The OP appears to be mostly talking about porn, but your points seem to be mostly addressing prostitution.
Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal system from further punishing women who are being exploited.
Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too.
Yes, there are issues of exploitation and licensing. They are at both places - maybe less for porn because it’s not as much in the shadows. Bring sex work out of the shadows. Just normalize it.
> Isn’t prostitution essentially porn without the cameras? Why ostracize legal prostitution? If porn is allowed, prostitution should be too.
IIRC, porn would be illegal, except the performance aspect gave it First Amendment cover. It might also be significant that porn seems to have traditionally involved a 3rd party paying two people to have sex, so that's arguably not prostitution. It's probably arguably illegal prostitution if one person pays another to sex with them and films it. You can't videotape an illegal act to make it legal.
The camera provides a record of the transaction for tax purposes.
Prostituion is much harder to monitor, especially when the buyer also has incentive to pretend that the transaction didn't take place.
There are, perhaps, solutions that could be developed to deal the problem but if you are the lawmaker why would you go out of your way to make your job harder?
The system failed to act as intended then, and I'd honestly not be remisced if I didn't mention it creating new victims. The people staring at that data and making laws know this; it's not like they're unaware and yet these systems are still staples. At some point you have to sit back and question whether they're actually trying to solve a problem at all.
Prostitution has long considered an disreputable and undesirable activity, and it along with other types of sex work are often tightly coupled with involuntary exploitation. A lot of the stuff that you're criticizing derives from attempts to continue to legally discourage prostitution while preventing the legal system from further punishing women who are being exploited.