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Online Porn - The Technology Testbed?
DaveAtFraud writes "USA Today is running a only slightly tongue-in-cheek article pointing out that the on-line porn industry has become the technology testbed for innovative content delivery. On-line delivery of 'adult' content has been wrestling with issues such as digital rights management, video on-demand billing, wireless services, and geo-location software since long before these became issues for 'mainstream' content providers. Maybe having an adult content provider listed on your geek resume isn't so bad after all."
I always hear about how amazingly profitable the porn industry is. My question is who pays for all this porn when there is more than enough free stuff out there to meet anyone's needs. Just my observation...
Saw an interesting feature on a Dateline-type TV news show for my Cyberlaw class. It said that pornography has driven not only the Internet (streaming video, credit card verification, broadband, etc.), but also technologies like the VCR (instead of going to the sleazy adult theatre, you can watch skin flicks in your own home) and even cable television. It was said that the number of adult movie screens in this country (indeed, around the world) has gone up exponentially since the introduction of the VCR, and it hasn't decreased since. It takes away the need for people to go out and buy porn in a semi-public fashion.
Just think, if it weren't for our baser instincts, we'd never have advanced as far technologically as we have. Who knows what the future holds...
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
...in college who did his doctoral o this exact subject. He later went on to work for ABC television. His basic gist was that it's the porn industry that actually works out the practical logistics of any new medium. At the time he was talking about the porn industry building the VHS video industry. A lot of movie studios were reluctant to put movies on VHS since they feared it would destroy their industry. But the porno business had nothing to lose as they were relegated to booths and shady theaters. So... they put ALL of their movies out on VHS. All those people out there who would NEVER be caught dead in a porno movie house or booth suddenly had access in their own living rooms and [BAM!!!] a new empire was born. Too bad porno movies soundtracks are so bad, otherwise the porno industry would probably have the online music distribution down pat in a short time.
Un-news
When the web started, these were the folks who mostly implemented the whole credit card/password access thing. They "stretched" graphics, streaming (uh huh huh) video, audio, and any other multimedia applications out there.
They've gone after the broadband crowd long before everyone else relied on it, and in a sense, continue to push the whole Internet-based "entertainment" stuff. Yeah, they innovate, can't deny that. They've always been in the fringe -- and everyone else just kinda looks on to see what does and doesn't work.
Hmmm, maybe they're the "military" of the Internet -- the technology gets designed for their purposes first, then once it's tested, goes on to find applications for the general public.
This means that the adult entertainment industry and other fast-paced private industries have supplanted the military as a driver for leading-edge tech. The long procurement cycles for weapons and government programs mean that they use older tech. In fact, it is a real problem for vendors because the government wants specs on stuff to be delivered in 18-24 months (its hard to spec a PC 2 years in advance).
Although the military will always be the driver for some technologies, commerical enterprise, with its much faster innovation cycle time, seems to be taking over as the key driver for innovation.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Alright, I gotta admit, I've been dying to ask this question, and this topic seems like the right place to do it... I wanna see some replies telling me how MUCH pr0n you've downloaded (and have available to you in some format (CD, harddrive, etc.)) *right now*!
/., I'm sure many of you must make me look like an amateur, so please humble me! (or at least make me feel like I'm not a TOTAL perv ;-)
I estimate I have *around* 15Gb of stuff I've saved, I'm sure I've downloaded MUCH more than that over the years, but I could probably find about that much in my apartment right now...
Anyway, this is
Still wondering why I can stream Debbie Does Dallas (the original) to my Zaurus over 802.11b faster than to my PC with a 1GB ethernet adaptor.
:)
Something the article fails to mention is the money behind porn. The porn industry is the *only* industry that has never suffered financially. There have never been layoffs. And while mostly privately held (after all, who wants their investment portfolio filled with smut companies), its one of the best funded industries out there. The porn industry has the $$$ to make things work, but they don't always share their technologies. The majority also use some form of *nix in their infrastructure... very little M$ found in the porn industry. And from a dot-bomb perspective, I made a killing as a 21-year-old making over $150K a year in the dot-com era. When I finally got laid off, I went to Vivid Video. While all my other over $100K a year friends and co-workers are now averaging $80K to $90K, I'm now making over $200K. There's something to be said for working in an industry with money. And, no, I'm not an actor, but I do get to watch whatever I want... and occasionally some of the girls need a little relief.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
Okay, I'm also being touch-and-cheek but I think the Rule of Porn mostly works. Can you use Google for porn? Yep, must be a good technology. Can you use faster Internet access for porn? Yep... and so on.
