Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 165 with Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal – Part 2

Speaker 1 (0s): This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to adult site broker talk, where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be speaking with adult attorney Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal in part two of our interview.

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Now time for this week's interview, part two of our talk with attorney Corey Silverstein, is it harder now to operate an adult website than it was 15 years ago? And if so, why?

Speaker 2 (2m 55s): It's not harder, it's different. It, it's, it's just 15 years ago, the issues were different. But now the reason why I would say it's more complex, because right now, as you and I are talking on, you know, May 10th, 2023, I think is the year, you know, right now the adult Entertainment industry is under a tremendous amount of government attack between Foss Cesta between age verification

Speaker 1 (3m 21s): And religious and private attack.

Speaker 2 (3m 23s): Well, we can get to religion. We haven't hit religion yet, but we hit the attacks in section two 30 and the attempts to, you know, destroy Section two 30 when you, when you go through all of these things. The fact is, is that right now there are a lot of reasons why it is a lot more legally challenging to be in the adult Entertainment industry because there's a lot of things that you can get in trouble for. Now, I wouldn't say, you know, some people would say, well, are we a bigger target now than we were 15 years ago? No, I don't think that's really changed. I think we were just as big of a target.

I, I think it was actually just different. I mean, when I first started in the adult Entertainment industry, we still saw the federal government pursuing obscenity prosecutions. Well, we haven't seen one of those in, in god knows how long now the radio station changes, but the music is still playing, so to speak. So little bit of a different tune, but the music's never stopped. So it, it's always challenging and you have to remember that being in the adult Entertainment industry, no one's forcing you to be in this industry. You're choosing to be in this industry, and it is a high risk industry.

If you go into this industry thinking that, you know, we're the same as, you know, someone operating a car park manufacturer, you're kidding yourself. We are high risk. There is always someone who wants to bring us up and try to make the adult Entertainment industry and people in it look negatively. You can look no further, as you brought up a second ago, by the far right religious movement that we're seeing, they're, they're very loud right now. I mean, you know, not to go off on a tangent here, but, but I'll be honest with you, did I ever expect in my lifetime, after studying constitutional law and frankly being a, what I consider to be a constitutional law attorney, did I ever expect that the Supreme Court was gonna overrule itself in terms of Roe versus Wade?

Did I ever think that was gonna happen in my lifetime? No. I never thought I was gonna see that. So, you know, we're not here to talk about that today, but you've gotta open your eyes and look what's going on in the world right now. There are very loud people out there who are making a lot of noise that want to make life as difficult as possible for the adult Entertainment industry. And I don't agree with it. I think it's wrong. I think it's ridiculous. I'll fight it. I've, I've been fighting it my entire career. I'll, I'm not gonna stop at this point. Yeah, a lot of,

Speaker 1 (5m 45s): But you've done pro bono. I know.

Speaker 2 (5m 47s): I've done a lot of, you know, pro bono work for different organizations. I'm very proud of that work. Any lawyer that's, you know, tells you that they win all their cases is full of shit. I'm gonna tell you that right now. 'cause I've, I've, I've lost my share of cases too, but I'm, but I'm very proud of the fact that I've been able to make the argument and be able to fight for the people I deserve fighting for. And, and, and I believe that in our industry, frankly, we're the, we're, you know, I view the adult Entertainment industry as the freedom fighters of the world. They're the ones out there who are, who are screaming at the top of their lungs that we want the ability to express ourselves.

We want the ability to, you know, share things that other people may not agree with. That's the very notion, the very nature of, of free speed, free speech and expression. So

Speaker 1 (6m 33s): We're definitely on the right side of things when it comes to right and wrong. We know who's right and we know who's wrong. There's no two ways about it. Has the evolution of social media platforms forced the adult Entertainment industry to reinvent itself? And if so, how?

Speaker 2 (6m 51s): It has, it has, you can't say, no one can say in the adult Entertainment industry that social media hasn't changed the game. Because ultimately 20 years ago, a consumer really didn't have the ability to have direct interaction with an adult Entertainment unless they went to a trade show or they went to a meet and greet somewhere or whatever. But now, not only is it possible, but consumers are expecting that they will have some degree of communication with adult entertainers, and if they don't get that, they will move on somewhere else, because that has actually become one of the big parts of adult Entertainment.

