Internet pornography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed via the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups. While pornography had been traded over the Internet since the 1980s, it was the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991 as well as the opening of the Internet to the general public around the same time that led to an explosion in online pornography.

Like videotapes and DVDs, the Internet has proved popular for distributing pornography because it allows people to view pornography (essentially) anonymously in the comfort and privacy of their homes. It also allows access to pornography by people whose access is otherwise restricted for legal or social reasons.

History and methods of distribution

While pornography had seen limited distribution over the Internet in the 1980s, it was not until the Internet became more accessible to the general public that Internet pornography became a widespread phenomenon. The earliest online distribution of pornography consisted mainly of Internet users uploading scanned photos from adult magazines to Usenet newsgroups. 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 restrictions, as well as protecting the identity of uploaders and downloaders. Around this time frame, pornography was also distributed via pornographic Bulletin Board Systems such as Rusty n Edie's. These BBSes could charge users for access, leading to the first commercial online pornography (though not "internet pornography," since BBSes were not accessed via the internet).

The invention of the World Wide Web spurred both commercial and non-commercial distribution of pornography. The rise of pornography websites offering photos, video clips and streaming media including live webcam 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 sites. These are free websites that post links to commercial sites, providing a sampling of the commercial site in the form of thumbnail 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. 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^[1].

TGP

Most common form of adult content is actually a categorized list (more often it's a table) of small pictures (so called "thumbs") linked to galleries. These sites are called a TGP (Thumbnailed Gallery Post), as a rule, these sites sort thumbs by category and type of content available on a linked gallery. Actually TGP is a site that contains table of thumbs that lead to galleries that provide adult content in a form of pictures, but because of significantly increased bandwidth of internet users, many of galleries provide materials in a form of video. Sites containing thumbs that lead to galleries with video content are actually called MGP(Movie Gallery Post). The main benefit of TGP/MGP is that surfer can get first impression of a content provided by gallery without actually visiting it. The most abusive form of TGP is a so called CJ, that contains links that mislead surfer to sites he or she actually didn't wish to see.

LinkLists

It seems that it was the first web form of free adult content providers, because of low bandwidth requirements, linklists unlike TGP/MGP sites do not list a huge amount of pictures. LinkList is a (frequently)categorised web list of links to so called "freesites*", but unlike TGP 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 trends that thumb for is more productive, and simplifies searching. On the other hand, LinkLists have large amount of unique text, so that helps them to improve their positions in search engine's listings.

TopLists

Actually TopLists are the same LinkLists, but internal ranking of freesites is based on incoming traffic from that freesites. Except that, freesites designed for TopLists have much more galleries.

Another free source of pornography on the Internet are the Usenet newsgroups that were the first home to such material. Newsgroups tend to be poorly organized and flooded with content that is off-topic or spam. 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 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.

Empornium was one of the first BitTorrent web sites founded on the sharing of pornographic media files. In July 2006, as a result of the TargetPoint buyout of Empornium, a splinter group of administrators launched Cheggit. ^[2]

Internet pornography formats

Image files

Image files, particularly of the JPEG format, are one of the most common formats for distributing pornography. Images may be either scanned into the computer from photographs or magazines, produced with a digital camera, or a frame from a video.

Video files and streaming video

Video files formats such as MPEG, WMV, and QuickTime have been used to distribute pornographic video clips. More recently VCD and DVD image files allow distribution of whole VCDs and DVDs. Many commercial porn sites exist that allow one to view pornographic streaming video. Recently (mid-2006), some Internet pornography sites have begun offering High Definition Video content in WMV HD format.

Since mid-2006, advertising-supported free pornographic video hosting service websites based on the YouTube concept have appeared. Referred to as Porn 2.0, these sites generally use Flash technology to distribute videos that were uploaded by users; these include user-generated content 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. It is unique as compared to images and movies in that it did not exist before the Internet, and there is no offline equivalent. Webcam content can generally be divided into two categories: group shows offered to members of an adult paysite, and 1-on-1 private sessions usually sold on a pay-per-view basis. Currently the most popular video format for streaming live webcams is Flash Video FLV.

Other formats

Other formats include text and audio files. While pornographic and erotic stories, distributed as text files, web pages, and via message boards and newsgroups, have been semi-popular, audio porn, via formats like MP3 and FLV, have seen only very limited distribution. Audio porn can include recordings of people having sex or reading erotic stories. Pornographic magazines are available in Zinio format, which provides a reader program to enable access.

Legal status

This article or section deals primarily with the United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Main article: Legal status of Internet pornography

Since 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 filters.

Many activists and politicians have expressed concern over the easy availability of Internet pornography, especially by minors. This has led to a variety of attempts to restrict children's access to Internet pornography such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the United States. Some companies use an Adult Verification System (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.

Most employers have distinct policies against the accessing of any kind of online pornographic material from company computers,^{[citation needed]} in addition to which some have also installed comprehensive filters and logging software in their local computer networks.

One area of Internet pornography that has been the target of the strongest efforts at curtailment is child pornography. 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.

Porn-blocking Web filters

A variety of content-control 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, and others. Various work-arounds and bypasses are available for these products; Peacefire is one of the more notable clearinghouses for such countermeasures.

One laptop per child project

On July 20, 2007, Reuters reported on a minor scandal when the News Agency of Nigeria claimed that several units of XO-1 seen by its reporters had been used to navigate pornographic websites. In response, the OLPC program decided upon the inclusion of mandatory filtering on future models^[3]

See also

• Adult documentary

References

External links

• Straight Dope: How much of all Internet traffic is pornography?
• "Purveyors of porn scramble to keep up with Internet", USA Today

Source: Wikipedia

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)