PHILADELPHIA — HotMovies.com announced today it would reinstitute its landmark FreedomStreams benefit for the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) this year on April 15 by dedicating its one-day earnings, matching all donations up to $10,000 to help fund the legal challenge and eventual repeal of L.A. County Measure B.
“We are elated to bring this important event back to life,” HotMovies director of business development James Cybert said. “Now is the time to do it, as our industry is entrenched in a crucial fight. We need the FSC on the front lines more than ever. We want every single content provider we work with to participate. We are now strongly encouraging them to send us permission to support our efforts.”
HotMovies said the first FreedomStreams fundraising event occurred in 2006. For three years, the annual event raised tens of thousands of dollars for FSC, which lobbies in Washington and other key battlegrounds to protect first amendment rights on behalf of the entire adult industry.
Cybert noted that the most important such battleground in 2013 is Los Angeles County. In November 2012, the City Council passed Measure B, an initiative funded and supported by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). The measure, designed to suppress adult filmmaking in greater Los Angeles under the guise of worker safety, requires that all adult performers use protective barriers such as condoms and dental dams when performing any act likely to generate bodily fluids. It creates the need for oversight by already taxed law enforcement and government agencies.
“Their idea of safer sex and a safer workplace would seem to mandate that all performers wear hazmat suits or goggles while working on set,” Cybert said. “Worse, it creates an enforcement issue. Who will be responsible? Potentially it takes officers off the streets where their presence is badly needed and directs them instead to invade porn sets where nothing nefarious happens. It completely ignores all common sense and, perhaps most importantly, the overwhelming desire of the performers themselves. This organization, AHF, which purports to protect sex workers, is the very same one that recently shut down the most reliable test facility to protect these individuals.”
In 2011, AHF president Michael Weinstein took the first major step in what Cybert termed “his personal crusade against the adult industry.” By funding and encouraging a series of legal complaints, Weinstein successfully perpetrated a campaign to shut down AIM Medical Associates, the testing facility with an undeniably successful track record that kept the adult industry healthy and working for more than 13 years.
Marci Hirsch, Vivid Entertainment’s vice president of production and licensing and newly elected to FSC’s Board of Directors served as a catalyst in renewing the FreedomStreams fundraiser for FSC.
“We all know how vitally important it is for the industry to succeed in overturning Measure B through our lawsuit. This program enables us to unite and pull together and I know we are going to see great success when we do,” Hirsch said.
Studios already slated to participate in FreedomStreams include Vivid, Ed Powers, Girlfriends Films, ErosArts, Porn Pros, Homegrown, Forbidden Fruits Films, Mile High Media, Combat Zone, Brandon Iron, Evil Angel, New Sensations, Kink.com, West Coast Productions, Zero Tolerance, Private, Adam and Eve and CWoody Photography.
Any HotMovies content producers who wish to participate in this year’s FreedomStreams benefit can email support@moviedollars.com or contact the HotMovies studio team at (800) 611-6684 (MOVIE).
Anyone else wishing to contribute need only log into HotMovies or FreedomStreams.com on or before April 15, to buy minutes and watch some porn on tax day.
“Break out the lube and indulge yourself for a great cause on April 15,” Cybert said. “With your pleasure, you’re saving porn in L.A. and rescuing a hugely underappreciated portion of the Southern California economy. This might be the one issue where most Americans can actually agree these days. If these rules are strictly enforced, production companies will either leave Los Angeles or go out of business. That isn’t good for anyone.”
