ou’ve probably heard people complain that "porn is everywhere today." Although it’s a bit of an exaggeration, pornography has been creeping С/ into a variety of new places, including cell phones and video iPods. Analysts believe that in the next few years these will become popular devices for accessing pornography because they are small and easy to conceal (Hall, 2005; Regan, 2005), and many of today’s cell phones have high-resolution screens and increased memory capabilities that enable them to play videos.
In Europe, cell phone pornography brings in over $100 million a year (Regan,
2005). What makes porn manufacturers optimistic about cell phone porn is that many U. S. consumers are willing to spend extra money for cell phone content. In fact, ringtone sales topped $450 million in the United States in 2005 (Regan, 2005).
Consumers are willing to spend money on a variety of other content, including interactive games, downloadable music, sports and weather, instant messaging, and other services.
The major wireless telecommunication carriers are devising a ratings system to prepare for the onslaught of cell phone pornography (this rating system will be similar to the movie rating system—see the Sex in Real Life, "How Do Movies Rate?" on p. 612). Companies such as Hotphones, Pornforyourphone, Voooyeur, Xobile, and Vivid Entertainment have all been working on pornographic content for cell phones. Xobile now offers 2-minute pornographic video clips for 44 cents each (Regan, 2005). Another company, Dirty-Text, Inc., offers pornographic text messaging to cell phones for a fee (Korzeniowski, 2005).
At the same time, other companies are scrambling to develop cell phone blocks for under-age cell phone users. Over the next few years, it will be interesting to keep an eye on these developments. Experts predict that by 2009, sales of portable pornography will reach $200 million in the United States (Hall, 2005; Regan, 2005) and will probably top $2.5 billion worldwide (Korzeniowski, 2005).
tween millions of people. The Internet has generated whole new forms of communications; and, as new forms of media are developed, sexual and gender issues are arising there, too. Literally thousands of sexually explicit conversations, art works, and computer games go zipping through the Internet between the users of computer networks every day. Today anyone with access to a computer, from 10-year-olds to college professors, can have virtually unlimited access to explicit sexual materials on the web.
Computer technology has been taken even one step further: virtual reality (VR). In VR, pictures generated by computer are projected into goggles put over the eyes, and as the head and eyes move, the picture moves accordingly. The user is given the illusion of actually being in the scene before him or her. Recently, enterprising VR producers have been making sexually explicit VR movies that are coordinated with “stimulators” (vibrators) attached to sensors at the groin; one can actually feel as though one is acting in the pornographic scene while the computer responds to the user’s own physical states of excitement and stimulates the user to orgasm. Certainly, new forms of media will present challenges to those who want to regulate or control the public’s access to sexually explicit materials.