Dr Rebecca Rose Nocella

Laws around occupational health and safety are not enforced in the gig economy porn industry. From nine semi-structured interviews with UK-based adult content creators (ACCs) it emerges that, while working on online platforms, they receive no training and are not supported with regard to the work-related risks they encounter while performing sex. ACCs self-regulate how to perform sex in the safest manner and avoid the risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases and infections, at their own expense and in their free time. Yet a doctrinal analysis of UK health and safety laws reveals that platforms should be obligated to provide ACCs with paid training, and personal protective equipment such as tests and condoms, to provide them with a safe work environment. Even self-employed individuals in fact have a right to be protected at work and to ensure that third parties are not harmed because of their work. I therefore argue that the lack of enforcement of health and safety regulations on online porn platforms is triggered by the stigma around porn work. Selling sex is perceived as a taboo activity; stigma is a powerful tool which relegates ACCs to the margins of society, while relegating porn platforms to lawless territories.

Adult content creators’ copyright is undermined in the profitable, gig economy, porn industry. From an analysis of the terms of use on the ManyVids, Chaturbate, OnlyFans and Pornhub porn platforms, the results show such creators have no bargaining power vis-à-vis online platforms. Although they create pornographic content, the copyrightability of their works is obscured because the recognition of their authorship is often a smokescreen. This is because, under the terms of use, they are forced to perpetually transfer their economic rights to online platforms without royalties in exchange as well as waiving their moral rights. By using Radin’s pragmatist feminist methodology, we suspend any critique of the goodness or badness of pornography in order to unveil the double bind that adult content creators working in the gig economy face in the context of UK copyright law.

This paper explores the case of Countess Diamond, a BDSM adult content creator who wears the hats of both producer and performer within the gig economy where adult content creators distribute pornographic material via the mediation of porn platforms. While Countess Diamond is self-employed, her business is very unstable due to the arbitrary changes made by porn platforms over what content they are willing to host and sell. The platforms control and monitor core aspects of Countess Diamond’s work reality placing her in a limbo where she is unsure of whether her work will be sold to clients at her own rate. I argue that, although adult content creators are self-employed and might wish to remain so, they could operate in a more stable working environment and invest more in their business if given labour rights as workers for the porn platforms.

The vulnerability of sex workers in the porn industry is a heated debate within feminism. The UK 2014 Audiovisual Media Services Regulations and 2017 Digital Economy Act, which burden the production of online pornography, provoked sex workers’ Face-Sitting and Kink Olympixxx protests. This paper investigates how throughout these protests, humour communicates sex workers’ discomfort on this legislation. Arguing that humour is a thermostat that senses public uneasiness and slowly activates social change, this paper examines the two protests highlighting how sex workers employed unrefined bawdy humour to unearth their neglected rights and move towards more adequate rights.