The Marriage of Technology and Sexually Explicit Materials

The ease of access and privacy afforded by cable television and the VCR, followed closely by the Internet and mobile wireless devices, has extended access to pornography to people who previously would not have gone to an adult movie theater or bookstore. This increase in availability may be especially true for women, who comprise one out of every three visitors to porn sites (Ropelato, 2012). A group of adult television networks has been developed exclusively for video-on-demand technology. Porn’s appearance on cell phones, iPods, PDAs, and PSP game handhelds provides por­table access to sexually explicit materials. Adult content on mobile devices became a multinational billion-dollar business in less than one year following its inception (Piccionelli, 2006; Ross, 2008).

Twenty-five percent of all search engine requests are for sexual imagery, and 4.2 million porn websites are available on the Inter­net (Ropelato, 2012; Young, 2008). The U. S. pornography indus­try released 13,588 hard-core porn video/DVDs in 2006, whereas Hollywood averages 400 feature films each year. In 2006 revenues from video/DVD sales were $3.62 billion, and Internet pornog­raphy generated $2.84 billion. These figures indicate that view­ing pornography is a form of mainstream entertainment (Klein,

2012a). According to news and research organizations, worldwide pornography revenues in 2006 were over $97 billion, more than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, and Netflix combined (Ropelato, 2012). I Figure 18.1 indicates the countries where individuals spend the most for pornography.

However, beginning in 2006 YouTube-type sites with free porn have caused adult industry profits from films and pay websites to drop significantly (free sites make money by selling advertising space instead of charging for access). The proliferation of webcam sites where a viewer can video-chat with a live model also contributed to less use of film sites. Anyone with a camera and a web connec­tion can set up a one-person operation (Alexander, 2008; Wallace,

2011). The adult industry also estimates that piracy of explicit material results in a $2 billion loss each year (Ross, 2008). By 2009 DVD sales had decreased by at least 25%, and pay-for-membership websites had a record low of new subscribers (Lucido, 2009).