I don’t know if they’re serious or not but the US pornography industry is the lastest industry group to appeal to the government for a bailout. [READ] I don’t normally write about porn on my blog but it was hard to resist in this case. Joe Francis (of “Girls Gone Wild” fame) and Larry Flynn (of Hustler fame) are saying that they’re going to ask the US Congress for a $5 Billion bailout. In 2006, the porn industry represented a $13 billion industry (surprizingly, South Korea and China’s industries are both nearly double the size of the US industry) [READ]. Claiming that smutty DVD sales are down 22% in the last year, US pornographers want the kind of help the US auto industry is receiving.

Safe For Work: Look! They have to mend their own pants now!

Taking a step back, this smacks of opportunistic pan-handling to me. Clearly, the porn industry is a significant player in the US (no surprize there) but are their current economic woes all due to an economic downturn? The porn industry has more in common with the movie and music industries than it does with US automakers. In other words, they’ve been having problems for years and it’s nothing to do with the economy.

The porn industry, like more mainstream media, suffers from piracy problems (made easy by the Internet). [READ] While going into your local HMV to buy a DVD or a CD has never been socially unacceptable, going into your local adult video store has huge psychological barriers. Any system that makes it easier for porn connoisseurs to get their fix without spending time in a sleazy, sticky adult video shack is going to have huge appeal – legal or not. While initially, the porn industry embraced the Internet with open arms, traditional porn publishers whose empires were founded on video and magazine sales, have been increasingly less competitive in the Internet era.

Back to the question of the bailout – should the US Government tuck some cash into the g-string of this ailing industry? In my opinion – no. Not unless they are also willing to bail out Hollywood and the US music industry. There has been some talk (mostly unofficial talk) that movie studios and record labels are expecting a slump in sales despite previous recessions in which they were relatively stable. Personally, I don’t think the auto industry should get a bailout. Call me insensitive but when an industry dies – let it die. People can get new jobs and towns will re-invent themselves. The auto industry is a basket of problems that I don’t want to rant about right now but I am going to suggest that it might not be worth saving in its current form.