Camille Crimson

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

There’s been a lot of talk about SOPA and PIPA over the past few days and there are a lot of site blackouts today.  I wouldn’t do that, because there are people paying for my site and it’d be mean to decided to take time out of their subscription.  Never the less, I think it’s important that people are aware of what’s currently being proposed for the internet and what ramification such laws could yield.

SOPA and PIPA have some ideas that could be alright, but it’s not being approached in a way that is good for civil liberties or creative expression.  There is too much up to interpretation with the proposed regulations and there is too much power put into the hands of the government and of really big businesses.  It could have real consequences for the internet as we know it.  As with the recent bill requiring condoms in porn in Los Angeles, there has not been much effort to listen to the people who are actually on the ground level of internet technology and experience.  It’s all well and good to have ideas to create more ways to protect intellectual property and copyright, but the idea that this discussion should take place without emphasis on the people who will be most directly impacted is ludicrous.

I’m not going to run around like the sky is falling, but I do encourage everyone to be informed and take the action you deem necessary to make sure that the internet continues to evolve, moving forward creatively, socially and technologically.  There absolutely needs to be something done about piracy, but it must be approached from a different angle with much more nuance and less carelessly broad statements.  I hope that this message is heard and that people decide to go back to the drawing board to find a better way to deal with things.

To close, a rallying cry about LOLcats:

EDIT: I found out I was mistaken about the DRM. It turns out the video has no DRM. Sorry for the confusion!

You all know I love Louis CK, right? Well, in case you didn’t know, now you do. He’s a brilliant and hilarious individual. I’m a big fan of his show, I’ve been lucky enough to see him in person and I bought his latest DVD called Live at the Beacon Theatre. The promotion he did for this latest DVD is very unorthodox, and I wanted to talk about it a bit today, specifically as it relates to my own experiences with the porn industry.

What Louis CK has done with his DVD is to have it available as an online item, which means that there’s no physical product, so he decided to charge just $5 for the video. Personally, I think he was selling himself a bit short, since it’s no more than a quarter of what an average comedy DVD would run for, but who am I to judge?

The result was incredibly positive, and he ended up breaking even within half a day and make a considerable amount of money within a week. That’s pretty impressive, but the fact is that he would have probably made more money and had to spend much less time and energy on it if he had just gone the traditional route. So, why did he do it?

Piracy. And I hate piracy. I applaud him for doing something like this to send out a message about how unfair piracy is. People don’t want to pay enough money for artists to actually turn a profit, so they find a way to get it for free. He’s created the alternative, to get more people to pay less instead of less people to pay more. He took a project he cared about, created it from the ground up, compensated the people around him fairly and gave a over a quarter of a million dollars to charity. That is a really cool thing of him to do, because he is a really cool guy. I wouldn’t expect any less from him and it’s really inspiring for someone like me, who deals with piracy and does things herself.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I deal with thoughts like this all the time. My sites aren’t ridiculously expensive, but people don’t need them to live, so they won’t pay for them unless they have ample money to do so. I completely understand it. To those of you who enjoy the blog and check out the free samples, great. I have no problem with that at all. What I have a problem with is that there is this deep sense of entitlement that results in people pirating what I do, posting it on evil forums, sharing around passwords and uploading my content to tubes. It’s one thing for me to share some samples, but it’s quite another for someone to decide they’ll just throw up a whole bunch of my new videos.

Piracy in general is a really big deal in porn. Everyone suffers, but at least larger companies can take the hit. Smaller companies rely on memberships to survive. The worst thing is that, whenever I find someone posting my content illegally, they are always so positive about it. They obviously like what I do and they act like they were just trying to help when I politely ask them to take it down. We’re in a culture where we’re already pretty deep in the mentality that “I can get it for free, so why should I pay?” and it’s not a good thing for a lot of industries.

This isn’t to say that we’re having issues staying afloat or anything. We’re lucky enough to be doing quite well. But the fact remains that each time someone pirates our content, that’s money that could be put towards creating new sites, hiring more people so we can focus more on shooting, getting better equipment… The things that will ensure that you can have lots more of the stuff you enjoy.

Ultimately, Louis CK’s experiment has opened some eyes about what has become necessary for artists to make a living making what people love. He’s brought an alternative to piracy into the spotlight, now it’s just important to look at his example and see what we can do to be as innovative.

I’ve been friends with Dustin of Life According to the Bathroom Wall for over a year now, as well as his lovely wife Heather of My Sexual Journey.  They’re really fun, sweet people with a real zest for sexual life and an obviously wonderful bond together.  It’s great to see a couple like this exploring their full sexual potential for the rest of us to witness.  Dustin has recently expanded to include interviews of his blog, so I thought I’d share an excerpt from our interview together:

A lot of women, including fellow porn star Misti Dawn, who play video games refer to themselves as “girl gamers”. I personally hate this term. If you play video games, you’re a gamer period. Thoughts?

