Your home business: being paid for getting laid

On Demand shows some of HBO's late night specials. I watched Pornucopia 2 the other day. Filmed in 2004, it covers the field of pornographic movies, people who star in them, and in this episode a segment on a couple who make money having sex on their webcam for paid subscribers.

I have no idea whether James and Seska are still at it five years after this show aired. I don't care, but I was interested in the money they said they earned. Seska said before they set up their Internet business they both made about $20,000 a year at their jobs, and at the time of filming Pornucopia they claim they are making "six figures." The graphic here says it all. You pay your $16.95, you get to see a couple you wouldn't look at twice in the grocery store have hot sex on your computer monitor.

What do James and Seska put down on their tax returns? "Internet business" is technically correct, but "expose our genitalia while performing multiple sex acts for strangers over the Internet" has much more of a ring to it, don't you think?

Internet porn can originate anywhere, so it's true entrepreneurship. This other graphic says that 5000 couples do this sort of mom and pop business online. Did someone actually count them, or is that just an estimate?

A farm couple in Iowa can be boffing just as easily as a couple of sophisticates from Manhattan. The web cam and global Internet access levels the playing field.

I don't have anything against free enterprise, but I wonder about people who have sex for a living, whether they are on the Internet getting paid, or in movies getting paid. If they're paid to get laid why isn't it prostitution? Isn't prostitution sex for hire? Apparently there's a fine point of law I'm missing here, otherwise all these people would be having their orgies in jail.