Alex Henderson

The Bettie Page Revival

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, May 25, 2006

April marked two major events in the life of 1950s erotica queen Bettie Page. On April 22, the 1950s pinup model/burlesque star celebrated her 83rd birthday, and April 14 was the U.S. release of "The Notorious Bettie Page," a 91-minute mainstream film starring actress Gretchen Mol as Page and directed and co-written by Canadian director Mary Harron of "I Shot Andy Warhol" fame.

"The Notorious Bettie Page" comes at a time when Page's popularity and influence are at an all-time high. Page retired from modeling 49 years ago, but the demand for her 1950s photos and short films has never been greater. From the many documentaries, books, websites and songs that Page has inspired to a long list of fetish models and professional dominatrixes who have capitalized on her distinctive look (long, jet-black hair with short bangs), Bettie Page has been a cottage industry during the past 20 years.

Page's image is being marketed aggressively by her agents at CMG Worldwide, the intellectual property powerhouse that has represented the images and estates of Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and many other celebrities of the past and presumably, Page is receiving a great deal in royalties from all the T-shirts, posters, beach towels, coffee mugs and other items depicting her.

One easily could spend a few hundred dollars purchasing all the Page-related DVDs that are sold online at Amazon.com and elsewhere, and the Page-inspired paintings of erotic artist Olivia DeBerardinis have been hot sellers.

New Converts

But in the 1970s and 1980s, Page's image was more of an underground phenomenon, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s that a new generation of converts rescued her from obscurity. Although Page is a member of the WWII generation, she has become a Generation X and Generation Y icon. One of the young Page admirers who have embraced her look is London resident Kittie Klaw, a well-known fetish model/neo-burlesque performer whose stage name was inspired by photographers Irving and Paula Klaw, two siblings who documented Page extensively in the 1950s.

The 24-year-old Kittie, who grew up in Scotland and operates the popular Ministry of Burlesque website with James Malach (a webmaster for Britain's leading fetish fashion magazine Skin Two), told XBIZ, "It seems like Bettie's fame skipped a generation and lay dormant until now. My parents had never heard of her; they didn't know who she was. But my generation has been very quick to pick up on images of her. It's almost as if people are seeking information from a bygone era possibly seeking advice from the ancients the way that people in ancient pagan societies sought advice from the elders."

But fellow London resident Tony Mitchell, who is Skin Two's editor and is widely regarded as one of Britain's top Page experts, notes that while most baby boomers were unaware of Page in the 1970s and 1980s, that wasn't true of all boomers and Mitchell stressed that the Page revival actually started in the 1970s with people who were in the underground punk, Goth and BDSM/fetish scenes.

"The Bettie Page revival didn't just start in the 1990s, it exploded," Mitchell explained. "It had been gradually building up since the 1970s. There was 20 years of gradual underground buildup, but it went seriously mainstream in the 1990s. That was when a lot of people who weren't interested in fetish noticed Bettie Page, but people who were seriously interested in fetish had been aware of her in the 1970s and 1980s."

Mitchell added that in the 1980s, he had a girlfriend, journalist Beverley Glick, who used Bettie Page as a pen name. Most baby boomers didn't get the reference back then, but Glick's pen name inspired big smiles from underground punks, goths and fetish/BDSM enthusiasts who were hip to Page's legacy. Mitchell said that Page's image has since become so ubiquitous in both Europe and North America that a professional journalist like Glick wouldn't dare use Bettie Page as a pen name today it would be wildly inappropriate now.

Von Teese Appeal
Of all the fetish models who have been greatly influenced by Page's look, the most famous is Heather Sweet, better known as Dita Von Teese. In March, the 33-year-old Von Teese was busy promoting her new book "Burlesque and the Art of the Teese" when she addressed the Page revival for XBIZ.

Von Teese (who married alternative rocker Marilyn Manson in 2005) pointed out that during the Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower years, Page was very much a cult figure.

"Bettie Page was just one of the many pinup models of her day," Von Teese told XBIZ. "She wasn't a big star at the time. Some people knew her, but I would liken her fame to that of one of the many modern Playboy or fetish models a certain degree of recognition, but nothing compared to the international fame she has attained in the past decade. I even remember noticing nearly overnight the change in her fame. In early 1990, I had Bettie Page's look down. I was usually called Cleopatra, but then one day, the E! Channel had a special about her, and suddenly they knew what the look was. Before that, the only people who knew who Bettie was were fetishists and serious pinup collectors."

Von Teese went on to say: "Bettie is part of an elite group of style icons that will always be remembered. One hundred years from now, we will remember Marilyn, Marlene, Garbo, Bettie, Rita and even a few modern women like Madonna and Cher. But the current 'young hot cookie cutter stars' will most likely be forgotten. It's the unique women who weren't afraid to be true to themselves and celebrate their differences rather than try to fit the mold that we will remember."

The Klaw Connection

One of the reasons that fetishists and BDSM practitioners hold Page in such high regard is the fact that she experimented with bondage and S&M in some of the material she made with Irving Klaw in the 1950s a decade that often inspires thoughts of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver," not leather-clad women with whips and chains.

Having a Page-like hairstyle certainly hasn't hurt Veronica Bound, a Philadelphia-based professional dominatrix who is the curator of the Aphrodite Gallery (an erotic art gallery that is associated with the fetish clothing boutique Passional) and teaches alternative sexuality classes. The 36-year-old Bound stressed that as much as she admires Page, she didn't set out to look like her. Bound went with the short bangs because her hairdresser felt they "framed my face better," but even so, she has found the look to be a definite plus with certain clients.

"Some of my clients are familiar with the very fetishistic Bettie Page and have latched onto her as a very sexual and erotic image, and when they notice my black hair and the short bangs, they're like, 'Oh, I want to get spanked by Bettie Page,'" Bound said. "I don't really think I look that much like her the hair does a lot of it but it's close enough for them."

Discussing Page's cultural impact, Bound explained that Page's kinkier work with Klaw would be considered "BDSM light" by 2000s standards.

Societal Attitudes
"Our society and culture have finally caught up to Bettie Page," Bound said. "In 2006, we can deal with what Bettie Page did in the 1950s. But if you were to actually put out images of what goes on now in S&M and dungeon clubs, our society on the whole is not ready to deal with that maybe in another 50 or 60 years, but not now."

