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Over a Third of the Internet Is Pornographic

Th'Inquisitor writes "Pornography makes up 37% of the total number of web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider. According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009."

63 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Thats more porn... by Kitkoan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thats more porn then you can shake a fist at...

    --
    Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    1. Re:Thats more porn... by paeanblack · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm sure somebody has tried to get a grip on it.

    2. Re:Thats more porn... by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Funny

      "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more porn will slip through your fingers!"

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    3. Re:Thats more porn... by Kitkoan · · Score: 5, Funny

      As Michael J. Fox one said 'You can yell at it, curse it, smack it around... but that only encourages it..'

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    4. Re:Thats more porn... by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You really have to wonder though, if that market can be oversaturated. After all, porn changes the least over time so if there's already 100GB+ or 1TB+ of whatever fetish rocks your boat on the market, how much room is there for yet another standard flick with quite "standard" girls - for porn anyways?

      I guess there'll always be the Jenna Jamesons but most of that market I think will disappear. At least here in Norway the two major production companies have folded, there's just not enough money in it. Porn is definitively a race to the bottom (pun intended).

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:Thats more porn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's time for me to take matters into my own hands.

    6. Re:Thats more porn... by Kitkoan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To be honest, I doubt the market can truly be over saturated. It like books, movies and music, no matter how many are made, someone will always be willing to buy more. As for those production companies that have folded, I've heard of this issue and the big issue seems to be that too many people are making their own 'home-made porno' which is flooding the market with too easy 'cheap/free' porn.

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    7. Re:Thats more porn... by quantumplacet · · Score: 4, Funny

      Regrettably, it’s true. Standards have fallen in adult entertainment. It’s video, Dude. Now that we’re competing with the amateurs, we can’t afford to invest that little extra in story, production value, feeling.

      Of course, you do get the good with the bad. The new technology permits us to do exciting things with interactive erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic.

    8. Re:Thats more porn... by thrawn_aj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. Of course, I find it amusing that big porno companies are decrying this "loss of quality" in the field, as if they were actual artists. To them I can only say - drop the delusions of grandeur if you want to survive today's market and give the people what they want - that's literally your only function (indulging the will of your consumers). There are no connoisseurs to grant you protective patronage nor any sympathy to be had from a society that detests you in public (while using you quite shamelessly in private). Sad but that's how it is.

    9. Re:Thats more porn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I just wish they wouldn't try to outdo each other by making porn more extreme and less erotic in the process. Please stop the gross spitting and choking that seems to have taken over. That is about as sexy as a day at Gitmo.

    10. Re:Thats more porn... by Knara · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Some people like it. I like it sometimes. Depends on my mood. There's still tons more vanilla porn out there for folks like you.

    11. Re:Thats more porn... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People "buy" porn? When did they start doing that again?

      Porn is free for those who look, and has been for the better part of the last decade. It's so prevailant that it's difficult to avoid. The market is, for all intents and purposes, "saturated".

      Porn is not like books, because books cost money to produce and can be sold for only so much. There are publisher controls on how many get printed each year, and so on, so as to not overwhelm customers and create a glut of supply.

      Will the amount of porn go down? God no. But it is likely that the quality of "good" porn will go down as the amateurs take over with free, ad-supported content.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    12. Re:Thats more porn... by bertoelcon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Some porn is as close to art as most movie's showing at the theater. Not the "just porn" stuff but some have the storytelling elements and decent acting. Pirates and Pirates 2 are probably the best examples of that type.

      --
      Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
    13. Re:Thats more porn... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That depends very much what you mean by "good", which is why (I'm guessing) you put it in quotes. "Amateur" is an entire fetish of its own anyhow -- one which people pay for, oddly enough.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    14. Re:Thats more porn... by chromas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or, depending on the video, crap on the shoes...

    15. Re:Thats more porn... by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm trying to think of a pun to keep this going, but it's just too hard.

    16. Re:Thats more porn... by kimgkimg · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, it's such a shame that the intrigue and drama in the porn plot lines have suffered so. I was always on the edge of my seat because who ever knew why the pizza delivery boy was there at the mansion? And the anguish and inner conflict experienced by the pool boy or gardener as they struggle with the business/client relationship. Should they pursue the relationship with the housewife who's there alone, but yet pays their bills?

