This interview appeared in Playboy in 2018. The focus was on Ethical Porn, the consumption of porn, and if the free tubesites, could ever be considered an ethical platform.

1. What do you define as ethical porn?

As stated on our ethical.porn website, “At its most essential, adult content that is consensual and transparent, is created in an environment that emphasizes safety and respect, and does not contribute to wider social inequalities via troublesome post-production marketing is ethical. Elements like tenor and intensity, sex acts being depicted, or production value do not preclude content from being ethical.”

The other critical aspect of ethical porn production is that performers derive fair financial benefit for their work. This can take the form of traditional pay-per-scene (or day) at a pre-negotiated rate, and another popular structure is “content sharing” in which the performer does not get payment for their work, but rather gets the final edited copies of their scenes which they are free to sell on their clip stores, pay sites, VoD channels and other outlets, keeping all revenue.

2. I’ve been told Pornhub pays a pittance for verified videos on its website. Have you heard about this? If so, what does it mean exactly? Would this practice be considered ethical?

Pornhub and most of the other large tubes have, for years, offered “Content Partner” programs in which the studio or performers upload scenes to their tube channel. The tube site joins the studio’s affiliate program and flies banners that link back to their paysites for an average of 50% revenue share going back to the tube that sent new members.

A newer form of this is called “View Share” (or at some tubes, “paid per view”) In this structure, the studio uploads longer scenes or even full movies, and the tubesite tracks views and pays the studio a very small amount of revenue based on what they are making in advertising or premium membership revenue for the video pages that show their scenes. The current problem with this system is that pretty much none of the tubes have robust or transparent reporting stats, so it’s very difficult to track views and revenues made from each video. At the end of the day, the studios simply need to trust the tubes to “do the right thing” which is generally just asking for trouble!

As far as ethical, that’s a hotly debated topic in the industry. Most studios have been severely damaged by the tubes and free porn in general, but as 90% of all adult traffic is going to free porn sites, it forces our hand to participate in Content Partner and View Share programs to recoup a small amount of our losses. The tubes have most of the traffic. The studios have the original content that the tubes need. Odd symbiotic/parasitic bedfellows.