Bound added, however, that what Bettie did was extremely controversial in her time, and one anti-erotica crusader who had no kind words for Page's work with Klaw in the 1950s was Democratic Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

Kefauver, who spearheaded a government investigation of Klaw, insisted that he was corrupting American's youth and did everything possible to get Page to testify against him in court. She refused.

"When Bettie Page did bondage videos, it was very groundbreaking," Bound said. "Nowadays, what Bettie Page did with Irving Klaw wouldn't be defined as anything particularly hardcore. But in the 1950s, those videos completely shocked the authorities."

Bill Margold, who was an adult film star in the 1970s and remains an outspoken adult industry activist, is old enough to remember Kefauver's anti-erotica campaign.

Margold, now 62, was 12 in 1956, and he remembers Kefauver and other moralists of the day railing against Page's erotica.

"I remember Bettie Page being called a corrupter of youth, and I remember that around that time, the EC Comics were also being raked over the coals as a corrupter of youth," Margold said.

Margold emphasized that even though Page (who posed for the January 1955 issue of Playboy wearing only a Santa Claus hat) never made any films as sexually explicit as what came about in the 1970s, she should still be recognized as an important figure in the evolution of adult entertainment.

"In the early 1970s," Margold said, "Triple-X began to play for real, and the first women to play for real and actually get credit for it were Linda Lovelace with 'Deep Throat' and Marilyn Chambers with 'Behind the Green Door.'

The Sex Queens
"I consider the modern era of porn was created in 1972, and everything before that was leading up to what would become the sociological acceptance of it," Margold said. "But I do believe that Bettie Page laid some of the groundwork for that. As far as film and photos go, I would say that Bettie Page was the grandmother of adult entertainment or the grandmother of modern-day erotica. We owe her a debt of gratitude. Every generation has its sex queens; Bettie Page, Lily St. Cyr and Candy Barr were the sex queens of their generation."

All of the Page admirers interviewed for this article illustrate her cross-generational appeal. Margold is young enough to be Page's son; Von Teese, Kittie Klaw, Bound and Philadelphia-based artist/graphic designer Joshua L. Pearson are young enough to be either her grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

The 26-year-old Pearson, who Bound chose as the Aphrodite Gallery's featured artist for the month of April, has created a piece called the Bettie Page Image Mosaic, which incorporates more than 470 pictures of her.

Pearson, who calls his company Digibilly Design and has collected 600-700 Page images, has been obsessed with her since he was 18, and he insisted that unlike others, he does not view her in an erotic way.

"Once I saw Bettie Page's face, I was hooked," he said. "Her smile and her eyes did it for me. You looked at her face and she brightened your day. There's just something about her face; I can't get enough of it. I really don't want to look at her as a sex symbol because I don't see her as a sex symbol; I see her as an image of happiness."

Often when Page's 1950s material is discussed, words like "fun" and "happy" come up as often as words like "sexy," "seductive" and "erotic."

Webmaster/writer Bonnie J. Burton who founded one of the first Page tribute websites, The Bettie Page told XBIZ, "The reason Bettie makes such a perfect sex icon even though her photos are fairly tame compared to pinups and music videos of today is that she had fun with sexual themes. It wasn't smutty or contrived. She had a way about her that made you feel like it was OK to admire her, not sleazy. Bettie brought campiness and humor back into sex, but she was also great at playing the girl next door."

Page Has Got Legs
The Baroness, a well-known fetish fashion designer who holds fetish-themed parties in New York City, is impressed with Page's longevity.

"It's amazing that Bettie Page is an icon to so many younger people," The Baroness said. "It's hard enough to be famous in your own generation, much less famous in another generation. If you ask most younger people about Veronica Lake or Barbara Stanwyck, they wouldn't have a clue who they were. But Bettie Page is somebody whose image has survived."

Mugshot of Samuel Roth From 1930

50 Years After 'Roth'

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, June 20, 2007

2007 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most consequential rulings in U.S. history: the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in the case Roth vs. U.S. A major turning point for American obscenity law, the Roth ruling (a 6-3 decision) made it more difficult for prosecutors to get obscenity convictions and it is safe to say that without the Roth decision, the U.S. probably would not have become the world's biggest erotica-producing country.

Samuel Roth, a New York City-based publisher/writer battled American obscenity laws starting in the late 1920s (when he was jailed for obscenity for publishing an unauthorized version of James Joyce's "Ulysses." Roth also faced intellectual property concerns (Joyce obtained an injunction against Roth forbidding unauthorized use of his work), but obscenity law was his biggest challenge. After serving time in prison from 1936-1939 for obscenity, Roth was arrested again in 1955 for sending obscene material through the mail. Roth's case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957, which was also the year the High Court reviewed another major obscenity case: Alberts vs. California, the companion case of Roth vs. U.S.

The Los Angeles-based David Alberts, who operated a mail-order business and published pictures of nude and scantily clad women, was convicted of obscenity under California law. When Alberts appealed that conviction and his case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, he was represented by the groundbreaking 1st Amendment attorney Stanley Fleishman (whose firm, which is now Weston, Garrou, DeWitt & Walters, went on to represent numerous clients in the adult entertainment industry). Fleishman did not represent Samuel Roth or argue Roth, but legal scholars have often pointed out that Fleishman's work in the Alberts case greatly influenced the outcome of Roth an outcome that, although not ideal, was definitely a major step forward for adult entertainment.

Profound Role

"Stanley Fleishman's role in the Roth decision was profound," veteran 1st Amendment attorney Clyde DeWitt, who is part of Weston Garrou, said. "Stanley briefed and argued Alberts vs. California, which, of course, was 50 percent of Roth. Stanley was a pioneer."

In both Alberts vs. California and Roth, the U.S. Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of obscenity prosecution; Fleishman saw Alberts' conviction as an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment. There was both good and bad news for adult entertainment in the Roth and Alberts rulings. The bad news was that in both cases, the Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that obscenity was not constitutionally protected speech. The convictions of Alberts and Roth were upheld by the Warren Court, and Roth went back to prison for several years. But the good news was that with the Roth decision, the Warren Court established a new definition of obscenity that wasn't nearly as prosecutor-friendly as the old 19th century Hicklin test that Roth vs. U.S. officially did away with.

In 1957, the Warren Court ruled that material was obscene if its "dominant theme, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest" according to the "average person, applying contemporary community standards," and the "dominant theme, taken as a whole" part of the Roth test was a crucial departure from the Hicklin test that had been established with the Regina vs. Hicklin ruling of 1868.

