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History and Technology

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Does Your Mother Know What You Really Do? The Changing Nature and Image of Computer-Based Pornography
Jonathan Coopersmith

To cite this Article Coopersmith, Jonathan(2006) 'Does Your Mother Know What You Really Do? The Changing Nature

and Image of Computer-Based Pornography', History and Technology, 22: 1, 1 25 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/07341510500508610 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341510500508610

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History and Technology Vol. 22, No. 1, March 2006, pp. 125

Does Your Mother Know What You Really Do? The Changing Nature and Image of Computer-Based Pornography
Jonathan Coopersmith
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Pornography has historically been closely connected with the rise of communication technologies, often providing male customers the justification to become early adopters. In recent decades, the digitalization of data, the Internet, and the World Wide Web have accelerated this trend. Cybersexelectronic pornographyhas proved an early and profitable market for almost every new computer-based service. As well as providing revenues, cybersex has also trailblazed new business and operational practices that later diffuse to other markets.
JonathanCoopersmith History 10.1080/07341510500508610 GHAT_A_150844.sgm 0734-1512 Original Taylor 2006 0 1 22 j-coopersmith@tamu.edu 00000March & and Article Francis (print)/1477-2620 Technology 2006Ltd (online) and Francis

Keywords: Pornography; Cybersex; Internet; E-commerce


The way you know if your technology is good and solid is if its doing well in the porn world. Susan Struble, Sun Microsystems spokeswoman, 20011

Pornography has been an increasingly visible aspect of the information revolutions of the last decades. This should not be surprising. Historically, pornography has tightly intertwined with the diffusion of new communication technologies, ranging from the printed book to the photograph and VCR.2 Pornography has usually been a hidden and often illegal market, one with few questions asked and fewer answers given. As the purveyors of pornography have shifted from the black (illegal) to grey (legal and low profile) and white (legal and normal profile) markets, its profits and prominence have increased. The role of pornography in shaping the development of new information and communications technologies (ICT) has been most explicit and important in the digitization of data. The explosive growth of the Internet, World Wide Web, and computers in businesses and homes has moved cybersex from the secretive habit of the few to the enjoyment
ISSN 07341512 (print)/ISSN 14772620 (online) 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/07341510500508610

J. Coopersmith

of the many, removing the biggest obstacles to selling pornography and sexual services: shame and ignorance.3 Uninhibited by previous barriers of time and space, cybersex electronic pornographyis an economists ideal free good: pornography is easily accessible, incurs minimum transaction costs and enjoys seemingly unlimited demand. The ease and dropping cost of creating, distributing and accessing pornography has created an electronic version of Greshams Law, except that the good information remains availablejust not always initially pursued.4 Why study cybersex? An impressive array of informed outsiders have highlighted cybersexs importance in accelerating innovation and developing technologies. Journalist T. R. Reid in 1995 considered cybersex arguably one of the great pioneers of the multimedia industry.5 The Economist in 1997 hailed pornography as a trailblazer in the economics of new technologies, helping the web mature economically by testing technologies and concepts to attract customers and their money.6 As the now defunct The Industry Standard noted in 1999, Progressive technologies and trade practices at least partially account for [cybersex] sites staying competitive and profitable.7 In 2000, VarBusiness.com proclaimed online pornography was arguably the edge of e-commerce and e-business.8 In 2001, Blaise Cronin and Elisabeth Davenport stated, It is universally acknowledged by information technology experts that the adult entertainment industry has been at the leading edge in terms of building high-performance Web sites with stateof-the-art features and functionality.9 Most studies of the Internet and Web have ignored or downplayed cybersex for a variety of reasons, including the wealth of data and stimulating questions about other aspects of the digital revolution. This paper begins to fill that lacuna by showing how cybersex has accelerated the diffusion of new products and services, led to the democratization of pornography, and pushed boundaries, technological, legal and social.10 Cybersexs spread was part of the larger commodification of activities and innovation from consumers reshaping contemporary capitalism. A venue attracting entrepreneurs and innovations, cybersex benefitted overall from the Webs digitalization, unregulated commercialization, virtual communities creation by techno-social interactions, users anonymity, facilities for product customization and instant international production, and absence of legal constraints.11 In many areas, users have taken the initiative to modify existing technologies to create new services and products. The webs potential for innovation and creation is probably exemplified nowhere better than cybersex. Two major challenges in studying cybersex are access to and the quality of sources. As well as the standard problems of finding reliable data about the pornography industry, cybersex poses additional problems.12 Many firms are reluctant to herald their involvement, reflecting a well-founded concern about societal opprobrium. Some companies that trumpet their activities are self-promoters. Users are often unwilling to answer questions honestly. Market research firms, a major source of data, often promote as well as analyze their fields. More generally, gathering reliable data about web usage is inherently difficult because of its rapid growth, incomplete coverage of websites and poor research methodology.13 Consequently, much data should be regarded as approximate, with trends more important than the actual numbers.

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The size of the cybersex market is debatable, but it is largehundreds of thousands if not millions of pornographic websites and growing. Its economic magnitude is very contentious with widely ranging numbersa 2005 Forbes.com article debunking estimates of US$10 billion for the entire American pornography market was accompanied by a piece accepting a US$11 billion figure.14 Certainly, cybersex grosses in the billions of dollars in the USA and much more worldwide. Future estimates by market research firms are even more uncertain. For the worldwide mobile phone cybersex market, Juniper Research estimated the market was over US$500 million in 2004 and would grow to US$2.1 billion by 2009. In 2003, Strategy Analytics predicted a US$1 billion market by 2008 while Visiongrain estimated a 2006 market of US$4 billion.15 The significance of this income is not so much its amount, but that it occurs early in the introduction of new technologies and services, providing an invaluable stream of initial revenue. The predictions add incentives to introduce new cybersex services. Challenges of data notwithstanding, cybersex warrants serious study. As Cronin and Davenport noted,
Despite the problematic public image of the pornography business (a feature it shares with the arms industry, among others), it is difficult to ignore a business sector that deals with basic human instincts (palatable or otherwise), exhibits high-revenue growth, is potentially attractive to private and institutional investors, and is astute in its exploitation of embryonic e-commerce structures and mechanisms.16

