Comment by adontz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adontz | Hacker News Reader

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Paperwork is not a solution at all. Porn performers must have right for anonymity because it's not safe to be porn actress/actor.

Old U.S. story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei_Lee_(actress)

Citing concerns of personal safety, Lee requested to testify under her stage name; the prosecution objected, arguing that allowing her to do so "gives some air of legitimacy to the porn star" (which Lee later called "incredibly insulting") and that "she shouldn't be treated any differently than anyone else in this case".[35] The case was ultimately dismissed on July 16, 2010,[36] before Lee was scheduled to testify.

New Russian story https://www.reddit.com/r/Lindemann/comments/f8ao8w/more_on_t... Families and friends recieve threats, members of the public get dragged in: After identifying the girls, families and friends of the girls also began to recieve threats. Home addresses of the girls were also posted online. Also, girls which had simply had selfies taken with Till Lindemann while he was travelling through the city of St Petersburg at the time of the shooting (but who had not featured in Till The End nor Platz Eins) began to recieve hate mail and threats online after being identified through their selfie photos with him on Instagram.

Porn actresses are often deanonymized and threatened death and you offer paperwork.

If they're collecting money, be it W-2 or 1099, they have to disclose their real name and social security number as it is to whoever is paying them, for tax purposes. Generally to the studio hiring them, but if they publish directly to a monetized platform, they'd have to provide the same to the website as part of collecting their share of ad revenue. So there's really no excuse for PornHub not to either directly verify performers or verify that publishers have all of the performers credentials in order.

Beyond that, of course, it's important for adult actors to be able to be represented publicly solely by their stage name. PornHub knowing both actually adds an additional protective layer, as PornHub could filter/block appearances of their legal name.

I definitely agree the court system should uphold pseudonyms and anonymity when revealing their legal name in public records and hearings has the potential for significant harm, but that's a very different issue than the record-keeping that adult film producers are already required to do.

I think/hope that properly implemented platform will not/should not keep real names. That's for payment provider which is hopefully PCI DSS compliant, not for a random porn site. Idea of porn sites keeping real model identities terrifies me.

I am not sure you can legally pay someone a taxable amount of money in the United States[1] without knowing their real name. Porn sites like PornHub probably don't have the real life info for performers who are employed by an adult film studio, but in those cases, the adult film studios definitely have that info. For anyone who publishes their own content directly to PornHub and monetizes it, it's likely PornHub has to have their real information.

[1] Similarly true many other places, though MindGeek's Wikipedia page suggests they maintain offices in a large number of island countries for tax evasion purposes.

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