Speaker 1 (7m 32s): Oh, yeah, interactivity for sure.

Speaker 2 (7m 34s): This is another example of mainstream not understanding adult Entertainment. And you know, the example I always give to people is I have plenty of adult Entertainment clients who have customers that have never seen them without their clothes on. They've never taken their tops, their bottoms off, both male and female. They've never shown any intimate part, but they're doing fantastically well in the adult Entertainment industry. And well, how the hell is that? Because there's different forms of adult Entertainment, and some of it isn't all visual. And again, this is a complete misunderstanding of adult Entertainment, and it's, again, a, it's more of a stereotype than it is a reality of the law.

But social media, social media and the ability to communicate with people, you know, in the industry changed everything. That it was a game, it was a game changer. And I'll tell you the truth, mo, most companies that didn't acknowledge that and didn't, somehow I wouldn't reinvent or renovate whatever word you want to use, a lot of those, a lot of those people aren't around anymore.

Speaker 1 (8m 36s): What do you think about social media platforms that either ban adult content or, you know, make it really difficult for adult content to be on there?

Speaker 2 (8m 48s): It's stupid. It's, it, it, it's stupid. It's like you wanna take sexuality and you wanna hide it in a, in a, a dark closet down the hall so that nobody ever talks about it. No one ever sees it, but maybe it's there. It's, it's, it's pure speech suppression. And look, the fact is that major companies, they have the right to run their platforms however they want. They are not the government people make that mistake all the time. They think that like, well, you know, my constitutional rights are protected. You know, if I'm posting on Facebook or Twitter, no, that's not correct.

Speaker 1 (9m 21s): You're a guest in their home.

Speaker 2 (9m 23s): You're a guest in their home, and they can throw you, frankly, guests in a home have more legal rights than you do on social media, because on social media, they literally can throw you off anytime they want. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Speaker 1 (9m 34s): Don't I know. Thank you, Mark Berg.

Speaker 2 (9m 37s): Well, I know, I, look, I know, I, I know Bruce that, that at one point you actually spent some time in Facebook jail for absolutely no reason whatsoever, except you were,

Speaker 1 (9m 46s): But they banned me and I can't even get back on with any account. And I've tried all the tricks.

Speaker 2 (9m 52s): I look at it as that's their loss. They lost someone who, who would voice his mine and voice his opinion. And if you, if you ever sit down and listen to Mark Zuckerberg's first interviews, and I'd also like to remind everyone that originally Mark Zuckerberg's first product was basically putting pretty girls online that didn't know they were going up online to rate them based on college campuses. So, but that's okay. We'll, we'll, we'll just, you know, pretend that never happened. But the, you know, the, the fact is, is that when you talk about social media and you talk about platforms that, you know, look, if you wanna run a platform and you wanna advertise and, and say right from the start, you know, come to our platform, the only thing you're gonna see here is conversations about religious teachings or whatever, you know, be my guest.

But, but if you're gonna be a platform that's viewed all over the world, has billions of subscribers suppressing someone's ability to post sexuality, adult Entertainment is, it's just ridiculous. And it's silly. And I, and I, and I, frankly, I think it's hypocritical because if you're a social media platform, your entire purpose is to allow people to share their ideas, their thoughts. You're not really a social media platform anymore. If you're censoring content now, you're, you're quite the opposite now.

You're only publishing the message that you wanna get out there. I don't believe that that a platform, that censors content is doing a justice to the world. Now, do I believe there's certain content that has no place on social media, like, like hate speech and, you know, speech that could, you know, incite violence and hurt someone and, and, and such, no, of course not. That sort of, that sort of stuff doesn't belong there. But I was born Jewish. I grew up Jewish, I've dealt with antisemitism my entire life, and I've seen people post things online that you know about Jews that are sickening, that I find personally absolutely offensive.

