If August job numbers were by the one week shutdown of the porn industry - September will be a dilly ! Now three porn actors / actresses hit with HIV !

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/pointing-at-pornography-for-job-losses/?smid=tw-nytimes

Pointing at Pornography for Job Losses

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Updated, 4:24 p.m. | to include point about how employees are counted.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The pornography industry, long accustomed to being a scapegoat for the country’s moral ills, is now being blamed for America’s economic failings, too.

Employment in the motion picture and sound recording industries plunged in August, for a loss of 22,200 jobs. It was the sector with the biggest losses last month, and also represented the largest monthly decline since the Labor Department started keeping track of jobs in the industry in 1990.

Some have attributed the job losses to the X-rated film industry. After an H.I.V. scare, the industry temporarily shut down around the time that the Labor Department conducts its monthly survey.

It sounds like a plausible theory, but there are a few reasons to be skeptical.

First, the numbers are volatile from month to month, and for some reason have gotten more so in recent years. So the decline could just be noise.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Haver Analytics

Second, as Josh Barro points out, workers are counted by the Labor Department as employed if they worked anytime in the pay period including Aug. 12, and depending on when industry employees are paid, the shutdown may have fallen in a different pay period (since it was Aug. 21-27). I’m actually not sure if this definitively disproves the argument for blaming the porn industry, since it’s plausible that the 12th could be in the same pay period as the shutdown, depending on how regularly industry paychecks go out, and since employees may not come into the office or studio every day.

Third, the motion picture and sound recording sector has 366,000 jobs, but the much smaller pornographic film industry may not employ 22,200 people even when things are good. The Los Angeles Times reported that the industry generated 10,000 jobs annually. I contacted an industry group, the Free Speech Coalition, to ask about this estimate, and was told they did not have an accurate figure available for the whole industry.

But in an e-mail, a spokeswoman, Joanne Cachapero, did mention another reason to be skeptical that the pornography shutdown drove the large decline in film payrolls: performers in X-rated films, who number about 3,000, are independent contractors, which means they wouldn’t be counted in the Labor Department’s payroll data anyway. Everyone who works behind the scenes (directors, editors, camera operators, wardrobe and catering workers, drivers, publicists and so forth), though, is a payroll employee and would be affected.

That said, she also suggested that ripple effects from a pornography production moratorium could affect employment in related industries as it could disrupt “activities like set building and more support-services type of employment.” That’s one way a 10,000-person subsector, if wholly out of commission, could potentially reduce total motion picture industry employment by more than 10,000.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101008596

HIV strikes again—what does it mean for the porn industry?

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 Published: Wednesday, 4 Sep 2013 | 3:19 PM ET

By: Chris Morris, Special to CNBC.com

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Source: Rod Daily | Twitter

Rod Daily

The revelation that a second porn star has contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, will likely have little to no impact on the bottom line of major porn studios but could act as a rallying point for supporters of mandatory condom laws. 

The performer, who calls himself Rod Daily,

confirmed his diagnosis

 Tuesday via Twitter, saying "With the tests I have done the doctors have figured out that I was infected within the last month."

The disclosure comes two weeks after Cameron Bay announced she had tested positive for the virus. While Daily's career was in the gay porn industry, industry insiders say he and Bay were linked romantically. (It's not uncommon for porn performers to cross between gay and straight film genres.) The source of either infection has not been determined, however.

(Read more: LA porn sets shuttered after actress infected with HIV)

Bay's August diagnosis resulted in an immediate call for a moratorium on filming by the Free Speech Coalition, which acts as a lobbying organization for the adult industry (but does not enjoy universal support from everyone in the porn world).

That moratorium was lifted on Aug. 28—when Daily's results were still unknown—and just one week after Bay's diagnosis was announced.

The group has not called for a moratorium after Daily's announcement, but some studios are still holding off on shooting.

(Read more: Debbie does data: Porn gets statistical)

"We are not currently in production," said Steven Hirsch, founder/co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, one of the industry's largest and best-known studios. "Our next shoot is scheduled for mid-October. We will assess the situation at that time."

(Read more: No porn please, we're British)

While the porn industry is under significant financial pressure due to piracy and the rise of "amateur" websites, insiders say the short August shutdown should not have a noticeable effect on revenue at major studios. And even if the industry were to shut down again following Daily's confirmation that he has tested positive, it still wouldn't be a significant financial drain.