Regina vs. Hicklin was actually a British case, but it influenced American obscenity law for 89 years. In Regina vs. Hicklin, the British courts defined obscenity as material that tends to "deprave or corrupt" the most susceptible members of society.

Under the Hicklin test, even a small, isolated, mildly erotic part of an artistic work could make the entire work obscene and in the U.S., an outspoken supporter of that test was moral crusader/activist Anthony Comstock, who called for much tougher obscenity prosecution when he persuaded Congress to pass the so-called Comstock Law (which led to at least 3,000 arrests) in 1873. Thanks to Comstock, the Hicklin test was used to ban everything from pamphlets promoting birth control to Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales."

A long list of attorneys, judges and 1st Amendment activists spoke out against the Hicklin standard and "Comstockery" (Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's term for zealous censorship based on alleged obscenity or immorality) in the late 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century, but it wasn't until the Roth decision that the U.S.'s highest judicial entity officially abolished the Hicklin standard in the U.S. once and for all. And for prosecutors in obscenity cases, having to evaluate an entire book, magazine or film under the Roth test was much more challenging than evaluating an isolated passage under the Hicklin test.

"The whole Regina vs. Hicklin concept rested on a premise that has turned out to be flawed," L.A.-based 1st Amendment attorney Allan B. Gelbard said. "There is no proof that exposure to adult materials harms anybody in any way, and even if there are some people who might be harmed by it, that doesn't mean you make it illegal for everybody else.

"You can't make all of society safe for the sandbox. If something is inappropriate for a 6- year-old child, that doesn't mean that you can prevent a 30-year-old adult from having it. You can't prevent a 30-year-old adult from having something because it might fall into the hands of a child. If we based everything that adults can have access to on what is appropriate for a 6-year-old, adults would never have a gun or a car."

Decision's Impact

While civil Libertarians believe that the Roth decision ultimately did more good than harm, hardcore social conservatives flat-out detest the decision. First Amendment attorney Gregory Piccionelli, who has spent much of his career battling modern-day Comstockery, said, "Roe vs. Wade and Roth v. U.S. are the Religious Right's most hated cases."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has indicated that he would like to see a return to a Hicklin-like standard, and Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly has complained that "the flood of pornography started with the Warren Court."

Adult entertainment did, in fact, become increasingly plentiful during what DeWitt and others call the Roth/Memoirs Era that is, 1957-1973. The Memoirs part is Memoirs vs. Massachusetts, a case the Supreme Court decided in 1966. The Warren Court's Memoirs decision essentially upheld the Roth decision and noted that obscenity was "utterly without redeeming social value." DeWitt pointed out that during the Roth/Memoirs Era, "the country evolved from a very subdued Playboy to 'Deep Throat.'"

The Roth/Memoirs Era ended when, in 1973, the Supreme Court under the late Chief Justice Warren Burger (Earl Warren's replacement) examined the landmark Miller vs. California case. The Burger Court's ruling in Miller vs. California established a new three-prong test for obscenity that maintained some parts of the Roth test but replaced the "utterly without redeeming social value" element with what is known as the "SLAPS test."

According to the Supreme Court's Miller test (which remains 34 years later), a creative work is obscene if it: 1) appeals to a prurient interest when contemporary community standards are applied, 2) is patently offensive, and 3) lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value when taken as a whole (the so-called SLAPS test).

If a prosecutor cannot prove to a jury that erotic material meets all three of those criteria for obscenity, the jury must provide a "not guilty" verdict. In 1973, DeWitt recalled, some adult entrepreneurs feared that the SLAPS part of the Miller test would make it easier for prosecutors to send them to jail. But as it turned out, adult entertainment became more plentiful and more explicit; it was during the 1970s that the adult film market truly exploded.

"[Miller] flat-out said that Congress could regulate morality, and that's just wrong," DeWitt said. "But Miller has not proven to be the train wreck that everyone thought it would be. After all, look where we have all gone since then. Let's face it, you can get every kind of erotic media everywhere now, except retail stores, which are fewer and far between."

DeWitt added that the Roth decision not only had an impact on adult entertainment it had an impact on mainstream entertainment as well.

Clients "in the Trenches"

"My clients in adult entertainment are in the trenches," DeWitt said, "and it is the battles that they fight that pave the way for the lyrics in rock 'n' roll and rap. I mean, how could anyone even think about prosecuting some store for music with raunchy lyrics when the same store sells DVDs with DP gang-bang scenes?"

Where U.S. obscenity law will go in the future remains to be seen. While 1st Amendment purists hope to see obscenity prosecution abolished altogether in the U.S., Christian Right fundamentalists long for a return to a pre-Roth decision test for obscenity and if the Supreme Court did replace the Miller test with a Hicklin-like test, it would be disastrous for American adult companies (many of which would no doubt relocate to Continental Europe if they were facing that type of nightmare). But Piccionelli doesn't see the U.S. taking such a giant step backward.

"It is insanity for Rick Santorum to believe that the country would tolerate a return to a 19th century standard for obscenity," Piccionelli said, also noting that vanilla erotica has become harder and harder to prosecute in the Internet era.

Ideally, Piccionelli added, he would like to see the U.S. government quit wasting taxpayers' dollars prosecuting consensual adult erotica and worry about terrorism and child pornography instead. And Gelbard also said that he would like to see obscenity prosecution abolished in the U.S. on constitutional grounds. But until that happens, Gelbard warned, adult-oriented entrepreneurs will need to be on guard.

"The whole concept of obscenity law is flawed," Gelbard said. "The whole idea that some speech is so sexually explicit that it somehow loses its protection as speech is ridiculous. The other areas of speech that are restricted are based on real harm. As everybody has heard, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, but that isn't because the word fire is offensive; that's because the word fire might cause a stampede and cause people to get killed.

"When the government restricts speech, there is supposed to be a really, really good reason what we call a compelling interest and there is supposed to be no greater restriction than necessary to effectuate that. If somebody is offended by sexually explicit speech, that's good and fine; you restrict it by saying that it shall not be forced upon them, but you don't make it illegal ab initio. That's just stupid.

"And the other part of it is that obscenity is the only area of the law where you don't know if you are breaking the law. If you walk into a bank with a gun and say, 'Give me all your money,' there is no question that you are breaking the law by robbing a bank. But if I make an adult movie today and three years from today, some prosecutor decides to prosecute me for obscenity, how was I supposed to know it was illegal when I thought it was perfectly artistic?"

