Pornhub and the other tube sites have long been a pain in the ass to many pornographers. In the early 2000’s someone came up with the bright idea to create a youtube type site and let its users upload all the porn they want while they make money from *cough cough* “advertising.” The result was a scorched earth full of piracy, 3rd rate talent and destroyed porn businesses. Technology has always been mixed blessing to the jizz biz, on one hand it enables it and on the other hand it turns it into cheap crap. In the 1970s, they made high production value movies that people actually watched in theaters. But by the time I started my career, we were 90 % gonzo, due to the change from analog to digital. These days, since everyone has a camera in his/her pocket, fuck videos are a dime a dozen.
So who is Bernd Bergmair?
According to Tortoise Media, he’s the secret majority owner of Mindgeek (aka. Pornhub). Now in case you didn’t already suspect, Pornhub gets a mountain of traffic, (92 million daily visitors were counted in 2018). I’ve no doubt that Covid lockdowns have contributed to raising that number. Increased traffic includes increased uploaders, which brings its own set of problems. Problems with mentally sick pedophiles uploading kiddie porn… Jackasses uploading videos of people that never knew they were being filmed… And assholes that just want to get revenge on someone. Personally, I’ve got an old school mentality, so it should be no surprise that I like the idea of removing the anonymity of uploaders and then sending men with baseball bats to their homes. (Hey, my family is Sicilian, this train of thought is genetic.)
I have always been in favor of treating sites like Pornhub the same way we treat distributors of adult erotica. That means EVERYONE who uploads must adhere to 18 USC 2257. So the general public doesn’t get to upload to the platform without submitting copies of the performer’s IDs and releases. As a producer, I assure everyone that I want the scumbags shut down too and that it’s in everyone’s best interest, including Mindgeek’s to work together.
Quid-pro-quo business approaches ensure long-term profitability and growth.
When we fail to keep the human garbage out of our industry, another industry will be happy to do it for us and be labeled as heroes for it. All those anti-porn activists and political lobby groups that will put enormous public pressure on career politicians, who will be very happy to win public favor by kicking the adult industry in the head. No one is ever going to win an election by promising to make porn production easier, but a promise to shut one of us down, will easily win 50k more votes from both feminists and Christian groups. I can just imagine the chaos that will happen the moment some social justice warrior successfully claims that porn contributes to rape culture and/or toxic masculinity.
Whoever Bernd Bergmair is, it might be a good time for him to step up and change the way Pornhub functions. My search results say Pornhub earns close to half a billion dollars a year, so it’s had a great run. The world is forever changing and as much as I dream of making a 1970s porn movie, I’m now experimenting with my smartphone and sending the majority of what I produce to private collectors. The situation is… What the situation is.. So who Bernd Bergmair is doesn’t really matter but maybe now it’s Mindgeek’s turn to adapt or die.
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