Internet pornography is any
pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, that is accessible over the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, primarily via
website
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 Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
s,
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
servers
peer-to-peer file sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program tha ...
, or
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
newsgroups. The availability of widespread public access to the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
in late 1990s led to the growth of internet pornography.
A 2015 study finds "a big jump"
[ in pornography viewing over the past few decades, with the largest increase occurring between people born in the 1970s and those born in the 1980s. While the study's authors note this increase is "smaller than ]conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom or received opinion is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field. In religion, this is known as orthodoxy.
Etymology
The term is often credited to the economist John K ...
might predict," it's still quite significant. Those who were born in the 1980s onward are also the first to grow up in a world where they have access to the internet beginning in their teenage years, and this early exposure and access to internet pornography may be the primary driver of the increase. The sex and tech conference series Arse Elektronika
Arse Elektronika is an annual conference organized by the Austrian arts and philosophy collective monochrom, focused on sex and technology. The festival presents talks, workshops, machines, presentations and films. The festival's curator is Johann ...
dedicated their 2007 conference to what they call ''pr0nnovation''. The con presented a keynote by culture theorist Mark Dery
Mark Dery (born December 24, 1959)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Mark Dery" (accessed February 12, 2008). is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. An early observer and critic of online culture, he helped to popularize the ter ...
and published a reader about the subject.
, a single company, MindGeek
MindGeek (formerly Manwin) is a Luxembourg-based, privately held company with Canada as its center of operations that primarily focuses on pornography. It is owned by Feras Antoon, Bernd Bergmair (Bernard Bergemar), David Marmorstein, and — mo ...
, owns and operates many popular pornographic
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of Human sexual activity, sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, websites, including video sharing services Pornhub
Pornhub is a Canadian-owned internet pornography website. It is one of several pornographic video-streaming websites owned by MindGeek. , Pornhub is the 10th-most-trafficked website in the world and the second-most-trafficked adult website aft ...
, RedTube
RedTube is a pornographic video sharing site, which in September 2009 held an Alexa ranking within the world's top 100 sites. It is one of several pornographic websites owned by Mindgeek. In June 2010 it had fallen out of the top 100, but it ...
, and YouPorn
YouPorn is a free pornographic video sharing website and one of the 100 most accessed websites in the world. Since launching in August 2006, it grew to become one of the most popular pornographic website on the internet, and, in November 2007 ...
, as well as adult film
Pornographic films (pornos), erotic films, sex films, and 18+ films are films that present sexually explicit subject matter in order to arouse and satisfy the viewer. Pornographic films present sexual fantasies and usually include eroticall ...
producers Brazzers
Brazzers (, company name: MG Premium Ltd.) is a Canadian pornographic video production company with headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and legal domicile in Nicosia, Cyprus. With an online network consisting of thirty-one hardcore pornog ...
, Digital Playground
Digital Playground Inc. is an American pornographic film studio, headquartered in Burbank, Los Angeles, California, Burbank, California. It has been called one of the five biggest porn studios and, in 2006, was described by Reuters as one of t ...
, Men.com
Men.com is a producer of Gay pornography, Gay Internet pornography, internet pornography content. It is owned by MindGeek.
The domain name was purchased in December 2003 from entrepreneur Rick Schwartz for $1.3 million. Many porn stars have made ...
, Reality Kings
Reality Kings (company name: MG Premium Ltd.) is a brand launched by RK Netmedia, an internet-based hardcore pornography production company operating out of Miami Beach, Florida.
Acquisition by MindGeek
A merger notification (with Manwin) was ...
, and Sean Cody
Sean Cody (company name: MG Premium Ltd.) is a gay pornography label founded in fall 2001. The website predominantly features young, muscular men in solo and hardcore bareback scenes. Sean Cody has a strict model selection, with contracts requi ...
, among others, but does not own the websites xHamster
xHamster is a Cypriot pornographic media and social networking site headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus. xHamster serves user-submitted pornographic videos, webcam models, pornographic photographs, and erotic literature and incorporates social n ...
and XVideos
XVideos, stylized as XVIDEOS, is a pornographic video sharing and viewing website. Founded in Paris in 2007, the website is now registered to the Czech company WGCZ Holding. , it is the most visited pornographic website and the tenth most visited ...
. It has been alleged to be a monopoly.
History and methods of distribution
Before the World Wide Web
Pornography is regarded by some as one of the driving forces behind the expansion of the World Wide Web, like camcorder
A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swa ...
s, VCR
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording. ...
s and cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
before it. Pornographic images had been transmitted over the internet as ASCII porn
The term ASCII porn –sometimes typographically euphemized as "ASCII pr0n" Kerstin Mey, ''Art and Obscenity'', I.B.Tauris, 2007, p155. – describes pornographic images consisting of ASCII art. ASCII porn was the world's first Internet pornograp ...
but to send images over network needed computers with graphics capability and also higher network bandwidth. This was possible in the late 1980s and early 1990s through the use of anonymous FTP servers and through the Gopher protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to ...
. At this time the internet had widespread ever since the late 1970s. One of the early Gopher/FTP sites was at Tudelft and was called the Digital Archive on the 17th Floor, This small image archive contained some low quality scanned pornographic images that were initially available to anyone anonymously, but the site soon became restricted to Netherlands only access, Pornographic videos started appearing on FTP and Gopher servers as well.
Usenet groups
Usenet newsgroup
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...
s provided an early way of sharing images over the narrow bandwidth available in the early 1990s. Because of the network restrictions of the time, images had to be encoded as ascii text and then broken into sections before being posted to the Alt.binaries of the usenet. These files could then be downloaded and then reassembled before being decoded back to an image. Automated software such as Aub (''Assemble Usenet Binaries'') allowed the automatic download and assembly of the images from a newsgroup. There was a rapid growth in the number of posts in the early 1990s but image quality was restricted by the size of files that could be posted.
The method was also used to disseminate pornographic images, which were usually scanned from adult magazine
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is ...
s. This type of distribution was generally free (apart from fees for internet access), and provided a great deal of anonymity. The anonymity made it safe and easy to ignore copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
restrictions, as well as protecting the identity of uploaders and downloaders. Around this time frame, pornography was also distributed via pornographic Bulletin Board System
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
s such as Rusty n Edie's. These BBSes could charge users for access, leading to the first commercial online pornography.
A 1995 article written in ''The Georgetown Law Journal
''The Georgetown Law Journal'' is a student-edited scholarly journal published at Georgetown University Law Center. It is the flagship law review of the Georgetown University Law Center.
Overview
The ''Georgetown Law Journal'' is headquartere ...
'' titled "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces and Territories" by Martin Rimm, a Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
graduate student, claimed that (as of 1994) 83.5% of the images on Usenet newsgroups where images were stored were pornographic in nature. Before publication, Philip Elmer-DeWitt Philip Elmer-DeWitt (born September 8, 1949) is an American writer and editor. He was ''Time (magazine), Time'' first computer writer—producing much of the magazine's early coverage of personal computers and the Internet—and for 12 years its sci ...
used the research in a ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine article, "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn." The findings were attacked by journalists and civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
advocates who insisted the findings were seriously flawed. "Rimm's implication that he might be able to determine 'the percentage of all images available on the Usenet that are pornographic on any given day' was sheer fantasy" wrote Mike Godwin
Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as ...
in HotWired
''Hotwired'' (1994–1999) was the first commercial online magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of the print magazine ''Wired'', ''Hotwired'' carried original content.
History
Andrew Anker, Wired's then Vice Presid ...
. The research was cited during a session of U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
. The student changed his name and disappeared from public view. Godwin recounts the episode in "Fighting a Cyberporn Panic" in his book '' Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age''.
The invention of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
spurred both commercial and non-commercial distribution of pornography. The rise of pornography websites offering photos, video clips and streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
including live webcam
A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral d ...
access allowed greater access to pornography.
Free vs. commercial
On the Web, there are both commercial and free pornography sites. The bandwidth usage of a pornography site is relatively high, and the income a free site can earn through advertising may not be sufficient to cover the costs of that bandwidth. One recent entry into the free pornography website market are Thumbnail gallery post
A thumbnail gallery post (TGP) is a website that provides links to free Internet pornography. TGP sites consist of categorized lists (more often tables) of small pictures (called "thumbnails") linked to full-size images or redirected to another we ...
sites. These are free websites that post links to commercial sites, providing a sampling of the commercial site in the form of thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image ...
images, or in the form of Free Hosted Galleries—samplings of full-sized content provided and hosted by the commercial sites to promote their site. Some free websites primarily serve as portals by keeping up-to-date indexes of these smaller sampler sites. These intents to create directories about adult content and websites were followed by the creation of adult wikis where the user can contribute their knowledge and recommend quality resources and links. When a user purchases a subscription to a commercial site after clicking through from a free thumbnail gallery site, the commercial site makes a payment to the owner of the free site. There are several forms of sites delivering adult content.
TGP
The most common form of adult content is a categorized list (more often a table) of small pictures (called "thumbnails") linked to galleries. These sites are called a thumbnail gallery post
A thumbnail gallery post (TGP) is a website that provides links to free Internet pornography. TGP sites consist of categorized lists (more often tables) of small pictures (called "thumbnails") linked to full-size images or redirected to another we ...
(TGP). As a rule, these sites sort thumbs by category and type of content available on a linked gallery. Sites containing thumbs that lead to galleries with video content are called MGP (movie gallery post). The main benefit of TGP/MGP is that the surfer can get a first impression of the content provided by a gallery without actually visiting it.
However, TGP sites are open to abuse, with the most abusive form being the so-called CJ (abbreviation for circlejerk), that contains links that mislead the surfer to sites he or she actually did not wish to see. This is also called a redirect
Redirect and its variants (e.g., redirection) may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Redirect'', 2012 Christian metal album and its title track by Your Memorial
* ''Redirected'' (film), a 2014 action comedy film
Computing
* ICMP Re ...
.
Linklists
Linklists, unlike TGP/MGP sites, do not display a huge number of pictures. A linklist is a (frequently) categorised web list of links to so-called "freesites*", but unlike TGPs, links are provided in a form of text, not thumbs. It's still a question which form is more descriptive to a surfer, but many webmasters cite a trend that thumbs are much more productive, and simplify searching. On the other hand, linklists have a larger amount of unique text, which helps them improve their positions in search engine listings. TopLists are linklists whose internal ranking of freesites is based on incoming traffic from those freesites, except that freesites designed for TopLists have many more galleries.
Usenet
Another free source of pornography on the internet are the Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
newsgroups that were the first home to such material. Newsgroups tend to be poorly organized and flooded with content that is off-topic In the context of mailing lists, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and
wikis a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is.
Even on very specialized fo ...
or spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
. Commercial software and websites are available that allow browsing the images or videos on newsgroups, sometimes with galleries of thumbnail images.
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
file sharing networks provide another form of free access to pornography. While such networks have been associated largely with the illegal sharing of copyrighted music and movies, the sharing of pornography has also been a popular use for file sharing. Many commercial sites have recognized this trend and have begun distributing free samples of their content on peer-to-peer networks.
Men and women viewers
As of 2011, the majority of viewers of online pornography were men; women tended to prefer romance novel
A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Pre ...
s and erotic fan fiction
Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settin ...
. Women comprised about one quarter to one third of visitors to popular pornography websites, but were only 2% of subscribers to pay sites. Subscribers with female names were flagged as signs of potential credit card fraud
Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The P ...
, because "so many of these charges result in an angry wife or mother demanding a refund for the misuse of her card." Nonetheless, women spend more time on pornography websites, particularly Pornhub
Pornhub is a Canadian-owned internet pornography website. It is one of several pornographic video-streaming websites owned by MindGeek. , Pornhub is the 10th-most-trafficked website in the world and the second-most-trafficked adult website aft ...
, than men and were more interested in pornography upon marriage.
Internet pornography formats
Image files
Pornographic images may be either scanned into the computer from photographs or magazines, produced with a digital camera or a frame
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
*Framing (con ...
from a video before being uploading onto a pornographic website. The JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
format is one of the most common formats for these images. Another format is GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...
which may provide an animated image where the people in the picture move. It can last for only a second or two up to a few minutes and then reruns (repeats) indefinitely. If the position of the objects in the last frame is about the same as the first frame, there is the illusion of continuous action.
