Since similar questions seem to come up with some regularity regarding Australia and our porn laws, I've decided to try to condense much of this information into a single post. I might at some stage rewrite it to make it more FAQ-ey, but not today. If I find out about any changes in the local laws, I'll also mention them as I find them out.
Cost Differences
One of the two best reasons to buy DVDs from overseas in my opinion and experience are getting the full disc, and the cost differences. Getting the full disc is deal with below, under the subheading of "Australian-Released Private and Evil Angel Titles" so I'll just point out the price differences here.
In most Adult Stores I've visited in Australia, a "new" disc will cost you approximately AU$55-65. Some places have some titles as low as $45 and some as high as $85, but the AU$60 median seems to be the usual.
Checking www.xe.com for an accurate price conversion today (22nd Feb, 2008) shows that AU$60 coverts to US$56.10. Right there you see how much we're overcharged locally. Two new release titles from most US studios will cost US$19.95-$22.95 from many of the online retailers here on ADT, plus usually US$5-8 for shipping from there to here.
So it's a trade-off. You going into Club X and buying a movie gets you a more limited choice, and you pay a lot more, but you get it now . If you order from overseas, you wait (usually) 5-14 days for your porn, but you'll either save a bunch of money, or get 2 DVDs of your choice for little more than you'd have paid locally including postage, if we don't count kickbacks, coupons and all the rest.
Ah! You say. But I can take my pre-watched movies back into Club XYZ and swap them over for new movies for a fee. I admit I used to swap discs from Club X from time to time, when the system allowed a swap for $25 so I could sometimes drop a disc entirely but pick up an original EA disc for less cash than it'd cost me from overseas but sadly those days are gone.
Since they put their new exchange price system into place around the start of 2005 the value has ended.
The Gold/Silver/Bronze thing is defined by the condition of the disc, so basically at the clerk's discretion and depending on which of the categories the disc was in when you first bought it from them. Brand-New and New Release discs are gold, by their definition.
Club X Exchange costs:
Gold-Gold $30
Silver-Gold $35
Silver-Silver $25
Bronze-Gold $40
Since I try to keep all of my discs in good condition by treating them carefully, the worst they get to would be Silver. So I'm in a position of wanting new discs, and having Gold or Silver to trade for them. Looking at that chart I'd be paying either AU$30 or $35 for a new release, plus giving them a disc back.
AU$30 works out to US$28 and AU$35 comes to.. US$32.75. So basically I can buy a new release for less, and keep my old discs to give away to a friend or sell/trade on something like the International DVD Trading Forum.
So yeah, as much as I used to enjoy browsing the local shelves and buying in the here and now, there's not much point anymore, for me at least when I can order from overseas and choose exactly what I want for half the price of buying new, and still save money compared to exchanging..

Buying from Overseas
Ordering from overseas for personal use (not in commercial quantities, ie 1s and 2s) is legal, provided you're not importing banned material (the usual list, plus anything thats been refused classification, though there are also some exceptions to the RC situation, things like Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer).
I'm also aware that one of the NuTech anime porn dvds has been seized by Aust customs at one stage, though I don't recall which one, but I assume it had some form of demon-rape scene as these things tend to have.
Personally I've ordered from the US and Europe many, many times, had shipments opened by customs many times, and never had a problem with anything getting siezed.
Australian Customs Information
Simply put, customs is concerned with the movement of items in and out of the country. Not with the movement of items within Australia. If something is illegal within our borders, it becomes the business of your state police or possibly tthe AFP if it's something really serious.
From the Australian customs Service website:
customs manages the security and integrity of Australia''s borders. It works closely with other government and international agencies, in particular the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and the Department of Defence, to detect and deter unlawful movement of goods and people across the border.
A little-known fact about importing things into Australia that I've mentioned once or twice before on these forums (but could not find) is the way customs operates here.
Customs are NOT ALLOWED to open the mail. Only Australia Post may do this.
Australia Post are NOT ALLOWED to randomly inspect people's international mail. Only customs Officers may do this.
This means incoming mail moves through a Facility called "Australian customs Postal Operations" where Aust Post and Aust customs employees work together. The Aust Post officer will open your mail, the customs Officer will inspect it, then the Postal Officer will reseal it. While it may seem to be a bit of a pointless doubling-up, it actually ensures extra safety for parcels coming in, as the teams/partners are rotated every so often, and noone wants to lose their job, it's much less likely here for some customs or Postal officer to decide to steal your mail once they open it and see what's in there.
Local Laws Regarding Ownership of Pornography
Follow This Link to the Eros Foundation's Website.
The Link lists Local Sex Laws in Australia in a handy tabular format.
Buying Porn Within Australia
It's (technically) illegal for shops to sell video/DVD porn over the counter in the various states, but not in the NT or ACT, however the authorities basically turn a blind eye to videos being sold over the counter in places like Club X and Sexyland etc etc (ie victimless crime and they have more important things to do).
Ordering from the ACT or the NT is perfectly legal due to laws about free trade betwene the stats and territories.
Where to shop locally? It all depends what you consider to be decent prices and range. Axis (http://www.axisshop.com/) have been around as a mail-order place forever. They used to be in the ACT, and then years ago moved to the NT, not sure where they are now. These days they're owned by adultshop.com (www.adultshop.com.au).
They have a very limited range, and you'll find that both websites have slightly different stock. You can combine items from both shops, but only by phoning your order through. Be sure and call the Axis line, and place it as an "Axis order" so you're entitled to the bulk discount.
Good things are they're quite cheap on EA titles, and amazingly so with the bulk discount thing happening. Bad points are as focusyn mentioned (and a point of many of my bitter complaints in the past here) that the discs they sell are local versions, so the EA titles have all the extra materials stripped out of them, and the Private Titles also have all the extras stripped out of them. I'm about to place an order for a few things to give them a test run. Of course, after I order they'll have nothing left I want for ages.. IMO they'd be someone to order from very occasionally at best.
While I'm sure Australia post screens internal packages for things like bombs and the like, DVDs are none of their concern. customs don't even factor into the equation as they're not at all involved with internal mail.
IMO anything advertised on the web by Kaosshop, or AXIS, or Adultshop or any of the other Australian mail order houses will be 99.9% be legal for you to buy via mail order. And even if something turned out to be suspect, you can easily claim reasonable doubt.
This is because anything they have openly for sale should be assumed to be legal. After all, their website is as accessable to Robert Alston or John Howard or the head of the Australian Federal Police as it is to you or I. It's not like an actual Club X shop where you have to go in, enter the back room and then search through the racks of DVDs - it's all right there in the (figurative) open.
Oh yeah, in addition to all of the above, a lot of these places use the various courier services to ship their product around. Some will use Aust Post expresspost parcels, but many will use courier services and so only travel through the couriers' internal transport network. - Again I'm sure they xray packages for bombs but I doubt they give two hoots about your choices of DVD...
Australian-Released Private and Evil Angel Titles

focusyn said:
A recent example of how bad the Private DVDs are here. I bought the PAL version of the 2 disc Collector's Edition of "Perfect" from a local online store. The price was average, but it was autographed by Jodie Moore so I thought why not. Movie arrives, it lists all the extras as the US one. Put in disc 1, movie, fine. Put in the other disc, it's the movie plus a bonus scene w/ Jodie Moore... that's it. Basically the same disc only with different menus and labelled as the extras disc. Crappy.
Yep I agree. I did buy a couple of Privates a year or two ago, before knowing the ones in the card covers were local stripped versions. I did end up keeping 3 of the 4 titles I bought - a comp which would not have had any extras anyway, a Reality title, which again only loses the extra previews, and Riviera 2, which shares the same extras as Riviera 1 and 3. The other one was the Virtualia with Sophie Evans, which I traded back in for an EA title, and replaced it with a real one.
Since then I've not bought a single Private title locally. The worst offenders locally are the Private Life of series, where the second disc is completely absent, and the annual Private "Best ofs" (ie 24 Karat, Odyssey, Millennium, Sex Non-Stop, etc) which were for a time sold as two seperate DVDs, the same as the video releases instead of compiled onto the one DVD, as they are everywhere else in the world.
Sadly these are the Private titles you'll find at Axis, adultshop.com.au, adultdvdwarehouse (and all their affiliates) and pretty much anywhere here in Australia.
The Evil Angel catalogue sadly suffers from the same fate in their local versions. The extras are consistantly removed from the discs in their PAL versions. Luckily (and unlike Private discs) there are quite a number of EA discs imported from the USA. The bad news here is that these can only be found in porn stores, as the online retailers are unlikely to have anything but the locally-licenced (and extra-less) local versions.
The "real" US ones can usually be easily identified by the distinctive red DVD cases, but the only way to be sure it's an original US imprint is to make sure it doesn't have an Australian "X" classification anywhere on the disc, and that all extras are listed.
Why won't the Imported Private Discs work on my console?