Big players in the porn industry typically have a large stockpile of films awaiting release and can ride out a shutdown. The porn industry shoots roughly 20,000 scenes per year. Bigger companies tend to produce four or five films per month—with costs reaching upward of $300,000—allowing them to stockpile releases.

Globally, porn is a $97 billion industry, according to Kassia Wosick, assistant professor of sociology at New Mexico State University. At present, between $10 billion and $12 billion of that comes from the U.S. Revenue from traditional porn films has been shrinking, though, because of piracy and an abundance of free content on the Internet.

The industry as a whole last halted filming for 10 days in August 2012, when a performer was diagnosed with syphilis but hid the diagnosis from producers and continued performing, prompting fears of a spread among other actors and actresses. (Nearly a dozen porn actors tested positive for syphilis during that outbreak.)

HIV scares have resulted in industry shutdowns in 2011 (due to what turned out to be a false positive) and 2010 (when a true HIV positive result was returned).

The back-to-back cases, though, could have longer-term repercussions, by increasing public support for mandatory condom laws for porn filmed in California. Last year, L.A. County voters approved a bill mandating condom use in adult film productions. (That law is currently being appealed in court.)

Meanwhile, state legislators are also considering a bill that would make condoms mandatory in films shot throughout California.

"Reports of a second confirmed HIV transmission of an adult film actor in less than two weeks should send a chilling message to the public and the adult film industry. Enough is enough," said Assembly member Isadore Hall III, a proponent of the bill, in a statement.

Play Video

Adult film stars talk about how the industry is changing

It's the porn industry's equivalent of the Oscars, and at this year's AVN Awards, it's all about the changing face of pornography.

"Adult film actors placed their trust in an industry that has put porn profits above worker safety. It is time for the Free Speech Coalition and the adult film industry to stand up for the workers that made them successful," Hall added.

Even Daily took shots at the industry for its quick resumption of shooting.

"A week later people are back at it shooting without condoms," he wrote on Twitter. "Magic Johnson has HIV, and can infect other people but his test comes up negative. Is that so impossible for anyone else to do the same? NO. ... Just sayin be careful because that test ain't <expletive> without a condom strapped up with it."

While several porn companies have threatened to leave Los Angeles—and California—if the mandatory condom laws are cleared by the courts, none have yet done so and the gestures are now largely viewed as empty threats.

—By Chris Morris, Special to CNBC.com.

http://radaronline.com/2013/09/third-positive-hiv-test-porn-industry-dozens-quarantined/

Third Positive HIV Test In Porn 

IndustrySparks Talk Of An ‘Outbreak’ 

— Dozens Quarantined

A third porn star has tested positive for the deadly HIV virus, leaving dozens in the adult film industry quarantined, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.

Female porn star Cameron Bay was the first to test positive last month, and her boyfriend and fellow porn star, Rod Daily, announced on Tuesday that he had also tested positive for HIV — but there’s a third infected porn star — a male performer who has done crossover work.

“Drumroll please!! I’m 32 years old and I’m HIV positive. Acute HIV, which means I recently was infected. For that I am blessed,” Daily tweeted.

“I’m blessed for the fact that I caught it so early that I can blast that sh*t with meds.”

The identity of the third infected porn star remains unknown right now, but an industry insider exclusively tells Radar, “A dozen female performers have been quarantined as a result of exposure.”

The insider also claims the unnamed actor worked for major studios and the positive HIV test was reported by a PASS-affiliated [Performer Availability Screening Services] doctor.

PASS is a United States organization that maintains a database of test results for porn actors, intended to help reduce and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

A moratorium was initially enacted to stop shooting when news of a performer with HIV broke, but the Free Speech Coalition lifted it.

“It’s deplorable that the people running the FSC and the production companies would let performers still work in light of this crisis,” a second industry expert tells Radar.

“The owners and lobby groups are all self-serving, and have money to lose if the actors are forced to use condoms.

“But the performers have more to lose…including their sexual health and lives.”

When Radar reached out to the FSC, they responded, “Very little known at the moment, but we expect to have more information shortly.”

Industry performers are outraged and understandably scared, as production continues to roll.

“People are still shooting in Los Angeles county as well as Vegas and in Florida,” the insider revealed.