LOS ANGELES — Free Speech Coalition has issued a call to action urging industry members to contact their senators and ask them to oppose the EARN IT Act.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. — The pretrial hearing in the Mercedes Carrera criminal case concerning multiple child sexual abuse charges against Carrera and her husband, which was scheduled for last Friday at the Rancho Cucamonga courthouse in San Bernardino County, California, has been postponed once again, this time until Feb. 22.

Carrera and her husband, Jason Whitney, were arrested after a police raid of their Rancho Cucamonga home on Feb. 1, 2019.

They have now been in county jail without trial for three years, first without bail and later, after they had liquidated their assets and had no source of income due to their incarceration, with bail set at $2 million for each.

A pretrial hearing to determine the jury selection process, and the date of the beginning of the actual trial, has already been postponed numerous times, most recently yesterday.

The new date of Feb. 22, like several previous postponements, appeared in a document filed online.

The earliest date for the actual trial to begin has been set for late April.

The document shows the hearing took place today with District Attorney Teresa Smith standing for DA Laura Fragoso and Carrera’s conflict panel attorney, Geoff Newman, standing for the accused. Carrera was in attendance.

For more of XBIZ’s coverage of the Mercedes Carrera case, click here.

VANCOUVER — Broker.xxx has rolled out a newly revamped website and has expanded its existing adult domain brokerage with “a purpose-built platform for the adult industry.”

A company rep additionally noted “tremendous growth in its domain portfolio.”

“When the first-generation domain marketplace was launched, it contained over $1.4 million in domains available for purchase,” added the rep. “Upon release of the second-generation marketplace, there are now over 2,000 domains listed with a value in the eight-figures.”

CEO and Founder Juicy Jay added, “We get results. More people are choosing Broker.xxx to sell their websites and domains and it is why Broker.xxx has become the largest adult marketplace in the industry and the most effective way to sell your adult properties. Last summer we got slammed with so much demand to sell domains that we rebuilt the platform to innovate and disrupt a tired and old space in the adult industry.”

“Recently we closed a deal for Porno.xyz, a domain publicly valued at over $43,000,” he noted. “We still have a ton of great domains available including Pornstar.com, Kams.com, Stigma.com, Cams.xyz, ExGfs.com, Fetishes.com, Nudes.xyz, Cougr.com, Pussy.xyz and many more.”

The platform’s Jimmy “Wizzo” Foreman described free marketplaces as “‘post and pray’ that domains and websites will sell. They usually just sit and rot.”

“We have an organized team that work hard to actively sell for our clients regardless of their size,” he said.

Visit Broker.xxx and contact sales@broker.xxx for additional details; follow the platform on Twitter.

LOS ANGELES — Thank Me Now has promoted Danielle Seerley to the position of director of sales.

“Danielle’s strengths include her relationship-building with customers, with an enhanced focus on the business development and growth of accounts. International expansion will be a key focus for her,” noted a rep.

Seerley added, “I have been in the industry for 11 years, and I’m thrilled at the opportunity to step into this new leadership role. I’m excited about the team we have in place and what the future holds.”

Thank Me Now CEO Kevin Mirachi noted the company has seen “extensive growth over the last few years and as we add to the team, it made sense to promote Danielle as our new director of sales. She brings strong leadership skills from her former jobs at Limited Brands and Nike, where she held various management positions.”

Find Thank Me Now online.

SEATTLE — Kheper Games has released its latest party game, “Extreme Personal Questions for Stoners.”

The new game expands on the company’s “Extreme Personal Questions” (EPQ) line by combining “the usual EPQ humor with the ‘cloudy-minded humor’ popular in Kheper pot-themed games,” noted a rep. Players take turns asking the group questions and the first two volunteers share their answers. The group votes for their favorite answer, and the volunteer with the most popular answer earns a point; a player wins after accumulating five points. 

“Each ‘EPQ’ game offers 400 questions and hours of hilarious fun,” the rep said. “The content delivers well on the name of the game, so brace yourself. Questions are hugely personal.”

CEO Brian Pellham added, “We are excited to bring this new game to market because of how humorous and incredibly flexible games in this line are in terms of game play.”

“Our ‘EPQ’ line is great for smaller get-togethers, either in person or via video chat play. As so many countries are coming out of social shutdowns due to COVID-19, we feel that it is very important that we do our part and help people learn to socialize safely with games like these. Making a version that is for stoners is another fun direction we can take this game as the questions are pot-themed and really ridiculous and fun.”

Visit KheperGames.com, call (877) 426-3755 or email info@khepergames.com for additional details.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The leading anti-porn crusading group in the U.S., the religiously inspired NCOSE, has re-endorsed the EARN IT Act after its reintroduction by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) in late January.

NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media, held a “Congressional Briefing” this afternoon to explicitly endorse EARN IT and influence attending members of Congress who will vote on it after a peculiarly accelerated mark-up period.