True story...
We were developing (back in the dot-com days, a moment of silence please) a desktop collaboration software (think NetMeeting, WebEx, etc.) but we had a way-supeior codec and way of doing things.
Along came a company, that wanted to use our server technology to stream video. Interestingly not a porn company, but none other than those fine friers of chicken, KFC. They wanted to wire up all their stores and stream their security monitoring cameras back to HQ security. We called the project ChickenCam...
Coincidentally, a few weeks later we were approached by a company out of the LA area (where else) who wanted a surprisingly similar implementation. They were a little sketchy about the details in their first call, but eventually they let on that they wanted various video channels to stream to their users. It was then that we decided to rename the ChickenCam project to PoultryCam to match this PussyCam project. We didn't think CatCam and ChickenCam was nearly as much fun.
In the end, the PussyCam ended up going operational, but the thick client install and configuration made it less than successful (as I had originally predicted). We did sell the PoultryCam, but they only ever implemented it in one store and then gave up on the whole idea.
Those were the days...
--D
p.s. Any porn companies currently hiring?
A lot of people have this idea that most porn is run on flaky servers in big server farms by shadowy sleaze bags. Form my experience working for Internet Entertainment Group, only one of those things (run by sleaze bags) was true. We ran IEG out of half a floor in a glass tower next to Pike Place Market in Seattle. We had 2 OC-3 lines and a few T-1s running from our studios in Capital Hill, 9 SGI servers running IRIX, and a RAID with terabytes before people tossed that term around much. Totally "state of the art". The boss, Seth, however, was a sleaze of the first level, and now resides in Thailand (for some reason, he fears coming back here, pissed off a few people).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Find the name of a model, especially one knows to pose nude. Now type it in on Google image search. Now you have a page full of way more porn than you can usually get, usually much higher quality than searching for "porn".
I agree, to an extent. I'm an adult webmaster, and it is an interesting line of work. It's a fairly close-nit community and it does have it's downsides.
When I started out, getting ANYONE to do business with us was next to impossible. Banks wouldn't allow us to open accounts, online merchants wouldn't accept us, etc etc.
It has gotten more "friendly" over the past few years, but it certainly isn't a market I recommend to just anyone. Building user contacts and networking is always hard, but in the adult industry people seem more guarded.
And honestly? The web visitors are always pompous, condescending assholes if you don't provide them with what they want, when they want it. I must get 50 emails a day with complaints about various miniscule bullshit.
I still wouldn't trade it for the world though. :)
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The sad thing is that if folks visited some of the other informational sites that engaged the brain in an effort to educate it in the ways of attracting the opposite sex, sex would be arguably free.
(Yes, I understand that much of the money made on the internet by the 'fringe' segments of the sex market, namely the fettish sections.)
In essence, there would be no need to buy a diamond, because you could simply just pick one up off the ground.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Originally posted at http://george.hotelling.net/90percent/linkage/pr0n _leads_the_way.php:
I found a pretty insightful rant (safe for work) copied from the business guy at the altporn site Suicide Girls. I wish the RIAA would start tracking how people hear about the albums that they buy, so that they could stop freaking out.
Porn has a long history of figuring out how to use new media to their advantage. Perhaps because porn is driven by our basest instinct we understand it on far deeper levels than widget building, and can apply that understanding to things that we don't fully comprehend intellectually. Maybe it's just because there's such intense competition in the industry that forces companies to innovate. I'm sure there's a "free hand of the market" joke in there, but I'll be damned if I can find it.
The VCR was largely decried by the MPAA because they saw it as cutting into their profits. When the VCR was still new, MPAA president Jack Valenti said the VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. (which of course means that he wasn't opposed to the VCR). A driver of early VCR purchases was being able to watch porn movies without having to go to theaters filled with creepier people than you. Fast forward 20 years and that Boston strangler makes up a huge portion of movie studio profits.