Video files and streaming video
Pornographic video clips may be distributed in a number of formats, including MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...
, WMV
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 QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is avai ...
. More recently, VCD
Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the ...
and DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
image files allow the distribution of whole VCDs and DVDs. Many commercial porn sites exist that allow one to view pornographic streaming video. As of 2020, some internet pornography sites have begun offering 5K resolution
5K resolution refers to display formats with a horizontal resolution of around 5,000 pixels. The most common 5K resolution is , which has an aspect ratio of with around 14.7 million pixels (just over seven times as many pixels as 1080p Full HD) ...
content, while 1080p
1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vert ...
and 4K resolution
4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K Ultra-high-definitio ...
are still more common.
Since mid-2006, advertising-supported free pornographic video sharing
An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...
websites based on the YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
format have appeared. Referred to as Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0, named after "Web 2.0", refers to pornographic websites featuring user-generated content, including social networking features such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting, blogs and comments. This is in contrast to the static conten ...
, these sites generally use Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Barry Allen)
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Wally West, the first Kid ...
technology to distribute videos that were uploaded by users; these include user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
as well as scenes from commercial porn movies and advertising clips from pornographic websites.
Webcams
Another format of adult content that emerged with the advent of the internet is live webcams
A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral de ...
. Webcam content can generally be divided into two categories: group shows offered to members of an adult paysite, and one-on-one private sessions usually sold on a pay-per-view basis.
Server-based webcam sex shows spur unique international economics: adult models in various countries perform live webcam shows and chat for clients in affluent countries. This kind of activity is sometimes mediated by companies that will set up websites and manage finances. They may maintain "office" space for the models to perform from, or they provide the interface for models to work at home, with their own computer with webcam. As of 2020, most so-called cam hosts stream directly from their home, due to the fast internet lines and cheap HD webcams, that are available at low-cost. The models get paid via tips or by selling exclusive content to their viewers through live cam sites, which can reach more than 20,000 viewers at once. Live cam sites are very popular. Big sites like Chaturbate
Chaturbate is a pornographic website providing live webcam performances by individual webcam models and couples, typically featuring nudity and sexual activity ranging from striptease and erotic talk to more explicit sexual acts such as mas ...
or LiveJasmin
LiveJasmin (company name: JWS Americas S.à r.l.) is an adult website emphasizing live streaming and related services, typically featuring nudity and sexual activity ranging from striptease and dirty talk to masturbation with sex toys and ful ...
are among the 100 most popular websites according to Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.
Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. ...
.
Other formats
Other formats include text and audio files. While pornographic and erotic stories, distributed as text file
A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating ...
s, web pages, and via message boards and newsgroups, have been semi-popular, audio porn, via formats like 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 ...
and FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are ...
, have increased in popularity. Audio porn can include recordings of people having sex or merely reading erotic stories. (Pornographic magazines are available in Zinio format, which provides a reader program to enable access.)
Combination formats, such as webteases that consist of images and text have also emerged.
Legal status
The Internet is an international network and there are currently no international laws regulating pornography; each country deals with internet pornography differently. Generally, in the United States, if the act depicted in the pornographic content is legal in the jurisdiction that it is being distributed ''from'' then the distributor of such content would not be in violation of the law regardless of whether it is accessible in countries where it is illegal. This does not apply to those who ''access'' the pornography, however, as they could still be prosecuted under local laws in their country. Due to enforcement problems in anti-pornography laws over the internet, countries that prohibit or heavily restrict access to pornography have taken other approaches to limit access by their citizens, such as employing content filter
An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software dete ...
s.
Many activists and politicians have expressed concern over the easy availability of internet pornography, especially to minors. This has led to a variety of attempts to restrict children's access to internet pornography such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case ''Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...
in the United States. Some companies use an Adult Verification System
An age verification system, also known as an age gate, is a technical protection measure used to restrict access to digital content from those who are not appropriately-aged. These systems are used primarily to restrict access to content classifie ...
