Hey guys, I’m The Dude. Back in February I took a leap of faith and blew all the money I had on 3DX content. I went into this industry because of the potential I saw, not at all sure if I would even find an audience or not. Six months in, and I’m feeling pretty hopeful for the future! My debut release set, Sin Sisters: The Museum, has sold (and is selling) exceptionally well, and my Tumblr blog has exploded to a crazy 7500 followers, rising daily. This is the fourth instalment of my journal on Affect3D, in which I try to tackle a different 3DX-related subject every time.
This month, it’s time to talk a little bit of politics.
Disclaimer: the opinions expressed are mine alone, and aren’t representative of Affect3D as a company.
It’s not an easy topic.
As you might’ve noticed, I never posted an article in July, and I’m rather late for August. The reason for that is to do with the complexity of this piece. I wasn’t really sure about whether or not to write a political article for a porn site, as it didn’t seem to me like the two subjects blended very well. Not only that, but the last thing I want to do is suggest that my political opinion is shared by anyone here at A3D, as I realise that we have people from all over the world contributing to this site, and that these are people with a range of different views.
But one thing we can agree on despite political affiliation, it seems to me, is the topic of Net Neutrality. Bit of a big deal, too. We are ardent internet users, after all, relying on the highways of cyberspace to get our news fix, our social networking fix, and our (not unimportant) porn fix! As they say, the internet is for porn, and the death of net neutrality would deal a severe blow to the 3DX industry that I’m not sure it could recover from in the long run.
Now, nothing gets people more riled up than the idea that they might lose access to their porn. Last year, the UK threatened to censor internet porn, turning it into a specific addition to your internet subscription that has to be requested. People took to the streets in protest, and disaster was averted. This year, we’ve seen India briefly ban porn, only for that ban to be rapidly overturned. And remember how HBO’s John Oliver met with Edward Snowden in Moscow, to talk about how the NSA spying scandal has completely lost people’s interest? Oliver came up with a method as ingenious as it was banal to reinvigorate the discussion: inform people that the government could see their dick-pics.
Outrage abound.
So it’s clear that the value we place on the freedom to express our sexuality through online anonimity is enormous. But if Net Neutrality falls to whatever new US government is elected in 2016, then sites like Affect3D would come under severe threat. Not only that, but such a decision would be incredibly counterproductive to the ever-increasing moral legitimacy of the porn business. You might recall Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Jenna Jameson, in which he could not stop comparing her work to prostitution. Whatever your stance on that argument may be, one thing is indisputable: 3DX is devoid of physical labour. It’s just tech-savvy people behind computers, figuring out ways to create to trigger human sexuality. And as technology advances and realism in 3DX increases, it’s just a matter of time before this industry rises to mainstream prominence.
So what is Net Neutrality?
If you’ve followed aforementioned John Oliver for a while, then you might remember that he not only did a piece about Edward Snowden and NSA spying, but several months before that also spurred Americans to action in defence of Net Neutrality. The free, unregulated Internet was about to die on the Senate floor, but millions upon millions of mobilised Americans put their calls in with the Federal Communications Commission, and the FCC and President Obama moved to classify the Internet as a public utility, giving supporters of a free internet some much needed breathing space, and offering a significant setback to Republican lawmakers and their corporate backers. But all is not yet well. The new FCC classification can be challenged before the courts. That’s the stage the battle is at now.
So if you’ve read this far and you’re not entirely sure what I’m talking about, let me lay it out for you. A neutral Internet is exactly the Internet as you know it today. You pay a fee to your Internet Service Provider, and in return they give you All Of The Internet. You can browse whatever you want, and if a website is slow, that is due only to that website’s host having trouble handling your traffic, not due to the ISP arbitrarily deciding that one site should be faster than another. This is something that ISP giants like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to change. They were getting increasingly upset by the fact that major websites like Netflix and Facebook were all this traffic, and were hogging ISP infrastructure. “We have a solution,” the ISP’s said. “How about you just pay us a lot of money, and we’ll prioritise your traffic, effectively dividing the internet between a slow lane and a fast lane.”
Not a bad idea in theory. At first glance it might appear as though it’s unfair to the ISP’s that their resources are being hogged by giant websites. But then consider the implications: if Comcast throttles Netflix’s speed, then Netflix as a company is done for. After all, they’re a streaming video service! So what do they do to generate the cash they need to pay for the fast lane? They increase your subscription fees! The price is ultimately always paid by the user. And who’s to determine what’s enough? What might buy them Fast Lane access in 2016, might not suffice in 2017. Greed, as always, will see to soaring costs.
But the problem extends beyond megasites. How is a small, new start-up business going to be able to get the traffic that it needs when it’s stuck to the slow lane? Without a neutral internet, Affect3D’s shopping experience might take an eternity, and you could still be waiting for this article to finish loading. Unless you cough up some more money, of course.