Not So Private

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, September 13, 2006

If Vivid Entertainment CEO Steven Hirsch or Wicked Pictures President Steve Orenstein has a European counterpart, it is arguably Berth Milton Jr. As CEO and chairman of Barcelona, Spain-based Private Media Group, the Swedish entrepreneur (who speaks fluent English) oversees not only Europes largest adult entertainment empire but also its oldest.

Private, which Miltons father, Berth Milton Sr., founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1965, is celebrating its 41st anniversary in 2006, and along the way, the outfit has evolved considerably. Private started out as a publishing company and subsequently branched out into adult films. Under the direction of Milton Jr., who took over the business in 1991, Private has undergone a considerable technological expansion and provides erotic content for the Internet, IPTV, video-on-demand, mobile phones, wireless and other technologies. And Milton has made sure that Private like Hustler and Vivid is recognized as a full-fledged brand. The Private brand in 2006 is being used to sell everything from condoms to clothing to an energy drink.

During an interview with XBIZ, Milton addressed a variety of topics ranging from Privates technological evolution to the companys decision to become publicly traded and even Privates ambitious marketing plans for the U.S.

XBIZ: In what ways has Private evolved and grown technologically since you took over in 1991?

MILTON: When I bought Private from my father in the early 1990s with a few investors, the first thing we did was to start home video. My father never took up video because he was always afraid of being pirated; he thought it was better to not sell videos at all than to have people make money from pirated copies, which I thought was a strange philosophy. After video, the Internet boosted the adult industry, and directly after the Internet, the DVD followed and also boosted the adult industry. Private was very fast with DVDs; we were one of the first adult companies to launch DVDs. And for sure, we were the first to launch adult DVDs with multi-language format. The competition was only doing one language, which made limitations for them in terms of where they could distribute. But because we had multi-language DVDs, we could launch DVDs on a big scale worldwide. So the multi-language DVD was one of the big things that kept us on the forefront when it came to technology. Now, were seeing a decline in DVD sales, and our focus is on newer technologies.

XBIZ: Technologically, where do you see the biggest growth for Private and adult entertainment in the future?

MILTON: Mobile phones, for sure, and everything that is wireless. Today, Private has four in-house attorneys who are signing contracts with mobile phone operators and telcos around the world on a daily basis. I think we will see enormous growth when it comes to triple play and IPTV VOD with the big telcos. People are clever when it comes to searching and finding, and they start realizing that VOD service with triple play on the Internet with IPTV is actually a better service than you get with VOD from Comcast or Warners and so on. [Triple play is a telecommunications marketing term for the provisioning of the three services high-speed Internet, VOD and telephone service over a single broadband connection. Triple play services are offered by cable television companies and telco operators.]

XBIZ: What do you see as the future for the small, mom-and pop adult webmasters the people who are making a profit providing adult content out of a home office in Boston or Seattle? What is the future of the small online entrepreneur in the adult industry?

MILTON: Probably they will still have the live cam thing, but thats what it will be. I dont see any other major growth opportunities for the small entrepreneur in the adult business. In Hollywood, you will always find the small independent movies, but Hollywood is mostly the big studios, and the same will happen with adult.

XBIZ: So what you envision is the adult industry, at least the film side of the adult industry, becoming dominated by a handful of major companies? Youll still have the small independent adult film companies, but mainly, it will be an industry dominated by a handful of major players like Private, Vivid, Playboy, Wicked and LFP/Hustler?

MILTON: Yes, it will be a handful of major players. It is going in that direction, for sure.

XBIZ: You said that DVD sales were decreasing for Private. Do you believe that DVDs have passed their prime in the adult entertainment market?

MILTON: Yes, by far. Some marketing people at adult companies in the U.S. have predicted that video piracy will be the downfall of adult DVDs. Its not piracy. Its that there are so many more ways to get access to movies today. Downloads are going quicker than we ever could have expected. Private has a contract with a company here in Spain called Imagenio, which is Telefnicas IPTV service. My guess is that they have 500,000 subscribers; that means there are 500,000 people who will never go out and buy an adult DVD anymore. And thats only one country and one operator. DVDs are fading away quickly in the adult industry, and it is the same thing for mainstream business. Why go out and rent a DVD and return it or go out and buy it when you can sit at home and do your own selection?

XBIZ: Some adult entrepreneurs are of the opinion that the future of adult DVDs will be strictly downloads, that instead of obtaining a DVD either by going to a video store or by mail order on the Internet, everyone will be downloading adult titles and burning them onto blank DVDRs. What do you think?

MILTON: Thats a dream scenario. In the future, it will be downloaded, but you will never burn it on a DVD. I have a box today, which is wireless, where I download my movies into. I can store 500 movies or maybe 1,000; I havent even reached the peak yet. It just downloads, downloads, downloads, and I can still use my computer because it doesnt take all the bandwidth. I installed that technology more than a year ago, and I can imagine that it is more advanced today. I can just see what will happen in two or three years. I have a son who is 17 years old. He downloads all of his music for his iPod; he hasnt been to a music store or a DVD store for the last three years. He will never be a customer of a DVD store, he will never be a customer of a CD store, and he will never buy a blank DVD and burn it because he cant store it. Memory is the cheapest thing today when it comes to computers; it costs nothing. You can store so many gigabytes in a box that is no bigger than a DVD box.

XBIZ: Private has been publicly traded since 1999, though the vast majority of adult companies are still privately held. For an adult company, what are the advantages of being publicly traded?

MILTON: It gives you credibility more than anything else. Of course, it also gives you an opportunity to raise money if needed. We didnt go public to raise money, we went public to create the credibility. We saw early on that all the big companies all the big telcos, all the big broadcasters, everybody were looking into adult, but dealing with small companies in the basement was really not what they wanted to do. Dealing with companies that could say they have a Nasdaq listing made the executives feel much more secure about their partners, and I think we have proven that with all the different contracts we have with the major players in these segments.

XBIZ: Do you envision more adult companies becoming publicly traded in the future?

MILTON: No. I find it more and more difficult for an adult company to become publicly traded. I know companies like Vivid have been looking at posbanker who is your underwriter. Private always had very good auditors very well known auditors and we were always run like a publicly traded company even before we were publicly traded. That made it possible for us to become public. It is not the different stock exchanges, I think, who have a problem with the adult industry; it is the underwriters. It is getting support from a banker or a broker, which is not that easy.