Previously, NCOSE had endorsed the bill — which has been universally condemned by digital rights groups and sex worker advocates as a Trojan Horse for censorship of sexual expression — in September 2020, when it was originally introduced by Blumenthal and co-sponsor Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

On Jan. 31, the well-funded anti-porn organization, which originated in the early 1960s with religious efforts to ban “obscene” books, republished an statement penned by the group’s  Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, calling EARN IT the “only option in Congress for online child protection” and boasting that the bill “has teeth.”

Quoting The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, Kennelly Gaetan claimed that there has been an “almost unfathomable increase” in the amount CSAM circulating on “Instagram, Twitter and more” and blamed Section 230 for what she alleges is the “near-carte blanche legal immunity” afforded technology companies that “can’t be held liable for facilitating CSAM because they aren’t considered ‘publishers’ under the law.”

The NCOSE propagandist also insisted that the widespread criticism of the EARN IT Act is merely “misinformation being spread by the technology industry.”

NCOSE has become increasingly influential after changing its name from Morality in Media in 2015 and refocusing its messaging on an imaginary link between any form of sexual expression and “human trafficking.” Earlier this year, a document by the U.S. State Department was revealed to be parroting NCOSE propaganda points about those topics.

NCOSE Angling for a Seat on New Politically-Appointed Commission

Two major potential changes that the pro-censorship organization eagerly anticipates, should EARN IT becomes law, are that “survivors and state attorneys general will be able to sue technology companies for facilitating CSAM using federal civil law as well as state civil and criminal law” and that the law “creates a new Online Child Exploitation Prevention Commission.”

This politically-appointed commission, to which representatives of NCOSE are sure to be elevated by religious conservative politicians, “will establish best business practices and make recommendations to inform policy, the judiciary and the law enforcement community about protecting children in the ever-changing digital environment,” alleged Kennelly Gaetan.

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — The Washington Post published last Friday a belated full obituary for Adam & Eve founder and sexual expression icon Phil Harvey, who passed away at 83 on Dec. 2, 2021.

The headline of the Louie Estrada-penned article honoring Harvey’s life described the retail entrepreneur as a man “who battled government over his sex-product business.”

The Post highlighted how Harvey “used his fortune to support sexual- and reproductive-health programs overseas as a philanthropist.”

“Eloquent, Harvard-educated and favoring Hush Puppies shoes, Mr. Harvey did not fit the stereotypical image of a sex merchant,” Estrada wrote. “He positioned himself as a defender of civil liberties after government prosecutors tried to jail him and close his adult novelty business in the 1980s.”

The obituary also chronicled Harvey’s business career from its beginnings in the early 1970s, when he was a graduate student in public health at the University of North Carolina and started a mail-order condom business as part of his thesis work on family planning administration.

“The business, which began as an experiment to test novel ways of distributing contraceptives, was later named Adam & Eve,” the Post explained. “Under Mr. Harvey and his Chapel Hill classmate Timothy Black, it became a multimillion-dollar company specializing in sexually oriented merchandise. Headquartered in Hillsborough, N.C., Adam & Eve’s parent company, PHE Inc., generates more than $200 million in annual revenue and employs more than 350 workers.”

The Post noted that “about 12 million customers receive its catalogue of products, which includes lingerie, massage oils, erotic books and magazines, X-rated movies and sex toys.”

The obituary also chronicled how Harvey became a main target of the Justice Department’s National Obscenity Enforcement Unit in the 1980s, and quoted the late businessman’s 2001 book, “The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve,” in which he wrote that “America prides itself on being a free society, and we do not want our government to so patronize us that we cannot engage in activities that are risky. We do not wish to be protected from ourselves by laws threatening fines or imprisonment for actions that do not affect other people.”

To read the Phil Harvey obituary, visit the Washington Post.

For XBIZ’s December obituary, click here.

WASHINGTON, DC. — The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, as part of its Human Rights Commissions program, has released its findings regarding oft-repeated claims that sex trafficking spikes in cities hosting the Super Bowl.

In partnership with the Sharmus Outlaw Advocacy and Rights Institute, Woodhull has concluded that “a dangerous uptick in sex trafficking is a myth, long encouraged by law enforcement, state/national governments and the media [and] has been continually disproven but continues to circulate, leading to confusion on all sides of the issue,” a rep explained.

Super Bowl LVI is set to take place on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles.

“Experts are highlighting how this debate interacts with the broader socio-political landscape, the conflation between [consensual] sex work and human trafficking and the fulfillment of sex worker rights,” noted a Woodhull rep.

Data from the newly released report shows that “while ads for sex may increase during the Super Bowl, instances of commercial sex and trafficking do not,” the rep explained.