Truth is, the ISP’s are fine.
Consider Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon, one of America’s biggest ISP’s. He pulls in a whopping 18.3 million dollars, earned by a single man for doing a single job. And that’s 16% more than he earned in the year before. McAdam somehow doesn’t feel like his company is raking it in big enough yet. He’s joined in that sentiment by Brian Roberts and Stephen Burke of Comcast. Between the two of them, they were good for a salary of close to 70 million dollars. That’s not to say that they do or don’t deserve it. That’s a separate discussion. What this is meant to illustrate is the point that America’s major ISP’s are really not at all strapped for cash.
So how would the end of Net Neutrality go, if these guys had their way? Well, it starts with a slow lane and a fast lane. They might maintain that concept for a year or ten, and you might think it’s not so bad. After all, you pay a few bucks more for Netflix, and as much as a tenner a year is enough to keep your profile alive on Facebook. Who cares, right? And their compensation might skyrocket from 30 million a year to 70 million a year, but no one would take to the streets over it.
Unfortunately as it often goes, once legal protections are removed, the door for widespread abuse is open. Consider the following scenario: after ten years, ISP’s decide that “the most effective way to enable high speed internet for all consumers” (ignoring the fact that you had high-speed internet until they broke it) is to bundle major sites into a specific internet package. This package would eliminate the individual fees you pay to individual sites, and bundle ’em all together. Overall, you might even be looking at a net discount. What a deal! At first. Then prices start rising and another ten years later you’re paying more than you were ten years before.
Suddenly, the Internet has been sliced and diced. You pay ten bucks a month for your social media, another ten bucks a month for your news sites, another ten bucks a month for streaming services, and another ten bucks a month for gaming services. You’d be down forty bucks a month and you’d still only have access to a fraction of the internet you do now. Add in your porn (which they will charge the most for, because sex sells), add in your hobby sites, add in your encyclopedic sites, online shopping, you name it, and before you know it you’re flushing a hundred bucks a month down the toilet for a heavily partitioned Internet and a fraction of the ease of use.
Don’t let them destroy this.
The Internet is the greatest invention in the history of mankind. It’s that simple. It allows for global communication, allows for the free exchange of knowledge and information, it allows for political organisation, allows for grassroots movements to sprout up and for people to take charge of their own future. Knowledge is the only thing that multiplies when you divide it, which makes this online sphere such an amazing place to be. Giant corporations will want to destroy that for the sake of short term profits, as they destroy so much else.
Imagine how Affect3D would survive in an environment like this. It wouldn’t. Sooner or later sites like this one and many others would yield, and the end result would be that only mainstream porn with a mind for profit, and nothing else, survives. This entire industry relies on people who buy our work and support us to have fast internet. But not only that, in order for us to come together, to share knowledge, to improve our art, and create a world of quality porn that doesn’t rely on the exploitation of people, a free and open internet is absolutely vital. Would my blog have done as well as it has if people were limited to a partitioned net? How many people would not have Tumblr or DeviantArt included in their subscription? Think of the audiences lost, the creativity killed. And, perhaps more practically: the money that is never made. If opponents of Net Neutrality care nothing for knowledge and community, then let them at least seriously regard the economic impact of killing independent online businesses.
So it’s election season in America again, which is the main battleground in the fight for Net Neutrality. The Land of the Free might be where a free internet goes to die first if we do nothing about it. And if you think it doesn’t affect you because you don’t live in the USA, think again: without American Internet users to contribute, the Internet is sliced in half for those of us who fall outside the sphere of influence of American ISP’s. Plus, how long do you think our own service providers would play by the rules when they see how American ones rebuilt the system their own advantage?
With that in mind, I’ve taken it upon myself to give American voters a bit of advice. I’m not gonna talk about political ideology. There are better venues for that than this article, and I wouldn’t presume to change years of political thinking with just a few words. But if you agree that Net Neutrality is essential to the continuation of the Internet as we know it, and you kinda like the Internet as we know it too, then consider that these are the politicians that either actively work to end a neutral net, or are just plain indifferent to attempts to kill it:
Eleven out of seventeen Republican presidential candidates have spoken out against Net Neutrality. They have either actively proposed eliminating it, or have spoken in opposition to Obama’s plans to preserve it. I have not been able to find decisive information on the following people: Rick Santorum, Jim Gilmore, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie. But with some of these being such hardline Republicans (and most of them being bought entirely by big money donors), it should be no surprise what they’ll do once in office.