    17. Re:Thats more porn... by Kitkoan · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm trying to think of a pun to keep this going, but it's just too hard.

      Just keep working at it, I'm sure something will come...

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    18. Re:Thats more porn... by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Art is certainly rare in porn, but it's pretty rare in commercial television as well - perhaps the real question is, is it getting rarer? Satire and Parody tend to count as artistic values. I don't know if there's anything like parodies coming out nowdays, but back during the 70's - 80s, there were. Many films had titles such as '8 to 4' (parodying '9 to 5'), or Flesh Gordon (which ended up being distributed as nonporn or at least softcore, because the funny parts were, well, funny enough to stand on their own.) You could just about bet there would be a porno version of some films, because you could see how some of the parts that could easily be parodied would be sexual humor.
              As for "minor", for some people, everything short of Shakespeare or at least Beckett is minor. Tons of directors could aspire to make the great XXX commentary on the human condition, and it's quite possible not one of them would hit such a high mark. Devil in Miss Jones definitely aspired to say something about religious repression of natural human desires, but did it actually say anything at all important? I doubt anyone in the porn industry today is even aiming that high, but I doubt that people in the TV industry get as much freedom and/or resource commitment when they try to break out of cliche land as they once did. Maybe porn is facing the same problem as video media in general, more than something unique to porn.
           

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    19. Re:Thats more porn... by zish · · Score: 3, Funny

      This thread is a stroke of genius!

      --
      Spork.

      P.S. Spork.
    20. Re:Thats more porn... by pinkushun · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yup, agreed, there's not enough erotic sexy stuff. Extreme porn should really only exist through personal experience, and not because it's too extreme, but rather because it pokes a part of your brain that is exclusive to each person. Cheapening extreme fetishes with bad porn is just not cool.

  2. How stupid. by click2005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTFA... Web sites that contain violence have grown by 10.8 per cent, terrorism content by 8.5 per cent, and illegal drugs purchase by 6.8 per cent, and are continuing to grow, according to to the study, although it failed to define what it means by these terms.

    So a gaming site mentioning GTA4 could be counted as violence, drugs & porn.

    Rotta reckons, "There is a growing trend for online role-playing games to encourage negative behaviour, by rewarding violent and brutal activities within the online games."

    Yes because Crocheting & Knitting RPGs would sell so well.

    Internet shopping pages have increased by nine per cent this year, but Rotta managed not to find this worrying. What might kids be buying? Has she thought of that?

    She finds shopping sites worrying? Dont most of them still require a credit card for payment?

    according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider which delivers "on-premise" security.

    So they will sell you software to protect you from teh interwebs?

    Now I just need software to protect me from bullshit slashvertisments posing as articles.

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    1. Re:How stupid. by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Funny

      >Yes because Crocheting & Knitting RPGs would sell so well.

      There is one!!! ZOMG!!1! Gimme the link! At last I can use my +3 Knitting Needles Of Purling!

      What's the story like? I'll bet that RPG spins quite a yarn!

    2. Re:How stupid. by bmo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes because Crocheting & Knitting RPGs would sell so well.

      Bitches don't know about my cross-stitch porn.

      --
      BMO

    3. Re:How stupid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Umm... no?

      It treats the prostitutes as prostitutes, who -can- be murdered, robbed, or slept with, because freedom is the entire theme of the game.

      It treats random woemn on the street as random women on the street. You can murder and rob them if you want to, but there's no unique incentive for it. They dress nicely. They talk to each other about their likes and dislikes. They have places to go. They dress differently in different areas. It's a rich, complex, and -satirical- simulation of a large city.

      The two women who feature prominently in the plot of the game or almost entirely supportive of the player character and his cousin (who deserves less).

      The player can write emails to his momma telling her how things are going. They always leave out the gritty details, because, as I think Russell Crowe said, "even bad men love their mommas". I'd say it's the second best game ever made, after Fallout 3.

    4. Re:How stupid. by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So prototype desensitizes me to jumping off the tops of buildings and gliding to the next one?