XBIZ: In 2006, which countries would you say are the most receptive to Privates material, and which are the most challenging in terms of obscenity laws and the social acceptance of adult entertainment?

MILTON: If you take away the Middle East, where the social acceptance of adult material will probably not happen as long as I am alive, Asia is starting to open up. They had the first sex trade show in China in September of last year, which would have been impossible only a year and a half ago, and they had another one in Singapore. Of course, you cant show much, but you can show some things. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan these are the places we see opening up. The challenge is to get these places to understand that sex is not a bad thing that sex is normal and that most people have sex and enjoy sex.

XBIZ: In various interviews, you have been quoted as saying that you find Spain to be more accepting of adult entertainment than Sweden, where Private started. Many Americans in the adult industry have been surprised to hear you say that.

MILTON: It sounds weird, but I think Spain has a more liberal view of adult than Sweden. Historically, Sweden was very liberal, but today, it is not as liberal as it used to be.

XBIZ: Would you say that the Spanish government is more tolerant of erotic entertainment than the Swedish government?

MILTON: No, its not the governments; the laws in Sweden and Spain are pretty much the same or you could say they are exactly the same. Its more the general acceptance of adult entertainment by the people; adult entertainment is more socially accepted in Spain than in Sweden. But law-wise, there is no difference.

XBIZ: What are some of your thoughts on the ways the U.S. government has treated adult entertainment during the George W. Bush era?

MILTON: Unfortunately, weve seen a little backlash the last couple of years in the U.S. with the Bush Administration. But I think that normally, people start screaming very loud when they see that they are starting to lose the battle. When you know you are losing, you try everything, and I have a feeling it is that way in the U.S. The sexual liberation is there, and people have to accept the fact that women have the same sexual demands as men.

XBIZ: So you believe that despite U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vow to increase the number of obscenity prosecutions, the adult industry is really winning the cultural war as Patrick Buchanan termed it in the U.S?

MILTON: Sometimes it gets worse before it gets a lot better, and I think that is what we are now seeing in the U.S. The religious right wing is screaming a little bit louder now, but all that will change.

XBIZ: Private North America has been active since 2001. In what ways do Privates marketing efforts in the U.S. differ from your marketing efforts in Europe?

MILTON: The European market, for sure, has been fantastic; the U.S. has been zero. But were changing that drastically right now. Were going to be focusing tremendously on the U.S. because weve really been lacking in brand recognition there. Weve been a totally European company. In the States, we never really put our name on the map with the DVD and video market, but I think that with mobile phones and IPTV, things will start to pick up in the U.S. Were following the American standard and will be hiring contract girls who will be out promoting Private. We will do major competitions in the U.S. in the coming year; were doing a tour that will go all over the U.S. and will end in Las Vegas, where we will announce four winners. Were trying to establish contract girls similar to the way Vivid has but with the look of Private girls. The Vivid girls are beautiful, but that look is maybe too plastic for Private girls. We always believed that the more natural look is better than the artificial look, and that is what we are aiming for in the U.S. the best-looking American girls with the natural look.

BDSM Shakes Up Vanilla Porn

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, May 19, 2008

There was a time when bondage and sadomasochism were practically unheard of in vanilla erotica. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, BDSM was seldom discussed in Penthouse, Playboy or Oui — and standard adult films stuck to what BDSM players refer to as "vanilla sex" (that is, heterosexual or gay sex that does not have bondage, fetishism or sadomasochistic activity as a primary ingredient). There were BDSM/fetish-oriented films, books and magazines back then (some designed for heterosexuals, some aimed at the gay leather community), but they were very underground and catered to a subculture that the vast majority of Playboy readers had little, if any, knowledge of.

But times have changed, and BDSM isn't nearly as underground as it once was. Numerous BDSM websites are published on the Internet, professional dominatrices are in heavier demand than ever, pop superstars like Madonna and Joan Jett have addressed kinky topics, and any run-of-the-mill sex shop is likely to be selling handcuffs, whips, leather masks, blindfolds and ball-gags along with the standard dildos, vibrators, lubricants and flavored condoms. BDSM is hardly new (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's 1869 novel "Venus in Furs" was a BDSM manifesto), but it has never been more ubiquitous — and that fact is not lost on the world of vanilla porn, which isn't as vanilla as it was 20 or 30 years ago. In 2008, the Internet is full of vanilla adult websites that are not specifically BDSM-oriented but have become increasingly BDSM-friendly.

Jeff Booth, president of the Los Angeles-based EroticUniversity.com and a longtime observer of adult-industry trends, noted that both spanking and light bondage have become more acceptable in vanilla porn. However, Booth was quick to stress that really hardcore BDSM — for example, someone voluntarily receiving an intense bullwhipping — is not something that the majority of people who patronize vanilla adult websites are going to identify with.

Booth explained: "There is definitely more kink slipping into what you might call mainstream porn or regular porn... But what people who are seriously into the BDSM scene are interested in is not necessarily what the mainstream adult entertainment fans are going to be interested in. If the mainstream adult entertainment fans are going to be interested in any kind of BDSM, it is going to be a BDSM-light kind of format."

BDSM-light, Booth said, is what adult superstar Jenna Jameson favored when she showed fans her kinkier side in 2005's "Jenna Loves Pain" (which is part of a mildly kinky Club Jenna series that also includes "Roxy Loves Pain" and "McKenzie Loves Pain"). Booth noted that vanilla erotica is merely reflecting the fact that American society on the whole has become quite comfortable with softcore BDSM, but he stressed that experimenting with softcore kink here and there is not the same as becoming a card-carrying member of a BDSM organization like the Society of Janus in San Francisco, Threshold in Los Angeles or The Eulenspiegel Society (TES) in New York City.

"A huge amount of people are into light BDSM these days," Booth noted. "Light BDSM play has grown exponentially; couples are really into the light bondage and light spanking. But that's where the line gets drawn. There is definitely an upper limit to how far people in regular porn are going to be able to go with BDSM activity, and we're probably hitting those boundaries now."