Faster Diffusion of New Products Cybersex has attracted media attention not just because of its content, but also because it has accelerated the diffusion of new ICT, often providing the first profits for businesses and a reason, even if not publicly stated, to become cybernetically active. Since the beginning of on-line services, pornography has been an integral part of the content and a major attraction for early users, primarily young males with disposable income, the classic early adopters of new technologies. These users initially were and have stayed overwhelmingly maleover three-quarters according to several surveys over time.17 These early adopters, to use Everett Rogers term, accelerated the creation of a critical mass of users, bringing technological and financial feasibility to cyberspace faster than it would have occurred otherwise.18 Pornography not only attracted and trained users, but provided suppliers and infrastructure developers an opportunity to sell equipment and services. To reach a pornographic website, users had to acquire equipment, learn how to use it, and access the World Wide Web, all activities that advanced the diffusion of this new technology. Nor did this initial acquisition end cybersexs role. As providers offered more services, users had to continue to invest in new, better equipment and services to take full advantage of, e.g., faster downloading and interactive games. Furthermore, cybersex users apparently frequent the Internet more heavily, operate at a more advanced level, and otherwise demand more than non-cybersex users.19 The broader pattern was for pornography to comprise an inordinate amount of early traffic and business on a new service. As the service grew and diffused, the amount of

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non-sexual traffic expanded and the percentage of pornography decreased even though its absolute volume grew. Even at its lower percentage, the volume and revenues remain substantial. This pattern has occurred in many venues. The prime example is Minitel, heavily promoted and subsidized by the French government as a means to rapidly access information and stimulate its domestic telecommunications industry. Started in 1983 as an alternative to telephone directories, Minitel grew to 2.5 million terminals in 1987 and peaked at 6 million in the early 1990s. Sexually oriented messages the messageries roses, one of the most conspicuous, popular and controversial services comprised a third to a half of all Minitel traffic in its early years and possibly an even greater share of the publicity. The relative pornographic share of Minitel traffic decreased as thousands of other services4400 in 1987, over 16,000 in 1991 and nearly 25,000 in 1994 before declining to 13,000 in 2003developed.20 That is, the absolute volume of cybersex did not shrink but the volume of other traffic grew as those markets matured. One way of gauging interest is to look at search terms by users. Across time and several computer-based technologies, cybersex has constantly proved very popular. Of the top 20 searched words in October, 1996 on Yahoo!, 12 were pornographic. The most popular, sex, had 1,553,420 requests. Second was chat at 414,320, closely followed by xxx at 397,640 and playboy at 390,920.21 According to SearchTerms.com in 2001, sex was the third most-requested item, trailing autos and travel.22 Not until 9/11 and the intense desire for information about this tragedy did sex drop off, albeit temporarily, from the top-10 lists of search engines.23 Another search engine, Lycos, reported that sex was either the first or second most demanded search term from 2001 through 2004. Of the remaining top 50 most popular terms, porn ranked between eight and 10 with other sexually suggestive terms further back.24 Wordtracker found that the first six of the top 10 and 10 of the top 20 search terms on several web metacrawlers over a four-month period in late 2005 were pornographic.25 For WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) for cellphones, according to Bango.net, a firm that enables vendors to sell content to cellphone users and collect micropayments, the top search terms in 2003 were free, ringtone, sex, adult, porn and gay.26 A random sample of 400,000 queries from 6 to 23 February 2003 on the Gnutella filesharing network found 42 per cent looking for pornography compared with 38 per cent searching for music.27 Based on their analysis of transaction logs of three search engines over 19972002, Amanda Spink and Bernard J. Jansen concluded that the percentage of pornography dropped from approximately 20 per cent to 5 per cent as commercial and informational web use grew, exactly as expected. They noted, however, One should not interpret this as implying that interest in pornography is necessarily decreasing.28 In the first years of the Internet, pornography truly did lead the way, becoming the first industry to profit from the Web. Millions of dollars of profits accrued directly to the actual pornography firms, but like the California gold rush and the fax boom of the late 1980s, the real beneficiaries were the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), equipment manufacturers, and services. For example, in 2000, CaveCreek Wholesale Internet

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Exchange, which operated over 300 servers for more than 12,000 adult web sites, claimed it was GTEs largest Internet customer, exceeding Yahoo!29 Many new services and products quickly appeared to take advantage of the potential of these new technologies. The tendency to build open-source platforms so other firms could more easily develop new applications for themas opposed to proprietary, closed platforms that discourage outside innovationproved ideal for cybersex. As lawyer Peter Johnson stated in 1996,
Porn, like its subject matter, is always eager to experiment. It is also free from ideological and sociological baggage. Its design is, simply, to get to market as quickly and easily as possible. When new media offer new markets, porn spies them quickly and rushes to fill them, like an amoeba extruding a new pseudopod where its skin is thinnest.30

Like companies selling weather forecasts, successful purveyors learned that longevity and profits came not just from providing raw data, but by adding value, such as formatting, archiving, interactivity, and linking to other websites. Pornography proved easily repurposed, cross-sold and up-sold, and differentially priced for a variety of local and international markets.31 Users drove demand initially to the surprise of the ISPs. Although the visual aspects of cybersex have attracted most attention, pornography first appeared in bulletin boards, chat rooms and newsgroups where the medium was the typed word. A mid1990s study of USENET found the most popular and active bulletin boards concerned sex.32 In the mid-1990s battle among AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy, the winner, AOL, was the first to promote chat rooms, unregulated message boards, accounts with multiple online names, and was the only one to allow private chat rooms. The ability to indulge in sexual conversation in unregulated, member-created chat rooms proved such an important, albeit unplanned, factor in AOLs success that some observers labeled the firm, The House that Sex Chat Built.33 The attraction of text has continued, both in womens pornography and in text messagingShort Messaging Service (SMS) for cellphones and Instant Messaging (IM). AOL Interactive Properties Group president Ted Leonsis joked that 99 per cent of IMs started hi, male or female?34 The preference, however, is for imagery. A survey of different data sets from 1997 to 2002 found seven to nine of the top 10 terms in image and video searches were pornographic compared with two to three in general searches.35 As new communication services and technologies struggled to emerge, cybersex played an increasingly explicit part in business plans. Different strategies evolved for different technologies, the result of unique legal, social, and economic circumstances as cellphones demonstrated. A major difference between the development and diffusion of cybersex on the Internet and cellphones was the paucity of free pornography on the latter. Cellphone customers normally paid for access. In contrast, the web was awash in pornography, often by amateurs or as teasers to get viewers to pay for more. Technologically, cellphone cybersex followed a somewhat similar evolution, first appearing via text and then through images and services. Cybersex services appeared more quickly in Western Europe than the USA, because of the larger market as a result of earlier agreement about standards, more relaxed

