Just pay for porn, already
PORNDOGGY
Jeremy Feist / Toronto / Thursday, February 09, 2012
Share |

Hypothetical story time:

Let’s say you are wandering around the city one day and all of a sudden your stomach starts growling. You haven’t eaten anything all day because of an early-morning meeting and you’re starving. Thankfully, someone nearby offers you some apples. And why not? You like apples; they’ll fill you up, problem solved.

But on the other side of the street is an apple pie cooling on a windowsill. And we all know apple pie is better than apples. Sure, it was never offered to you, and in all likelihood it won’t be, but you’re hungry and the steam from the pie is beckoning. Do you accept the apples or steal the pie?

One thing about porn piracy is that there are so many free alternatives to professional porn, other than simply stealing movies, that it is an irrational, dickish decision, rather than a necessary evil. Here’s the thing: with the dawn of Xtube and other legitimate, user-generated content sites, there now exists a porn niche where free spank material is not only accessible, it’s encouraged. If you want to get off for free, there are large segments of the internet that enable you to get off with other like-minded exhibitionists.
Marc Williams is AEBN's featured pornstar for February.
(AEBN)

But amateur isn’t for everyone; I’m aware of that. If you absolutely must have professional-grade porn but you don’t want to spend too much, here’s a crazy idea: just suck it up and buy a membership. Despite what you might think, porn really isn’t that expensive. A one-month membership to men.com’s four sites will run you only $25. A month on Next Door Studios (I saw 12 sites listed on the main page) is $29.95, and 200 minutes on AEBN, which offers movies from 25 studios, is $20.55. As I said, it really isn’t that expensive.

I’m aware that people like getting shit for free. But they need to get over this idea that art has no inherent value because it’s not a tangible commodity.

As media moves toward increased digital content and the undercurrent of entitlement makes people less willing to pay for entertainment, we have to be more fair with regard to compensating artists. I don’t mean a full-on SOPA/PIPA-style law that would cripple freedom of speech; I’m just saying that pitching in less than $30 a month for porn might not be the worst thing in the world.

To revisit the hypothetical story from the beginning, it boils down to this: if you have two equally viable options, one being a win-win situation and the other involving taking advantage of someone else, choosing the latter is not just illogical — it makes you an entitled fuckwad.
Jeremy Feist is a Toronto pornstar. Porndoggy appears in every issue of Xtra.


Share |


Reader Comments


 
Xtra crappy writing, as usual.
How is this man employed to write? My head explodes from the consistent lack of intelligence in his writing, it's like reading an editorial by a fifth grader. Porn is NOT art. Art is constantly being commodified into products both tangible and intangible, a extension of modern consumer culture. Equating paying for porn to fair compensation for artistic endeavors is an insult to actual creative professionals working in countless sectors throughout industry and infrastructure who are not receiving fair compensation. I have nothing against porn, free or otherwise. I do have something against weak, unintelligent "journalism" (I use the word generously). If you want to talk about compensation for artists, user rights, piracy, and people being taken advantage of there is lots of content to research and report, much of it specific to the gay community. i think the multi-billion dollar porn industry will be fine if you spare us a wag of the finger served up in microwave quality writing.
Matthew Landeen, Toronto ON
02/13/12 12:05 PM EST
Report this comment to moderator.
Horrible article
There is so much misinformation and one terribly bad analogy in this article it almost seems like I'd have to write an article equally as long to correct it. I guess if I was going to pick something brief to critique it would be the difference between something like youporn (aka sharing porn with other users of the site) and theft of a pie. Copying a video and sharing it with people is not stealing, the pie is still there, you've just made a perfect copy of it to eat for yourself. Because the outdated method of attracting people to buy your pies by cooling them by the window is going extinct. If they bothered to make a free site like youporn and just made their money with ads like the free sites do, they wouldn't have problems getting paid. I refuse to support organizations that refuse to adapt to the times and sue and pay millions to the government for laws that censor everyone else. In short, I couldn't give less of a f**k if a rich executive gets his 3rd Lamborghini or not due to people filsharing porn.
Notyour Business, Toronto Ontario
02/13/12 2:20 PM EST
Report this comment to moderator.
I wonder why this was published anyway
The Pink Triangle Press pron has made it to torrent sites and the owners of Xtra does not like it since they want the $$$$$. Since Squirt is most likely becoming a non site since there are alternatives that are a lot cheaper and better I guess they are missing the $$$$ from cruseline and Squirt.Pink Triangle Press doing to do? Sue? Well I hope they know if someone uses a VPN they would never find the real IP addresses of the people who download their porn for free since it is way easier then the old way since most producers still are in the past. It could be the reason why this was in Xtra anyway. Pink Triangle Press's lost $$$$$ they make off of porn . But I will not have a problem downloading it. In Most cases the seeders use VPN's and it is really hard to find them since they could be anywhere on earth. I'm just saying!
Pink Triangle Press, Pron sucks anyway
02/13/12 2:31 PM EST
Report this comment to moderator.
Professional gay porn is dead
Good riddance to "professional" porn. There is nothing hotter then amateur porn. Sites like Adult Friend Finder, have at any given moment, dozens of men doing for free what young gay whores used to get paid for. These young whores will have to get a real job..lol
Amateau Porn is the Best, here now
02/13/12 8:23 PM EST
Report this comment to moderator.
LOL
You know being outspoken and all, I try and leave the side comments to the rest of y'all. I have been glancing at Xtra for some time now. Always avoid focusing my full attention so as not to sustain irreversible brain damage. Kudos to Matthew Landeen (poster) who had the hoootspa to finally say, really, what some, who have more than a grade 10 education have been thinking for some time. I will say that Jeremy Feist is now starting to use words with more than one syllable, which of course is encouraging to most of us. However,one must wonder if anything of real substance actually occupies his adolescent mind. Perhaps this will change once he graduates from high school or something like that. This article is so characteristic of where Xtra needs to move away from if it is to migrate successfully from something you line a bird cage with. Provocative, not. Interesting, no way. Informative....get a grip.
Zach, Toronto ontario
03/04/12 6:46 PM EST
Report this comment to moderator.
Ed's note
Zach: You may be interested to know that Jeremy's Porndoggy contributions and blogs are very popular among our readers and staff. You imply that you read the above piece and have been following his work for some time, yet you argue not only that it lacks merit, but that Jeremy lacks merit. I don't understand why on earth anyone would take the time to write such an insulting and provocative comment. It's no more than a series of cheap shots taken from behind a veil of anonymity; random cowardly rage. If you don't like the work, don't read it. Do something constructive with yourself instead.
Matt Mills, Toronto Ont
03/05/12 11:31 AM EST
Report this comment to moderator.