While I'm skeptical that porn can drive any technology - who really needs porn on their cellphone at blazing speeds - the porn industry typically ahead of the curve. Let's hope the RIAA realizes this and stops suing 12 year old girls.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
The web visitors are always pompous, condescending assholes if you don't provide them with what they want, when they want it. I must get 50 emails a day with complaints about various miniscule bullshit.
Interesting. I have a friend who used to be a clerk in a porn shop; he absolutely hated the job, but he said the best part of it was the fact that the customers were too intimidated just by being in the place to give him any shit. I guess the anonymity of the internet gives your customers the courage to act like assholes. Maybe you should start replying to complaints by calling them at home?
The military may use old technology now, but at the time those machines are designed for the military they are the highest of high-tech.
You raise some very good points. I think the change-over from military applications being the leader to being the follower occured on the last 10-15 years. In the mid-80s the DoD adopted a COTS (Commmercial Off The Shelf) strategy to help reduce systems costs. Bad press about $600 toilet seats and $2000 screwdrivers made them shift from custom-designing and building everything to buying off the shelf.
I remember studying the synthetic aperture radar system for the F-15. It had a 500 MFlop-equivalent processor for doing FFTs and came out in the mid-60s -- definitely way past the leading edge. Then I noticed that the F-22, being designed in the 90s was only going to use a 20MHz i860. At the time, commerical CPUs were pushing past 100 MHz and the F-22 wasn't even first flown until 1997 and won't be in routine service until 2005. Now I'm sure they've upgraded the avionics for faster CPUs but I'd bet that when it enters service it will be at least 2 to 4 doublings behind commerically-available hardware.
Looking at current IT, I'd say that the military has contributed little to the most recent advancements in CPU and communications (how much of does Intel get from govt contracts vs. commercial sales? How about Cisco? or Nokia?). I'm sure the government buys lots of stuff from these vendors, but I'd also bet that its a minority of these company's business volumes and strategic concerns. Intel & Cisco design their new products for the commercial market, not the military market these days.
Yes, the military played a huge role in getting tech off the ground in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. But somewhere in the late 80s and 90s, commerical applications became the driving force in tech. The DoD's move to COTS and the mass-adoption of tech in everyday life has put the military in the backseat on mainstream tech development.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is off-topic, dont bother modding me down for it, I just want to comment on Symbolic's sig:
Slashdot must not ever have editing of posts for one simple reason, that it would remove accountability (and be psychotic if it allowed mod'ed posts to be edited). Imagine trying to understand a nested message board like this, with comments about parent posts, etc., when people repeatedly edited their posts? It would become impossible to understand what was going on...
Worse, what if your post was modded to 5, then you edited it to be innappropriate? The entire point of moderation - to bring good ideas to the forfront - would be ruined.
"Stumble before you crawl"
"One of the first things printed in mass-form after the Bible....."
this satement would seem to contradict the notion that porn is that driving force of technology. That religion is the driving force of technology is not so unbelievable - science is itself a kind of religion, one that has supplanted (to many) the 'mystical' religion of the shamen. And science has 'created' technology - and certainly drives it. Most tech comes from the ivory tower of academia, the training ground of the scientific religion. Sexual drive has, in most religions, been the underdog/dark side. Lucifer in Christianity; absenance has long been a holi practice, even in shamanic cultures. Control of the sexual function is at the root of most religions, and the antithesis of most religions is that free and unrestrained expression of that drive. Even in sciences it is stated that unchecked growth is a fundamental hazard.
I almost feel like this is a chicken/egg argument.... Shamanism had the market cornered for Visioning practices (psychedelics et al), which has popularly been supplanted by visualization technology. There is more......
-shpoffo
How does one become an adult webmaster
There are a couple of ways to do it. The first method involves having a very willing girlfriend that has a lot of friends who aren't afraid to take their clothes off. If you date a stripper or a wanna-be porn starlet, you're set.
The second method is more difficult now, but basically, find a niche and fill it. Unfortunately, most of the common fetishes (big breasts, asians, lesbian, blonds, etc.) are already represented by some very well-established sites, so what you're left with is catering to the Fat Asian Foot-Fetishists out there. Not very enjoyable work, and hard-as-hell to get content.