(AVS) to deny access to pornography by minors. However, most Adult Verification Systems charge fees that are substantially higher than the actual costs of any verification they do (for example, in excess of $10/month) and are really part of a revenue collection scheme where sites encourage users to sign up for an AVS system, and get a percentage of the proceeds in return.
In response to concerns with regard to children accessing age-inappropriate content, the adult industry, through the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP)
The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) is an American nonprofit organization that fights Internet child pornography and works to help parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate material online.
Most of ASACP's f ...
, began a self-labeling initiative called the Restricted to Adults label (RTA). This label is recognized by many web filtering products and is entirely free to use.
Most employers have distinct policies against the accessing of any kind of online pornographic material from company computers, in addition to which some have also installed comprehensive filters and logging software in their local computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
s.
One area of internet pornography that has been the target of the strongest efforts at curtailment is child pornography
Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...
. Because of this, most internet pornography websites based in the U.S. have a notice on their front page that they comply with 18 USC Section 2257, which requires the keeping of records regarding the age of the people depicted in photographs, along with displaying the Name of the company record keeper. Some site operators outside the U.S. have begun to include this compliance statement on their websites as well.
On April 8, 2008 Evil Angel and its owner John Stagliano
John Stagliano (born November 29, 1951), also known as Buttman, is an American entrepreneur, former pornographic film actor, producer and director who founded and owns the Evil Angel pornographic film studio.
Early life and career
Stagliano gr ...
were charged in federal court with multiple counts of obscenity
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...
. One count was for, "using an interactive computer service to display an obscene movie trailer in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age."
Web filters and blocking software
A variety of content-control
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
, parental control
''Parental Control'' is a reality television show about people looking for love produced by MTV. The two directors, Brendon Carter and Bruce Klassen, have also created other MTV shows.
In Asia, this show was aired on Channel V from 2007–2009. ...
and filtering
Filter, filtering or filters may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
* Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming
* Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream
* Filter (video), a software component tha ...
software is available to block pornography and other classifications of material from particular computers or (usually company-owned) networks. Commercially available Web filters include Bess, Net Nanny, SeeNoEvil, SurfWatch SurfWatch, Inc. was a Los Altos, CA-based company which pioneered the first widely available filtering software that allowed users to block explicit content on the Internet. By disallowing computers from accessing specified sites and by screening fo ...
, and others. Various work-arounds and bypasses are available for some of these products; Peacefire
Peacefire is a U.S.-based website, with a registered address in Bellevue, Washington, dedicated to "preserving First Amendment rights for Internet users, particularly those younger than 18". It was founded in August 1996 by Bennett Haselton, wh ...
is one of the most notable clearinghouses for such countermeasures.
Child pornography
The Internet has radically changed how child pornography
Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a chi ...
is reproduced and disseminated, and, according to the United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
, resulted in a massive increase in the "availability, accessibility, and volume of child pornography." The production of child pornography has become very profitable, bringing in several billion dollars a year, and is no longer limited to pedophiles. Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins (born April 3, 1952) is a professor of history at Baylor University in the United States, and co-director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the Edwin Erle Sp ...
notes that there is "overwhelming evidence that hild pornographyis all but impossible to obtain through nonelectronic means."
In 2006, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with a regional presence in Brazil, Singapore, and Australia, is a private 501(c)(3) non-governmental, nonprofit global organization. It com ...
(ICMEC) published a report of findings on the presence of child pornography legislation in the then-184 INTERPOL
The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...
member countries. It later updated this information, in subsequent editions, to include 196 UN member countries. The report, entitled “Child Pornography: Model Legislation & Global Review,” assesses whether national legislation: (1) exists with specific regard to child pornography; (2) provides a definition of child pornography; (3) expressly criminalizes computer-facilitated offenses; (4) criminalizes the knowing possession of child pornography, regardless of intent to distribute; and (5) requires ISP
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s to report suspected child pornography to law enforcement or to some other mandated agency.
