Employment Status on a Spectrum: Porn Content Creators as Limb (b) Workers?

Abstract Pornography is a global multibillion dollar industry in which porn content creators (PCCs) work in precarious conditions, associated with the fact that their work is both sex work proper and an instance of the gig economy. While legal scholars tend to look at the links between pornography and obscenity laws, little work has been done to look at pornography as a business and a working environment. This paper sets out to fill this gap in existing literature by assessing PCCs’ employment status under UK labour law in light of eight semi-structured interviews. The empirical data show that, although currently PCCs operate as if they were self-employed individuals running their own business through porn platforms, they should be classified as limb (b) workers under the 1996 Employments Rights Act. On the employment status spectrum, they are in the grey area between self-employed and employees. A purposive approach to their employment reality shows that platforms have employer-like power as they firmly integrate PCCs into their business for which porn services are essential for running. PCCs therefore should be empowered through rights associated with limb (b) worker status to avoid being exploited at the hands of porn platforms.