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societal views toward pornography, different perceptions of who provides content, and the need to repay large license fees for 3g, the new generation of cellphone standards. In the USA, most cellphone companies and ISPs had an adult services strategy, even if not discussed publicly. One reason for this reticence was fear of organized public opposition, discussed below. American cellphone operators tried to continue the legacy of AT&Ts position that the telephone company only provided the lines and did not control the content. They were not gatekeepers or censors, but the proverbial piano player, providing the conduit with no knowledge or control over what was sent. This attitude was also strongly, if unsuccessful legally, held by file-sharing firms. As Greg Bildson, the chief technology officer of file-sharing provider Lime Wire so pithily stated, were content agonistic.36 Nonetheless, major American cellphone providers like Sprint and Verizon decided to restrict easy access to cybersex.37 In contrast, greater European social acceptance of pornography meant cellphone services were less hesitant about openly integrating pornography into their offerings. European cellphone operators, who assumed they would control most of the content flowing over their equipment, and thus garner more of the profits, were far more public and positive about pornography. Virgin Xtras, Hutchison 3g and T-Mobile all formed adult services teams.38 Finally, the European operators needed to generate revenues to repay the billions of euros spent on 3g licenses. Pornography appeared to offer that revenue. Promoters envisioned MMSmultimedia messaging servicesthat would add imagery to the SMS sex chats and services like daily pinups as well as interactive games like strip poker (thereby combining that other insatiable well of human behavior, gambling, another very profitable part of the web). Indeed, one joke was that 3g stood for girls, games, and gambling.39 Consequently, European providers were more likely to offer cybersex directly and charge the users wireless account while American firms usually made cybersex customers access a pornography providers website and then pay by credit card, a more laborious procedure. When New Frontier Media introduced its TEN wireless products in the USA in mid-2005, cellphone users could access swimsuit-style images and charge the downloads directly on their wireless bill. For more explicit downloads, users had to go to the firms website and pay by credit card. In contrast when New Frontier introduced TEN wireless services in Europe, customers could easily charge all downloads to their wireless bill.40 Like consumers of pornographic magazines and movies, cybersex customers were willing to pay premium prices. One British study found cellphone cybersex users browsed much more than customers who bought ringtones or music, but the former spent an average of 132 pence compared with 67 pence. When 3Gsexclub.com offered color hardcore WAP pornography in late 2003 at 1.50 per download, users bought 5000 downloads weekly, the cellphones small screen notwithstanding.41 Cybersex pushed infrastructure development and diffusion, but not all pornography providers benefited equally. Exploiting new technologies and services demanded expertise and capital, which often only larger firms had. In an example of a technology

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shaping the market, the capital requirements of broadband pushed consolidation in the cybersex industry even while pornography accelerated the diffusion of high-speed, high-resolution connections. A large firm like the Private Media Group (PMG) could offer broadband from its website, privatespeed.com, providing a service smaller competitors initially could not.42 In turn, acquiring higher resolution pornographic images faster promoted broadband connections. As early as 1999, technology reporters noted that pornography was considered a force behind the growing demand for digital subscriber lines.43 By late 2002, market research firm Ovum stated that the high demand for pornography made cybersex one of the few real commercial opportunities for video-on-demand transmitted over the internet by broadband (VOD IP). Another market research firm, Cahners-Instat, used the cybersex market as a barometer for residential VOD broadband services.44 Another area where cybersex led development was interactivity. The idea of controlling action, whether a couple copulating or a UAV patrolling over Iraq, at a distance has long attracted interest. Unsurprisingly, cybersex has been a leader, along with the military and NASA, in pursuing interactivity. The CD-ROM Penthouse Virtual Photo Shoot, for example, won praise for one of the most interactive games in the early 1990s.45 Interactive videoconferencing and streaming-video technology have found early markets in cybersex, pulling the technology and its providers closer to commercial success.46 Although pornography did not affect the 1970s standards battle between VHS and Beta for VCRs, cybersex may determine the standards battle between Blu-ray and HDDVD for high-definition DVD.47 The potential comes from the large number of pornographic films released yearly on DVD, 11,000 in 2004, the tendency of many pornography customers to be early adapters of new (and expensive) technology, and the deadlock between the major movie studios and between the manufacturers over the competing, incompatible standards. Because of that stalemate, the pornography film industry may provide the tipping point. The pornography industry, however, is also split. Blu-ray offers greater capacity but demands greater up-front capital investment by producers to take advantage of this technology. Larger firms, like Wicked Pictures, can easier afford the investment. Smaller firms, like Multimedia Pictures, prefer HD-DVD because they could use their existing equipment. Cybersexs impact may be overratedthe people promoting the notion, like Adult Video News editor Peter Warren and pornography providers, had an interest in publicizing their importance. Undisputed, however, was the cybersex industrys interest in a technology that would allow greater audience involvement (e.g., choosing different angles and actions) and higher resolution viewing.48 Innovations The role of pornography has moved beyond accelerating the diffusion of independently created new technologies to the first use of new technologies explicitly created for it. In a demonstration of historian of technology Mel Kranzbergs Second Law,

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invention is the mother of necessity, cybersex has also stimulated innovation in business as well as technology.49 Indeed, cybersexs biggest contributions may be the tactics, concepts, and strategies employed to profit from new ICT. Beyond the traditional creation of regional and national trade organizations to represent the industry, such as Bay Area Adult Sites and United Adult Sites, which had over 500 adult online members in mid-1999, the industry also pioneered new forms of profitable cooperative competitionco-opetition in the words of Jack Duvall, a television executive.50 Conferences, such as AdultDex and Adult Entertainment Expo, provided more traditional opportunities for members of the industry to meet.51 Working on a model of mutual support that would make an Amish community proud, cybersex entrepreneurs soon developed a range of support services, including copyright infringement (WebPosse), ratings of products for consumers (Janes Guide), search engines (Yahooters), site tracking (SexTracker), and, of course, legal help and consulting (United Adult Sites).52 Among the most important concepts were free supersites to attract customers, referral rings so sites could cross-link and swap links with their competitors, and networks offering comprehensive membership for a variety of services. These innovations then diffused into more mainstream applications as their utility increased while their cost and bugs decreased. How did individuals and firms make money? The most common methods were charging monthly memberships, passing traffic to other websites for a fee, selling advertisements, and offering products. Charging memberships for US$1030 a month or more could generate a significant income from thousands of customers. Before the police shut Webb World NetPics for distributing child pornography in 1997, the firm grossed US$500,000 monthly from over 40,000 subscribers paying US$11.95 a month.53 An early web innovator was porn star Danni Ashe, owner of Dannis HardDrive, which she founded in 1995. Ashe archived a huge collection of pornography that subscribers could access for a flat fee (US$19.95 a month originally and raised to US$24.95 in 2001). In 2000, 95 per cent of firms US$7 million in income came from subscriptions.54 Some sites like voooyeur.com encouraged amateurs to upload their still and video imagery to the website, and made money by charging for each downloaded image.55 Amateur soft-core nudity was available free on voyeurweb.com, but a click of the mouse sent viewers to the hard-core redclouds.com, which charged US$25 a year for entry. Sites often offered different levels of membership. As a rule, the more interactivity and options the customers wanted, the more they paid. Such cybersex sites, according to journalist Doug Bedell, provided the essence of personalization a facet of Internet commerce that has largely eluded many other e-commerce efforts.56 Most innovative was the referral or pass-through ring, which swapped visitors with competitors as well as independent operators. Many websites had links to other websites. Commercial sites paid the originating site a micro-fee for the new traffic or a small commission if a sale (like buying a membership) occurred. Larger sites served as clearing houses, offering visitors easy access to a vast range of other sites and services. Many websites were independent, but others were controlled by large firms. In mid2000 New Frontier Media owned over 1300 cybersex domains that sent traffic to its 27

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pay sites; rival Cyber Entertainment Network claimed approximately 3000 and 14 respectively.57 Everyone benefited from these rings of referrals: Customers had a wider selection of options and providers gained greater viewer exposure and either direct income from a sale or indirect income via a referral. Advertisements proved another source of revenue. Rates varied by the popularity of the site, type of advertisement, and the cost per thousand impressions. Many advertisers offered pornography-related services and products, but non-pornographic offerings also appeared, especially on more mainstream sites. Products ranged from magazines, videos, CDs, sex toys and other material delivered physically to an innovative array of downloaded products aimed at specific consumption venues. Customers could personalize their cellphones with moan tones, screensavers, and background wallpaper as well as ordering videos, photographs, and strip-tease games.58 Nor has the cybersex industry been slow to hawk its expertise to others. Just as Disney has created a profitable sideline of behind-the-scenes tours of its facilities, Danni Ashe and others in the industry lectured on how the industry worked.59 More visibly, providing frameworks and services for others to offer cybersex proved another way to diffuse new technologies while making a profit. Sites like adultchamber.com and hosts4porn.com offered neophytes guidewaysfor a priceto operate their own porn site and meet thousands of other webmasters.60 For European cellphone providers, Netcollex introduced a service enabling online portals and content owners to launch own-branded mobile adult content portals.61 The very competitive pornography market often first encountered challenges that other web businesses would face later, especially payment. Two common problems were credit card fraud and chargebacks, when a credit card firm cancelled a transaction after the customer denied making it. Chargebacks were a major problem for the cybersex industry. Companies consequently developed a variety of strategies and technologies to increase their chances of receiving payment. Outsourcing billing to Internet service payment providers helped the cybersex industry by avoiding the investment needed to provide that service. As important, billing via firms with innocent names avoided unwanted exposure by many credit-card users of their records to, for example, spouses and office accountants.62 The first web firm to accept Duocash, which provided anonymous but guaranteed Internet payments by prepaid telephone calling cards, was Entertainment Network, which ran thousands of pornography sites and soon expanded to online gambling.63 Like an oilboom town, the cybersex industry also pioneered shady operations and unscrupulous practices. Some were merely frustrating, like automatically opening sister windows, which linked to a main window. More dubious were the stealthy redirection of unsuspecting customers, altered suffixes for web sites (e.g., whitehouse.com was definitely not whitehouse.gov), and encoded key words to manipulate search engines to place a site higher on their lists.64 Other practices, like continuing to bill a monthly fee after a membership lapsed or hijacking and mouse-trapping viewers so their browsers could not escape, hurt the industrys reputation and contributed to new credit card rules to reduce losses from financial high-risk sites.65 More visibly, the rise

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of pornographic spam in the early 21st century contributed to anti-spam filters, legal action, and other efforts to de-spam the Internet.66 As discussed below, the opt-in feature of British cellphone cybersex to head off more restrictive state efforts may provide the template for similarly limiting access to gambling sites. The promise of cybersex applications has pulled investors, if not every product, forward. One of the most telling appreciations of cybersex is how its inclusion may lend seriousness and respect to the otherwise uncertain promise of a new technology. Ian Mecklenburgh, head of interactivity for BBC Technology, stated in 2002 that the interactive TV sector was now considered a realistic market because the pornography industry was developing services and technology for it.67 The promise of cybersex may be necessary, however, but not sufficient for commercial success. Democratization of Pornography When historian Kathleen Franz hailed a new cultural arena in which different groups of American consumers could demonstrate their technological competence and gain authority in a culture that valued ingenuity she was analyzing the automobile in the early 20th century.68 However, her description easily covers the growth of do-it-yourself cybersex where the producers are the participants as well as the distributors with the entire world as potential consumers. The democratization of pornography grew from the fertile base of evolving technologies that encapsulated the expertise and skills necessary to record, edit and distribute, thus enabling almost anyone to be a producer. This democratization of pornography is part of a larger trend of innovation from below by users (as opposed to innovation from above by manufacturers) and the rise of technical hobbies and doit-yourself projects among American males of all classes.69 Historically, a fairly rigid separation existed among producers, distributors, and consumers. Making a film used to take professional equipment and expertise. Blackboxing these skills and capabilities into a camcorder (ne video tape recorders) enabled millions to produce their own videos easily. The advent of camcorders, digital cameras, webcams, file-sharing, and the web have changed that. Now anyone canand many docreate and distribute their own pornography because barriers to entry and transaction costs have been greatly reduced. Perhaps the most striking aspect of cybersex, this democratization of pornography has radically changed patterns of production, distribution, marketing and consumption. Some, especially those providing hosting and other services, primarily sought profits, but the majority were primarily letting the world know what they were doing or wanted to do while demonstrating their technical expertise. This do-it-yourself pornography has given new meaning to the concept of self-expression.70 Blaine R. Richards, the producer of Bodacious Bodies, proclaimed, You use the software to create your own fantasy. Then you upload it to the Net, so your buddies can see whats on your mind.71 Just as viewing pornography encouraged an early generation of users to go online, so too did the promise of producing pornography lure new novices a few years later to

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establish their adult websites, often with links to commercial sites, thus further expanding both expertise and the commodification of sex. Cybersex has helped advance and diffuse the infrastructure, concepts, and knowledge of webcasting.72 In a sense, this technology can be seen as liberating and empowering, allowing individuals to actively create their own pornography, not just passively consume the work of someone else. Anyone with a modicum of skill could become a producer. Hundreds of thousands did. According to a 2001 survey, approximately 70 per cent of all porn sites were developed by people outside the industry.73 The web revolutionized distribution as well as consumption. The amateur pornographer could post his self-made video on his website, and the world was his audience if the world was watching. Just as the Polaroid camera enabled people to make their own pornographic photographs without acquiring the expertise and equipment to develop and print their own pictures, so too have businesses provided blackboxed services to enable individuals to create their own pornographic websites with only a basic understanding of what they are doing. A key organizational innovation that transformed these self-produced videos from home movies to worldwide viewing was the site link. Linking to other pornographic websites, including commercial websites, increased the potential audience enormously. Tens of thousands of people contributed to and viewed private webcam adult sites, accessible by subscription only. As early as 1999, according to journalist Gareth Branwyn, The most trafficked Web rings are found in the amateur porn and adult Webcam communities.74 Instant Messaging video pornography had arrived. Bill Asher, the president of Vivid Entertainment, the largest American maker of pornographic videos, in 2000 described the holy grail of online pornlive one-on-one porn teleconferencing.75 The webcam, a video camera that broadcasts directly onto the web, has moved many closer to this goal, pushing the adoption of web-based videoconferencing. Users needed a PC, webcam, microphone, a network link, and conferencing software. Microsofts free Net Meeting service included an Adults Only directory. Webcam32, a web conferencing software program, succeeded partly because of its chat room, a feature added in response to cybersex requests.76 Fueled by the webs increasingly lower barriers to entry and use, individuals have let a thousand cybersex flowers bloom, exploring and tinkering to create new services, products, technologies, and organizational forms. Consequently, a wide range of activity has evolved, encompassing the human experience and imagination on a scale unfathomable a few decades earlier. For the modest pornographer, there was reflectoporn.77 At the other extreme was fleshbot.coma frequently updated web magazine which showcases all the porn that digital technology and distribution has made possible. This includes CGI and morphed images, amateur girls, webcam guys, sex blogs, hentai and yaoi, accidental smut, vintage erotica, celebrity candids, and hardcore video.78 In between lay much, much else. The Internet fostered the creation of virtual communities by making it easy for people with common interests, whether flyfishing or spouse-swapping, to find each other and communicate.79 Some consequences were higher degrees of specialization, more innovation and experimentation, and easier establishment of physically

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separated groups. Unsurprisingly, cybersex has developed extensive grassroots links. Local erotic networking harnessed the web as a marketing and screening tool for sexually oriented parties. New York City hosts One Leg Up, Skin NYC, Cake and other groups whose income comes from monthly membership fees and party charges.80 Geographically dispersed networks of people created computer-based groups, such as alt.sex.fetish.startrek. By the late 1990s, these self-organizing fora had blossomed into niche markets for every imaginable form of deviant sexual behavior.81 De Tocqueville would have been impressed. Pushing the Social Envelope In the USA, the pornography business has grown economically, but lacks the public acceptance of Europe. Pornography has moved from the black to the white market but the subject remains a socially contentious arena still under negotiation. Techie-totechie bragging was acceptable as was hidden promotion of pornographic offerings, but more public pronouncements were rarer. To quote an informal saying within the streaming media world in 2001, Dont ask, dont tell, do sell.82 Compared with the early years of the Internet, recent providers of the underlying technologies admittedor even braggedthat the pornography industry was using their products, proof that these technologies were up to task. In 2001, Susan Struble, a Sun Microsystems spokesperson, stated, The way you know if your technology is good and solid is if its doing well in the porn world.83 This is a role and candor unthinkable in the 1950s60s for stag films and Polaroid cameras, and even in the 1970s80s for VCRs, a technology whose initial spread depended greatly on pornography. The greater public acknowledgment reflects a greaterbut still not totalacceptance of pornography, the mostly male composition of the information technology workforce, and the greater role of pornography in pushing and pulling these new technologies. One way the cybersex industry has tried to alter public perceptions was claiming it was pushing the technological and commercial envelope.84 As BBC Technologys Ian Mecklenburgh, observed, For much of the adult entertainment industry, its the technology which they develop that legitimises them.85 Some of these claims were undoubtedly designed to link their product with the socially appealing concept of technological progress, a long-standing theme in American history. However, the underlying reality should not be denied.86 Another aspect of the broader drive for more respectability (or at least fewer protests) were efforts to change the industrys name and image. Like the gambling industrys efforts to change its name to gaming, the pornography industry prefers to be known as the far more respectable adult entertainment business. Openness in America could only go so far for fear of public protests, often orchestrated by anti-pornography organizations. Since 1999, Yahoo! had offered pornographic products. When the firm clustered them into one section and announced its adult and erotica store in April 2001 to increase its income, Yahoo! did not anticipate the large, negative reaction. Not only did Yahoo! reverse itself in three days but restricted its adult products.87 In June 2005, Yahoo! closed many user-formed

