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Variety reports that the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation and Adult Video News, the industry's trade publication, have called for all porn production to shut down for two months after actor Darren James tested positive for the virus. (Actually, AVN's editors urged a shutdown or a switch to condom-only productions.) Reuters follows up with a story that the two months off would be used to test the 14 actresses who have recently had onscreen sex with James, and those women's 35 subsequent sex partners. Also, the L.A. website Pornblography (adult content) wades tentatively into the issue while covering a shoot this week involving porn star Janine Lindemulder -- her scheduled partner did not appear because he was "in quarantine" over the HIV scare. And for a marker of how far porn has crossed over into mainstream culture, today's "At Home" feature in the New York Times Home and Garden section visited demurely with porn star Jenna Jameson at her mansion in Scottsdale. The website Fleshbot also has been asking readers to send in gossip sightings of porn stars around town, and has been getting lots of response.
* Update: Adult Video News reports online that Lara Roxx, a perforrmer who worked with James, has tested positive (after only three months in the business). The trade names the actors and actresses who have worked recently with one of the infected performers, and gives a roundup of the industry's reaction, including most major producers halting filming.
** And: Brian Flemming blogs on the contrast between the regulations he had to comply with to shoot films in L.A., and the lack of rules that govern teenager Lara Roxx doing unprotected double-anal with an HIV-positive actor in front of porn cameras in the Valley.
*** Friday Update: Five reporters are credited on Friday's LAT story on the porn biz reeling. Plus a graphic tracing the pyramid of James' sexual partners possibly exposed. Daily News story.