Kink.com is a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

-based bondage internet pornography company that runs a group of

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...

devoted to

BDSM BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...

and related

fetishes A fetish (derived from the French , which comes from the Portuguese , and this in turn from Latin , 'artificial' and , 'to make') is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over ot ...

. Kink.com, along with Kink Studios, LLC, Hogtied.com and Behindkink.com are DBAs for Cybernet Entertainment LLC, the parent company that operates the studio. In March 2018, Alison Boden, the former VP of Technology, became the new CEO of Kink.com. She helmed the company until founder Peter Acworth returned in 2021.

Origin

Kink.com was started by UK native Peter Acworth in 1997 while he was a doctoral candidate in finance at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. After reading a story in a British tabloid about a fireman who made £250,000 in a short period by starting an Internet pornography website, Acworth decided to start a pornographic web site of his own. Since Acworth had what he described as a lifelong interest in bondage, he oriented the site toward BDSM pornography."A Disciplined Business"
by Jon Mooallem, ''

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

,'' April 29, 2007. The site was called Hogtied.com and initially featured content that was licensed from other primary producers. The site was successful and was soon grossing several thousand dollars per day. Acworth left his graduate studies to work on the site full-time. In 1998, Acworth moved the company from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Finding that sales were leveling off because other sites were using the same content, Acworth began producing his own material, initially featuring himself with various models whom he found through

Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...

or through his photographer friends. He opened the company's second site, Fucking Machines, in 2000," The Man Behind the Fucking Machines"
''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

,'' July 16, 2008 and has since opened 26 additional subscription Web sites. Several Web sites under the Kink.com umbrella feature directors who relocated following the demise of

Insex Insex was one of the biggest BDSM pornographic websites on the Internet and arguably the most extreme American pornographic production featuring female submissives. It was also a leading innovator in both live video streaming, pioneering the con ...

as a result of US government pressure in 2005, but offer more of a focus on consensuality than Insex was known for. National Guard Armory & Arsenal (San Francisco)

National Guard Armory & Arsenal (San Francisco)

Acquisition of the San Francisco Armory

In late 2006, Kink.com purchased the

San Francisco Armory The San Francisco Armory, also known as the San Francisco National Guard Armory and Arsenal or simply The Armory, is a historic building in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. As of 2018, it is owned by SF Armory LLC, an affiliate ...

for $14.5 million, for use as a production studio. A group known as the Mission Armory Community Collective formed to oppose Kink.com's use of the building and in early February 2007 held a public protest in front of the building."Kink hearing: The pornographer's purchase of the Armory faces more roadblocks"
by Deborah Giattina, ''

San Francisco Bay Guardian The ''San Francisco Bay Guardian'' was a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble. The paper was shut down on October 14, 2014. It was relaun ...

'', March 7, 2007. At one point, there were plans to demolish part of the building to make way for a condominium development. Such news brought in supporters who welcomed Kink.com's preservation of the historic building as part of an overall attempt to revitalize and bring back business to the area, without altering the appearance of the historic building."San Francisco Planning Commission - Special Public Hearing"
''SFGTV'', March 8, 2007. (link to streaming

Windows Media Video Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

and downloadable

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

audio) San Francisco mayor

Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman who has been the 40th governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th lieutenant governor of California f ...

also expressed concern over the Kink.com purchase, and scheduled a special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission in March 2007 to review the company's use of the building. The meeting was well-attended by both supporters and opponents of the Kink.com purchase. One opponent,

anti-pornography Reasons for opposition to pornography include religious objections and feminist concerns (for specific sectors of feminism), as well as alleged harmful effects, such as pornography addiction. Pornography addiction is not a condition recognized ...

campaigner

Melissa Farley Melissa Farley (born 1942) is an American clinical psychologist, researcher: "''Dr. Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher at the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco who directed the study with colleagues from Turkey and Af ...

compared the images produced by Kink.com to images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and testified against the purchase. The Planning Commission ruled that Kink.com was not in violation of any law or

zoning Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...

requirement. No welcome mat for adult film studio"
by Marisa Lagos, ''San Francisco Chronicle'', January 26, 2007"Planning Commission hears Kink.com case"
by Liz Highleyman, ''

Bay Area Reporter The ''Bay Area Reporter'' is a free weekly newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the largest-circulation LGBT newspapers in the United States, and the country's oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'', March 15, 2007. Although Kink.com has stated that its activities would be invisible to the surrounding neighborhood, La Casa de las Madres, a neighboring

women's shelter A women's shelter, also known as a women's refuge and battered women's shelter, is a place of temporary protection and support for women escaping domestic violence and intimate partner violence of all forms. The term is also frequently used to ...

, announced that they would be leaving the location because of the media scrutiny of Kink.com's presence. In addition to utilizing the Armory for its own productions, Kink.com also rents space in the historic building to local independent filmmakers to use as locations in non-pornographic narrative films and videos. By 2013 Kink.com was converting rooms at the Armory into webcam studios that independent

webcam model A webcam model ( colloquially, camgirl, camboy, or cammodel) is a video performer who streams on the Internet with a live webcam broadcast. A webcam model often performs erotic acts online, such as stripping, masturbation, or sex acts in exchan ...

s could rent. In January 2017, Kink.com announced that it would cease to use the Armory for film production. In 2018, Acworth sold the Armory for $65 million.

