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Porn attitudes may have
changed, but not quickly enough for Don
Smith. For relatively mild satirical FX films he received
a $100K fine, was banished from having an internet connection
in his home and has had to wait more than two years for Brian
Greenspan to get his case to appeal court. As of March 20, 2005
he is still waiting for the reserved judgment
Kind of blue
Can porn really be
acceptable? A new website thinks it can.
Bobbie Johnson, November
24, 2003, The Guardian
"The porn gods were definitely
smiling on us the day we launched," says Jonno d'Addario,
the editor of Fleshbot, a new venture which brands itself as
a showcase of "all the porn that digital technology and
distribution has made possible".
He's referring to the infamous
sex tape of New York socialite Paris Hilton, which broke on the
internet the very day that Fleshbot hit the web. On the back
of the buzz surrounding the Hilton video, Fleshbot soared to
more than 1m hits in its first week when it launched a fortnight
ago.
The site, a magazine-style
weblog funded through advertising, is the latest addition to
the stable of Gawker Media, the brainchild of Nick Denton, the
former FT journalist turned dotcom guru. But one of the most
surprising things about Fleshbot's launch was that, despite the
lurid subject matter, there was a distinct lack of criticism
from inside the web community.
In the real world, a well-known,
mainstream brand launching a porn based title would expect to
draw fire - just consider the flak that the Express owner Richard
Desmond's top-shelf sidelines have received. But Fleshbot has
been more likely to draw positive feedback than murmurs of discontent.
"Intelligent writing about
porn will always find an audience - but I think we've been helped
along by certain factors," says d'Addario - including "the
increasing acceptance of porn as a topic of mainstream conversation".
Even the conventional press
is in agreement. "Fleshbot might best be described as an
erudite pornography site," wrote the New York Times, "with
the same kind of catty writing and timely links that have made
Gawker a must-read for New York's gossip crowd."
Despite the hype, Gawker's
sites only bring in enough cash to cover costs. But it's not
only the small fry who draw respect rather than reprimands. Bigger
fish in the internet pond have started shifting their position
on adult content. Yahoo!, which banned adult products and adverts
from its American portal two years ago, is carrying advertising
for candid materials again - including ads for hardcore-sex sites.
The move, which came as a result of the company's £1.8bn
takeover of search engine group Overture in October, currently
affects a minority of smaller sites recently brought under the
Yahoo! umbrella.
The company remains steadfast
in defence of its decision. "Our intention is to ensure
that consumer interests are best served and that consumers, advertisers
and partners benefit from the highest quality online experience,"
says a Yahoo! spokesperson. "We evaluate our practices on
an ongoing basis."
While this volte-face might
strike puritan campaigners as a betrayal, it also shows that
even the largest web companies can sometimes be prepared to put
profits before prurience - especially when the sums involved
are often substantial.
But it is not just the balance
sheet which has influenced this increasingly liberal attitude
towards online pornography - it is also reflective of the current
mood of the US media. Usually, the cliché goes, America
is 10 years ahead of Britain. But this time we're talking about
sex, not obesity. In a post-political correctness backlash that
might make British readers recall the early 90s, it is only now
that unashamed sexualisation - across all media - is feeling
the trickle-down effect of America's own Loaded revolution.
Top-shelf material has been
brought into more fashionable territory, given edge, wit and
sarcasm. Denton has even gone so far as to say he comes from
"the Felix Dennis school of publishing" - a reference
to the latter's success with raunchy-but mainstream titles such
as Maxim.
As well as having to cope with
society's tacit acceptance of titillation, many anti-pornography
campaigners are finding it hard to keep up their struggle in
the face of the seemingly awesome and unstoppable power of the
web. Issues such as child pornography apart, many champions of
censorship seem to have capitulated. One high-profile activist
even admitted that she "does not keep up with it any more".
Some remain convinced that
they can change opinion, however. Bel Mooney, the author and
journalist, who once worked for Penthouse svengali Bob Guccione,
is among those who continue to advocate online censorship.
"Nowadays the internet
is, in effect, an endless gallery of pornographic images and
acts, accessed in the comfort of your own home," she said
earlier this year. "To speak of regulation may appear to
be wishful thinking, in the face of the reality of the internet.
But I believe it is important for each of us to know what is
going on, to be aware that pornography is not just natural, harmless
fun."
But despite such protestations,
the undeniable fact that sex has always been seen as a major
driver in the online market remains. And now the same level of
impetus is being put across other new media - such as palmtops,
picture MMS, and particularly video messaging.
"We believe the consumer
market for subscribed wireless adult media has enormous potential,"
says Charles Prast, the president and CEO of Private Media Group,
a huge adult entertainment organisation which has joined up with
a number of telecoms firms to provide adult content for mobile
phones and palmtops.
This shift is eroding the dividing
line between the "clean" internet - colonised by respectable
dotcoms and telecommunications providers - and the longstanding
reputation of the web as a haven for pornography.
Another reason behind changing
attitudes could be down to the transformation of the online population.
The web used to be peopled by computing professionals. But now
the average broadband web user has become less technically literate
and more classically liberal - typical of a post-60s generation
brought up on sex, drugs and freedom of choice.
New York's Village Voice magazine
calls Fleshbot "the perfect way to conceal your animal urges
beneath a veneer of geek intellectualism". This approach,
of sex as pop-culture pursuit, is reflective of a cultural elite
more likely to look to Eminem than Andrea Dworkin.
"That's bound to continue,"
says d'Addario. "Although I'd hate it if it became too mainstream.
Nothing would be more dreary... porn should always be dirty -
that's what makes it fun."
