New Article in Las Vegas Sun Catches Up With Porn's Reality

LAS VEGAS—Yesterday's edition of the Las Vegas Sun featured an extensive article on the adult industry's possible relocation from L.A. to L.V. While that may seem like old news to those who've followed AVN's plethora of news stories about Measure B and AB 1576, Sun reporter Andrea Domanick still manages to make a few good points—and snags some quotes from Kink.com CEO Peter Acworth, who announced several weeks ago that he was shopping for office/production space in Sin City. “Vegas is looking more and more attractive as time goes by,” the article quotes Acworth as saying. “I think that a lot of companies are doing what we’re doing. They’re setting up satellite offices and getting their feet wet with Vegas as a potential place to shoot.” But, Acworth cautioned, “The move is happening, but quietly. They don’t want a target on their back.” And while it's true that several companies have set up at least partial shop in the city, which Domanick notes "requires permits only for specific locations and conditions. Shooting on private property, frequently the choice of porn producers, requires no permit or notification, and the state has no explicit regulations about condom use," though she does mention the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's complaint against a Kink.com oral-only shoot. But though salivating a bit over "California’s $6 billion porn juggernaut" coming to town, and while Jim Reid of JR Lighting, Nevada's largest production rental company, noted that, “A lot of people I know in the mainstream industry started out in the adult industry in California. It’s a very good training ground," Robert Lang of Brookings Mountain West, a subset of the famous Brookings Institution that's partnered with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was less than sure. “Some big part of it will stay [in L.A.] and production companies will continue to be based there, so it’s not accurate to say that all of that $6 billion translates to Southern Nevada,” Lang said. “But what it also gives to Las Vegas is that it’s building technical capacity that undergirds non-pornographic production and media. It adds some competitive advantage in scale to Los Angeles.” Among those "competitive advantages" are the fact that filming permits cost only $45 per day in Clark County with no "location fee" at all, and "Our growing tech sector offers resources for production and web operations, and it’s cheaper to hire talented workers here than in California." The article gets a few things wrong, like the location of the first Adult Video News Awards (it wasn't at the Sands Convention Center, which hadn't even been built then); that there's some question whether the HIV infection of an "unidentified female performer in LA" in 2009 was "contracted off set" (there's no question that it was); and it accepts as fact AIDS Healthcare's false claim that there have been 21 other performers found to be HIV-positive since 2004. Domanick also seems to have missed the reports that Measure B is likely to lose its sole supporter in Vivid Entertainment's lawsuit to overturn the law, thanks to the impending decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, though she does note that the attempt to "expand the law statewide" died with the defeat last month of AB 1576. (Interestingly, although AHF has posted two press releases over the past few weeks essentially admitting that AB 1576 and similar measures are useless, Domanick nonetheless reports that AHF "vows to reintroduce the bill next year.") Indeed, there's a fair bit of discussion in the article about whether Nevada (or Las Vegas proper, or Clark County) will enact some sort of Measure B-like law, but Clark County Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Lopez told Domanick, “Regulation of the adult film industry is not a topic on our legislative agenda at this time. Our efforts to ban revenge porn are on the agenda as it pertains to consumer protection issues, especially for minors.” And there's the usual bluster from AHF that "Nevada regulates things, especially when dealing with vice. ... We would hope it doesn’t want to walk away from regulation.” Adult industry attorney Marc Randazza was more optimistic, however. “What happens this legislative session is going to say a lot,” Randazza said. “If a bill gets put forward [to require condoms or similar regulations], and it gets shut down, I think that will scream to the industry that it’s welcome here. If nothing gets introduced, that would be even better.” The article also contains a couple of sidebars, such as local artist/writer Sarah Jane Woodall's story of being an extra on a porn set; a summary of the existing laws and regulations governing adult shoots in the county, as well as locations where it's okay to shoot it—and a description of Lee Roy Myers' Mission Control Studio, in "an industrial parkway long marred by 'For Lease' signs and defunct adult novelty stores." All in all, Domanick's article is a good read—and excellent food for thought for those thinking about relocating to that portion of the desert.