Australia- from www.brisbanetimes.com – Monica Mayhem had become accustomed to a certain degree of luxury in her sex life.

The Brisbane-born, US-based porn veteran once worked in Bel Air mansions, enjoying the pampering associated with dedicated costume designers and hefty budgets.

Then the internet came along.

Like video killed the radio star, the bright lights of the world’s pornographic film industry are being bound, gagged and held to ransom by the world wide web.

“It’s pretty bad,” says Ms Mayhem, who has 400 XXX American film credits to her name. “A lot of us are screwed.”

In town for Brisbane Sexpo, the articulate, attractive 31-year-old says dark clouds have gathered over California’s San Fernando Valley, the once thriving, spiritual home of pornographic film.

In a world of free online downloads, plummeting DVD sales and disappearing profits, Ms Mayhem says she knows directors who give the industry two more years, tops.

“All these little girls are coming in straight out of high school and thinking [porn] is glamorous and that they’ll be like [porn super star] Jenna Jameson,” Ms Mayhem says.

“And these little girls are coming in doing way hardcore things for $300 and ruining it for everyone.

“[What they] don’t realise is that’s never going to happen like [Jameson] again – that she was all marketing – and the industry is never going to be like it was.”

Getting people to pay attention to a poor porn star’s plight is no easy task, either.

“I don’t think people take us very seriously at all. We’re never going to have a union like SAG (the Screen Actors Guild) so no one is protected,” Ms Mayhem says.

“The companies can’t afford to pay the girls what they used to; they can’t afford to have the big productions in studios.”

A former futures trader in London, turned stripper, Ms Mayhem has been relatively quick to diversify across platforms, with her own book, Absolute Mayhem: Confessions of an Aussie Porn Star, and website. But even embracing the online trend comes with inherent risks.

“For me it’s pretty bad because of all the video piracy with my website,” she explains.

“Anyone can get anything they want of mine for free, from anywhere they want over the internet, so why would they want to join my website?”

Rob Godwin, general manager of Sexpo Australia, says while the audience for pornography is growing, society increasingly expects to be able to watch it for free.

“Most people will look at adult films online – it has become more accepted, to a degree, because of the proliferation of internet access – and I don’t think it’s been good for the industry,” Mr Godwin says.

“It’s not good for the 180 adult stores in Queensland or the actresses like Monica because there is so much free content out there… if anything, it’s harder to sell Sexpo because general society is a lot more sexually orientated due to the mainstream media and advertising.

“But taking off my Sexpo hat and just looking at it as an entrepreneur, then that’s business, as much as we lambast it, and you either adapt and develop or you suffer.”

With Sexpo celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Mr Godwin says change has been vital to its survival.

Part of that has been growing its female audience, to the point where 49 per cent of attendees are now women, he says.

“We’ve changed the show over the last two years. The majority of our retail stores are now aimed at females and our advertising is aimed at females because you’re not going to have too many blokes complaining when their partner suggests, `Let’s go to Sexpo.'”

But despite the increased competition, both online and in the real world, Mr Godwin says the more sex out there, the better.

“Then people have a choice. If they want to go online and look at some adult films, let them – if they want to come to Sexpo, they can.

“The world will always want sex and we will find a way to give it to them.”