Porn 101: UMaryland students’ porn film protest

The surest way to drum up interest in a porn movie on campus is to ban it

As reported by Time Magazine:

Silly politicians. Don’t they know the surest way to drum up interest in a porn movie on campus is to ban it? When a state senator threatened to strip funding from the University of Maryland over its plans to show a XXX-rated film in the student center, school officials nixed the event. But fired-up students responded on Monday by holding a free-speech demonstration that drew media coverage from as far away as Thailand and Australia.

The brouhaha is the result of a marketing strategy by porn company Digital Playground, which last summer started offering complimentary copies of Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge (a hardcore homage to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, animated skeleton pirates and all) to students on 100 college campuses. Many schools have already screened the film in venues ranging from a dorm room at Southern Connecticut State University to an 850-student audience in December at UCLA, where the film’s stars responded to questions and criticism about the porn industry.