But at the same time, I actually believe that they have the right to express how they feel. Now, do I disagree with it? Is it wrong? Do I think they're, you know, demented or ill or uneducated? Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that I, I don't think that they should be prohibited from, from posting it. I, I, I don't, now I know some will disagree with me, and that's okay. But that's also one of the nice things about social media. One of the nice things about social media is that people can actually, when they're using social media correctly, you can actually go on there and you can learn quite a bit.

You can have very good discussions and hear views of other people, you know, for those that are actually behaving themselves. As, you know, Bruce, there are a lot of people who jump on social media and seem to behave like, like three-year-olds. But there's, you know, to go back to your original question, I I, I think social media has probably been great for adult Entertainment. And you, you know, what's, what's the expression? Adapt or die and adult companies that haven't, you know, adopted the, the, the potential of it, what it has to offer and so forth.

Again, they, they've very much been left behind.

Speaker 1 (12m 58s): No two ways about it. How much do you think the whole Trump thing changed social media?

Speaker 2 (13m 3s): So, here's the thing about all of that. Again, this is another person that I, again, I I, I don't believe, you know, whether what he says I believe is right or wrong isn't the issue. I believe he should be allowed to speak his mind. I think that he probably, because of the fact that he became the president of the United States, that obviously his audience became arguably the most attentive audience in the world.

So, you know, how much did, did he change things? I think he changed things a lot. But I would also tell you that there's been other polarizing figures over the years that have been all over social media that have said things and called for, frankly, acts of violence. And yeah. Do I, you know, do I think that Trump brought a lot of it to front page news headlines? Yes. But do I think what he was doing was a new thing? No,

Speaker 1 (13m 57s): But I mean, he also changed the whole discourse on social media, and that was more what I was, what I was getting at.

Speaker 2 (14m 3s): Yes and no. There's been other people there, there have been historically other figures that have been silenced on social media that weren't quite as front page headline news as, as someone as powerful as the president of the United States. And so he changed things because of who he is and who his position was. But was he unique? Was he the, was he the first person to, you know, say things that may not have been true on social media? No, there's been plenty of others. Did he, you know, did he abuse social media platforms to the benefit of, you know, winning an election?

Yeah, he probably did. But to be completely candid with he here Bruce, I, I believe that politicians have been doing that since the beginning of social media. So

Speaker 1 (14m 43s): They've been doing things like that even before social media existed. They did it with the normal media. Do you think as a free speech attorney, do you think he should have been kicked off of Twitter?

Speaker 2 (14m 54s): No, I really don't.

Speaker 1 (14m 56s): I had a feeling that that was gonna be the answer. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14m 59s): I, again, this has nothing, this has nothing to do with whether I agree with that, what he had to say or not. That's, that's not the point here. I'm not here to debate, you know, whether the president's a good guy or a bad guy or whatever. You know what, I'll, I'll leave that to, to everyone else to kill each other on social media over, that's their business. But, but, but ultimately what, you know, should he have been silenced? No, but as we talked about before, Twitter's a private platform. They can do whatever the hell they want. And now Elon Musk is, you know, it's no longer a publicly traded company.

Elon Musk can do whatever the hell he wants with it. If Elon Musk tomorrow wants to ban everyone on his site, who ever mentioned the number four, again, he can do it.

Speaker 1 (15m 42s): And he just might, knowing that guy, he just

Speaker 2 (15m 45s): Might, might, well, listen, I'm, listen, listen, I'm sorry folks, but that, but these social media platforms are, they are not the US government. They are private and public companies, and they can make their own rules. And you're using it as a privilege. You, you have no right to use social media platforms.

Speaker 1 (16m 1s): As I said before, you're in their house.

Speaker 2 (16m 4s): And look, I can even, I can even use you as an example, Bruce, I don't think you should have been off thrown off Facebook, but do you really have a say in it? Nope.

Speaker 1 (16m 11s): I don't even know why it was an algorithm and I don't think the person even reviewed it.