    5. Re:How stupid. by danbert8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow, chalk up another one for Rule 34...

      http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Rule_34

      --
      Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
    6. Re:How stupid. by clone53421 · · Score: 2

      When I graduated from, oh, kindergarten or so, I acquired this amazing capability... to differentiate between what’s real and what’s make-believe. Maybe you haven’t?

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  3. 37%? by hoboroadie · · Score: 5, Funny

    I clearly need to spend more time surfing the web.

    --
    They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
  4. Rule 34 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Applying Rule 34 in reverse, one could say that all of the internet is pornographic. I mean, there's got to be someone who gets off reading papers on arXiv, right?

  5. Correction: 37% is NUDITY by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A lot of sites are nothing more than naked bodies. I'd estimate only about ~20% are actual porn (sex).

    I wish people would stop confusing the two, because they are not the same.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    1. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by Kitkoan · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'd estimate only about ~20% are actual porn (sex).

      You also have to remember the difference between porn and erotica, the differences being of course the lighting.

      --
      Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
    2. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      You also have to remember the difference between porn and erotica, the differences being of course the lighting.

      I thought that porn is naked, whereas erotica is nude.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    3. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What difference does it make anyway?

      Personally as long as i find the content i need, i don't care what else is there.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    4. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >>>porn and erotica

      I don't see any difference. If there's a real or fake dick being inserted in a hole, or a pussy being licked, then it's sex and qualifies as "porn" for me. i.e. Not something I'd show children under age 13.

      On the other hand nudity is just that - a body without clothes. Lots of cultures think nudity is acceptable, and a photo of that nudity is not "porn" (or evil as some Puritan-americans claim). I don't care if my kid sees it.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    5. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by Itninja · · Score: 3, Informative

      "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

      Pornography is not exclusively depictions of sex. From a big-boy dictionary:

      "1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
      2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement"

      Pornography is any iamge that is intended to arouse sexual desire in someone. Depiction of a sexual act is not required. In fact the image doesn't even need nudity. For example, a website showing pictures of little girls in their undies, published for the intention of arousing the audience, would be pornography.

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    6. Re:Correction: 37% is NUDITY by hedwards · · Score: 2, Funny

      Isn't that a bit like being between a cock and a hard place?

  6. Unfortunately 90% of them are TGP driver sites by Vekseid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Always frustrating to see them littering all over the place.

    Glad for the RPG mention though. Good to know I'm part of what's corrupting America.

    1. Re:Unfortunately 90% of them are TGP driver sites by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 2, Funny

      Unfortunately? TGPs kick ass. How else could I quickly become acquainted enough with pornstars/producers that I like so that I can find torrents of them? Forums I suppose... but IDK... porn forums are kind of creepy. Oh LOL... I just noticed your sig.

      --
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  7. Re:That's All? by Tetsujin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Was I the only one surprised at how low 37% seems?

    Lower still when you consider your mom accounts for half of that (or two-thirds by mass...)

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  8. I'm glad we have this new technology.. by greywire · · Score: 5, Funny

    FOR PORN!

    Ooops, sorry..

    --
    -- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
    1. Re:I'm glad we have this new technology.. by BlueKitties · · Score: 2, Funny

      i can has porn? No, i cant has porn but DROID DOES.

      --
      "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
  9. Wait... by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does this count as a "porn site"?

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Wait... by powerlord · · Score: 2, Funny

      Does this count as a "porn site"?

      Not so much anymore: http://xkcd.com/751/

      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
  10. Dr Cox quote (Scrubs) by amstrad · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dr Cox: I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be one website left, and it would be called bring-back-the-porn.com

  11. no content by fermion · · Score: 3, Insightful
    There is no content in this article, just a statement of random unsubstantiated statistics.

    And what if the random trivia is true? What if half the internet is for adults? Aren't half the people in the world adults? Why should they not have a representative portion of the internet? So we have to sanitize the world for the developmentally challenged that have never seen a real vagina or penis.

    And then, what is pornographic? If I write a story with a plot and gratuitous sex scene is that pornographic? We want definitions.

    This is just a useless piece of fluff intended to make people who aren't getting laid mess in their pants. Oh, think of the kids. Oh, Oh, the kids. We have to protect, the Oh, kids.