Colin Rowntree, president of Wasteland.com (which bills itself as "the web's oldest and largest BDSM and fetish site"), recalled that softcore BDSM started becoming more acceptable in vanilla porn in the 1990s. "I started to see the incorporation of soft BDSM and fetishism in standard adult entertainment about 10-15 years ago," said Rowntree, who founded Wasteland.com in 1995. "Much of this appears to have been driven by mainstream non-adult popular culture — Madonna in corsets, Michael Jackson's pseudo-kinky music videos, and a lot of movie stars pushing the edge as far as wearing fetish gear in public appearances and the like. The one identifiable turning point was the 1990s-era Penthouse magazine edition that showed — gasp! — models peeing into glass bowls and brandy snifters. From that point on, 'fetish' became fair game for adult entertainment. Feature films and websites then, with increasing frequency, began to incorporate light BDSM and fetish into their productions — a little spanking, a little sex and submission, light bondage."

Howard Levine, national sales manager for Vivid Entertainment, explained that these days, light BDSM is showing up in Vivid material much more than it did in the past. But "light," he said, is clearly the operative word where kinky activity in Vivid's material is concerned — and he doesn't envision Vivid becoming any more hardcore than what Club Jenna audiences saw in "Jenna Loves Pain" or "Roxy Loves Pain."

Levine told XBIZ: "How prevalent is softcore fetishism in mainstream porn in (the late 2000s) compared to 10 or 20 years ago? I think that it is quite prevalent. It's almost commonplace... There used to be a rule: you could tie them up and not fuck them or fuck them and not tie them up. But we do include light bondage now, and I mean very light bondage. Being tied up with scarves and stuff like that is pretty OK these days."

Even though vanilla porn has become kinkier and more bondage-friendly than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, there is still a big difference between vanilla-oriented adult websites that include some light kink and adult websites that focus on hardcore BDSM exclusively (such as Kink.com, SpankedBrats.com and DungeonCorp.com). Serious BDSM players who visit DominantDolls.com or BrutalCBT.com to see extreme paddling, caning, whipping or CBT (cock and ball torture) definitely are not Club Jenna's target audience.

The Boston-based Isobel Wren, an erotic model who has done her share of fetish-themed work and includes some of it on her membership site IsobelWren.com, explained that vanilla-oriented adult sites that include some light BDSM are not really competing with Wasteland.com, Kink.com or DungeonCorp.com because their audience is not a hardcore BDSM audience. Wren said that even if a vanilla adult web site includes some spanking and light bondage, intercourse is still the main ingredient — whereas on hardcore BDSM sites, the main ingredient is still BDSM. "In real fetish stuff," Wren explained, "the climax scene would be centered around that fetish rather than the sex. In regular porn, the climax is the sex. In mainstream porn, you might have someone getting handcuffed or spanked — I'm seeing a lot of spanking in mainstream porn — but it's still centered around the sex. And in real fetish stuff, you might not even have sex; you might not even see genitals at all because the fetish is the most important part."

Similarly, Rowntree said that even though vanilla porn has become more BDSM-friendly, there is still a world of difference between vanilla porn consumers and consumers of hardcore BDSM erotica. "These are absolutely two different genres and audiences and do not really compete with each other," Rowntree explained. "'Vanilla' viewers want hardcore, compelling sex scenes, generally with as little acting or dialogue as possible; BDSM viewers are really there for the pain and psychodrama of erotic power exchange, generally with a lot of dialogue to propel the drama along. Yes, both genres borrow from each other from time to time. Mainstream adult includes some kinky behavior; BDSM productions include some sex as part of the power exchange. But, there really is not a lot of significant cross-over between the two sexual cultures. Viva la difference."

Kelly Eberhard, chief information officer for the sex toy merchant XR LLC, said that sales of BDSM-oriented sex toys have been booming online in the 2000s — and she gives some of the credit to the increase of light BDSM in vanilla porn as well as to the increase of BDSM images in mainstream entertainment. For five years, Eberhard has been keeping a journal of BDSM images and BDSM references she encounters in the mainstream media — images and references she said have been great for business if you are using the Internet to sell floggers, blindfolds, handcuffs or restraints.

"When I first started logging BDSM images in the mainstream media," Eberhard noted, "I would have an entry in that journal maybe every six months — and last year, I bet I was putting in entries three or four times a month. There has to be a direct correlation between the fact that our sales are increasing and the increase in BDSM-type images in vanilla porn and in the mainstream media. I've seen more and more BDSM images in mainstream media; we've had women dressing like dominatrices in mainstream commercials, and we've had references to BDSM on 'Frasier' and 'Sex and the City.' So I believe that the mainstream porn consumers were ready for light BDSM and light spanking as part of their entertainment."

Eberhard added that both hardcore BDSM websites and vanilla adult websites that incorporate light BDSM have been beneficial for XR LLC, which caters to serious BDSM players on its ExtremeRestraints.com site and has a self-described "light BDSM" section on its milder HealthyandActive.com site. Eberhard echoed Booth's assertion that someone who enjoys seeing some light spanking and light bondage on a vanilla adult site might be someone who has no formal association with the BDSM community — and similarly, Levine said that someone who appreciates "Jenna Loves Pain" isn't necessarily someone you will see in a hardcore BDSM dungeon.

"'Jenna Loves Pain' is really BDSM with training wheels," Levine asserted. "I think that a fan of full-on, blown-out BDSM would go 'Ah, that's nothing.' How many people who watch 'Jenna Loves Pain' or 'Roxy Loves Pain' will go on to become hardcore, full-on S&M players and participate in the Society of Janus or Threshold? I think the percentage would be extremely small — like one percent. Most people buy 'Jenna Loves Pain' because Jenna is in it. They get to see maybe a harder edge to Jenna, but I don't think they're going to see 'Jenna Loves Pain' and become hardcore, full-on S&M players. I just don't think that's going to happen."

Although vanilla erotica that incorporates softcore kink is not created with BDSM purists in mind, BDSM activist Susan Wright is still happy that such material is being made. New York City resident Wright is the founder and president of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF), which has been aggressively fighting for the BDSM community's civil liberties — and the very fact that a vanilla porn superstar like Jameson has provided some BDSM-minded erotica is a sign of social progress, Wright said.

"Millions of people enjoy the behaviors of BDSM even though they don't necessarily identify what they are doing as BDSM," Wright emphasized. "Those are the people who are buying so much vanilla porn, and they are loving all these BDSM behaviors in their porn. That's why BDSM behaviors in vanilla porn are successful — they are reaching an enormous market of people who love BDSM behaviors even though they don't identify them as BDSM behaviors and are not in the BDSM community. BDSM is not a label that they put on themselves, but they do enjoy those behaviors."

