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Did pornography help develop the internet? And has the internet made it more difficult for porn producers to make money?

Did pornography help develop the internet? And has the internet made it more difficult for porn producers to make money? From photography, to cable television, to the video cassette recorder, there’s a theory that pornography users are some of the earliest adopters of new technology. Five in six images shared on the Usenet discussion group in the 1990s were pornographic, one study claimed. But, as Tim Hartford describes, the internet has made it easier for people to access pornography, but made it harder for anyone to make money from it.

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9 minutes

Last on

Mon 3 Jun 2019 03:50GMT

Image credit

A neon XXX sign (Credit: Getty Images)

Sources

Web Porn: Just how much is there? - Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

The Nature of Paleolithic Art, R. Dale Guthrie, University of Chicago Press, 2005

The Erotic Engine: How Pornography has powered mass communication, from Gutenberg to Google, Patchen Barss, Doubleday, 2010

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and cheap labour in the American Black Market, Eric Schlosser, HMH, 2004

Pornography, Videotape and the Internet, Jonathan Coopersmith, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Spring 2000

EroticaBiz: How Sex Shaped the Internet, Lewis Perdue, Writers Club Press, 2002

Broadcasts

  • Sat 1 Jun 2019 04:50GMT
  • Sat 1 Jun 2019 13:50GMT
  • Sun 2 Jun 2019 14:50GMT
  • Sun 2 Jun 2019 21:50GMT
  • Sun 2 Jun 2019 22:50GMT
  • Mon 3 Jun 2019 03:50GMT

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