"Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn't worth your life," says porn actor Derrick Burts to the LA Times, calling for mandatory condom use on porn shoots and saying, "Performers need to be educated." Burts, who goes by Cameron Reid in straight porn and Derek Chambers in gay porn, tested positive for HIV in October after contracting the virus on a gay porn shoot in Florida. Burts is straight, and says the only person he had had sex with privately was his girlfriend, who has tested negative. After Burts' positive test, half a dozen straight studios around LA halted production for a bit to "evaluate" the situation, but they have since returned to business as usual.

For those who aren't aware, a debate rages on in the porn industry about condom use, with the straight side of the industry never having made it mandatory though they try to cover themselves with regular testing of performers, and the gay side having made it mandatory at the major studio level in the mid-90s -- long after infection rates devastated the gay community. Bareback porn, however, produced by smaller and "amateur" gay producers is immensely popular these days, and the genre is seen as cutting into the already diminished profits of the larger studios, who have taken hits in recent years from the proliferation of free porn of various sorts on the internet.