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History and Technology 13

adult chat rooms, after a TV report stated that some might be used to solicit sex from minors.88 Much more discreetand successfulwas eBays mature audiences section, which demanded several clicks to find. In early 2001, this hard-to-reach section posted 40,000 items a day and nearly 65,000 in late 2004. While not the major factor in eBays profitability, this section added healthy profit.89 Public opinion or organized opposition to pornography has also shaped restrictive American government policies toward cybersex. In 2005, the George W. Bush administration upset the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by refusing, at the last stage of the process, to allow ICANN to issue a .xxx domain, raising anew concerns about American dominance. Domestically, the Department of Justice also announced a major new initiative against pornography. Nor did politicians appreciate publicly large donations from wealthy pornographers.90 Like other emerging technologies, cybersex has raised serious legal and social questions, including issues of content, access, intellectual property, privacy, and morality. Some of the underlying issues were perennial concerns repackaged in novel ways. Others questions were new. Two major concerns became focal points of social and political action, child pornography and access by minors to cybersex.91 Child pornography exemplified all the fears of the misuse of the Internet. The two main worries were using the Internet to lure children into assignations and child pornography itself. The specific arenas of interest evolved with the technology, growing from concerns about chat rooms to pornographic spam and file-sharing. Politically, proactively opposing child pornography gave the cybersex business the opportunity to portray itself as a respectable industry that distinguishes between good and bad pornography. Wanting to be (and be seen as) good corporate citizens, over 5800 pornographic websites formed Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (ASACP) in 1996 to establish a code of conduct and report child pornography websites.92 Similarly, child pornography offered anti-pornography forces a tool to impose restrictions on all pornography in the guise of focusing on child pornography.93 Historically, restricting access to the over-18 cohort has been one way of allowing pornographic products to coexist with more socially acceptable offerings. Keeping magazines and videos physically separate in a store was an easy fix. Confining X-rated films to pay-per-view channels allowed cable TV to profit from pornography. Most of the attention about restricting access to modern pornography concerns filtering online pornography, a far more difficult challenge because of the ease of access to the Internet, cellphones, and other media.94 In a standard response to ward off legal restrictions and to prove they were socially responsible, parts of the cybersex industry promoted voluntary self-regulation. Most commercial websites have homepages with warnings and disclaimers, requiring visitors to confirm they were over 18 before entering the site. More importantly, British cellphone operators in 2004 established the first national self-regulated code of conduct for adult conduct (covering gambling and violent games as well as pornography). In ecommerce, opting in meant consumers signed up to receive targeted e-mail, instead of

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opting out by placing their names on a do-not-contact list. In an intriguing variation, Vodafone introduced an opt-in Content Control which required users to prove they were over 18 before being able to access pornography. This restrictive approach to accessing pornography may head off state regulation. In the USA, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) began working on similar guidelines in 2005.95 The voluntary ratings of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) were another attempt to ward off government censorship. To gain an ICRA tag, a web site supplied information about its site so filters can block it. ICRA grew out of the Recreational Software Advisory Council Internet (RSACI), launched in the USA in 1996 to self-censor sex, nudity, violence, and language. ICRA was established in 2000 to include more potentially offensive topics (like gambling and drugs) and to be more sensitive to different cultural mores. ICRA itself became caught up in a standardization question about which content labeling language to use, changing in 2005 from PICS to RDF.96 A novel challenge was the inadvertent presentation of pornography as viewing became more portable and thus more public. With DVD players moving into more vehicles and laptops, what happened when people in other cars viewed Debbie Does Dallas on the Interstate? It was not a laughing matter to drivers arrested on obscenity charges when police officers saw a pornographic movie playing. Several states have considered legislation to outlaw this public dirty driving or drive-by pornography.97 Another arena was the airplane, where passengers may be exposed to another passengers X-rated movie. The evolving procedure was for a bothered passenger to either ask the viewer directly or via a flight attendant to shift the screen so it is less visible.98 The major concern about intellectual property was file sharing. File sharing was publicly linked with music, as the demise of Napster demonstrated. Less noticed was that the second generation of file-sharing software like Kazaa and Gnutella can handle files with images, such as pornography, and they do.99 Randy Saaf, the president of Media Defender, a filtering firm, stated in early 2003, Naturally, the largest demand and supply for video files on Kazaa is adult content.100 Pornography on person-to-person file sharing (p2p) entered publicas opposed to userawareness in 2003 with a congressional hearing on child pornography. Online industry and Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports showed that pornography was prevalent in file-sharing services like Kazaa with child pornography a small but significant and apparently growing percentage. The GAO concluded that young p2p users faced significant risk from inadvertent exposure to pornography, including child pornography because many innocuous keywords led to deliberate pornographic content. The agency searched words like Britney and Pokenmon and found 56 per cent of the Kazaa files contained pornography and 8 per cent child pornography. Using several keywords associated with child pornography, the GAO found 1286 titles and file names of which 42 per cent contained child pornography and 34 per cent adult pornography.101 In a later letter to Senator Orrin Hatch, however, the GAO noted that p2p was not necessarily more dangerous or easier to access than other forms of pornography on the web.102

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History and Technology 15

The demand for pornography has shaped file-sharing three ways. First, the growing presence of child pornography generated demand for regulation and filtering. Certainly, the music and motion-picture industries have used the easy and often unwitting access to child pornography to try to legally restrict p2p.103 Second, servers had to be able to handle the large volume of traffic, expanding the underlying infrastructure to handle the growing demand.104 Finally, in sharp contrast with the music and motion picture industries, many in the pornography industry welcomed file sharing. A new business model for file sharing may emerge as a result. Scott Hunter, CEO and co-founder of Exploit Systems, which sells secure downloading services, enthused, The adult industry is leading the way in peer-to-peer and beginning to monetize it instead of fighting customers. Any smart merchant cant look at a mall filled with 200 million people and not look at the opportunities to set up a kiosk.105 Two notable differences between the music and pornography industries were the much smaller size of a music file compared with a porn video and the well developed, longstanding system for selling music and movies. With far less invested in an existing sales structure, the pornography industry was eager to harness new technologies to expand its market. Like the music industry, piracy has eaten into the pornography industrys profits. Unlike the music and movie worlds, the pornography industry has decided to encourage sampling to attract more subscribers, assuming that demand seems insatiable.106 Less visible concerns about intellectual property dealt with questions of ownership of materials acquired on the web and the legitimacy of software patents. Is a search engine is guilty of copyright infringement if it pulls up a website that houses content taken from another site? In November, 2004, Google received a lawsuit from Perfect 10, which claimed it was losing membership fees and revenue because the search engine had generated over 800,000 links to its nude images.107 Cybersex firms also had the dubious distinction of being the test case for Acacia Research Corporations lawsuits claiming infringement of its streaming media patents. The selection was deliberate, a decision to attack politically friendless and usually meagerly financed firms to get them to accept the validity of Acacias patents and pay royalties. The logic was this would provide Acacia with the legal standing and income to then convince larger firms to pay.108 Technological developments in concealed video cameras and cellphone cameras (cellcams) have renewed privacy concerns about the unwanted, unasked filming of people. Voyeurism has long been a problem and business opportunity.109 The cellcam can photograph children at play, friends at picnics, celebrities shopping, accidents and people in locker rooms undressing and showering. As Chris J. Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center noted, cell cams have revitalized the up skirt and down blouse genre of photographs. This raises the question of the right to privacy of the unsuspecting people being filmed. Some lawmakers have introduced local and national legislation banning such photograph in some semi-public places, like municipal bathrooms.110 Another privacy concern was false identity. People can create their own identities on the web, but they can also alter others. The most visible manifestation of this was the