    We already know that 99.99999% of the interent has no useful content. Yahoo is evidently becoming the ultimate porn site by advertising it is the place of entertainment news. Pretty soon the only safe place to be will be /. Even XKCD can't be trusted. Fuck.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    1. Re:no content by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Pretty soon the only safe place to be will be /. No chance of seeing any naked women on /., but there ARE a lot of dicks!

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  12. "child protection projects at Optenet" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Ana Luisa Rotta, director of child protection projects at Optenet"

    So they have a commercial interest in this topic and to make things even worse, they claim to be "child protection"... those are the worst. I don't trust this study or them at all.

  13. Let me fix that summary for you by rundgong · · Score: 3, Insightful

    According to the report, which probably looked at a well chosen sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009."

    When someone tries to sell you software to protect you from the evil porn that you might accidentally see on the internet, I'm not sure I'm gonna believe their claims of how much porn there is.

  14. Te distinction should be made: by amanicdroid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How much of that is malware disguised as porn?

  15. Re:New controversy: Google leading porn industry. by BlueKitties · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, ever since I learned google images has a "find similar images" feature, I have been using it as a sort of cloud-porn-computing system. And google videos is nice too... google is my GOTO porn site these days.

    --
    "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
  16. More than that according to Joyce by fyoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    James Joyce defined pornographic art as art created with the intention of inspiring desire to possess the object. By this definition, advertising art is pornographic, and there's no shortage of that on the web! Perhaps a third of the content on the web isn't pornographic.

    --
    Loose lips lose spit.
  17. Who cares about #'s we need solutions by Orga · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is dire news indeed. I wish the article has discussed possible solutions to the lack of porn found on the internet

  18. Awesome. by Jaysyn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Awesome, that means we only have 2/3rds left to go!

    --
    There is a war going on for your mind.
  19. What about traffic? by sirrunsalot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The interesting question, if you ask me, is how much traffic is devoted to porn. This is the result of a survey of four million URLs, but I could set up thousands of sites about pomegranates if I wanted, and it wouldn't have much to do with interest in pomegranates. (Don't ask why pomegranates. I just thought a pomegranate sounded good right now. Too much darn work though.) I suppose in large volume the quantity correlates with the size of the industry, but that still doesn't take into account the number of sites required to meet the needs of the people. Other people, that is, am I right?

  20. At first I thought, "no way" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At first I thought, "no way", but then I considered that they were saying web pages, not web domains. No doubt, any single porn website might have thousands of individual pages, whereas most websites only have a few dozen. So yeah, I could see 37%.

  21. At least it's something by minstrelmike · · Score: 2, Funny

    Therefore, only 2/3rds of the internet is a compleat waste of time.

  22. How would you like your official newsflash? by abbynormal+brain · · Score: 2, Funny
    --
    L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
  23. representative sample of URLs by ooloogi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What is a representative sample of URLs? Due to dynamic content, the internet has an infinite number of URLs so surely the percentages you come up with are all about the methods you use to obtain the URLs. If you include enough precision in decimal degree of latitude and longitude, there's probably more of the internet just in google maps than in porn.

    1. Re:representative sample of URLs by nicholdraper · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You bring up a very good point. I used to work for an ISP, we found that porn sites were the most likely to play tricks with their pages to increase their apparent popularity. When we counted web pages by viewers and not by page hits, not a single porn site remained in the top 100. I very much doubt the percentages are accurate at all.

  24. Re:But.. by cosm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You probably do and haven't realized it. Having worked IT in law enforcement, I can attest that you CANNOT judge a person's sex life by their appearance. That sweet girl on the plane or straight laced guy could be into some freaky stuff and you would never know.

    Not being snide, but what instances in your law enforcement IT experience point to that conclusion? Just looking for the scandal, humor, etc...Could you enlighten us with the correlation for the purpose of comedy and more jokes against the state (TM)?

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
  25. Re:New controversy: Google leading porn industry. by rhyder128k · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have found that Google image search often omits the "find similar images" button for images containing nudity.

    --
    Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
  26. A third? A THIRD? by fyngyrz · · Score: 2, Funny

    We... we've got to make more porn! Right now, there's a 2/3 chance I won't see porn when surfing! This is CRITICAL!

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.