Further, “the true victims of the ‘Super Bowl sex trafficking myth’ are human trafficking victims themselves; 80% of cases are in labor sectors outside of commercial sex,” continued the rep. Additionally, they added, “criminalization prevents those participating in commercial sex from reporting crimes committed against them for fear of arrest.”

So-called “trafficking hysteria” around the Super Bowl causes cities to increase police surveillance.
“Human trafficking is a problem that persists year-round,” the rep said, but due to the damaging conflation between adult consensual sex work and human trafficking, police use resources to arrest sex workers rather than engage in prevention.

“Increased policing has disproportionate consequences for communities with intersectioning vulnerabilities,” the Woodhull rep said. “Members of LGBTQ communities, communities of color, the unhoused and immigrants are among those disproportionately targeted by law enforcement as sex workers.”

More information can be found WoodhullFoundation.org; follow the organization on Twitter.

NEW YORK — Golden Age male performer Ron Hudd has passed away, according to his friends at The Rialto Report.

No details are available at the time about the time or place of his passing; in his later years, Hudd was reportedly conflicted about his adult work. His age has been listed by online sources as 68.

The news was revealed by Rialto Report in the intro to a reminiscence by fellow performer Lisa Be.

“Ron Hudd, a prolific New York adult film actor in the early 1980s, passed away recently,” the introduction read. “The Rialto Report lost a friend. He spoke with reserved amusement about the people with whom he worked, like Radley Metzger, Roberta Findlay and Larry Revene, but preferred to remain in the shadows. To mark his passing, The Rialto Report spoke with Lisa Be about her unique relationship with Ron.”

Acording to his IAFD entry, Hudd was active in the industry between 1976 and 1985, with over 100 film credits for top studios of the era like Caballero, VCA and VCR.

Be wrote about meeting Hudd on the set of “A Scent of Heather” (1980).

“The day I shot my second scene for the film,” she wrote, “remains one of the most beautiful of my life. It was with Ron, who I had just met for the first time. He was striking, intense and serious, as well as introverted and taciturn. He had a deep voice that commanded attention, and a tattoo of Pegasus on his arm. I found him instantly attractive, but wondered if we would have any chemistry. After all, we looked like the Midwestern kids that we were, Ron from Indiana, me from Michigan, so would it be like two cousins having sex?”

“My doubts disappeared the moment we came together for the camera. I had just emerged from makeup in my period costume. Ron looked at me and his eyes grew wide in schoolboy incredulity. I stared back at him in awe, returning the same gaze. The instant sexual attraction was mutual, real and intense.”

“Our scene started on a grand staircase, and ended on a four-poster bed. Ron was to deliver the line: ‘You are the most beautiful girl in the world,’ which he changed to ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world.’ He said it with immense vulnerability and shyness, looking at me with the same intimate and penetrating stare.”

“The director shouted, ‘Cut!’ and asked Ron to revert to the original dialogue line.”

“Ron looked embarrassed, taken aback. He snapped out of the moment, clearly fearing that he had been too sincere and romantic in delivering his line. The concern he had for being too authentic and not macho enough was etched over his face.”

“I soon learned, that was Ron. He disliked his own best qualities, such as the gentleness that he tried to keep hidden behind a gruff exterior.”

Be said Hudd was an artist at the time they met and he lived in a studio on West Broadway.

Through a shared interest in art, Be and Hudd bonded. He told her his art career “meant everything to him. Certainly more than relationships. That was the reason he made adult films. The movies provided enough money to support his art endeavors, and meant he could have sex with a variety of women without the need for any commitment.”

A few years ago, Be reconnected with Hudd, by then a successful painter whose work appeared in exhibitions across the country, and was sold through major auction houses. It was, however, sad to see that he had abandoned his earlier, wistful style in favor of modern, colorful abstract images.’

To read the entire reminiscence of Ron Hudd by Lisa Be, visit TheRialtoReport.com.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who has acknowledged having conversations with the U.S.-based, religiously-inspired anti-porn lobby NCOSE, is now “developing a roadmap to implement age verification for online pornographic sites.”

The news was reported by the Canberra Times this morning, with the newspaper also noting that Inman Grant intends to present the roadmap to the federal government by the end of the year.

According to the report, these age verification trials are now “under way” in Australia for online gambling and alcohol sales, and are projected to be “expanded to include online pornography as the federal government looks to restrict sexually explicit content on the internet from underage children.”

Unlike the U.S., Australia does not have any blanket protections of free speech like the First Amendment, or a Section 230 analog protecting platforms from liability for third-party uploads.

The new guidelines, which Inman Grant has been promoting nationally and — to the surprise of local observers — chiefly internationally, would necessitate a government definition of “pornographic website” or “adult website,” and would also have to specify if non-porn-specific platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, which tolerate adult content, would also fall under that category unless they ban all sexual content.