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digital alteration of images of female celebrities by putting their heads on nude or pornographic photographs. Over 300,000 faked photos have circulated on the web. In a superb example of a problem and self-organizing solution, the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.nude.celebrities.fake both identified and promoted them.111 Conclusion Where do we go from here? As Cronin and Davenport noted in 2001, one sign of cybersexs less than respectable standing was a lack of academic study. As they delicately stated, the field was undertheorized.112 The links between pornography and communications technologies in general and cybersex in particular raises many tantalizing questions. How can we integrate research on cybersex with broader academic studies on the consumer revolution of the last centuries? Can cybersex improve our understanding of concepts like Ruth Schwartz Cowans consumption junction, the place and time at which the consumer makes choices between competing technologies and the more recent attention by historians of technology to users?113 Franz concluded about the automobile, Tinkering with technology might not always contribute to the radical invention of new technologies, but it challenged manufacturers to incorporate changes from the bottom up and gave users a sense of authority to rewrite the shape, use, and meanings of new technologies.114 Has cybersex contributed similarly? Pornography has historically been a socially camouflaged technology and often a forbidden topic. The doors on such areas and others are opening.115 Can a study of cybersex contribute to our understanding of licit and illicit knowledge and activities? Predictions about the future have shaped technology by raising expectations and shifting resources, sometimes becoming self-fulfilling or self-hastening prophecies. Market research firms may not be right, but they can create a sense of inevitability that may alter the current reality. Perhaps the best example is the struggle in the 1920s30s between established wooden and developing metal airplanes. Proponents of metal outmaneuvered the wood-and-fabric builders in the court of public opinion.116 The buzz had moved from wood, taking interest, investments, and individuals with it. Does cybersex offer a case study of how market research firms can affect an emerging technology?117 The actual content of cybersex merits study. There appear to be significant differences between commercial and private websites and between cybersex and traditional printed pornography.118 The web has altered the environment and nature of a pornographic experience compared with the pre-digital world.119 How is cybersex changing concepts of sexuality? What does it mean that advertisements in Fleshbots gay sex sections cost up to 50 per cent more than in the heterosexual section? Why are femaleoriented websites so few?120 A business history of cybersex is badly needed. The entire pornography industry has been shaken as much as any other industry, if not more, by the Internet. To survive, existing firms have had to reinvent themselves and become multimedia, using their names to keep and attract business. Similarly, what could the perspective of labor history provide? Can one speak of careers in cybersex? How easily do the people in that

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industry flow into non-pornographic work and vice-versa? Some antedotal evidence indicated economic factors, like the 2001 dot-com meltdown significantly shaped job opportunities.121 A geographic perspective is also needed. How does the diffusion of cybersex differ across borders? How well has cybersex reflected government censorship, social mores and the shifting geography of technological developments?122 Early American dominance of the Internet was reflected in its overwhelming domination of cybersex; a similar European domination of cellphone cybersex reflected earlier and greater activity on that continent.123 Most basic of all is the question of the relationship between people and their technologies. In my classes, I ask students to define what technology is. The most common answer is a tool to enhance or improve peoples lives. The students consider any technology that gives people what they want is a good technology, thinking of supplying human needs and desires like food, water, shelter, and security. By that standard, cybersex is a very good technology. Because pornography raises serious issues about the future shaping of our societies, it seems appropriate to close with another of Kranzbergs laws, Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.124 Notes
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Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. Coopersmith, Pornography, Video, and Pornography, Technology; Lane, Obscene Profits. Giving the Customer. Leiby, Future Schlock. Reid, CD-Porn. A Survey of Electronic Commerce. Branwyn, How the Porn Sites Do It. Doyle, Architects of Porn. Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones. This paper does not discuss the moral aspects of pornography. Rajagopal with Bojin, Globalization of prurience. Richard, The Perils of Covering Porn. For one study of bad research, see Thomas, When Cyberresearch Goes Awry. See also, Lawrence and Giles, Accessibility of Information; Spink and Jansen, Web Search; Fox, Adult Content Online. Ackman, How Big Is Porn?; Dukcevich, Stock Focus; see also, Lake, Is Porn Still the Webs Great Test Bed?; Li, Silicone Valley. Juniper Research, Adult to Mobile; Darling, Adult Content. Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones, 42. E.g., OConnell, Web Erotica; Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones, 44; Fox, Adult Content Online. In mid-2004, according to comScore Media Matrix, 71 per cent of men aged 1834 visited a porn site at least once a month compared with 53 per cent for music and 48 per cent for sports sites (Rose, Lost Boys). Rogers, Diffusion, 26366. Spink and Jansen, Web Search, 152; Spink, From E-sex. Booker, Vive, 24; Grenier and Nahon, Minitel; High-wired Society; Wilson, Myths and Magic, 52; Lucas, Levecq, Kraut and Streeter, Frances Grass-roots Data Net; Arnold, Frances Minitel.

