If you search “free porn” on Google, you get 1,400,000,000 hits. That’s a lot of porn. From vanilla lovers to BBW aficionados, kink and BDSM enthusiasts, foot fetishists and golden shower fans, there’s something for everyone. All at your fingertips, and all for free.
Although free porn is an accessible way for us to explore and embrace our sexuality, it relies on a business model that exploits sex workers and filmmakers. So while viewers are getting off, creators are the ones getting screwed. We boycott fast fashion brands for exploiting factory workers, we go vegan in the name of animal rights, we ban plastic straws to save the ocean, so where’s that same energy when it comes to protecting sex workers?
Free porn sites operate on pirated and unregulated user-generated content. Users can upload clips even though they’re infringing copyright, and stolen content goes up faster than studios can issue demands for it to be taken down. Award-winning feminist adult filmmaker Erika Lust tells Refinery29 that at the time of writing her team had been fruitlessly chasing Pornhub, asking them to take down some of her XConfessions films. “[Free porn sites] steal from studios, while at the same time profit from unregulated amateur production. This adds to the capacity for exploitation towards the performers, and the illusion that porn is free leads to the assumption that sex work is not work,” says Lust. “Most of the performers involved in these videos did not give their consent for their film to be pirated and hosted on a free porn site.” And they’re not making a penny, either.
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Pay for your porn, folks!