Back in November, Australian news publication Crikey published a lengthy report on Inman Grant’s obsession with banning online porn. The report revealed documents, obtained under Australia’s Freedom of Information Act, in which the country’s top internet regulator revealed explicit animosity towards press coverage of her contacts with NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media, and other foreign crusading organizations.

The Censor Blames ‘Angry Porn People’

The Crikey report was titled “Caught in ‘Porn Wars’: Backlash Over Internet Censor Going on Anti-Porn Podcast” and noted that “LGBTIQ+ and sex worker communities [were] furious eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant did not do due diligence before appearing on a podcast.”

Staff from the office of Inman Grant’s office admitted to Crikey that “her appearance on the podcast of a US-based anti-porn, anti-sex trafficking organization added to LGBTIQ+ and sex worker communities’ fears about her new powers.”

Inman Grant’s appearance on the podcast “was a recorded interview broadcast at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit in July, just weeks after the Parliament passed the Online Safety Act.”

According to Crikey’s sources in the Australian regulator’s office, “it was only after the podcast was published in September and promoted on Inman Grant’s Twitter account that it drew the attention, and ire, of people online who criticized her for appearing with NCOSE. This was influenced by news editor of sex industry trade publication XBIZ Gustavo Turner’s coverage.”

Crikey then cites the FOIA-obtained internal emails where Inman Grant disparages the XBIZ coverage which exposed her association with the long-running religiously-inspired U.S. lobby as “misinformation,” without clarifying which part of the XBIZ report she deemed not factual.

XBIZ stands by its reporting.

According to the documents obtained by Crikey,

In an email sent shortly after with the subject line “Angry porn people and the LGBTQI+ community,” Inman Grant tells two other staff that there are “U.S.-based porn people spreading a fair amount of misinformation” about the interview. She says that she doesn’t think NCOSE is a religious organization and chalks up the opposition to the sex industry having a “beef” with them.

“This may be our ‘new normal’ now that we have been thrown in the midst of the ‘porn wars’ …,” she writes.

One staff member replied, confused about Inman Grant’s appearance. They attached a screenshot from a Google search of NCOSE that shows it listed as “an American nonprofit known for its anti-pornography and anti-sex trafficking advocacy”: “Is this accurate? Who recommended that we do this? Was due diligence done?” they asked.

A staff member responds later by raising the alarm about NCOSE’s past efforts, including trying to block LGBTIQ+ content on schools computers.

“So this feeds into that narrative that we have discussed earlier — that some sectors of the community (most notably the LGBTIQ+ community) are very distrustful of the government and feel that eSafety’s new powers are a bit of a Trojan Horse to silence their voices and/or consensual or positive porn,” they wrote.

These emails back up Inman Grant’s previous public statements that she was unaware of the background of NCOSE, and that she appeared in response to its invitation.

Inman Grant and staff agreed to delete her tweet promoting the podcast, but advised against speaking to XBIZ.

“This is a good lesson for the due diligence that needs to be done through the invitations process … But yes all, a cautionary tale …” Inman Grant wrote.

Continuing Opacity

But today’s report by the Canberra Times, also the product of an FOIA request, shows the continuing opacity in Inman Grant’s dogged attempt to implement the censorship-leaning age verification legislation supported by NCOSE and other War on Porn crusaders by hook or crook.

“Documents released under a freedom of information request by The Canberra Times show the online safety office is considering teaming up with the Digital Transformation Agency on trials using government identification as it explores different methods to stop those under the minimum age from accessing online pornography,” the Canberra Times reported.

“Both agencies denied conducting trials for the moment but said they were working together to support ‘online safety outcomes,’” the report continued. “Neither responded to questions surrounding the planned timelines or the agencies’ roles and responsibilities.”

The DTA’s Trusted Digital Identity Framework “forms part of a government push to streamline the identity system. It provides users with access to government services and benefits using a reusable digital identity without needing to complete official forms each time. The framework would allow third-party private providers to join onto the system, too.”

International tech news site Gizmodo today recapped the Canberra Times article, headlining it with the warning “Age Verification Could Be Back on the Cards for Australian Porn Users.”

Australian Public Caught Between Surveillance and ‘Techno-Solutionism’

XBIZ spoke today with the founder of Australian sex work and technologist group Assembly Four, Eliza Sorensen, who submitted the request for the FOIA documents cited by Crikey.

“There is an increasingly worrying trend not just in Australia, but worldwide,” she said, “where policymakers from government, private industry and not for profits attempt to regulate the internet and technology without properly assessing whether or not the proposed solutions cause more harm than the mischief they’re trying to manage and whether or not the proposed solutions are proportionate.”

For Sorensen, there are two types of policymakers with power in Australia at the moment: “One party who is interested in further amassing power to surveil and censor the population, and the other, who are misled and ignorant to the nuance and complexity of the issues that they believe they can stop with capitalistic techno-solutionism.”

Main Image: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julia Inman Grant