Wright said that from a legal perspective, the presence of those "BDSM behaviors" on vanilla adult websites is a positive thing for the niche companies that specialize in BDSM/fetish erotica because the more exposure and mainstream acceptance BDSM receives, the harder it will be for prosecutors in obscenity cases to argue that BDSM is deviant, unnatural behavior or is harmful to society.

"As long as it is clear that BDSM behaviors are consensual, that's the important thing," Wright asserted. "I like the BDSM/fetish videos that include little interviews with the participants where they're asking, 'Did you enjoy that activity?' I think those interviews are very beneficial because they show that these activities are being done in a safe and consensual way; they are beneficial from a legal standpoint and are also instructive to the people who buy the videos."



Paul Cambria

By Alex Henderson
XBIZ, February 15, 2007

Paul J. Cambria Jr. has witnessed quite a few changes in the adult entertainment industry over the years. When the famous Buffalo, N.Y.- based attorney (who is a senior partner in the firm of Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria, LLP) first met longtime client Larry Flynt in the 1970s, there was no such thing as the adult Internet or adult webmasters. In those days, the adult industry's biggest profits mainly came from printed adult magazines and adult films, which, even with the VCR-powered explosion of adult home video in the early to mid-1980s, were still being transported physically instead of electronically.
But thanks to the Internet revolution of the 1990s and 2000s, Cambria's clientele now includes an abundance of adult webmasters along with many adult filmmakers and some adult magazine publishers. It now includes a new generation of technology- minded adult entrepreneurs who — in this digital era — distribute erotic material electronically, not physically.

Speaking with XBIZ, Cambria, who will turn 60 this year, discussed the importance and growth of the adult Internet, and what he believes the industry might be facing during the final two years of George W. Bush's presidency.

XBIZ: You have had many legal victories over the years. In retrospect, which ones would you say have been the most consequential for the adult industry?

PAUL J. CAMBRIA JR.: I don't think you can pick any single one. They all played their part in helping. Al Goldstein, Ruben Sturman, VCA, Video Team, Larry Flynt — all of those trials added a little stitch to the fabric, if you will, in strengthening the 1st Amendment. The last 10 years have been interesting because when the Clinton administration backed off from federal obscenity prosecutions, some of the states became more active in state prosecutions. For example, I defended a Max Hardcore tape in Manassas, Va. — and it wasn't for Max Hardcore, it was for a wholesaler-retailer I represented at the time.

XBIZ: Manassas is a very dark red part of Virginia. In fact, some of your victories in recent years have been in the type of conservative, heavily Republican jurisdictions that prosecutors tend to favor in obscenity cases.

CAMBRIA: We went into the courtroom in Manassas — one of the most conservative places in the South — and it was a very middle-of-the- road jury with schoolteachers and people who I would be worried about evaluating Max Hardcore material that definitely pushed the envelope. [In the video] Max started off with the camera on his shoulder; the girl comes up, and he says, "How old are you? About 14?" She goes, "No, I'm 16." It was obvious that she was really 19 or 20, but that's what Max does with that stuff. There was gagging and all the usual Max stuff, and I'm sitting there saying, "Oh, here we go. We are in Manassas with very rough material" — and the jury comes back and acquits. The next day, we get an editorial in the Washington Post basically criticizing the prosecutors for wasting taxpayers' money. That case really helped us put a damper on obscenity prosecutions in the South. And a few years after that, in St. Louis, we had a case with an all-woman jury. These were rough movies — these were gang-bang movies — and the prosecutors were high-fiving each other because they had gotten an all-woman jury. I think the average age was about 48 on that jury, and they found every film not guilty. The prosecutor turned to me and said, "If you can get an acquittal on this material with an all-woman jury, I'm done — we're not prosecuting this stuff." So each case has played a role.

XBIZ: In what respects have juries in obscenity cases evolved since the 1970s and 1980s? How do the juries on obscenity cases in the 2000s differ from the juries of 20 years ago?

CAMBRIA: Twenty years ago, jurors were afraid to be honest about their feelings regarding adult entertainment. They were afraid to express themselves. What would happen back then is that the younger male jurors would look around and say, "Hmmm, let's see. They think that because I'm young, I should be saying that this stuff is OK. I really do think it is OK, but I'm not about to tell them that." In the jury room, the men would feel this obligation to protect the women from adult material.

XBIZ: Is this the Sir Galahad syndrome?

CAMBRIA: Yes, male jurors often take a view that is very hypocritical because they would eat this stuff up if they had access to it. But instead they go into the jury room and put on their Galahad face and say, "Oh, this is terrible, ladies. We have to outlaw this." That's what we were facing back then. What happened in the interim is that with mass communications — computers, satellites, cable — you can now get adult material more easily in your home. More people are familiar with it. It's not shocking anymore. So now, when we pick juries, we see that people aren't afraid to be honest about adult material. I'll give you an example. In the St. Louis case, the prosecutor was asking everybody, "When was the last time anybody here saw an X-rated movie?" A lot of people raised their hands, and one of them was this really pretty young girl who said her name was Mrs. Bork. The prosecutor said, "Mrs. Bork, when did you last see one of these movies?" And she smiled and chuckled and said yesterday — and everybody laughed. She said: "You know, it was a rainy day. My husband and I got bored. So we decided to rent one of these movies." Now, I could not have paid for a better endorsement, and during my summation, I said, "The prosecutors want you to think that billions of dollars worth of adult entertainment is being purchased by a roving band of 1,000 perverts with billions of dollars to spend, but it doesn't work that way. It is purchased by average people like Mrs. Bork, who are married, who have a relationship and who are nice people." Even if Bush and the others try to prosecute the daylights out of people, they are going to get a rude awakening with jurors like the prosecutors did in Manassas and St. Louis.

XBIZ: You mentioned that the St. Louis jury was dominated by women in their late 40s, which is important because in the past, middle-aged women were people who prosecutors in obscenity cases expected to be socially conservative.

