Quite some time ago (probably years) I had this strange urge to test out IPFS, obviously in legal ways and so I wondered what could be shared on it. I found a few very interesting projects however rather a lack of erotic content.

I wished to include a quote about how much of the internet is porn and how important it is for a technology's universal adoption, however I felt hard stats would probably be better. So I went to a few websites statista does include a guess that 20% of mobile searches and 13% of searches in general relate to pornography. The data that led to that conclusion is obviously paywalled. Checking other sites such as Psychology Today or something they link to named Covenant Eyes, seem to always link back to Statista, so I give up.

“It seems so obvious: If we invent a machine, the first thing we are going to do—after making a profit—is use it to watch porn.”

– Damon Brown, Author of Playboy’s Greatest Covers

In any case for it to be shared so recklessly and indiscriminately as on IPFS or BitTorrent, we would need to get legal rights to do that, which might be comparatively easy when it comes to source code, art however, is quite the beast. And so the images I acquired are often old and laden with stories of interesting copyright law shenanigans that led to them being left unprotected.

American Army Productions

U.S. Code: Title 17 — COPYRIGHTS / 105 - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works tells us that:

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

Further:

A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties.

The "Yank, the Army Weekly" was a magazine published by the U.S. military in WWII. For "boosting morale" as the wiki states they included a pin-up photograph. This magazine was made by the army for the army, only being sold to enlisted personnel and famously being produced by enlisted personnel as well. Therefore these issues are not protected by copyright.

I must mention here a 1945 article titled A Free Press in a Citizen's Army by Egbert White whose idea sparked the existence of Yank and who retells some of the stories and lengths he went to to distribute this piece of literature, and his then opinions on what it meant for the soldiers.

Debbie Does Dallas

We now move to the almost infamous case of the 1978 American movie called Debbie Does Dallas. If you ever wonder over to WikiMedia and look for full-length movies, you'll likely come upon this piece as there are few movies especially so recent that can be uploaded there as they do not allow copyrighted works. In short it was published in a time when you had to explicitly include copyright notices lest your work fall into the public domain in 5 years time. VCX the creator of the film after some legal shenanigans opted to include the notices, however they were required to also mark all the theatrical releases that have already been shipped. After M&As president who attempted to buy the film rights, informed VCX of this fact, they simply refused, and in a short while they concluded that the copyright had been lost. M&A sued VCX but by then the judge's ruling only reiterated that indeed, Debbie Does Dallas, is in the public domain.

Obscenity barring from protection

In instances throughout history it was a subject of thorough discussion, whether obscene works should be protected by law or not. Most famously the Mitchell Brothers Film Group v. Cinema Adult Theater case whereby a theater defended themselves that the movie they aired without permission was obscene and therefore the plaintiffs were barred from relief.

Reminding you and myself that plaintiff is the one initiating a suit.

If this seems ludicrous, it was based on something called the "unclean hands doctrine", which is a concept in American law stating that if you engage in unethical behaviour you are not entitled to compensation from the trial. The court viewed the movie, accepted that the plaintiff is dealing in an unethical subject matter, and ruled in favour of the defendants. This decision was luckily soon overturned on appeal and the obscenity defense isn't used too much nowadays at least to my knowledge.

Studio Biederer (Ostra)

This Parisian photography studio was run by two brothers Charles and Jacques Biederer (1887 - 1942), who were both Czech. Ostra then obviously reffering to Ostrava, their hometown. There is a strange page recounting their tales, however it sadly does not exist anymore outside of archive.org. The studio specifically made Erotic content, sometimes with a whiff of fun, outside and storytelling, strangely specializing in spanking? At least they sometimes included men, though as far as I saw it was usually one of the brothers.

Italian Law

ITALIAN COPYRIGHT STATUTE Law for the Protection of Copyright and Neighbouring Rights

CHAPTER V

Rights in Photographs

Article 87

The images of persons, or of aspects, elements or events of natural or social life, obtained by photographic or analogous processes, including reproductions of works of figurative art and stills of cinematographic film, shall be considered photographs for the purposes of this Chapter. This provision shall not apply to photographs of writings, documents, business papers, material objects, technical drawings and similar products.

...

Article 92

The exclusive right in respect of photographs shall subsist for 20 years from the making of the photograph

Therefore this photograph of a movie where Laura Antonelli plays a Cello went out of protection in 1991.

The Prelinger Archives

In 1983 Rick Prelinger founded the Prelinger Archives, a collection of "ephemeral" movies. While originally being about "ephemerality", meaning movies which are products of their time made specifically for the audience of today and so have historical significance to understanding that time period. Adverts, recordings of experiments, historical events, home-videos, public service announcements, political debates and more, echoing bygone times. Obviously some of these will have sexual undertones or are simply recordings of burlesque shows.

• Main Site
• Archive.org

The Rest

The rest of the gallery is a random assortment of old photographs.