I’m a geek, but I’m more of a shy coder geek. I do love sci-fi andgaming, but I don’t try to capitalize on it and use it as a way to make people find me sexier. I think that the whole idea of every girl with glasses being a “sexy geek” or every girl who plays games is a “gamer geek” to be a reductionist tool to sell porn.

Back to porn. Let’s say a larger production company, such as Adam & Eve or Digital Playground, decided they wanted to do business with you. How would you react? What would your prerequisites be for agreeing to a deal with one of these companies?

Since I’ve done business with Hustler, I’m never 100% closed off to the idea of entering into agreements with larger companies, but I wouldn’t want to compromise my ethics in the process.

Most of the work you do for Art of Blowjob, due to the nature of of what’s being filmed, is done using a POV (Point Of View) format. Despite the fact that this can be very hard to do and, more often than not, doesn’t look all that great, you and Mike pull it off beautifully. What’s your secret?

Well, he’s a great filmmaker and we’re good at editing. It’s just about being creative and thinking outside the box to get the right shot…we’re not going to give the secret away, though.  ;)

This Saturday night was the annual Montreal X Nights Xmas party and Mike, Lilyanne, Sophie and myself decided to go.  It was a lot of fun, the drinks were flowing and it was certainly very sexy.  JFK of Fubar was there taking pictures, so I decided to post a few.  This first one is Lilyanne and myself with Ry of Gaytube.

It was in a popular Montreal club downtown, but in a private room, so it was perfect to mingle and have a little business talk too.  Here’s Sophie talking with Kurtis from Xtube while Mike, Lilyanne and myself whisper and enjoy our drinks.

Even though there are a lot of ladies in porn, there’s always a bit of a boy’s club too.  Here’s Mike with a few of the guys, including Michel, who runs the Qwebec expo here in Montreal every August.

Here’s a little shot of my dress from behind while Mike, Lilyanne, Sophie and I chatted with Ava and Brooke Lynne from Live Cam Network.  Those ladies are so sweet and of course very beautiful too.

I think there were definitely some sparks flying that evening, but don’t let the loving eye contact in this shot fool you.  Sorry, Sophie…  I think Ry runs Gaytube for a reason.  ;)

There was a draw for a free iPod Touch at the event…  And Lilyanne won it!  Lucky girl!  Here she is with Michel from Qwebec and Simon, Erik and Erynn from Stunner Media.

I was only a little bit jealous…  :P

The event was a great success.  It’s so wonderful that Montreal has such a vibrant community in the adult industry.  Even though we’re not the biggest city, we’re certainly one of the closest knit.  I can’t wait until next year!

This is a really interesting video that Sophie linked me to today, featuring a sexuality expert named Amy Jo Goddard who she met at the Playground conference in Toronto earlier this month.   I think that this is unbelievably important information that 90% of the population wouldn’t even think of as a logical approach to sex and sexuality.  The fact is, somehow we all feel embarrassed about not knowing everything about giving and receiving pleasure.

There is a lot of sexual education out there, and there are a lot of people who are opening themselves up to the possibility of learning about sex, but there is definitely this feeling of anxiety surrounding the idea of not being good enough.  It’s as if you’re expected to just magically be perfect as soon as you “come of age” and though you CAN get sexual education, it’s an admission of imperfection or something like that.

The main thing is that nobody is perfect, nor should we be.  The approach to sexual education shouldn’t be to amass the most skills to be the best lover…  It should be about getting in touch with your desires, figuring out how to communicate with others and how to be receptive to incorporating other desires into your sex life.  And the fact is, this is a difficult and ongoing process, so no one is ever done learning and growing, as cheesy as that may sound.

What do you think?  Have you ever experienced any of this kind of anxiety I’m talking about?  Or have you taken steps to developing sex as a skill?

Halloween is only a week away and I’m already in the spirit.  I found these amazing videos making the rounds and I just had to share them.  I am a huge fan of zombie movies, TV shows, games, pretty much anything, so of course these would be right up my alley.  But they’re not just zombie movies, they’re sexy zombie movies.  They teach ways to fight off the zombie apocalypse with various different sex toys.

Their tactics are awesome and their ideas are actually pretty smart.  Of course, most of them wouldn’t ACTUALLY work, but the idea of finding a way to ballgag and handcuff a zombie could work on certain types of zombies, as long as you worked in teams and had your hazmat suit on.  Yes, these are the things I think about.  Anyways, enough about my planning for the zombie apocalypse.  Enjoy these awesome videos, made by the equally zombie-enthused people at LoveHoney.