Speaker 2 (16m 17s): And there is no legal requirement that they ever tell you why you were thrown off. None at all. They don't ever have to, they don't have to ever talk to you again, which they probably won't, but that's their loss.

Speaker 1 (16m 26s): No, and I won't talk to them. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's their loss.

Speaker 2 (16m 30s): You should probably stop calling Mark at home. He's probably getting annoyed with that. So you might wanna cut that out,

Speaker 1 (16m 37s): I suppose. I suppose I've left him some doozies of messages though. So you regularly attend and speak at the trade shows across the world, as we referred to before. Is the bang for your buck still there

Speaker 2 (16m 52s): At trade shows? You know, here's, here's the thing with trade shows. Trade shows can actually be very expensive. You gotta always look at the, the total cost of a, of a trade show. And when I say the total cost, you need to consider travel, staying, eating Entertainment meetings. But also you've gotta think about the time away from your family, the time you're on the road,

Speaker 1 (17m 15s): And the time away from your business too, and

Speaker 2 (17m 18s): Time away from your business. There's a lot of things you really have to consider. Trade shows are always gonna be, I believe, a trade show, whether it's good or bad, will be what you make of it. You can go to a trade show that is relatively small and come away with it with a ton of business leads. Or you can go to a trade show that's relatively large and come away with nothing. I think there's a huge misunderstanding where people seem to think that the size of the show is what matters the most. And it's not, it's actually, and then some people will even say, well, it, it also depends on what the quality of the people that are.

I think that's wrong too. I think that you have to go in and you have to do your homework. I think that you need to analyze, okay, who's gonna be there? Where's the show gonna be? What are my goals to get out of it? And then you work your goals and if once you get to the show it changes, then you, you adapt. But, you know, there's also some trade shows that, that, you know, historically have been very large. And this isn't isolated to the adult Entertainment industry. It's, it's to the entire IT field there.

There's some huge trade shows out there that they brag about having, you know, 10,000 attendees and stuff and so forth. And, and I think they suck.

Speaker 1 (18m 29s): Like some of the affiliate shows that, that have been known to have 10,000, 20,000 people

Speaker 2 (18m 34s): A successful show. Isn't you going home with a giant bag of free shit.

Speaker 1 (18m 41s): I don't bring back anything anymore, man, except maybe a cute shirt for my wife.

Speaker 2 (18m 46s): That's not how you judge a trade show. You drudge a trade show by what you get out of it. If you, if you leave a trade show and the cost of the trade show was less than what you walk away with, you win. And that doesn't necessarily have to be immediate. That's another thing that people mistake. People leave a trade show and they think that results have to be instantaneous. No, I mean, listen, when I first went to trade shows, I, you know, I, I wandered around lost, not knowing what the hell I was doing. That's, that's every, everybody's, you know, first couple of trade shows.

It takes time. And, and you know, again, though, you gotta pick and choose too. I, I, I think that the trade show industry got a little carried away before Covid to, to be completely honest with you. I think there were far too many of them. I thought it got ridiculous. The fact that there was two or three trade shows in a month was really starting to get absurd. And a lot of people, you know, felt like the need, like they had to go there. It's the, it's the same thing with the, the award shows. Like, I'll be honest with you, I think award shows are awesome. I think they're really cool.

I think it's great to, to award them. But you know, it gets to the point where, you know, there's an award show every three weeks and, and you're like, all right. It kind of takes away from the significance. I used to joke about this all the time 'cause when I was growing up, and I don't know, I don't know if you, you grew up in this era of Bruce, but you're a little older than me. But when I grew up watching M T V M T V showed music videos all day long, like actual music, music videos, they don't show music videos anymore. Now on M T V, it's all, you know, programs with people jumping off of platforms into buckets of shit and whatever they do.

But, you know, when I was watching, it was funny 'cause like there'd be like the once a year there'd be like the M t V music awards. And this was big man. This was big. And you know, even like after the M T V Music awards that a CD or a cassette tape from my era would get released with like, you know, the songs that were at the M T V Music Awards. Well, you know, after that it got like, oh, well a lot of people watch it. So let's have the M T V video Music Awards. Let's have the M T V movie video awards, let's have the M T V TV movie video awards.

