Adult performer Jessica Drake is one of the actors launching the campaign. Twitter/Jessica Drake Adult performers have launched a campaign to encourage fans to pay for the porn they watch, rather than pirating videos on the internet.

The Pay For Your Porn campaign, backed by publishers Adult Empire, argues that piracy is hurting the industry, and that porn fans need to take responsibility for that if they want the industry to remain sustainable.

"Purchasing content ensures it’s better produced, delivered in higher quality formats, more secure, and fosters the creation of new adult content," the campaign argues. "Porn piracy hurts everyone, from the creators behind the scenes to the porn stars fans love to watch.

"Everybody needs to make a living – theft only helps take away the ability of the tens of thousands of people in the adult industry," it adds.

The campaign was launched just as the actor Samuel L Jackson sparked outrage among porn performers by naming porn sharing site RedTube as one of the best pop culture achievements of the past 50 years. Jackson's comments led the adult star Catalina Cruz to call for a boycott of his movies, telling the Avengers actor that "these sites are stealing whole members' areas and have to potential to kill an industry."

The adult performer and sex educator Jessica Drake is one of the actors launching the campaign. "I can speak first hand about the very real effects of piracy on the entertainment industry and the economy. Piracy is a very serious criminal activity," she says. "Theft is also a violation of personal consent and ethics."

Megan Wozniak, who works for Adult Empire, argues that porn is in a trickier position than most media industries. "Unfortunately, porn still has a stigma attached to it, so we know that we won’t ever receive help or support from legislatures, that’s why we decided to rally together this grassroots campaign on our own and spread the word."

But some "tube"-style sites, which mimic YouTube's model of user uploads and free streaming, are attempting to build their own sustainable business model. Porn.com's David Kay, who says he is "100% behind the campaign", argues that his site's pay-per-view scheme "keeps a lot of content owners in business," by offering a cut of the ad revenue to studios which upload their own videos and clips to the site's system.

Just as the movie and music industries were forced to adapt in the face of piracy, becoming more user-friendly to win back customers who were used to getting what they wanted for free, Kay says the porn industry needs to change as well. "The industry needs to adopt "Netflix" pricing," he says, "of $7-$10 per month as opposed to the standard $39.95 monthly that you commonly see. We switched to this pricing years ago and are one of the few companies still flourishing."

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This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk