California Taxpayers Paid To Train Kink.com Porn Staff

kink.com.gifA racy story making its rounds from blog to blog — Kink.com’s use of taxpayer funds to drive their online porn business is most worthy and deserving of a spoonful of Miso.

We are a legal business in the state of California, said Daniel Riedel, Kink.com’s Chief Operating Officer. We follow all of the state of California laws.

Danny, come off it. You most certainly are kidding us, right?

Almost $50K dollars in state subsidized education went into training Kink.com workers to help them better produce sexually explicit online content — in other words — California was funding the porn industry.

We’re sure Kink.com has good people working for them out there. Maybe some of the staff even have kids. Some may even be struggling to pay bills or make ends meet. And we feel for those poor folks who were laid off.

But according to this article on KTVU.COM, the Kink.com folks who went to training were directly involved with post production. Danny? This means that [on the taxpayer's back] you sent your staff to learn the art of editing pornography — raw XXX footage.

Daniel Riedel also said,

BAVC was giving us training for post-production skills, …to learn more about using tools like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop — tools of the trade that anyone would use in any production environment.

There’s a [not so] subtle difference between Kink.com’s production environment and say, that of Sony Entertainment’s. One is without any sliver of a doubt, porn.

For Danny Riedel to say anything that borders on justifying the use of taxpayer monies for his staff to learn how to edit porn, well, he’s slapping ‘Main Street’ right in the face. First amendment rights? Forget about it.

Why is Kink.com’s bell ringing similar to those that tolled when AIG doled out executive bonuses after receiving taxpayer bailout money? Are these two companies cut from the same mold?

California’s Employment Training Panel general counsel Maureen Reilly eventually caught the error after Matt Smith of SFweekly.com submitted a state public records request. Better late than never.

Should Kink.com have to pay back the California taxpayer?

  • http://blog.beraw.org Lady 'Lin

    Editing skills are editing skills – I'm not sure why it's a big deal *what* they're editing. The porn industry brings a lot of revenue into California – Chatsworth is the porn capital of the world, or so I've been told.

    However, if there are set-in-stone limitations that were overlooked when the money/training was given to them, they should definitely have to pay it back.

  • http://techmiso.com/ Rich Chuckrey

    Say the porn industry is in fact generating a lot of revenue for California. Then Kink.com should have the $50K for training and have avoided decoying themselves as an entertainment company, applying for government funding and bilking California of money that [we both know] could have been better spent.

    Poor judgment on Kink's part.

  • Webmistress

    Um… it's NOT taxpayer's money. It comes from employer tax funds – funded by companies, including Kink.com, not you and me… This has also been repeated ad nauseum, but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

  • http://techmiso.com/ Rich Chuckrey

    Not sure I understand your definition of 'taxpayer.' Companies and individuals alike are taxpayers. Are you implying Kink[dot]com should have the same priority and access to tax revenue as say, the state's engineering, agriculture, criminal justice, or social work industries. Paying taxes doesn't make Kink porn alright. California's Employment Training Panel made a good policy decision in saying the adult entertainment industry is 'lowest' priority funding. Like I said, the money is better spent elsewhere.

  • http://techmiso.com/ Rich Chuckrey

    Say the porn industry is in fact generating a lot of revenue for California. Then Kink[dot]com should have the $50K for training and have avoided decoying themselves as an entertainment company, applying for government funding and bilking California of money that [we both know] could have been better spent.

    Poor judgment on Kink's part.

  • tiberiu84

    Sexuality could be easily taught in school and for less money: have you ever heard of female escorts? That would useful and very very explicit. Right?

  • http://recordsresources.com public records

    hi friend i am happy for reading this and like this!

  • Hotel Honeys Escorts London

    I’m sure the good people of California appriate the addion to state GDP driven by the porn industry.  All those lovely tax dollers funding education, health etc.  God know how much in tax we have paid at London Escorts but such is life