And they kept adding and adding and adding and adding to the point where it's just like, okay, we get it. There's 17 different award shows for the same brand. So I, you know, again, I I I don't think more award shows, more trade shows is the answer. And, and I do think that the bang for your buck is still there. But I think that people need to be, be smart about it, you know? And, and if someone puts on a bad show, if some organization throws a bad show that doesn't, you don't have to support it again. You, you're not obliged. You're not obliged to go

Speaker 1 (21m 23s): No, you're right, you're right. I agree. I completely agree.

Speaker 2 (21m 27s): Listen, I've been to some terrible shows where thousands of people were promised and there was less than a hundred people there. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (21m 35s): I can think of one.

Speaker 2 (21m 37s): I, there's been more than a couple. And I, I've also been to trade shows where you get there and if you wanna get a cup of coffee, you gotta wait in line for four and a half hours. 'cause there's so many people there. You, you gotta make it worth your own wild. And if you're, if you're not, don't spend the money on it.

Speaker 1 (21m 51s): You wrote an article, which was one of the better articles you've written and you, you write a lot of good articles and it was about etiquette at trade shows. If you were to put that into just a few quick points for people listening, because I think it's really important. What, what would those be?

Speaker 2 (22m 10s): That was actually, so trade show etiquette was a, was a special series I did for Xbi Magazine. And we, we actually did parts one, two, and I believe I did the part three. I think it's actually a three part series. Yeah, I think it's a three part series. But it was like, it was, some of the stuff was just like asinine, that, that, that, that I couldn't believe that people were doing, like, to give you example, people were showing up to trade shows and they were, I know this is gonna sound crazy Bruce, but they were improperly dressed. They were dressed like bums.

They weren't sanitary. They s they frankly, they smelled, they were dirty. And I'm thinking to myself, who the hell is gonna do bi? What are you spending all this money to come to a trade show when you're presenting yourself like that? There were people that come to trade trade shows without business cards and, and I thought this was the stupid, the stupidest thing in the world. I'm like, so how is anyone gonna, if someone's gonna meet 25 different people and you can't even give them a three inch by four inch piece of paper that has your contact information on it. Like, come on.

Speaker 1 (23m 11s): And the ca and the caveat today, by the way, since that was a few years ago, is obviously there are also digital business cards that are acceptable. But yes, have something, I mean, you can download an app and make a business card in two minutes now. But I still think, I still think physical business cards are good. But anyway, continue.

Speaker 2 (23m 30s): So then another thing was the, the, the partying. Okay. And this is like, this is a big thing. Listen, I get it. There's a lot of parties, there's a lot of fun stuff that goes on in trade shows. I'm totally all about it. But I'm gonna tell you something. I can remember every person that I've ever seen drunk off their ass act in a fool at a trade show. And I, and you remember it forever.

Speaker 1 (23m 55s): Oh, I did that once. Do you,

Speaker 2 (23m 58s): You don't ever forget it. No. You're there to do business as a prime. You're there to network. There's nothing wrong with having fun. There's nothing wrong about having some drinks and going to a party. There's something very wrong if you're walking around the next day and you don't remember the night before and you look like someone just kicked the shit outta you. And I remember a show, this is years ago, I'm not gonna mention the show because it's not necessary, but I was at a show where there were two idiots.

And these two numb skulls were so drunk that one of them, literally while one of them was sitting down on a a bus bench, the other guy walked up to him and literally kicked him in the head, like kicked him in the skull. Oh

Speaker 1 (24m 40s): My God.

Speaker 2 (24m 41s): And he's laughing and whatever. The one guy of course got, you know, once he got off the bus, he was arrested and charged. It was insane. And you know, for those of you old timers in the industry who are listening to this, you might even remember who it was. But I never forgot that. And every time I think about the guy now, that's all I think about. I I I, I can never picture him in any sort of business atmosphere. You know, you show up to a trade show and you're, and you're acting like that or, or you know, this nonsense with doing drugs and, and this is a business show, my friends and people will remember that forever.