Specialty web sites

In 2007, the company's web site Fucking Machines was involved in a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

dispute when the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

refused to grant a trademark for the name of the site, asserting that it was obscene. Also in 2007, the company began streaming regular live shows, in part as a defense against

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

. By 2008 live shows were being streamed by Device Bondage, a Kink.com bondage site, and erotic wrestling site Ultimate Surrender began streaming its competitive matches live in 2008. Kink

In 2008, the company added on-demand technology to its web sites, selling updates to their websites on a per-episode basis rather than strictly by subscription. This system recently began adding third-party content, including that from Germany's '' Marquis''. Also in 2008, the company launched a site called Bound Gods, a gay bondage site directed by Van Darkholme (also the director of Naked Kombat). Bound Gods was launched under a new gay-focused division, KinkMen.com. In 2014, the company announced that it was stopping production on its "wildly popular" Public Disgrace and Bound in Public sites, and changing Hardcore Gangbangs to make it more explicitly the fantasy of the female participant. Kink announced that it was increasing educational efforts, with the aim of "demystifying alternative sexualities" and would be welcoming the public into The Armory. It wished to turn Kink.com into a lifestyle brand à la ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

''. As of 2022, their main network boasts over 90 channels, 27 are Kink exclusives from nine studios. Making it the largest fetish network to date. In October 2022, Kink launched KinkMen as its own, exclusive paysite within the Kink network, bringing in performers from across the male kink and fetish sphere, and feauring directors such as Dominic Pacifico and Micah Martinez.

Documentary

Fucking Machines top banner cropped to machine example

In 2013 ''

Kink Kink or KINK may refer to: Common uses * Kink (sexuality), a colloquial term for non-normative sexual behavior * Kink, a curvature, bend, or twist Geography * Kink, Iran, a village in Iran * The Kink, a man-made geographic feature in remote ea ...

'', a documentary, was made about the company.

Award nominations

* 2008, Kink.com was nominated for a 2009 AVN Award in a new category, Best Adult Web Site. * 2010

XBIZ Award XBIZ Awards are given annually to honour "individuals, companies, performers and products that play an essential part in the growth and success of adult films" and have been described by XBIZ publisher and founder Alec Helmy as being "born out of ...

Nominee - Innovative Company of the Year

Awards

* 2009 XBIZ Award - FSC Leadership Award * 2009 XBIZ Award - Original Web Content * 2011 AVN Award - Best Alternative Web Site * 2012 XBIZ Award - Fetish Studio of the Year * 2013 XBIZ Award - Specialty Site of the Year * 2013 AVN Award - Best Alternative Website * 2014 AVN Award - Best Alternative Web Site * 2014 AVN Award - Best Web Premiere - ''Public Disgrace 31515'' * 2014 XBIZ Award - Specialty Site of the Year * 2014 XBIZ Award - BDSM Site of the Year (DivineBitches.com) * 2015 XBIZ Award - Adult Site of the Year - BDSMXBIZ Award Winners
''

XBIZ XBIZ is an American publisher of business news and business information for the sex industry. In addition to its flagship "Xbiz.com" website, XBIZ publishes two monthly trade magazines, hosts winter and summer exhibition and industry conferenc ...

'', January, 2015 * 2015 CyberSocket Web Award - Best Hardcore/Fetish Site (KinkMen.com) * 2016 XBIZ Award - Adult Site of the Year - BDSM * 2016 CyberSocket Web Award - Best Hardcore/Fetish Site (KinkMen.com) * 2016 TEA Award - Best Scene (Yasmin Lee and Lucas Knight on TS Seduction) * 2016 AVN Award - Best Alternative Website * 2017 AVN Award - Best BDSM movie - ''Deception: A XXX Thriller'' * 2017 AVN Award - Best Alternative Website * 2017 XBIZ Award - Adult Site of the Year — BDSM * 2017 TEA Award - Best Scene (Threesome with Aubrey Kate, Will Havoc, and Phoenix Marie on TS Seduction) * 2017 StorErotica Award - Fetish Company of the Year (Kink by Doc Johnson) * 2017 Adultex Award - Best Fetish/Alternate Product Range (Kink by Doc Johnson) * 2018 XBIZ Award - BDSM Site of the Year * 2018 XBIZ Award - BDSM Release of the Year (''Whipped Ass 21: Masochistic MILFs'') * 2018 XBIZ Award - Fetish Product/Line of the Year (Kink by Doc Johnson) * 2018 StorErotica Award - BDSM Product of the Year (Power Banger Sex Machine, Kink by Doc Johnson) * 2018 CyberSocket Web Award - Best Hardcore/Fetish Site (KinkMen) * 2018 NightMoves Award - Best Fetish/Taboo/Specialty Release (''Hardcore Gangbang Parodies #3'')

References

External links

Official website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kink.Com Adult entertainment companies Bondage pornography BDSM-related mass media Companies based in San Francisco American erotica and pornography websites Fetish subculture Internet properties established in 1997 Mission District, San Francisco American pornographic film studios Pornography in San Francisco 1997 establishments in New York City