Fees for scenes, not surprisingly, have taken a hit. "Some girls get $600 [£390] for a scene now," the retired performer JJ Michaels tells me. "It might be $900-$1,000 for a big-name girl. It used to get up to $3,000." For guys, rates can be $150 or lower.
Women supplement their income by stripping and doing live shows over the internet, shot from home on their webcams. One evening I visit one of LA Direct's top performers, Kagney Linn Karter – star of Rack-Tastic and Pound the Round – at her house as she prepares for her bi-monthly live show. Her boyfriend and full-time assistant Montae is hanging up her dresses while Kagney bathes and puts on her makeup. Montae and I then retreat to the kitchen where he tidies and wipes down surfaces while Kagney strips on her bed and masturbates in front of the strangers viewing her through her laptop. Forty-five minutes later, she emerges. "Well, I made a hundred dollars," she says brightly.
It's an open secret in the porn world that many female performers are supplementing their income by "hooking on the side". It's also called "doing privates", as in private bookings. The official industry line is that it's dangerous (because clients aren't tested the way performers are) and irresponsible (because the women could then infect the closed community of professional performers). But the women can make far more money having sex behind closed doors than doing it on film and, in fact, the practice is widespread. For many female performers nowadays, the movies are merely a sideline, a kind of advertising for their real business of prostitution.
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Where the industry will end up is hard to predict. Clearly there is still a market for softcore movies made by companies such as Penthouse and Hustler, available on subscription channels. The parodies may continue for a while, too. But it is difficult to see how a business selling hardcore movies and even internet clips is sustainable when most people simply don't want to pay if they don't have to. To many people, when it comes to porn, not paying for content seems the more moral thing to do.
"The way it is now, within five years I don't see how there could be a professional porn actor," Michaels tells me.
