Should Porn Stars Pay for Porn? by Danny Wylde

I’ll start with a confession. Today I stole some porn. Tomorrow – if I have the time – I plan on stealing more.

It’s something I do quite often. Pirated content swarms the Internet and I’m just another kid taking his fill.

But that’s not my rationale. When I surf the “tube” sites, I’m actually making money. I jerk off to stolen porn so other people can jerk off to me.

I must admit the irony. After all, I started camming because the lack of work. Production had slowed and I’d begun to feel the effect. To fill a financial hole, I began masturbating for strangers from the (semi) privacy of my apartment. Anyone with a few spare dollars could watch my erection stream live at twelve-HD-frames-a-second.

Often my cock would rise within moments of the right touch. But after hours of sitting at my computer, even I needed motivation.

So I’d often watch porn. Sometimes I’d throw on a DVD from my collection. But mostly, I’d look at pirated material – the stuff that nearly killed my own industry; the stuff that’s still killing it today.

In some ways, I feel justified. Like, “I’m a sex worker, so I shouldn’t have to pay, right?” But when I apply this argument to anything else, I don’t know if it works.

I’ve often made the case that porn is just another medium, a way to get across an idea, or to portray a certain aesthetic. That is to say it’s an art-form. When done well, this art-form can elicit a very specific reaction. It can incite participation, stimulation, entertainment, and maybe even more.

When I break it down, porn holds many of the qualities I’d attribute to the forms of media I still pay for: print, music, film, etc… Sure, I’m guilty of pirating this stuff too. But when a band comes around that completely blows my mind, I’ll do my best to support them. Even if I steal the album, I’ll at least buy a shirt or spend my money on a live show.

However, with porn, I’ve ceased to pay for anything. And I need to think about why.

When I first started writing, or rather when I first attempted to get published, I began to craft my own consumer ideology. I would no longer buy books by dead authors. After a few months, I became more strict. I would no longer buy books by authors over the age of sixty.

The idea was to support my own generation of writers. If I made no effort to read the works of my peers (or those I wanted to be my peers), how could I expect anyone to read my stuff? To ensure a future for young writers like myself, I became part of the market demographic. In a way, I hoped my purchases would invoke a sort of karmic reaction.

I’ve held similar stances with other forms of media. But they’ve never been the kind to bring me much success. I still write, work on films, and make music, but these things don’t pay my bills.

Porn is what I do to make a living and it’s not likely to change any time soon. So why don’t I pay for it? I mean, I do the job with hopes that other people find it worth their money.

Part of my answer is that I’m a fairly established member of the adult industry. If I want a copy of a movie, it’s likely I can just ask for it. In fact, I have a shelf of porn DVDs that have been offered up to me for free.

I imagine it’s a perk of working in any (entertainment) industry. If you help with the production of material or content, you are likely to have access to the final product. Even if not directly involved, you might still get the stuff for free. Like if you’re a successful musician, you probably know other successful musicians. They probably give you copies of their album without expecting you to pay for it.

But if I was a successful musician, I imagine I’d still want to keep track of the up-and-comers. I’d want to help them along.

The thing with porn is that there’s not much of a divide. The “successful” ones are also the up-and-comers.

Off the top of my head: Bobbi Starr, Kimberly Kane, Aiden Starr, Paris Kennedy, and Lily LaBeau are all fairly established performers with a decent fan base. They’re also up-and-coming directors. Even if they’ve been around a while, they’re still struggling to produce movies, start up websites, and get their content off the ground.

In theory, I want to support each one of these girls. And in some ways I do. I’ve performed for nearly all of them. But it’s always been a part of my job.

So should I buy their movies? Should I support the cause?

Maybe. I mean, each of these women create aesthetically interesting content and mind-blowing pornography. But they also tend to cast my friends.

When it comes to masturbation material, this is kind of a problem for me. I love getting paid to fuck my friends, but I don’t like to watch them when I jerk off. They’re not my fantasies. They’re the people I hang out with in real life.

This creates an interesting problem as a consumer. The type of porn I want to support is also the type of porn I cannot actually masturbate to.

So should I buy porn made by people I don’t even know? If I do, it’s not going to help my community of pornographers. It’s going to send the money somewhere else.

Truth be told, I don’t think this much when jerking off to stolen porn. I just find something on a tube site, and keep stroking my cock. The ramifications aren’t considered. I’m just trying to keep my mind on track so I can entertain my fans.

But if I weren’t a performer, I wonder whether I would buy porn. I wonder if I would consider it worth my money.

Maybe I feel the need to pay for other media because I’m still a fan, and not a professional. But maybe with porn, I’m just making an excuse.

Many of my friends are artists, and many of them produce pornography. I believe each one should be paid well for their work. But as of now, these sound like the words of a hypocrite. Because I’m still not sure whether I don’t buy porn because I don’t have to, or whether – like everyone else – I know where to find it for free.

Danny Wylde is a pornographer, writer, and filmmaker living in Los Angeles, California. He updates his personal blog at http://trvewestcoastfiction.blogspot.com