Ultimately, the aphorism that
sex sells is perhaps beginning to hold true for the big hitters
as well as those looking to make a quick profit. Of course, the
divide between established, mainstream internet companies and
adult-content providers remains. But thanks to a relaxation in
public attitudes, the web's bluechip firms are slowly inching
towards a corporate realism, in which adult content exists not
as a moral quagmire, but as a way of strengthening the bottom
line.
MediaGuardian.co.uk ©
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
- Sex sells, especially
to Web surfers
- Internet porn a booming,
billion-dollar industry
By Jeordan Legon December
11, 2003
(CNN) -- Gone are the furtive
visits to seedy theaters and the fear of being outed as some
perverted purchaser of porn. Now, all you need to indulge anonymously
in the "XXX" world is your trusty personal computer
and a good connection to the Internet.
It's difficult to derive reliable
figures from an industry that, despite flirtations with the mainstream,
is made up of many small shops that prefer to keep a low profile.
But the figures that exist paint a picture of a booming online
field, fueled by the relatively low costs of setting up shop,
fickle consumers in constant search of new thrills and the promise
of quick profits.
The flood of sites competing
for attention is fueling a torrent of X-rated spam, resulting
in minors being exposed to adult content and annoying marketing
ploys that spurred the recent approval in Congress of the first
national effort to stem the flood of unwanted e-mail.
Attorney General John Ashcroft's
office has launched dozens of investigations of adult content
businesses and filed an obscenity case against Extreme Associates,
a California porn firm that sold violent sex videos by mail and
over the Internet.
"It's an enormous business
... There's a lot of money to be made," said Sean Kaldor,
an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, which estimated that 34 million
visited porn sites in August -- about one in four Internet users
in the United States.
The average user is "looking
at 121 pages, going back six times and spending an hour and seven
minutes every month looking at adult-related material,"
Kaldor said.
All that browsing has caused
the number of pornography Web pages to soar during the past six
years, with over 1.3 million sites serving up about 260 million
pages of erotic content, according to a study released in September
by the Seattle, Washington-based Web-filtering company N2H2.
N2H2's database of porn sites,
a company spokesman said, includes many low-budget, fly-by-night
and sometimes unscrupulous operators hoping to rake in their
share of a market that the National Research Council estimates
to be in the $1 billion range annually.
The council, which advises
Congress on technology, issued a report in 2002 that predicts
the online porn industry will grow to a $5-$7 billion business
within five years.
People should be concerned,
said N2H2's David Burt, "because of the ease with which
children can stumble on porn sites accidentally and the ease
with which people can stumble upon this in the workplace, creating
liability issues."
Kathee Brewer, technology editor
of porn industry news site AVN Online, said the increase in adult
Internet pages has spurred opposition from conservative groups
and heightened government scrutiny. She said critics of porn
sites are attempting to blur the lines between law-abiding adult
content and banned obscene material.
"People can be easily
led, and the mere twist of a phrase -- like substituting 'obscenity'
for 'pornography' -- can have a profound effect on basically
good folk who want to do the right thing but don't know exactly
how to go about it," Brewer wrote recently in an essay about
conservative groups that support porn-filtering software.
Instead of government intervention,
Brewer urged the industry to police itself by keeping minors
away from explicit content and cutting down on spam e-mail. At
the same time, she said, it should be acknowledged that porn
has been one of the few profitable Internet businesses from the
start, employing thousands of people and generating millions
in revenues for site owners, Web hosting companies and computer-hardware
firms.
Experts say the industry has
been on the forefront of many innovations that have been adopted
by mainstream sites, such as new payment systems, ad revenue
models, chat and broadband.
"One of the most interesting
things is to watch how these sites pioneer new technologies,"
said Kaldor, the Nielsen/NetRatings analyst.
Online porn
grows up
Kaldor said the industry is
showing signs of maturity.
Password services have sprung
up, often charging an annual fee to deliver access to hundreds
of small sites, which share the subscription revenues.
Large firms also have consolidated
power by providing free content to smaller "affiliate"
sites. The affiliates post the free content and then try to channel
visitors to the large sites, which give the smaller sites a percentage
of the fees paid by those who sign up.
Another way some adult Webmasters
make money is by forwarding traffic to another porn site in return
for a small per-consumer fee. In many cases, the consumer is
sent to the other sites involuntarily, which is known in the
industry as "mousetrapping." Surfers who try to close
out a window after visiting an adult site are sent to another
Web page automatically. This can repeat dozens of times, causing
users to panic and restart their computers in order to escape,
the National Research Council found.
A fourth trend is for adult
sites to cater to niche audiences.
"There's a Web site for
just about every kink," said Scott Fayner, who writes for
LukeFord.com, a site that posts porn industry news and gossip.
Experts say tech advances and
the growing use of broadband will fuel even more growth in the
industry.
Porn and the
future
All of which is prompting concerns
about what impact the onslaught of porn might have on future
generations raised on a steady stream of adult images. Some believe
porn is creating unrealistic expectations among couples.
A recent article in New York
magazine contained interviews with men who said they were hooked
on Internet porn.
"Dude, all of my friends
are so obsessed with Internet porn that they can't sleep with
their girlfriends unless they act like porn stars," a 26-year-old
businessman told the article's author.
"Just imagine the adolescents
who, you know, their sexual coming of age has totally coincided
with the Internet and high-speed connections," reporter
David Amsden said. "As opposed to the 13-year-old boy [before
the Internet existed] who is lucky to find one Playboy"
magazine.
Like it or hate it, Internet
porn is here to stay, Amsden said. And the key, said sex therapist
Laura Berman, is to keep it in check.
"There's always a role
for pornography and for fantasies, if it's used to the benefit
of the couple," Berman said.
CNN producer Linda Keenan contributed
to this report.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
