the way they do things because of the rules they’d (theoretically) be required to adhere to if they happened to live in Los Angeles, he’s not just mistaken, he’s delusional.
If the AHF’s goal was to make life more difficult (or at least marginally more expensive) for L.A.-based porn producers, then the organization has already realized its ambitions. If, on the other hand, they really hope to improve performer safety on-set, these fees and the other requirements stemming from the passage of Measure B arguably represent a step in the opposite direction.
We already know a good number of L.A.-based producers either relocated or went underground in the wake of Measure B’s passage back in 2012; this much was obvious from the precipitous decline in permit applications received between 2012 and 2016.
Thankfully for those who support the AHF’s condoms-in-porn crusade, we already know the group’s ambition is to spread Measure B-like regulations to other jurisdictions across the country, something which has been clear since 2011, at the latest.
Until and unless Weinstein comes up with a means of spreading his organization’s influence across oceans (and into underground porn sets), however, the AHF will just be tilting at windmills.
The AHF’s victories might make for good PR, but with respect to the supposed objects of their concern, porn performers, the measures AHF wants every state legislature to adopt will likely mean less work coupled with more risk.
If that’s a victory for adult performers, I shudder to think what defeat looks like.