You're wandering around, falling on your face drunk. You're not gonna leave a very good impression. And, and to be honest with you, you're probably not gonna make very many business contacts

Speaker 1 (25m 22s): Free booze isn't free. I've learned that at a very early stage in the industry.

Speaker 2 (25m 26s): Bruce, there's nothing free in this world. Nothing. And and there's, there are those that will tell you that, oh no, there's the air is free. I'm like, no, it's not. Everything costs, there's a price to pay for everything in this world. That's, that's the reality. But that's a great question. And, and for those that haven't read that series articles, they should go back and pick, take a look.

Speaker 1 (25m 43s): Yeah. I even asked you if I could post them on my blog and you said, Nope. XXX Bazzone said I went, ah, damn but maybe one of these days I'll have you do a guest post for me. 'cause our blog's gotten very active.

Speaker 2 (25m 54s): I, you know, I think you could probably reach out to the good folks at Xbi and I if you linked to their stuff. I don't think they'd have that big of a, a problem with it.

Speaker 1 (26m 4s): Yeah. Now that some time has gone by. That's a great idea. 'cause I'd love to have it on our site. I really, really would. But we should talk about guest posts at some point. So do you expect the current trend of state laws related to age verification to continue?

Speaker 2 (26m 20s): Yes. For right now, the answer to that question is yes, but we've had a good development because in a lawsuit has been filed now challenging the constitutionality of the Utah law. My hope is, is that challenge will be successful and that will actually be the, the first domino to drop the rest of them. So I, I'm actually hoping resolution to that. Now the only problem is, is the, the US judicial system moves very slowly. Constitutional challenges take time.

As you know, if those of you that have are listening that have been in the business for a long time, you know that the Free, Speech Coalition is challenge against 2, 2, 5, 7 went on for, I think it was nine years or 10 years or something like that. So it takes a long time.

Speaker 1 (27m 5s): Yeah. And it's, and it's hurting people's businesses now there's sites like PornHub who have turned themselves off in Louisiana at least, and I think maybe Utah.

Speaker 2 (27m 14s): Yeah, that's what my understanding is too. But I, I, the funny thing is, is I kind of like the fact that they're telling this, the, you know, these states like, okay, you wanna go explain to your citizens why no adult, no consenting adult. Not any person can access adult Entertainment in, in, in my state. And, you know, here's the, the names of the senators and the legislators to go talk to. It's

Speaker 1 (27m 36s): Not gonna kill porn humps business. It's just a blip.

Speaker 2 (27m 39s): I tend to think that what they did was pretty okay by me, but I'm not PornHub. So that's up to them. But, you know, it doesn't change the fact though that, you know, I'm hoping this constitutional challenge will kind of slow this nonsense down. Because again, I, I don't know how many more times I can say this, the US Supreme Court has already ruled on this issue and the fact the states are now doing this and basically just completely ignoring the US Supreme Court is wrong. Doesn't surprise me though, because every generation says this Bruce they all say that, I've never seen politics like this.

It's never been this bad. I've never seen it before. Talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents about this and everyone will have, you know, various different stories. And

Speaker 1 (28m 17s): You go back to the McCarthy era. Did, was it ever worse than that?

Speaker 2 (28m 22s): You're an educated man. Some would say no. The, the one thing that people always say is they say, well, you know, with history, we wanna learn from our mistakes. And that's one of the biggest things in history. But no, we don't in politics, no.

Speaker 1 (28m 35s): Well, and these politicians, they're making short term points and really that's all they care about is the next election.

Speaker 2 (28m 42s): Well it's, that's the name of the game. They're politicians name of the game in politics is, is real simple. Stay in power, stay in power, stay in power. That's it.

