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#316374 - 04/15/08 02:54 PM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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Whoremaster
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 2710
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Welcome, latest incarnation of Super Randy...I have enjoyed your work on BGAFD, and I think you'll fit in nicely here. Oh, and you're correct about UK porn being light years behind, but a lot of this is due to the ridiculous market restrictions placed on UK producers...but it is also due to some seriously shambolic product too. 
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#316376 - 04/18/08 10:43 PM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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Porn Jesus
Registered: 01/07/06
Posts: 4268
Loc: Portland
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Wasn't porn illegal in the UK until semi-recently, hence the "catching up" aspect? Also, the pallid, snaggle-toothed nature of the vast majority of the citizenry results in a minuscule talent pool? Cheers, mate! [Ben Dover. NOW I get it! Har!] 
_________________________
"My people (the real Americans- descended from the original Angle-Saxon pioneers)"-Coke S.
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#316377 - 04/19/08 02:27 AM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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AC Cream Wannabe
Registered: 09/07/07
Posts: 576
Loc: Dolce Hottest Bukkake Babe
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Quote:
Also, the pallid, snaggle-toothed nature of the vast majority of the citizenry results in a minuscule talent pool?
Just like most yanks are fat stupid cunts?
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#316378 - 04/19/08 03:09 AM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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Whoremaster
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 2710
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Quote:
Wasn't porn illegal in the UK until semi-recently, hence the "catching up" aspect?
Yes, however the real problem is the marketplace itself. All porn is classified as 'R18' by the British Board of Film Classification (formerly 'Censors'), which means it can only be sold in a licenced sex shop, in person. Mail Order of R18 is strictly illegal, but there are many offshore companies that do it. If a licenced UK retailer started offering mail order within the UK, they'd be looking at jail time. As you can imagine, the same applies for producers...no sales via mail order.
Therefore, if you are a producer or distributor (as I once was), you have only one legal outlet for your product. 80-90% of the stores at the time I was doing business were owned by a single chain, and if they didn't take your product, you'd be left with the smaller chains (which Harmony was at the time) and the independents. As you can imagine, when you've got to pay for rights, certification, duplication, sleeves, etc then it gets difficult to make a profit if you're selling to 10% or less of the market.
As an independent distributor, you have no leeway on price. It's not like you can turn around and say 'If the stores don't want to pay x for it, we'll just sell it via mail order.' You have but one marketplace, and if you won't sell to them at the price they want to pay, then you're going to left with a bunch of product that you cannot legally offload anywhere else. I can't plame the stores for wanting to pay rock bottom prices either...at the time I was working in one, licences in London were pushing $60,000...and that's just to be licenced. Then you have rent (not cheap in our nation's capital!), electricity, stock, wages, taxes, etc.
I first heard the whisper that hardcore was going to be legalised when I was working in a sex shop, and at the time they were talking about mail order too, but that never panned out. Once I realised that the market wasn't going to change, I sold on my rights and got the fuck out while I was still ahead, because I could see that being an independent distributor would not be sustainable, especially when most of the store chains also licence and distribute films of their own from big producers like Private, Evil Angel, Hustler etc. Why should they buy my product when they can sell their own and sell it on to other competing store chains as well?
(I should point out my product was not crap either...I put out the first hardcore vid featuring Zsanette 'Sandy' Egerhazi who was Club Magazine's regular model at the time, and I also had some stuff with Tera Patrick in it at the peak of her popularity...and I seem to recall speaking to some guy named Jeff Steward when I was going about getting the rights for it, because when I came to XPT and saw the ad for Jerk Off Zone, I suddenly remember where I had first heard of it! )
For a few years afterwards, I would look at big UK distributors like Hot Rod and wonder how they did it, and chastise myself for not perhaps sticking it out a little longer, but when they went out of business last year with massive debts, I knew my decision had been thoroughly vindicated. I could see the web was the place to be.
Quote:
Also, the pallid, snaggle-toothed nature of the vast majority of the citizenry results in a minuscule talent pool?
'Pallid and snaggle-toothed, eh?'
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#316379 - 04/19/08 12:19 PM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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Max Hardcore Prison Bitch
Registered: 04/02/05
Posts: 314
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#316381 - 04/19/08 10:38 PM
Re: Hello from the UK.
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Kurt Lackwood's Fluffer
Registered: 10/09/04
Posts: 1176
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Quote:
Why is England so "quaint" about porn? Other members of the European community are notorious pervs and even the U.S., with its "moral majority" is the world's leader in porn. Only Japan with it's pixelation of penetration (though shooting baby eels from assholes is okie-dokie) can compare with England's inhibition.
Turn it around: why is the US so permissive? Porn certainly has plenty of enemies over there, religious nutters have a far greater influence. As far as I can see there was never a conscious decision by the US government to allow porn - you got where you are as a fortunate, but completely unintended, side-effect of the first amendment. Porn has vocal enemies almost everywhere, whereas consumers prefer not to shout about it, so it never looks expedient for politicians to make pro-porn moves. They mostly ignore it.
As it was here in the UK. In fact, the politicians never did grasp the nettle, the law remains unchanged, but it's vague and leaves much to the judgement of unelected board members. What happened in 2000 was a minor revolution amongst those board members, resulting in an outbreak of common sense and the decision to certificate porn R18, so it can be sold in licensed sex shops. (The problem now is the shortage of licensed sex shops, but the internet is rapidly making this irrelevant.)
As for other European Countries, much of their "permissiveness" is simply because governments never got around to legislating against porn. For example just last month the Netherlands decided to outlaw animal porn. It's not like anyone ever decided that animal porn was a good thing, but by default everything is legal until there is a law against it.
_________________________
"If I were a guy, not swallowing would be a deal breaker. So what if you cook and clean? I can get a maid for that." - Gia Jordan
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