A note that might be useful for some with regard to the locally-produced vs Imported Private discs, I have had a retailer tell me that he preferred to stock the local ones because customers with X-Boxes and PS2s can't play the imported ones. This is because the imports have parental lock enabled and so do their consoles (by default). They just need to RTFM (Read The Fine Manual) and turn the locks off on their consoles and away they go.
Other Valuable and Interesting Posts regarding Porn in Australia
Posted by ADT Member: Ultrasiet
Jun 28 2004
I used to buy most of my stuff through kaosdvd.com which worked out really well, as they had a 'buy six get three free' deal. That meant my DVD's averaged in, including postage, at around the 26 dollar mark, not bad considering the range. Whenever I had a problem with discs scratched from manufacturing or in transit, I had them replaced without incident.
However, the deal is now gone, and while they have some decent specials - currently all the Orgy World lines and No Cum Dodging Allowed 1 & 2 are all 15 bucks Australia - they just aren't the option they used to be. They need to bring that special back, because there isn't a whole lot of incentive to order from them anymore.
So that leaves overseas options like Adultdvdnow.com, which I have used twice and an incident with a faulty disc pissed me off with them...but I may go with them again because of my paranoia with Aussie customs. Check this out Aussie folks, from the latest Eros journal issue, as reported by
refused-classification.com:
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This issue also contains an interesting letter from a reader in Adelaide who had his home raided after trying to import two films by art-house erotica director Andrew Blake. customs ended up walking away with 60 of his DVD's! He is obviously at a loss as to how he should deal with this issue and so wrote to The Eros Journal for advice. Here is their reply.
You are not alone here. Many Australians are now experiencing dawn raids on their homes by customs because they bought what they thought was an ordinary, non-violent erotic DVD from overseas. The problem here is that the DVD or video that is called X or XXX in another country is now a Refused Classification film in Australia, due to the unnecessary tightening of the guidelines for X material here by the Howard government. All it takes is a few seconds of really bad language ('assualtative language' in the jargon) or someone to throw a drink on someone or slap them on the face (or the arse sometimes) and the film will not pass the X classification. It basically knocks out any form of dramatic plot developments, so if you see an intelligent X rated video that looks like it might have a good story line or drama in it, don't try and import it.
Sorry, not much we can do here. You should engage a good customs lawyer and have him or her highlight the stupidity of the customs Regulations
which are at odds with the Classification Act.
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Well, this makes me a little nervous - I'm in NSW, and have not heard of any home raids in this State. In fact, generally suspect tapes/discs are confiscated and a warning letter issued...but hey, the strategy of customs appears to be changing. I mean, as far as I can see, Andrew Blake films have never been a problem with the OFLC in this country, which means some customs officer has decided from looking at the case or the footage in the film itself that it breached the guidelines for importation, organised a search warrant...etc.
In Western Australia, these sorts of raids are a dime a dozen, but X-rated films are technically illegal to possess there. Not so South Australia, so customs are enforcing Federal Law quite forcefully. Scary.
I'm very very cautious about buying any porn at all from overseas. You would think the way adultdvdnow does it is pretty safe, and so too adultdvdtoday from all reports. I'm surprised scipio's shipments have got through hunky dory, as quite a few Private films are under scrutiny thanks to RC classifications. I also think the cover to something like Weapons of Ass Destruction 3 would bother them - Tegan Presley with a ball-gag. They're not fond of ball-gags, hence Private's THE ACADEMY being Refused Classification until they removed footage of Lex Steele with a ball-gag in his mouth.
Even with the supposed discreet packaging of adultdvdtoday.com, it's a little disturbing customs is still opening each package. If they can take issue with Andrew Blake movies, what about a Jules Jordan? Or a Susie Medusa Gottardi title?
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Posted by ADT Member: Loraine
Jul 5 2004
I read the Eros Journal's letter re the Custom's raid when my copy arrived last month and had to pick my jaw up off the floor. A raid! I'm still shaking my head at that.
I still get confused here. Is anyone else? Anything labelled X or XXX overseas is now a Refused classification in Aust. It's not illegal to own film rated X by the OFLC. What about owning film that is unclassified by the OFLC? Which seems to be the case in the Eros letter.
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I believe Loraine also had another excellent post on a very similar topic, but I can't find it
An Interesting Link Regarding Films that have been Refused Classification in Australia
http://www.refused-classification.com
scipio
Edited by - scipio on Nov 2 2004
Edited by - Steph on Jul 8 2005
Edited by - scipio on Jul 10 2005
Edited by - Steph on Jul 10 2005

Edited by - scipio on Feb 27 2008