Speaker 1 (28m 52s): That works very well into the next question. We're headed into another election cycle in the us Should the industry be concerned,

Speaker 2 (29m 0s): We gotta watch this one. The reason why we gotta watch this one is because, look, ultimately right now things in the United States anyway are not very good. You know, gas prices are at all time highs. Inflation is at an all time high, you see for higher signs on virtually every business, everywhere. And at the same time, people are complaining. It, it, it's kind of interesting 'cause you've got people complaining they can't get a job. And at the same time, business is saying there's no people to hire. So it, it's a very weird time. But when you see a combination of that with bad inflation numbers, the stock market has been dog shit.

Now for however long, you know, it's been, the covid recovery has been terrible. We could be looking at some pretty substantial change in this next election. You could see a lot of, you know, is it possible that we could have a, I call it basically a super Republican majority. When I say super Republican, I mean that they will have the Supreme Court, the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. It is possible.

It, it, it's actually very possible just because people are very upset with the way things are going. Now, historically speaking, Republicans have not been great for the adult Entertainment industry. But you know, the, the Trump administration didn't really, frankly, care all that much about adult Entertainment

Speaker 1 (30m 21s): Trump's a fan.

Speaker 2 (30m 22s): Well, yes, but, but he was the president that signed on to Foster Cesta. So he he did actually.

Speaker 1 (30m 28s): Yeah, I know I was somewhat joking. Yeah, but look who the senator was, who, who really got that law going? It was Harris who's the vice president now. We have no friends in Washington.

Speaker 2 (30m 39s): This particular election cycle people should be watching because the real possibility of us getting a very far right complete empowered government is a possibility. And historically speaking that that's not been good for the adult Entertainment industry.

Speaker 1 (30m 53s): No, not at all. So during Covid, you created adult law. What's that all about and how can it benefit people in companies? In the adult space?

Speaker 2 (31m 4s): Adult law was, you know, during covid, like many other people, I had a lot of downtime. I wasn't going to live court as much. I was spending a lot more time in the office, and I was talking to a lot more people than I previously had the time to talk to. And one of the things that kept coming out was performers specifically saying that, you know, they didn't feel that they had access to legal education for what they considered to be more affordable prices. So what I did was, I actually kept talking to performers that a ton of performers during this time, and I created adult law.

What adult law is, is it's a subscription based platform, so it's not like hiring conventional lawyer where you have to pay a big retainer and then so forth adult law, you pay as you want the services and adult law is filled with educational videos about different topics in the adult Entertainment industry. And we have resources including articles. And depending on what package you subscribe to, you can get individual legal time with me. So adult law was basically a brainchild for let's, I wanted to give performers equal access to adult education at affordable prices.

So I'm very proud of adult law. We we're very busy making videos. It's, it's a lot of work. And as you know, with this podcast, it's a ton of work. But I'm very grateful to the adult law subscribers and a lot of the performers that have been very supportive of, of me and the platform. But the platform itself is, it's for performers, it's for performers that are looking for education, they're looking for access to legal resources.

Speaker 1 (32m 40s): What about small site owners too?

Speaker 2 (32m 42s): You know, the education component is, is great for small site owners, but for small site owners, I, you know, I I I think really conventional legal representation is a little bit better, but I do actually have quite a few businesses that have signed up and, and they utilize adult law because by subscribing to adult law, we also give discounts for hourly rates. And you get a certain number of hours per, per month in legal consulting time. So some businesses have actually been a little smarter than I was and they've been taking advantage of it a little bit.

But, but that's okay. That, that's okay. It's all, you know, in, in the adult Entertainment arena that, that it's all in good spirit. So, but it's a great platform. I'm really proud of it. And hopefully the signups and memberships will continue to grow.

Speaker 1 (33m 26s): And everyone after this podcast look at that. What are some major pieces of advice you find yourself giving to the majority of your

Speaker 2 (33m 35s): Clients? Well, right now it's a, you know, right now it's a tough one. And, and one of the biggest pieces of advice I'm telling you I'm gonna do is to slow the hell down. Slow down, stop racing. Don't go 8,000 miles a minute because when you go 8,000 miles a minute, you're gonna miss something. But there are so many things that you can do when you start off in the adult Entertainment industry. One of the things I always tell people do to start off with right away is form an entity, whether it's an L l c, a corporation, and don't just stick to your local jurisdiction.

