I'm not saying that it is a conscious decision to ignore profitability and legal ramifications just for the thrill.

No gambler says to himself: "You know, this really isn't a good bet if I look at the risk-reward ratio. But, I'm so addicted to the thrill that I'm going to overlook the dangers just this once. Give me $5K on Rex Grossman to win MVP, at 5:1.", and no porn whore says "Even though I really should go to my shoot first, get paid, and only then get high, thus giving me enough money to get high again tomorrow, I think that I'll make an exception just this once."

This is why it is so hard to model human behavior using so-called "rational" economic models. You have to tweak the model, so to speak, to account for things such as addiction, and then assume that all this decision-making occurs subconciously.

This porn series is a good example. It just isn't rational, from a legal or an economic perspective. What is the market for people who want to see a girl pretend to choke herself into unconsciousness, and is it large enough to cover legal costs? But these questions are subsumed by the rush of being "edgy" and "controversial", and a conscious rationalization is developed to justify the product as being so edgy that it must somehow be economically viable.