In a recent article by Gail Dines and Dana Bialer The Guardian says Louis Theroux has got it all wrong in his upcoming documentary, ‘Twilight of the Porn Stars’.
Taking a view that the pirated, free and amateur porn online has helped it go mainstream, the piece explains, “While profits may be down, it is a mistake to see this as evidence of a dying industry. Indeed, it is actually a sign of a successful, maturing industry that is moving from a ‘mom and pop’ model of small, backstreet players to a more legitimate, mainstream industry characterised by fierce competition and increasing concentration in the hands of a few large firms.”
The article quotes Stephen Yagielowicz of XBIZ, when he wrote, “The corporatisation of porn isn’t something that will happen or is happening, it is something that has happened… It’s Las Vegas all over again: the independent owners, renegade mobsters and visionary entrepreneurs pushed aside by mega-corporations that saw a better way of doing things and brought the discipline needed to attain a whole new level of success to the remaining players.”
Rather missing that the people who create porn (the porn industry) aren’t always the same people distributing porn (a porn industry?), the piece mentions of Fabian Thylmann, the German businessman who founded Manwin; a Luxembourg-based conglomerate with more than 700 employees. It owns and operates sites for Brazzers and Digital Playground, and last year signed a deal with Playboy to manage some of its branded online and entertainment businesses.
The Guardian article says Manwin describes itself as, “the leading international provider of high-quality adult entertainment, delivered through online, mobile and television media platforms. It is the owner of the largest network of adult websites in the world, with more than 60 million daily visitors.”
Manwin also owns many of the top-visited ‘free’ porn sites, including YouPorn, PornHub, Spankwire and Tube8, where much of the content comes from Manwin’s and others’ paid sites, to acts as teasers to drive viewers to sites which charge, to monetise them.
The piece concludes, with perhaps a hint of bias, “…the rules have changed, and now the industry that trades in the debasement and degradation of women is being taken seriously by Wall Street, the media and the political establishment. Rather than an industry in crisis, this is an industry that has reached a level of mainstream acceptance that Hefner and the old gang could never have dreamed possible.”
