Pornography Prevalence and Availability
Introduction to Pornography Prevalence and Availability
Both the availability of pornography and the growth of the pornography industry have exploded since the 1950s. These trends reflect an increased demand for pornography, greater social and legal tolerance, and the emergence of new technologies for distribution.
In the United States, the pornography industry went “above ground” in the 1950s with the creation of Playboy, which was the first mass-marketed “girlie magazine” (see Playboy Enterprises). By the 1970s many other magazines were available that had much more explicit and hard-core content. Hard-core pornographic movie theaters emerged for the first time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the mid-1980s, however, pornographic magazines and movie houses were beginning to decline as new technologies emerged that made private viewing possible, especially videocassette recorders (VCRs) and cable television. Since the 1990s the Internet has increased the availability of pornography in the United States and many other countries.
Pornography in the United States is now a multibillion-dollar business. In 1996 Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core pornographic materials, such as videos, adult cable programs, computer pornography, sex magazines, and peep shows. About 25,000 stores sold hard-core videos. In 1992 Americans rented 490 million hard-core pornographic videos, a substantial increase from the 75 million rented in 1985. A 1997 study of pornography on the Internet found approximately 34,000 pornographic Web sites. Some studies have maintained that organized crime is deeply involved in the making of hard-core pornography in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere.
Various efforts have been made to control the spread of pornography on television, in movie theaters, and on the Internet. Many countries, such as the United States and Britain, permit restrictions on the content of certain forms of broadcasting beyond those allowed for newspapers, books, and other mediums of expression. (Cable television, however, is exempt from such regulation in the United States.) In addition, broadcasters often engage in self-regulation. Governments have also moved to restrict movie theaters and sex shows by enforcing basic obscenity laws, enacting zoning laws that limit the number of such establishments, and, when relevant, enforcing hygiene laws.
The Internet has posed special problems in two respects: It is easily accessible by minors and it makes it easy to transfer materials over national boundaries with the mere click of the computer mouse. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 in the United States restricted sending sexually indecent statements or images to minors, but the Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional for being too broad and vague and thereby abridging the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. Congress subsequently passed new legislation to address this problem. Other countries have passed similar laws. To protect international boundaries, Germany has passed laws that hold local Internet access providers liable for the content of material that enters Germany from servers outside the country, a policy that has been challenged as a threat to the free market created by the Internet. Child pornography on the Internet poses a serious problem. In Japan, for example, where laws against child pornography were fairly weak until recently, a police study in 1997 found that of 3,000 pornographic Japanese Web sites, 40 percent showed images of children. In response to this problem, Japan passed a law in 1999 that outlawed child pornography on the Internet. France has punished Internet access providers that have allowed child pornography to enter France through their systems. Efforts at international policing have yet to make much headway because obscenity and child pornography standards are national, not international.
In the United States and elsewhere, libraries have encountered complaints and regulations, mostly at the state level, designed to limit the access minors have to pornography on library computers. Libraries have defended themselves on First Amendment grounds, and for the most part they have prevailed in court. They have also purchased filtering software designed to restrict minors’ access to certain kinds of sites. Such self-regulation holds promise, although critics of filtering software note that it also blocks many nonpornographic Web sites. For more information on legislation limiting the availability of pornography, see the Legal Status section of this article.” (1)
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