The Pornography Business

Traditionally, the presence of pornography in American society has been mediated by two primary factors: legal restrictions and the relatively high cost of the product. The degree of legal restrictions on adult material has varied from era to era and community to community, but the porn premium has remained relatively constant. Given this, these should be heady days for adult business owners. Thanks to the Internet, distribution costs are virtually nil and even the most hardcore content is easily accessible in the smallest coastal hamlet and most rural farmhouse in America. Adult industry balance sheets should be bulging with profit. But in reality, far from it. The World Wide Web has completely eradicated both the legal restrictions and premium cost that used to govern adult industry economics. To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, never has so much pornography been available to so many people for so little.

This is the story of how the online adult industry has plummeted from its lofty heights of the late 1990s, when a savvy Web entrepreneur could charge thousands of eager subscribers premium prices. It is also the story of how the law has completely failed to keep pace with the technological innovations that boosted and then savaged the online adult industry. It concludes with a detailed analysis of the social impact of virtually unlimited pornography of every description, available to all ages at the click of a button.

Accessible to the general reader, this book will appeal to those who want to know more about the adult entertainment industry in America and will prove useful reading for students and researchers involved with a wide variety of academic disciplines including business strategy, the history of technology, cultural studies, sexuality, media studies and technology more generally.