NEW DELHI —  As India’s Supreme Court continues to evaluate whether to impose content regulations on streaming services doing business in the populous Asian country, members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are urging the enforcement of long-standing prohibitions against obscenity and blasphemy, alleging that some streaming services “even show pornography.”

Many of the 1.3 billion Indians have quickly adopted less-regulated streaming services over traditional film and television offerings, which have long been subject to state censorship. Amazon and Netflix are the Indian market leaders for streaming services, although other local channels and apps serve different niches, including erotic content.

Supreme Court Justice Ashok Bhushan questioned the openness of streaming services, compared to the traditional Indian mediascape.

“We are of the view there should be some screening of these types [of content],” he asserted last week. “What they are showing? They are showing pornography also.”

Streaming Freedom vs. Bollywood Censorship

Going to cinema halls to watch Bollywood productions was already on the decline even before COVID shuttered those venues.

The enormous Indian viewership — only comparable in size to China, and several times the size of the U.S. or European markets — now favors binging web series and seeks more niche-focused content.

A case in front of an Indian court involves high-profile Amazon Prime series “Tandav” (“Fury”)  which has been charged with depicting Hindu gods in a derogatory manner.

Amazon’s head of India content for Prime Video, Aparna Purohit, is seeking for protection against her arrest, according to an Al Jazeera report.

Unlike other traditional channels of diffusion, content on streaming platforms is not currently subject to government vetting.

Last week, Purohit was reportedly questioned for nearly four hours by Uttar Pradesh police.

India’s War on Porn

The Supreme Court’s reference to “pornography” and obscenity occurs in a context when the government-aligned media constantly reports on supposed allegations against India’s underground adult industry in a relentless campaign that shows many parallels with the current War on Porn campaigns in the U.S. and Canada.

Last month, police forces in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, announced the creation of a team to monitor internet searches for “pornographic material.”

Uttar Pradesh police announced that it had “hired a company to ‘keep an eye’ on citizens’ internet searches and keep data of the people who search for porn content,” reported local culture news site The Swaddle.

Main Image: India Supreme Court Justice Ashok Bhushan (Source: India Supreme Court)

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LOS ANGELES — Allie Eve Knox, the adult performer and cryptocurrency advocate who has been one of the industry’s leading “early-adopters” of blockchain-based technology, announced on Saturday the creation of her first NFT (Non-Fungible Token).

NFTs are one-of-a-kind collectible digital assets around which a thriving investment market has quickly developed.

Although NFTs have been a known concept in cryptocurrency circles for some time, the market has recently crossed over into the mainstream, resulting in a rushed flurry of explainer articles and news of high-price trades.

Recently, NFTs have been highlighted by billionaire entrepreneur and tech influencer Elon Musk, his partner the musician Grimes — who recently issued an enormously profitable series of art NFTs — and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who spun his first tweet (and the first tweet ever) as a tradable NFT.

On Saturday, Allie Eve Knox tweeted “Hi, go bid on my first NFT!,” a piece of digital art titled “Giantess Allie in the City” which depicts her in the nude looming over a cityscape.

Knox’s NFT is now open for bids at NFT marketplace OpenSea.

NFTs seem like ideal assets for adult performers: although they could literally be anything non-fungible (one-of-a-kind), the art market has already started getting involved because the asset appears to be best marketed around digital images.

Pornography, a largely visual medium, could be the ideal counterpart to market the highly technical FinTech and blockchain-based concepts underlying NFTs.

XBIZ has learned of a number of would-be NFT creators trying to book photo shoots with models hoping to create X-rated and erotic tokens. Some of these creators are proposing paying the models in cryptocurrency or else offering “shares” of the resulting NFT itself.

According to Knox, fellow crypto-friendly model Brenna Sparks is also creating NFTs.

Porn and NFTs, a Match Made in the Blockchain

“I minted a token, and people can bid on it,” Knox told XBIZ about this novel way to generate income for adult performers. “There will also be residuals and royalties. If I sell it to someone, they can turn around and flip it. If they were to sell it again, I can make a 30% residual, which is a number I chose and is there on the algorithm forever. Every time that sells — and it could be any price, because it’s tied to Ethereum (ETH) fluctuations — I can get a residual or royalty from it.”

“And this would be great for adult performers, because, as everyone knows, porn doesn’t generally have residuals: you get paid for the scene and that’s it,” she added.

“Those residuals are automatically built into the algorithm,” she stressed. “It’s all on the blockchain. You can see everything.”

Like all crypto advocates, Knox also emphasized the anti-censorship advantages of the blockchain environment.

“If [NFT marketplaces] Rarible or OpenSea were to go down, or they decide they’re not going to allow adult, the content doesn’t disappear,” she explained. “It’s minted on the blockchain. If someone were to take down your Instagram, on the other hand, your images would be gone.”

Another Way to Create Content

Knox says that due to her involvement with the crypto community, she has known about NFTs “for a long time.”

“I just did it recently because it just became mainstream,” she said. “If it sells or not, it was a fun project. But it’s another way to create content and the potential is big.”

Knox said the potential justifies the small initial cost attached to creating the artwork and putting it up for sale or auction.

“You have to pay to mint,” she said. “I’m $50 dollars [into] ETH fees, plus I paid for the artwork to be created.”

