Internet pornography
Encyclopedia
Internet pornography is pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

 that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, primarily via website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

s, peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

 file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...

, or Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 newsgroups. While pornography had been traded over the Internet since the 1980s, it was the invention of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 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 videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...

s and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s, the Internet has proved popular for distributing pornography because it allows people to view pornography more or less 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.

Before the World Wide Web

Pornography is often considered as one of the driving forces behind the early expansion of the world wide web. Pornographic images had been transmitted over the Internet as ASCII porn
ASCII porn
The term ASCII porn, or "ASCII pr0n", describes pornographic images consisting of ASCII art. It was the world's first internet pornography, and was popular before the invention of the World-Wide Web, and often found on BBSes and other text mode terminal-based systems that could be reached via...

 but to send images over network needed computers with graphics capability and also higher network bandwidth. This was possible in the late '80s and early '90s through the use of anonymous FTP servers and
through Gopher. At this time the internet was mainly an academic and military network and there was not widespread use of the internet. One of the early Gopher/FTP sites was at tudelft and was called the Digital Archive on the 17th Floor (List of websites founded before 1995). This small image archive contained some low quality scanned pornographic images that were initially available to anyone anonymously, but the site soon became restricted to Netherlands only access.

Usenet Groups

Usenet newsgroups also provided a way of sharing images over the narrow bandwidth available in the early 1990s. Images scanned from adult magazines were encoded as ascii text and then broken into sections which were posted to the Alt.Binaries hierarchy of usenet. These files could then be downloaded and then reassembled before being decoded back to the images. Automated software such as aub allowed the automatic download and assembly of all the images from a newsgroup. There was a rapid growth in the number of posts in the early '90s but image quality was restricted by the size of files that could be posted. 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
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 restrictions, as well as protecting the identity of uploaders and downloaders. Around this time frame, pornography was also distributed via pornographic Bulletin Board System
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...

s such as Rusty n Edie's
Rusty n Edie's BBS
right|thumb|360px|A typical [[ASCII art|ASCII]] advertisement for Rusty n Edie's BBS.Rusty n Edie's BBS was a bulletin board system founded on May 11, 1987 by the two SysOps, Russell & Edwina Hardenburgh, of Boardman, Ohio...

. These BBSes could charge users for access, leading to the first commercial online pornography.

The invention of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 spurred both commercial and non-commercial distribution of pornography. The rise of pornography websites offering photos, video clips and streaming media
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

 including live webcam
Webcam
A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi.Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera...

 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
Thumbnail gallery post
A thumbnail gallery post is a common type of ad-driven website that provides links to free Internet pornography. In affiliate marketing terms, TGPs are the affiliates that drive new traffic to the product producers, paysites...

 sites. These are free websites that post links to commercial sites, providing a sampling of the commercial site in the form of thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...

 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
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....

 by keeping up-to-date indexes of these smaller sampler sites. These intents to create directories about adult content and websites were followed by the creation of adult wikis where the user can contribute his knowledge and recommend quality resources and links. 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.

TGP

The most common form of adult content is a categorized list (more often it's a table) of small pictures (called "thumbnails") linked to galleries. These sites are called a Thumbnail gallery post
Thumbnail gallery post
A thumbnail gallery post is a common type of ad-driven website that provides links to free Internet pornography. In affiliate marketing terms, TGPs are the affiliates that drive new traffic to the product producers, paysites...

 (TGP). As a rule, these sites sort thumbs by category and type of content available on a linked gallery. Sites containing thumbs that lead to galleries with video content are called MGP (Movie Gallery Post). The main benefit of TGP/MGP is that the surfer can get a first impression of the content provided by a gallery without actually visiting it. The most abusive form of TGP is the so-called CJ (abbreviation for circlejerk), that contains links that mislead the surfer to sites he or she actually didn't wish to see. This is also called a redirect.

