Why LA's adult film business is relocating

Unhappy about a new condom law, it's moving out of its usual haunts into neighboring -- and often unsuspecting -- residential areas.

Quick: What's one of the few global industries the U.S. still monopolizes? If you said "pornography," congratulations.

Nearly 90% of porn is American-made, and U.S. Internet porn sites generated $2.84 billion in revenue in 2006, according to Good magazine. Sex sells so much, in fact, that more than 260 new sex sites reportedly go online daily -- with about $89 spent every second on pornography.

For decades, Los Angeles County has been home to the U.S. porn industry. But that changed last November, when county voters approved a mandate requiring porn actors to wear condoms during filming. The new law was intended to combat the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases -- but it's having an unexpected side effect.

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Daily News noted that applications for filming permits from the adult film industry dropped dramatically in L.A. County -- from an average of about 500 permits annually to just two so far this year.

"Most production companies have ceased shooting in L.A. County," Diane Duke, the chief executive officer of the Free Speech Coalition, an adult film trade organization, told the newspaper. "They have other options in other states and communities."

Those "other options" appear to include the moving of skin-flick production out of L.A. County and down the road into residential communities in neighboring Ventura County.

The Los Angeles Times says that in an unincorporated part of Ventura County local residents were recently startled to discover a sex shoot happening at a home on their street.

"It's really disturbing," Tim Gray, a 56-year-old father of four, told the Times. "We were eating dinner, and we heard these loud sounds outside, like something really bad had happened. I went outside and heard, well, the typical sounds you'd hear in a porn movie. It was echoing all over the neighborhood. Later I asked my daughter if she heard it. She said, 'Yeah, I was doing my homework, and I just turned up the music to drown it out.'"

The Associated Press says the Ventura County Board of Supervisors is expected to consider its own condom ordinance for adult films next month. If adopted, the measure would apply to the country's unincorporated regions as well.

Back in L.A. County, the porn condom law is being contested in U.S. district court by Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest producers of porn movies. Stay tuned.