But the potential for residuals and also boffo profits success stories like the Grimes art sale, which allegedly netted the singer $6 million, make NFTs an attractive proposition for adult performers.

“Also, don’t forget the blockchain is censorless,” Knox said. “And we in adult should like that.”

Mar 8, 2021 11:06 AM PST

NEW YORK — Today, Satisfyer announced the launch of an Instagram campaign celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD), to run from March 8-14.

As part of the promo, the company is using the hashtag #ChoosetoChallenge and calling upon users across the world to add their own words to the statement “Sexual freedom empowers me to…”

All statements tagged with @satisfyercom will be collected, anonymized and uploaded and, according to Satisfyer, will serve as a platform to showcase the diversity of individuals who “embrace their own sexuality as an important step towards a fulfilling lifestyle.”

The company also is tapping into a range of influencers and activists in the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Poland, Portugal, and the U.S.

Supporting Satisfyer’s IWD campaign is content creator and sex positive influencer Ellie Tyrell who told Satisfyer, “Sexual freedom empowers me to be unapologetically myself. For too long women have been told what sexy should look like… and how sex should be. Sexual freedom means I can explore sex by myself, on my terms, and discover exactly what I like without fear of embarrassment and judgment. The result? A whole lot more self love and self-acceptance.“

According to the company, the campaign builds upon the Satisfyer’s goal to celebrate human sexuality and empower individuals.

“Women are often criticized for embracing their bold, dynamic sexuality — the standards set by society are not serving the individual,” said Megwyn White, director of education at Satisfyer and certified clinical sexologist. “Unrealistic beauty standards are embedded into the minds of women, until they rebel with self-love and radical expression of their own sensuality.”

Satisfyer has initiated a call to action with an illustration by U.K. artist Hazel Mead.

“The picture shows multicultural silhouettes in a self-pleasuring moment, underscoring the importance of saying a natural ‘Yes!’ to yourself, releasing tension and embracing the empowering potential of female sexuality,” the company said. “In turn, the illustration is aligned with one of the Satisfyer brand values — ‘sexual health is for everyone, regardless of their sexual identity, socioeconomic background, age or gender.’”

According to White, Mead’s picture evokes the primal energy and freedom that people should enjoy in the middle of an orgasm. She says that this is precisely what Satisfyer would like to express in the picture: “Say ‘Yes’ to yourself and to your needs. Gain confidence by accepting yourself. Enjoy the energy of your voice and body and wave goodbye to taught systems that restricted you.”

For more information about Satisfyer’s IWD initiative, click here.

CULVER CITY, Calif. — A new cultural trend taking place on popular Gen-Z platform TikTok complicates the idea that support for sex worker rights and freedom of sexual expression will continue steadily gaining generational ground, according to a recent article by Rebecca Jennings for online news site Vox.

The insightful article, titled “TikTok: The Problem With the ‘Cancel Porn’ Movement” (subtitle: “On TikTok, It’s Impossible to Have a Nuanced Discussion About Sex Work”), highlights how a “Cancel Porn” campaign within the phone video platform has been quietly taking shape among “teenagers mostly, diverse in race, gender and aesthetic (some were girls with the dramatic winged liner of alt-TikTok, others looked like frat boys).”

Their message, according to Jennings, is that “porn is inherently evil; it normalizes rape, incest, pedophilia and misogyny; and it profits off of sex trafficking.”

As part of this supposedly “grassroots” War on Porn outreach campaign, Jennings wrote, “boys share stories of how their middle school porn addictions ruined their lives,” girls share Exodus Cry propaganda about non-consensual videos on adult platforms and “Christians discuss how to overcome the sin of lust.”

A TikTok-Based Facet of Conservatism

For Jennings, this “Cancel Porn” fad is “one facet of a conservatism, for lack of a better term, that’s proliferating on TikTok from rather unlikely sources: young, presumably progressive women (for the most part) who seem to believe that ‘choice feminism,’ or the idea that every choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because a woman made it, is propagating patriarchy and the male gaze. “

These young women even echo the standard SWERF propaganda points that “all sex work is coercion because it involves the transfer of money.”

This anti-porn campaign, the article argues, may be reaction to increase visibility on TikTok of sex workers attempting to normalize their lives.

“Escorts, sugar babies, cam girls, strippers, OnlyFans creators and folks who sell feet pics or panties online have used the platform to show both the highs and lows of their jobs,” Jennings explained.

“Yet even more than those videos,” she added, “I’m seeing the backlash to them,” and quotes an allegedly teenage conservative TikToker’s caption bemoaning that “liberal feminism telling young girls that hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you don’t have extreme kinks at a young age then they’re boring and vanilla, and encouraging them to get into sex work the minute they turn 18.”

Jennings quotes sex industry studies academic Dr. Barb Brents, who sees TikTok’s “Cancel Porn” movement as a result of “misdirected anxieties.”

“It’s almost like the recognition that staring at a screen all the time is causing you problems, but if you can label those problems as, ‘Oh, it’s porn,’ then you can ‘other’ it and still be able to look at the screen,” Brents explained.

To read Rebecca Jennings’ article “TikTok: The Problem With the ‘Cancel Porn’ Movement,” visit Vox.com.