Obscene Profits: Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age by Frederick S. Lane

Author:Frederick S. Lane [Lane, Frederick S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781135115708
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2001-07-23T07:00:00+00:00

THE INTERNET: A WORLD WIDE PRIMER ON STARTING AN ADULT WEB SITE

If there is one thing that will prevent the publication of an Adult Web Site for Beginners, it is that everything that could be put in such a book is already available to entrepreneurs online. From the perspective of pornography opponents, it is not bad enough that the Internet has globalized the production and sale of pornography, ratcheted up its potential profits, and made sexually explicit materials readily available in every living room, library, and school in the country. What is worse is that the Internet is steadily eroding many of the traditional objections to the pornography industry, in large part because the Web has substantially reduced the social costs of learning enough about pornography and the industry to successfully run an adult Web site.

It has never been easier to research a sector of the pornography industry, learn how to compete with existing businesses, and locate product suppliers. In the so-called real world, of course, the process of learning enough about the pornography industry in order to set up and run a successful adult business was and generally still is unpleasant and often dangerous. In most urban areas, for instance, sex shops and adult movie theaters are generally segregated in seedy or rundown areas of the city, and any effort to learn about how the businesses work, how much money they make, or who supplies their products are actively and often aggressively discouraged. By contrast, a prospective pornography entrepreneur can quickly and easily access a wealth of adult Web sites from the privacy of his or her home. With a few clicks of a mouse, for instance, one can visit the Yahoo! listings under “Home > Business and Economy > Companies > Sex > Internet Services” and find companies that offer Adult Turnkey Programs (5), Age Verification Services (26), Commercial Web Site Directories, Content Providers (22), Photographs, Web Designers (4), Web Hosting (15), and Web Promotion (9). Similarly, the adult-oriented directory Naughty Linx offers an entire category devoted to adult Webmasters, including listings for Bulk Email, Billing Systems, Submissions Services, and so forth. One of the most comprehensive sites is the Webmaster section of Ynot Network (see Chapter 6), which contains links to a wide variety of Webmaster resources and even a special section devoted to new entrepreneurs called “Beginner's Luck.” The scope of the material in the Beginner's Luck section is impressive, ranging from “Building an Adult Site” to “Proper Precautions,” a summary of the legal risks inherent in operating an adult Web site.

In many ways, the scope of the material available on starting an adult Web site is simply an extension of the changes that have taken place offline. With the arrival of the videocassette recorder and the ubiquitous video store, it became increasingly easy to participate in the pornography industry. By the early 1990s, large numbers of so-called “mom-and-pop” video stores were adding adult titles to their stock as a way of competing against large video chains like Blockbuster, which has a corporate policy against stocking X- or NC-17-rated videos.

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