Linklists

Linklists unlike TGP/MGP sites do not display a huge amount of pictures. A linklist is a (frequently) categorised web list of links to so called "freesites*", but unlike TGPs, 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 cite a trend that thumbs are much more productive, and simplify searching. On the other hand, LinkLists have a larger amount of unique text, so that helps them to improve their positions in search engine listings. TopLists are linklists whose internal ranking of freesites is based on incoming traffic from those freesites, except that freesites designed for TopLists have many more galleries.

Usenet

Another free source of pornography on the Internet are the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 newsgroups that were the first home to such material. Newsgroups tend to be poorly organized and flooded with content that is off-topic
On-topic
In the context of mailing lists, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and wikis a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is....

 or spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...

. 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
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

 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.

Men and women viewers

The majority of viewers of online pornography are men; women tend to prefer romance novel
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...

s and erotic fan fiction
Fan fiction
Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...

. Women comprise about one quarter to one third of visitors to popular pornography websites, but are only 2% of subscribers to pay sites. Subscribers with female names are flagged as signs of potential credit card fraud
Credit card fraud
Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction. The purpose may be to obtain goods without paying, or to obtain unauthorized funds from an account. Credit card fraud is also...

, because "so many of these charges result in an angry wife or mother demanding a refund for the misuse of her card."

Image files

Image files, particularly of the JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

 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
Moving Picture Experts Group
The Moving Picture Experts Group is a working group of experts that was formed by ISO and IEC to set standards for audio and video compression and transmission. It was established in 1988 by the initiative of Hiroshi Yasuda and Leonardo Chiariglione, who has been from the beginning the Chairman...

, WMV
Windows Media Video
'Windows Media Video is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater...

, and QuickTime have been used to distribute pornographic video clips. More recently VCD
Video CD
Before the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, the Video CD became the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm optical discs. The format is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc...

 and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 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
WMV HD
Windows Media High Definition Video is the marketing name for high definition videos encoded using Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 codecs...

 format.

Since mid-2006, advertising-supported free pornographic video hosting service
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...

 websites based on the YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 concept have appeared. Referred to as Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0, named after the Web 2.0 is a concept of internet-based websites featuring user-generated content. These ideas are sometimes described as intermediate social networking mediums using dynamics contents such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting in ?tube as opposed to static contents in...

, these sites generally use Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

 technology to distribute videos that were uploaded by users; these include user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...

 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. 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
FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...

.

Server-based webcam sex shows spur unique international economics: adult models in various countries perform live webcam shows and chat for clients in affluent countries. This kind of activity is sometimes mediated by companies which will set up websites and manage finances. They may maintain "office" space for the models to perform from, or they provide the interface for models to work at home, with their own computer with webcam.

At times, such companies will exploit the models — making them work long shifts, and paying them only a small fraction of the money they collect from clients.

Other formats

Other formats include text and audio files. While pornographic and erotic stories, distributed as text file
Text file
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...

s, web pages, and via message boards and newsgroups, have been semi-popular, audio porn, via formats like MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 and FLV
FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...

, 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
Zinio
Zinio is a publishing technology and services company, which provides sales and distribution of printed material in digital format including magazines, books, catalogs, newsletters and research...

 format, which provides a reader program to enable access.

Combination formats, such as webteases that consist of images and text have also emerged.

Legal status

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 to minors. This has led to a variety of attempts to restrict children's access to Internet pornography such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act
Communications Decency Act
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...

 in the United States. Some companies use an Adult Verification System
Adult Verification System
An Adult Verification System also known as an "Age Gate" is a computing system used by a website to confirm that the user attempting to access their website is of the age required to view the website's content, which typically includes sex, nudity, violence or profanity, or Entertainment Software...

 (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.

In response to concerns with regard to children accessing age-inappropriate content, the adult industry, through the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP)
Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP)
The is a non-profit organization that fights Internet child pornography and works to help parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate material online....

, began a self-labeling initiative called the Restricted to Adults label (RTA). This label is recognized by many web filtering products and is entirely free to use.

Most employers have distinct policies against the accessing of any kind of online pornographic material from company computers, in addition to which some have also installed comprehensive filters and logging software in their local computer network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

s.

One area of Internet pornography that has been the target of the strongest efforts at curtailment is child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

. 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.