Those who are strongly for it may not surprise you: Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Hillary Clinton. Biden may yet jump into the race, but his positions aren’t clear. There’s a rumour saying he’s against it, others say he hasn’t taken a position yet. Lincoln Chafee has also not come out in favour of it, though he also doesn’t appear particularly opposed. Either way, the deck is heavily stacked against Net Neutrality proponents, and it seems pretty much guaranteed that the person nominated by the Republican Party will also act to kill the net. That means Dems will have to put forward a strong and principled candidate to win this fight.
I wish it wasn’t so black-and-white (or red and blue, I should say). I wish it looked like less of a partisan issue. Because in truth, it isn’t a partisan issue at all. Look at these Republican voters criticising Ted Cruz for his position, for example. The people know what’s good for them when it comes to Internet freedom. The officials meant to represent them, however, often do not. Hence this piece.
So the bottom line? Every single thing you see in the Affect3D store is the result of the Internet as you know it. You’re witnessing a pornographic revolution in the making. A world in which every human sexual fantasy can be fulfilled without moral compromise. A world in which we can not only provide quality content because we enjoy making it, but in which we can also lead the charge against the prudes who take issue with our industry. Kill Net Neutrality, and quality porn goes with it. ISP’s will have the freedom to charge sites exhorbitant sums, and if they’re of the moralistic kind, might choose to not provide porn subscription packages at all.
Freedom is the bottom line. Now to wait and have this article turn up somewhere under the headline: “Pervents defend free Internet.”
ammon17
September 23, 2015Career politicians (almost?) ‘all’ get donations from corporations. Most all corporations only exist to make money, PERIOD! Follow the money, and you can see the government needs to stay the hell out of it!
The solution here is not to try and get countries to pass new ‘net neutrality’ legislation, but to stay the hell away from the internet! Any and all bills introduced will ‘always’ be counter-productive, as corporate lawyers slip in ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ amount of sneaky additions, that will destroy the internet, even as they “save it”.
The internet has already saved the U.S. economy once, and launched many economies in developing nations. Yet it could all slip away with the advent of international treaties, the new ‘political’ way to screw over constituents, and establish a world government. Yikes!
Dianaranda
September 1, 2015Also Hillary her Pro Net Neutrality stance in my eyes atleast is just a cover, as her real stance is against it.
The TPP and TIP both are horrible horrible agreements.
Both allow corporations to bassically sue any country that would deny them from selling there rubbish for billions if not trillions, I really really really recommend people to do some research on these agreements.
They are terrible, and cover almost all basic aspects of life.
I wish i was exagurating, but sadly i am not….
Dianaranda
September 1, 2015Sadly America is stuck with a political situation that will destroy Net Neutrality, be it through direct Conservatives. Or through Democrats all of which seem to support the TPP/TIP and other similar behind closed doors contracts.
I can really recommend Americans to do some truely in debth analysis of who you support.
Myself i have only voted Blank in my own country for quite a few years now, due to this very same dilemma, but involving immigration reform, and the EU. None of the candidates support any of the views i’d like to see.
miro
September 1, 2015the thing with this particular issue is that whilst there are big corporations lobbying against net neutrality there are also several in favor of it, meaning what can be done, is (hopefully) done, as far as I know that is (who really know what happens behind doors)
either way it’s a good thing to vote for net neutrality in which ever you can of course, you rightly pointed out that net neutrality is one thing we must have for 3DX to flourish
Wobbegong
August 31, 2015Im counting on you America! Don’t screw this up! (Can’t do too much not being an American citizen)
Dianaranda
August 31, 2015American should rise up, and send all those career politicians home, Also take a look at the monster people like Hillary Clinton support, the TPP and TIP, those are MAJORLY huge international trade agreements being talked about behind closed doors.
Both agreements also decide that net neutrality has to go away.
So as over sight on the candidates you presented in this piece are bad, but the others are just as bad.
None of the 2016 candidates support Net Neutrality, just the democrats are managing to keep it behind closed doors through the TPP and the TIP.
The Dude
August 31, 2015This is actually a good point I hadn’t considered, the TPP does significant damage to Net Neutrality. Unfortunately Hillary -has- come out for Net Neutrality as an isolated concept, so I don’t really know how that relates to her pro-TPP stance.
At any rate, if you want someone who’s both anti-TPP and pro-Net Neutrality then Bernie Sanders and I believe Martin O’Malley as well are your candidates.
Dianaranda
September 1, 2015Well i dont live in the Americas sadly, but i have studied the subject quite in depth.
Hence my talk about all the candidates being very wishy washy this time around, Though dunno about Martin O’Malley, but i do know Bernie Sanders also has some very strange Agendas aswell, mostly Marxist/Social Justice Agendas.
Which again despite being none American, i cannot support, and will speak out again, due to all the hypocrisy coming from that corner aswell.
Anyhow thanks for considering the point i made about the TPP/TIP, May i suggest either balacing this Article with the TIP/TPP and who supports those?