ICMEC stated that it found in its initial report that only 27 countries had legislation needed to deal with child pornography offenses, while 95 countries did not have any legislation that specifically addressed child pornography, making child pornography a global issue worsened by the inadequacies of domestic legislation. The 7th Edition Report found that still only 69 countries had legislation needed to deal with child pornography offenses, while 53 did not have any legislation specifically addressing the problem. Over seven years of research from 2006–12, ICMEC and its Koons Family Institute on International Law and Policy report that they have worked with 100 countries that have revised or put in place new child pornography laws.[Permanent Bureau (February 2004)]
"Strategic Plan Update, submitted by the Permanent Bureau"
Hague Conference on Private International Law, Preliminary Document # 14, p. 6[The Koons Family Institute on International Law and Policy (2012]
"Child Pornography: Model Legislation & Global Review"
, 7th Edition
The NCMEC
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress. In September 2013, the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, and the Pres ...
estimated in 2003 that 20 percent of all pornography traded over the internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the internet had increased by 1500 percent. Regarding internet proliferation, the US DOJ states that "At any one time there are estimated to be more than one million pornographic images of children on the Internet, with 200 new images posted daily." They also note that a single offender arrested in the United Kingdom possessed 450,000 child pornography images, and that a single child pornography site received a million hits in a month. Further, much of the trade in child pornography takes place at hidden levels of the internet. It has been estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 pedophiles are involved in organized pornography rings around the world, and that one third of them operate from the United States. Digital cameras and internet distribution facilitated by the use of credit cards and the ease of transferring images across national borders has made it easier than ever before for users of child pornography to obtain the photographs and videos.
In 2007, the British-based Internet Watch Foundation
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a registered charity based in Cambridge, England. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhe ...
reported that child pornography on the internet was becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse had risen fourfold since 2003. The CEO stated "The worrying issue is the severity and the gravity of the images is increasing. We're talking about prepubescent children being raped." About 80 percent of the children in the abusive images were female, and 91 percent appeared to be children under the age of 12. Prosecution is difficult because multiple international servers are used, sometimes to transmit the images in fragments to evade the law.
See also
* Cybersex
Cybersex, also called computer sex, Internet sex, netsex and, colloquially, cyber or cybering, is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more people have long distance sex via electronic video communication (webcams, VR headsets, etc) and other e ...
* Internet sex addiction
Internet sex addiction, also known as cybersex addiction, has been proposed as a sexual addiction characterized by virtual Internet sexual activity that causes serious negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, and/or financial well- ...
* Adult movie theater
An adult movie theater is a euphemistic term for a movie theater dedicated to the exhibition of pornographic films.
Adult movie theaters show pornographic films primarily for either a respectively heterosexual or homosexual audience. For the patro ...
* Amateur pornography
Amateur pornography is a category of pornography that features models, actors or non-professionals performing without pay, or actors for whom this material is not their only paid modeling work. Reality pornography is made porn that seeks to em ...
* Revenge porn
* Sexting
Sexting is sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or videos, primarily between mobile phones. It may also include the use of a computer or any digital device. The term was first popularized early in the 21st ...
* Susanna Paasonen
Susanna Paasonen (born 1975, Helsinki) is a Finnish feminist scholar. She is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku, and was a visiting scholar at MIT in 2016. She gained her PhD from the University of Turku in 2002; her dissert ...
* MindGeek
MindGeek (formerly Manwin) is a Luxembourg-based, privately held company with Canada as its center of operations that primarily focuses on pornography. It is owned by Feras Antoon, Bernd Bergmair (Bernard Bergemar), David Marmorstein, and — mo ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
External links
XBIZ, Adult Internet News, Market Analysis Articles, and Webmaster Resources
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20130609112627/http://antonellagambottoburke.com/opinion/pornography/ "Cyberporn: The Crack Cocaine of Sexual Addiction,"by Antonella Gambotto-Burke
Antonella Gambotto-Burke (née Antonella Gambotto, born 19 September 1965) is an Italian-Australian author, journalist and singer-songwriter based in Kent, England, known for her writing about sex, death and motherhood.
Gambotto-Burke is best k ...
, ''Men's Style'', December 2006
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Internet Pornography
Internet
New media
Multimedia
Internet censorship