Video booth
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A video booth , single video booth , sex video booth or porn video booth is a single booth that can be locked from the inside and can be used to call up various "sex films" or porn films on television screens and to switch between different films during the paid usage period. Such video booths are usually installed as "room within a room" within a commercial space and are often part of the range of erotic and sex shops , but are also operated as sole porn film booths ("sex cinemas") with several to a large number of such individual booths . They are mostly to be found in the amusement miles, train station and red light districts of cities, as well as partly in commercial areas and in smaller towns. The companies are part of the sex industry .
Video booths with sex or porn films are almost exclusively used by men .
Video booths as part of the sex industry
Establishment and operation
Video booths consist of small, approximately 2 square meters large cells, which are mostly created from prefabricated partition walls by shopfitting companies. There are also manufacturers who have specialized in the interior design of sex shops with video booths and offer a complete service including video technology and its installation. Occasionally, single cabins can also be found that were built using drywall construction.
The individual cabins are equipped with doors that can be locked from the inside, a seat, a coin counter with a slot for money and control buttons for the customer to choose a film. There is a television screen in each booth for showing the selected sex films, often two, with the second screen allowing a preselection. The installation of the single cabins in the sex shops or cabin cinemas takes place in the form of row systems. The “ambience” is mostly factual, so you will find, among other things: “black upholstered seats, washable red plastic walls, a roll of paper towels on the wall”. Most of the cabins are now equipped with flat screens . In addition, video booth operations are increasingly being equipped with digital technology, with "control panels as control centers for film selection" and up to five flat screens in full HD technology being found in the booths .
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Nowadays, banknote acceptors as well as EC and credit cards are also accepted for payment . The prices for the use of the video booths or the film screenings are between EUR 1.00 and EUR 2.00 for 3 minutes . With the previous video technology with DVD players, the range of films usually comprised 32 to 128 films, while video booths with the new digital technology can choose from 1,000 sex films and more.
The consumers of video booths consist almost exclusively of men who want to arouse themselves sexually by watching the sex and porn films. Most of the time there is masturbation . The transitions from “anonymous pleasure satisfaction” to a behavior that is partly addictive are fluid. According to a study carried out in the USA and reported in 2003, "one in four men between the ages of 18 and 60 has experience with the porn video booth".
The industry
Market leaders in the field of “virtual sex” are those nationwide sex shop chains where video booths are part of the program, such as Beate Uhse AG and Seventh Heaven, the Dolly Buster Center and World of Sex (WOS). In addition, there are video booths in the numerous local sex shops, which were often created as early as the 1970s after pornography was legalized in Germany and are mostly owner-managed, as well as sex cinemas and booth porn movie theaters. According to the daily newspaper Die Welt , there were a total of around 500,000 video booths in Germany in 2003, which at the time "recorded record sales". Concrete sales figures or the total volume of the business with the video booths are not known. In 2002, the business magazine brand eins reported on estimates that at that time amounted to an annual turnover of around 500 million euros for the entire porn market in Germany , i.e. including the rental and sale of sex videos , video booths, porn channels in hotels and the TV broadcaster Beate-Uhse .TV operated by Beate Uhse AG for Premiere (today Sky Deutschland ), but without internet sex offers.
For comparison: the annual turnover generated with prostitution in Germany was estimated by the Federal Audit Office at around 6 billion euros in 2003 , assuming a figure of around 400,000 prostitutes and around 1.2 million men who pay for sexual services by prostitutes every day. Other estimates put prostitution sales around € 12.5 billion per year.
Meanwhile, the demand for “virtual sex” in video booths is now falling significantly. The market leader, Beate Uhse AG, blames digitization for this: "Customers [...] satisfy their needs from free providers of sex films on the Internet ". In addition, the erotica market with cheap porn films at a cost of five euros or less flooded'm so Beate Uhse chief Christian Lindemann 2008 at the presentation of the balance sheet for 2007, which for the erotic trading company for the first time since the IPO in 1999 a negative balance auswies . Lindemann announced that Beate Uhse AG wanted to convert its sex shops in the cities and remove the video booths. Only in industrial estates and on motorways does the company want to serve the “ hardcore- oriented customers” with film screenings in individual video booths and with harder magazines.