Personally, I worked with a photographer for a few years, and we did a number of shoots for strippers who wanted to become models. The problem is, most strippers simply don't have the right looks or height to be a model. But we would shoot them regardless, since they paid our bills.
We decided to offer free publicity shots (since we kept the publishing rights), and word got around. Mind you, Joe Photo won't be able to pull this off. The key to being a successful photographer is looking like a successful photographer: plenty of strobes, lots of tripods hanging on the walls, a proper studio, tearsheets casually tossed about, etc.. The photog I worked with probably had a hundred grand invested in equipment.
The nice thing about strippers is that they tend to be a bit crazy to begin with, and if you're reasonably cool they won't have a problem doing crazy shit in front of a camera. In their minds, it beats having to ass-grind some fat slob at a club any day of the week.
This can get expensive, however, depending on location. Which is the next point: go where the talent is. We worked on the East Coast, and there's just not a lot of girls going into porn over here. And the strippers? Well, your standards tend to drop when you have a real-flesh-and-blood girl dancing for you, but for an online audience the bar is raised considerably. Your girls either better be extremely attractive, have enormous breasts, or be willing to do some pretty extreme stuff if you're going to keep up with the competition.
So, if you really want to be a PornGod, here's my advice. First, move to L.A. -- there's a lot more "talent" (ha!) to be had for a lot less dough. Learn some basic studio photography, then shell out a couple grand for a prosumer digital camera and some strobes. Rent a studio someplace that's easy to get to by public transportation (bus, train, whatever). Or, make friends with a photographer that's already established and shares your enthusiasm for naked chicks and doesn't mind ruining his professional career (i.e., his day job). That's not to say that your name will get dragged through the mud if you go into porn, but it's a risk.
Once you've got that, set up a website with a host that won't boot you for hosting porn. Set up your site, plan what kind of market you're aiming at, and start filling it with stuff you find on USENET. Yes, it's not really legal, but if there's no (c) on the picture, and you're still small-time, you can consider it fair game. Now comes the fun part...
Head down to your local strip club. You're not going for a lap dance, so try and be professional and curteous. Really look at the girls -- don't just oggle their nakedness. If you don't see anyone that catches your eye, move on to the next place. Try to remain as objective as you can (it gets easier the more you do it). If you find a couple of girls you like, approach them after a routine when they're walking around the club. Tell them your name, what you would like to use them for, and hand them a business card. Look at her eyes, not her tits, and you're more likely to be taken seriously. Tell them how much you're paying for a shoot, and ask them to pass along the information to anyone they think might be interested.
Don't engage them in a long conversation, since they're technically on the clock and y
If porn is a recession-proof industry, why are so few porn companies listed on the stock market? I would *much* rather see my retirement money being used to produce something of value like this, than wasted on WorldCom and Enron scandals.
By searching boycott lists from religious fundamentalist groups, it is possible to find some publicly traded porn companies. There is also the Vice Fund, but that is mostly drinking and gambling, not airbrushed silicone.
Where is the Vangard T&A 44DD Fund when you need it?
Hmmh. But isn't that nitpicking? It's like saying food isn't a major factor in human behaviour, it's the hunger? Drive really is based on human (or any animal) biological goal to multiply and generate offsprings, which means sex. And although porn is "only" a subsitute to having sex, it is still closely related... So saying sex is a driving force, IMO, is not all that far off. And of course it also goes without saying that this "obsession" is rather natural phenomenon, since nature wanted to make 110% sure animals (including humans) never accidentally forget to generate offsprings. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
I'm still trying to figure out what's 'adult' about most 'adult' content, since much of it depicts a complete absence of restraint, common sense, and reality in general
That's called "fantasizing", and yes, it is peculiar that it's associated with term "adult" (or rather, "adult" being euphenism for sexual fantasies), in english language. I'm not sure I follow importance of absence of some of things needed in real life; that's what defines fantasy, and there's nothing bad about that. It's what ALLOWS us to act in more controlled manner in Real World; having the optionn to fantasize about alternatives.