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[21] www.web.archive.org/web/19970502094027/; www.eyescream.com/yahootop200.html. Not all the searches for sex are pornographic in intent, but the vast majority are. [22] Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [23] News Tops Sex. [24] 50.lycos.com/031501.html; 50.lycos.com/032202.asp; 50.lycos.com/032103.asp; 50.lycos.com/ 032904.asp. [25] wordtracker.com, Wordtracker Report. [26] Darling, Adult Content. [27] Chmielewski, Online File-sharing Networks. [28] Spink and Jansen, Web Search, 5557. [29] Glidewell, Business Lessons. [30] Johnson, Pornography Drives Technology. [31] Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones, 39. [32] Sproull and Faraj, Atheism, Sex, and Databases, 4345. [33] Swisher, AOL.com, 227; Thompson, Sex. [34] Ibid., 28. [35] Spink and Jansen, Web Search, 173. [36] Krim, Pornography Prevalent. [37] Richtel, Cellphone Entertainment; Richtel and Marriott, Ring Tones. [38] Online Porn Goes Mainstream; Pornographys Next Digital Crusade; Giussani, Dial P for Porn; Not-so-mobile Porn; Porn-phone the Future of 3G. [39] Skeldon, Sex and the City. [40] New Frontier Media and Miller, Karyn. Personal communication, 23 August 2005. [41] Darling, Adult Content. The 1.50 was for British users; Spanish users paid 0.90 (www.3gsexclub.com/enterSite2.html). [42] Skeldon, Sex and the City; Private to Roll Out Adult VOD Service; DVD-Quality Porn. [43] Pringle, Obscenely Profitable. [44] Skeldon, Sex and the City. [45] Keizer, Debbie, 24; Fenichell, Virtual Photo Shoot; Atkin, Penthouse Interactive. [46] Lane, Obscene Profits, 24049. See also, Doyle, Five Tech Innovations and Architects of Porn. [47] Greenberg, From Betamax to Blockbuster and personal communication. [48] Berkowitz, Porn Business; DVD Standoff; Tabuchi, Sony, Toshiba. [49] Kranzberg, Technology and History. [50] Kilgannon, What Sex Sites Can Teach. [51] Over 200 firms registered for the 2006 Adult Entertainment Expo (www.avn.com/newsletter/ promo/2005/aee06_4.html). [52] Branwyn, How the Porn Sites Do It. [53] Alaniz, Police Raid. [54] Sheldon, Soft Porn. [55] Juniper Research, Adult to Mobile. [56] Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [57] Doyle, Architects of Porn; Cybersex bids; Sheldon, Soft Porn. [58] Sexy Moans. [59] Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [60] www.adultchamber.com/about.htm. [61] Pearse, Netcollex. [62] Kilgannon, What Sex Sites Can Teach. [63] Schwartz, New Economy. [64] Kilgannon, What Sex Sites Can Teach. [65] Richtel and Schwartz, Credit Cards; Labaton, Net Sites Co-opted; Doyle, Architects of Porn.

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[66] Manishin and Joyce, Spam. In 2003, Congress passed CAN SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act). [67] Carter, Porn Providers. [68] Franz, Tinkering, 2. [69] Coopersmith, Pornography, Technology, 118; Gelber, Hobbies; von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation. [70] Barcan, In the Raw. [71] Reid, CD-Porn, 17. [72] Lane, Obscene Profits, 24958. [73] Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones, 39. [74] Branwyn, How the Porn Sites Do It, 36. [75] Li, Silicone Valley. [76] Lewis, Videoconferencings Killer App; Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [77] In reflectoporn, a seller on eBay lists a photograph that, if examined carefully, contains the reflection of the nude photographer in the object (Reflectoporn comes to eBay). [78] www.fleshbot.com. See also, Sorkin, Building a Web Media Empire. [79] See Robinson and Tamosaitis, The Joy of Cybersex; Rose and Thomas, net.sex; Stone, War of Desire and her Sex and Death Among the Disembodied. [80] St. John, Parties; www.onelegupnyc.com/home.htm. [81] Kohm and Selwood, Virtual Tourist, 127. [82] Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [83] Ibid. [84] E.g., George Stone, a Max Headroom co-creator, in Matherews, Clocking the Censor and Mike Saenz, creator of Virtual Valerie, in Milstead and Milhon, Carpal Tunnel. [85] Carter, Porn Providers. [86] Levy, David; Tierney, Porn. For a broader perspective, see Marx, The Machine and Segal, Technological Utopianism. [87] Huffstutter, Struggling Yahoo; Halkias, Outcry; Swisher, Will the Internet; Perry, My Yahoo!? [88] Musgrove, Yahoo Closes; Sullivan, Yahoo Chat Choice. [89] Bedell, Unlikely Innovators. [90] Melton, Earley Donor. [91] For a sobering overview of child pornography, see National Research Council, Youth, Pornography and the Internet and Rajagopal with Bojin, Globalization of prurience. See also, Jesdanun, Approval of .xxx Domain; CBS News, Porn Domain .xxx; Family Research Council, FRC Urges Supporters; Gellman, Recruits. [92] www.asacp.org/index.php. [93] See, e.g., Committee on Science, Cyberporn; National Research Council, Technical, Business, and Legal Dimensions; Committee on Government Reform, Stumbling Onto Smut. [94] The Top Shelf; Hard Line on Porn; Markels, Dirty Work; Price, V-chip Debate; Committee on Energy and Commerce, E-rate and Filtering. Pornographic spam, another major concern, was part of the larger spam problem. [95] Vodafone, Content Control; and Miles, Vodafone. [96] ICRA, Report of the Advisory Board; Bennett, ICRA. [97] Runk, Sex Drive; Jones, X-rated DVDs; McMasters, Dirty Driving. [98] Tugend, If Only the Flier; www.forum.airwise.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-6627.html. [99] Wise, Free Sex!; Chmielewski, Online File-Sharing Networks; General Accountability Office, File-Sharing Programs. [100] Emphasis added (Saaf, Written Testimony). [101] Krim, Pornography Prevalent; Reps Warn; General Accountability Office, File-Sharing Programs. [102] Mark, GAO.
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Cohen, Can Porn Kill. Carlson, Napster. Evangelista, The Other Shared Files. Friess, Hot and Bothered. Perfect 10. Google also filed a lawsuit against Booble, charging copyright infringement (Google, Booble). Hachman, Porn Kings; Cherry, Who Owns Streaming Media? Lane, Obscene Profits, 26165. Napolitano, Hold It. OToole, Pornocopia, 27980; Kushner, These Are Definitely Not Scullys Breasts; Lindsay, Celebrities; www.lairofluxlucre.com. Cronin and Davenport, E-rogenous Zones, 34. Cowan, Consumption Junction; Oudshoorn and Pinch, How Users Matter. Franz, Tinkering, 165. E.g., Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge; Maines, Technology of Orgasm; Laport, History of Shit. Schatzberg, Wings of Wood. E.g., Corn, Imagining Tomorrow. Mehta and Plaza, Pornography. For a postmodern perspective on amateur pornography, see Patterson, Going On-Line. Focus on gossip, sensuality, passion, romance and confessions and images that place men in less exploitative images, appear to be the hallmark of female-oriented pornography (Rajagopal with Bojin, Globalization of Prurience). See also, OConnell, Web Erotica; Dominus, What Women Want; Phillips, Walking. Kilgannon, What Sex Sites Can Teach and Porn Firms Move in. The OpenNet Initiative reported over 30 countries censor Internet content in mid-2003 (Zittrain and Edelman, Documentation; Walsh, Access Denied!). Adult Content; Pornographys Next Digital Crusade; Giussani, Dial P for Porn. Collins and Skover, Pornographic State.

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References
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