On April 8, 2008 Evil Angel
Evil Angel (studio)
Evil Angel is a production company and distributor of pornographic films, founded and owned by John Stagliano.Stagliano and Evil Angel pioneered the Gonzo pornography genre in the late 1980s....

 and its owner John Stagliano
John Stagliano
John Allen Stagliano , also known as Buttman, is an American entrepreneur, pornographic actor, producer and director, who founded and owns the Evil Angel pornographic film studio.-Early life and career:...

 were charged in federal court with multiple counts of obscenity. One count was for, "using an interactive computer service to display an obscene movie trailer in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age."

Web filters and blocking software

A variety of content-control
Content-control software
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...

, parental control and filtering 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
Net Nanny
Net Nanny is a brand of content-control software marketed primarily at parents as a way to control a child's computer activity. The flagship product allows a computer owner to block and filter Internet content, place time limits on use, and block desktop PC games.-History:The original version of...

, SeeNoEvil, SurfWatch
SurfWatch
SurfWatch, Inc. was a Los Altos, CA-based company which pioneered the first software that allowed users to block explicit content on the Internet...

, and others. Various work-arounds and bypasses are available for some of these products; Peacefire
Peacefire
Peacefire is a U.S.-based website, with a registered address in Bellevue, Washington, dedicated to "preserving First Amendment rights for Internet users, particularly those younger than 18". It was founded in August 1996 by Bennett Haselton, who still runs it...

 is one of the more notable clearinghouses for such countermeasures.

Internet porn viewing during working hours

As of October 2008, about one quarter of employees visit Internet porn sites during working hours according to Nielsen Online
Nielsen Online
Nielsen Online, a service of the Nielsen Company, provides measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, consumer-generated media, word of mouth, commerce and consumer behavior. Previously a majority investor in both companies, Nielsen purchased NetRatings and BuzzMetrics in the...

. This figure is up by 23% from October 2007. M. J. McMahon, publisher of AVN Online Magazine
AVN (magazine)
Adult Video News is an American trade journal that covers the adult video industry. The New York Times notes that AVN is to pornographic films what Billboard is to records...

 reports that hits are highest during office hours than at any other time of day.

Child pornography

The Internet has radically changed how child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

 is reproduced and disseminated, and, according to the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

, resulted in a massive increase in the "availability, accessibility, and volume of child pornography." The production of child pornography has become very profitable, bringing in several billion dollars a year, and is no longer limited to pedophiles. Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins is as of 2010 the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities at Pennsylvania State University . He was Professor and a Distinguished Professor of History and Religious studies at the same institution; and also assistant, associate and then full professor of Criminal Justice and...

 notes that there is "overwhelming evidence that [child pornography] is all but impossible to obtain through nonelectronic means."

The NCMEC estimated in 2003 that 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1500%. Regarding internet proliferation, the US DOJ states that "At any one time there are estimated to be more than one million pornographic images of children on the Internet, with 200 new images posted daily." They also note that a single offender arrested in the U.K. possessed 450,000 child pornography images, and that a single child pornography site received a million hits in a month. Further, that much of the trade in child pornography takes place at hidden levels of the Internet, and that it has been estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 pedophiles involved in organized pornography rings around the world, and that one third of these operate from the United States. Digital cameras and Internet distribution facilitated by the use of credit cards and the ease of transferring images across national borders has made it easier than ever before for users of child pornography to obtain the photographs and videos.

In 2007, the British-based Internet Watch Foundation
Internet Watch Foundation
The Internet Watch Foundation is a non-governmental charitable body based in the United Kingdom. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of 'potentially criminal' Internet content, specifically images of child sexual abuse hosted anywhere, and criminally obscene adult content in...

 reported that child pornography on the Internet is becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse has risen fourfold since 2003. The CEO stated "The worrying issue is the severity and the gravity of the images is increasing. We're talking about prepubescent children being raped." About 80 percent of the children in the abusive images are female, and 91 percent appear to be children under the age of 12. Prosecution is difficult because multiple international servers are used, sometimes to transmit the images in fragments to evade the law.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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