Is porn the economic engine of the Internet?

Snickers Man

I only ask because I've been llistening to Dunphy's radio show in the mornings and this week he's focusing on the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons.

In the course of priming interviewees to respond about the state of our decadent liberal democracies he has twice (at least) in the last few days made the claim that 'porn is the economic engine of the Internet'.

Is this true? Are there any figures to substantiate it? How much internet commerce is porno pics and movies?

I'm skeptical myself. I have never bought porn on the internet in 11 years of surfing.

No honest. I haven't.

Smut.

Sputnik

You mighn't have but a hell of lot of other people have.

Don't know if I'd describe it as the 'economic engine' of the net but it's certainly the biggest business online.

daveyjoe

http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

It's difficult to derive figures from the industy because a lot of the money that is passed along may not be above board and a lot of the sites are actually scams.

HelterSkelter

You don't have to be buying it, people just downloading it for free (legally or illegally) are using more bandwidth and increasing the demand for faster connections, higher caps, etc. Just look at all the channels dedicated to porn in Direct Connect/Mirc/etc.

daveyjoe

It's an old joke that every new technology is driven by porn. I would question whether it is the biggest business on the internet... I know that it's probably one of the easiest ways to make a quick buck on the internet, but does anyone have any figures to back-up Sputnik's claim?

UberNewb

I would say it would be online shopping. Porn is a small percentage of the internet that dirty, Dirty, DIRTY men (and women) look at.
Look at it this way, what percentage of your time on the internet is spent looking at porn???

Over the past few years the amount I spend buying items on the internet doubles every year! :eek:

quad_red

daveyjoe wrote:

http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

It's difficult to derive figures from the industy because a lot of the money that is passed along may not be above board and a lot of the sites are actually scams.

"Child pornography generates $3 billion annually"

:eek:

mike65

I'd love to how they know this stuff. Child Porn is underground in essence so making an estimate thats worth a damn must be impossible.

Mike.

magpie

Poker has officially outstripped porn as the #1 use of the interweb. Its official; nerds love poker more than they love to masturbate. And that's saying something.

KdjaCL

magpie wrote:

Poker has officially outstripped porn as the #1 use of the interweb. Its official; nerds love poker more than they love to masturbate. And that's saying something.

So they can win money to buy better machines to watch HDtv porn...


it all fits in.


kdjac

Snickers Man

UberNewb wrote:

Look at it this way, what percentage of your time on the internet is spent looking at porn???

You mean apart fromyour signature?

BTW nice pussy.

ghost26ie

if u were to take all the porn off the web, there would be only one site left and that would be called 'bring back the porn'.

Anarchist

mike65 wrote:

Mike.

Your sig about Denmark is funny, they are hardly struggling for freedom.
No apology and printing stuff that they knew would probs cause offence, I look forward to the Iranian solution which is finding their best cartoonists pisstake of the holocaust.:)

jesus_thats_gre

X-rated: Getting a tech job in the adult industry

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020484,39237409,00.htm


Naked innovation online - Porn industry are early drivers for new technology such a streaming, DRM and so on..

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/internet/ecommerce/0,39020454,39237362,00.htm

Charlie

Its often been remarked that the reason that VHS triumphed oveer Betamax was that VHS was the format that the porn industry adopted. Also the porn industry has been widely credited as being the first entertainment industry to realise the potential of selling thier product on video. i.e it was hollywood who followed the porno people with regards to releasing movies on video available to buy or rent. While porn may not be the biggest revenue earner on the internet anymore, I think it is pretty obvious that porn played a big part in the success and widespread adoption of the internet, the same can also been said about most forms of mainstream media.