CAMBRIA: And the reality is counterintuitive because older women have seen it all. Older women have been in relationships a long time, and you need to know what switches to flick. In Manassas, I saw all these middle-aged ladies on my jury, and we were talking about the Miller test and how material has to have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. One of the expert witnesses testified that the material had scientific value because it helped ordinary couples work through sexual issues. I said things like, "Why wouldn't this material be acceptable if, for example, you and your mate could download one of these adult movies and use that material to strengthen your bond? Maybe you're getting older; maybe it helps you spice up your relationship. Maybe it will help a relationship in the sense that you and your husband will continue to be attracted to each other, and he won't feel he has to take off with the secretary at the desk outside his office." Well, let me tell you something, when I said that, I struck a chord with about two of those ladies. The jury has to be able to relate to what you have to say, and it has to make sense to them. They have to be able to say, "You know, he's right." If you can't get a "you know, he's right" out of your summation, you're gone.

XBIZ: One thing 1st Amendment attorney Clyde DeWitt has pointed out about the evolution of juries in obscenity cases is that today's 60-year-old juror is a baby boomer who is old enough to remember Woodstock and the sexual revolution and all the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s — quite a contrast to someone who was a 60-year-old juror 20-30 years ago.

CAMBRIA: Well, there's no doubt about it. But you really have to see what happened to them between then and now. You really have to be careful when selecting juries, which is why I use consultants for everything when I'm picking jurors. Jury selection is 75 percent of the game.

XBIZ: You were practicing law long before the advent of the Internet. In what respect has the growth of online adult affected your work as a 1st Amendment attorney?

CAMBRIA: It has added a new dimension to it because we are now advising so many adult website [operators] not only about content but also 2257. I'm also one of the principal lawyers in the Free Speech Coalition's lawsuit attacking 2257. So the Internet has made a lot more work for me. I have eight lawyers who have been with me for years and years — lawyers who are all extremely experienced in all aspects of criminal law, constitutional law and 1st Amendment law. I literally had three of them hopscotching around the country in the last month advising on 2257 record-keeping plans; we've been advising some of the largest adult companies and some of the smallest adult companies. It has been just one company after another with 2257.

XBIZ: How great a source of frustration is the international nature of the adult Internet for the Christian Right?

CAMBRIA: The Religious Right was unhappy when adult entertainment was a collection of magazines and books in a brick-and-mortar location, let alone now when anybody and everybody has access to adult entertainment online in their living rooms. This has to be making them crazy.

XBIZ: In 2006, roughly what percentage of e-commerce on the Internet would you estimate is adult entertainment oriented?

CAMBRIA: I know that every day, the amount of adult entertainment on the Internet keeps growing by leaps and bounds. My guess is that of the $13 billion that is spent on adult entertainment in this country every year, at least half of it comes from e-commerce. You know as well as I do that in the next five years, you won't have a television in your house, you'll have a giant PC — a giant personal computer — and that will be your source of television programs, downloads, video-on-demand, whatever. Basically the Internet will take over everything.

XBIZ: One obscenity case that adult webmasters and civil libertarians have been quite concerned about is the case of Red Rose Stories. Is the U.S. returning to a trend of text-based obscenity prosecutions?

CAMBRIA: I never thought text was a major target, but remember that many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that the written word is subject to the same obscenity test and standard as visual material. There is nothing new about that; we just haven't seen another prosecution of the written word until recently. But I don't think you're going to be seeing too much of that type of thing in the future. To be honest with you, I think that case is an anomaly.

XBIZ: Before the Red Rose case, adult webmasters who published erotic fiction sites were operating under the assumption that the written word would not be prosecuted for obscenity even though it had been prosecuted a lot in the past. Did they have a false sense of security?

CAMBRIA: They didn't know the law. In 1973, the Supreme Court made it clear that the written word could be prosecuted. The laws have never changed; the only thing that has changed is that somebody recently decided to prosecute the written word on the Internet.

XBIZ: Is Mary Beth Buchanan, the federal prosecutor in the Red Rose case, just rolling the dice to see if there is an appetite for text-based prosecutions of adult webmasters?

CAMBRIA: That's a possibility. Buchanan got all this attention with the Extreme Associates case, but what other attention is she going to get unless she continues to ride that horse? The horse needs a new track; so now, the track is, "Well, I'll take it to an even greater extreme, and we'll go after the written word." This case is all about Mary Beth Buchanan trying to get some publicity for herself. The next thing you know, she'll be running for the Senate. It's a familiar refrain. This is all about her trying to get her name out there and get known for something, and that's what's going on with this case; she's trying to exploit the adult entertainment industry for her own gain.

XBIZ: Is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' interest in prosecuting consensual adult entertainment continuing to drain valuable law enforcement resources that could be used to combat child pornography and terrorism?

CAMBRIA: I've said that several times in the past. There are only so many FBI agents; there are only so many courtrooms and only so many judges — only so many district attorneys and local police officers. These days, people are more focused on avoiding terrorist violence, and to divert these finite resources to something like adult entertainment is really unconscionable. More and more people are realizing that. Look at the FBI when they tried to recruit agents for their new porn squad; look at how many agents protested and said: "We have more important missions out there than this. I don't want to be on that squad."

XBIZ: Let's discuss the midterm election results. What are some of the possible repercussions for the adult industry?

CAMBRIA: Obviously, the change in the House of Representatives is a big deal. We're hoping that it may have the effect of slowing down legislation that the conservative Republicans might have had on their agenda. Obviously they can't count on the House to just follow suit. They got rid of Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, which is phenomenal, and I think Nancy Pelosi is going to be a great Speaker of the House. What will be interesting is this: Will the Republicans now say, "We didn't do enough for our constituents — the Religious Right and all the rest of them — so we need a big push to try to make them happy"? Obviously, the Religious Right has been unhappy with the pace and rate of prosecutions by the feds.

XBIZ: Overall, has the George W. Bush era been better or worse for the adult industry than you expected?

CAMBRIA: So far, it has been much better because nothing has really changed. Aside from saber rattling, nothing has really changed.

XBIZ: If federal prosecutors are having a harder time getting obscenity convictions for vanilla adult entertainment, does 2257 become their weapon of choice?

CAMBRIA: That clearly is true. 2257 is a pretty technical statute, and it's fairly easy to find a violation. They couldn't get Al Capone on other violations, so they got him for tax evasion — and the same theory applies to prosecuting adult entertainment companies. Not that the adult industry is Al Capone, but I bring that up as an example of the fact that when the government puts a bull's-eye on you, they figure out a way to hit the mark. If they can't get you for obscenity, they get you for 2257 and record keeping.