Note, too, that term "adult" isn't necessarily used in other languages; they definitely have their own ways of implying erotic or pornographic content, without using same terms (in finnish, for example, it's not "adult magazines" but "men's magazines"... but most other things are referred to as either porn [if one condemns it] or erotic [if it's ok by whoever refers to it]).
"Just like there's no windows in a strip club, you shouldn't be able to see inside windows in a car when they're watching X-rated movies," said Carlton, a 26-year-old from Gurnee, Illinois.
More and more Americans are buying vehicles with DVD players, usually to keep the kids entertained. But an increasing number of other people on the road are catching a glimpse through the windows of more than just "Finding Nemo" and "SpongeBob SquarePants."
Depending on where they are driving or parked, motorists could face fines and even jail time for screening X-rated stuff. But where the law may not be clear, some are calling for tighter regulation.
"Residents should not be subjected to those obscenities," said Flint City Councilwoman Carolyn Sims, who is examining whether an ordinance packing a $500 fine is needed. "They do have a right to have peace and tranquility and not to have this exposure to sex in their face."
A driver in Schenectady, New York, was arrested last month after rolling past police with a DVD titled "Chocolate Foam" playing on the passenger-side sun visor in his Mercedes-Benz, authorities said. The movie also was rolling on screens set into the car's headrests.
The driver was accused of breaking state laws prohibiting watching TV while driving, as well as another law making it illegal to exhibit sexually explicit material in a public place.
"The detective had a clear view of what was playing through the window. Anyone walking by on the street could have seen it," Schenectady police Lt. Peter Frisoni Jr. said of the nighttime traffic stop. "If he had dark, tinted windows where you couldn't see in, that wouldn't be a public display."
As for Carlton, she was driving in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove with her daughter when Catherine glimpsed the sexually explicit movie. The experience last fall upset the girl and angered Carlton.
Carlton and her husband sat down with Catherine and offered the best explanation they could. Since then, Carlton has spotted other motorists with explicit movies playing, including a couple watching from the back seat of their car in a store parking lot.
"You're not allowed to have sex in your car, so why are you allowed to watch it?" Carlton asked.
Most states, including Michigan, have laws that make it illegal to watch TV while driving. Laws governing the exhibition of pornography vary by state, but experts say they could be applied to drivers as well.
"I think those restrictions would apply if the content is located in a vehicle," said Jeff Matsuura, director of the law and technology program at the University of Dayton. "You have effectively moved beyond the privacy of your own home."
During the day, it is often difficult to see what is playing inside another vehicle. But at night, the screens are easily visible from a passing car or a vehicle stopped alongside at a traffic light. The screens are also getting bigger.
In Flynt, Sims took up the issue after hearing from a woman who was driving with her 5-year-old when she spotted porn playing on a vehicle's 13-inch TV screen. A police officer who happened to see the display pulled over the driver, Sims said, but let him off with a warning.
To Sims, a 23-year police veteran who retired in 2001, playing an explicit movie in view of other motorists or pedestrians is akin to flashing or having sex in a public place.
But Michigan State Police, who have not had any cases of in-car porn, say playing an X-rated movie might not be easy to prosecute unless it can be proved that the motorist intended for others to see it.
There should be 3 things that make a post uneditable:
- Someone responds to the post
- Someone moderates the post
- A hard time limit passes
A time limit alone isn't good enough. Once someone responds or moderates, a post should be set in stone.Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
First Version:
Porn is for Losers!
by Some_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @12:00 AM (#12343242)
You are all wrong, porn has never been a source of innovation, only the growth of perverts! Anyone who has ever looked at porn should go to hell!After edit:
Concern over Child Pornography
by Some_Jerkface on Friday March 12, @12:00 AM (#12343242)
One thing that concerns me is the growth of child pornography over the Internet. Again, the porn industry (in this case, the child porn industry) is more techonologically advanced than the government that is trying to stop it. Ultimately, the only thing that will end child porn is if every loser that looks at these photos is sent to jail.Obviously, you can see the sort of confusion that could result from posting edits. Moderation is just the tip of the iceberg. Once you edit a comment, replies to it could make no sense, or have a completely different meaning!
If you post something and it has a goof in it, I'd just laugh it off.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.