A lot of people think that just because you live in, you know, the state of Arkansas, you have to file, you have to create your company in Arkansas. That's completely untrue. There are states out there that provide a far better corporate layout and landscape for people in the adult Entertainment industry. So Delaware's fantastic. Wyoming's fantastic. Those are my two, those are my two favorite right now. One of my least favorite, which you'll probably be, you'll find this amusing, is actually California.

Speaker 1 (34m 34s): I'm shocked. I used to have a corporation in California, believe me. I know,

Speaker 2 (34m 40s): I actually think, you know, in, in my opinion, California is one of the worst places in the world to, to create adult Entertainment. As much as they want to proclaim themselves as being liberal and free and whatever. I I think their, their employment laws are ridiculous. I think their reporting laws are ridiculous. And when adult people jumping to adult who immediately like, oh, well we should be in California. That is the wrong decision. That is the wrong decision. You should be considering all your other options before you're thinking about California.

I I think the state of California has done a horrific job in terms of being friendly to the adult Entertainment industry. It's actually one of the least friendly places, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (35m 20s): Look at the condom laws. Well,

Speaker 2 (35m 22s): You can, it's not just that, it's everything there. Employment laws, they, they're the laws AB five age verification. I, I can go on and on and on. It's, it's in, in my opinion, it's a horrible place for adult Entertainment.

Speaker 1 (35m 34s): Yeah, it's one of the few liberal states that passed age verification.

Speaker 2 (35m 39s): And again, this is just another reason why it's, in my opinion, it's, it's a terrible place to be.

Speaker 1 (35m 44s): Last question, any thoughts on crypto and blockchain and adult Entertainment?

Speaker 2 (35m 49s): You gotta be paying attention. I mean, crypto and blockchain. I, I believe it is the future. I, you know, my personal belief is that even though it's growing, we're still a little ways away from mass adaptation simply because it's still a little bit tricky to use and people are still afraid of it. But I believe that if you are an adult Entertainment company and you are not already accepting crypto or making plans to accept crypto and learning and potentially utilizing blockchain technology, you will be left in the dust in the next five years.

Speaker 1 (36m 22s): Okay. Well, Corey, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk, and I hope we'll have a chance to do this again soon. The

Speaker 2 (36m 30s): Pleasure's all mine and keep it up Bruce. I, I, I'm, I'm just as much of a fan of your series as, as it is a pleasure to be here today.

Speaker 1 (36m 39s): Thank you. My Broker tip today is part seven of how to buy a site Last week. We talked about the agreement and escrow. So now you own the website. What do you do now? The first thing you should do is make sure you understand everything about the operation of the site. The previous owner will hopefully be available for a period of time to help you with this. As I mentioned, Last week, you should establish what the Former owner's participation will be after the sale. You'll need to deal with production of new content processing, paying affiliates, and many other things.

If you don't have experience in these areas, you may want to consider using our general consulting firm, adult Business Consulting. You can get more information on what this company does@adultbusinessconsulting.com. We help website owners, project manage and guide them to the right vendors. Maybe the previous owner had all the right elements processing, hosting payments, production scripts, et cetera, or maybe they didn't. We can help evaluate that for you. Let us know if we can help.

Anyway, you'll now be operating the website. If you don't have someone like our general consulting firm to help evaluate all of those items and everything the site is spending money on and using to operate the site, make sure you're getting a good deal and that these companies are providing the right service and check to see if you can do better. Hosting is a great example on something where people are often both overpaying and not getting the right service. Many times a server is just too slow.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to reach out to us on our site. Next week we'll talk about how to sell a website. Adult Site Broker Talk has been brought to you by Webmaster Access September 12th through the 15th. The show will be in beautiful Cyprus at the stunning grand resort on the beach. Go to the events page on our website at Adult Site Broker dot com for a 25% discount. For Adult Site Broker Talk listeners.

To register, go to webmaster access.com. Next week we'll be speaking with Peter Jensen of Rocket Fuel. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Corey Silverstein. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.