Tax treatment
Cinemas are generally viewed as cultural institutions and therefore receive a VAT reduction in Germany and other European countries , as cinema operators only have to pay a reduced tax rate. In Germany, for example, this is currently 7 percent, while the full VAT rate is 19 percent. The operators of porn cinemas benefit in part from this regulation. Many municipalities , however, in Germany collect some long-standing, a separate tax on "pleasures of a special kind" and tax "Sexdarbietungen" as porn cinemas and striptease , peep shows , sex fairs and table dance , partly brothels . Such “sex taxes” were levied in thirteen Hessian municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants in 2008 .
In individual cities, such as Giessen and Hamburg , such entertainment taxes are also payable by video booth companies. In addition, in Germany and other European countries, video booth operators are generally denied the benefits that cinemas are entitled to. The operator of a sex shop in Belgium took legal action against this, arguing that his business was one of those “cultural, sporting or entertainment establishments” which, according to a decree valid in Belgium, would benefit from the reduced VAT rate.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg ruled in this case in March 2010 that a “sex cinema” with individual video booths was not a cultural institution. The operator should therefore not use the reduced VAT rate of 6 percent (valid in Belgium) for cinemas, according to the judges, but must pay the full rate of 21 percent. The European Court of Justice found that watching sex films in individual booths did not entail the shared experience of going to the cinema and that it was therefore not a tax-privileged cultural event. With its judgment, the ECJ also confirmed the previous practice in Germany.
Copyright levies
In Germany, many manufacturers or producers of porn films are members of the GÜFA . This represents the legal interests of its affiliated authors and film producers or rightholders of film producer rights and other ancillary copyright holders who mainly deal with the production of erotic and pornographic films. Operators of video booths must therefore have a corresponding contract with GÜFA in order to be able to show films . Additional fees to GEMA may be required for music in the film . There are also comparable collecting societies in other European countries to which taxes have to be paid.
See also
literature
- Stephan Dressler, Christoph Zink (arrangement): Pschyrembel Dictionary Sexuality . Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-016965-7 (→ keyword: video booth ).
- Robert Jütte: History of the Senses. From ancient times to cyberspace . Verlag CH Beck, 2000, ISBN 3-406-46767-9 , p. 327.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Dirk C. Fleck: First he was a good husband, then came the addiction to porn. Die Welt , July 6, 2003, accessed March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ Titus Amu: The Degreasing. Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 4, 2008, archived from the original on March 24, 2010 ; Retrieved March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ Peter Lau: After the revolution. brand eins , archived from the original on February 17, 2010 ; accessed on March 26, 2010 (edition 10/2002).
- ↑ Carsten Holm: Whips for the Treasury. Der Spiegel No. 49/2003, December 1, 2003, p. 117 , accessed on March 26, 2010 .
- ^ Regulation of prostitution and prostitution facilities. (PDF file; 1.8 MB) Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth , May 2009, p. 51 , accessed on March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ Birger Nicolai: Beate Uhse is doing away with the video booths in city centers. Die Welt , April 1, 2008, accessed March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ a b c beck-current editors: ECJ: Operator of a sex cinema with individual video booths has to pay full VAT. In: beck-current. Verlag CH Beck, March 19, 2010, accessed on March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ a b Gesa Coordes: Sex tax is highest in Frankfurt. Frankfurter Rundschau , September 3, 2008, archived from the original on September 12, 2008 ; Retrieved March 26, 2010 .
- ↑ EU decides that sex booths are not cinemas. Die Welt , March 18, 2010, accessed March 26, 2010 .
