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Abstract

Pornography has had a significant role in the promotion and diffusion of new communication technologies. New technologies have also altered the nature of pornography in the last few decades. These technologies include VCRs, camcorders, Minitel, computers, and the Internet. Pornographic products have served to stimulate interest in these new technologies, despite their higher initial costs. The attractions include greater perceived privacy and easier access. As each of these technologies matures and prices drop, the importance of pornographic products diminishes relatively, but not absolutely. Another pattern is the elimination of the distinctions among producers, distributors, and consumers as do-it-yourself video and computers have permitted a “democratization” of pornography. At the risk of appearing indifferent to moral issues, the author focuses on pornography's importance in diffusing new technologies (VCRs, camcorders, Minitel, computers, and the Internet), and how these technologies have reshaped the nature of pornography. Driving this transformation have been the great capitalist engines of innovation and the quest for profits. Like war, pornography has served as an agent of change for both, and similarly benefitted greatly
... Infrastructure scholars have stressed the theme of visibility and invisibility (Parks 2007(Parks , 2015Supp-Montgomerie 2021b), which is also a central theme for us-in this case, the visibility that can occur through the practice of pornography. We thus bridge infrastructure studies with literature exploring pornography as a pioneering practice for new technologies (Coopersmith 1998(Coopersmith , 2000Barss 2010;P. Johnson 1996). ...
... Infrastructure scholars have stressed the theme of visibility and invisibility (Parks 2007(Parks , 2015Supp-Montgomerie 2021b), which is also a central theme for us-in this case, the visibility that can occur through the practice of pornography. We thus bridge infrastructure studies with literature exploring pornography as a pioneering practice for new technologies (Coopersmith 1998(Coopersmith , 2000Barss 2010;P. Johnson 1996). ...
... Well before SpankChain, observers noticed how pornography feeds the development and adoption of new technologies, from ancient sculpture and the printing press to VCRs and the internet (Barss 2010;P. Johnson 1996;Coopersmith 1998Coopersmith , 2000. In these accounts, pornography becomes a path for the adoption of new technologies precisely because of its existence outside the moral infrastructure. ...
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The making of novel infrastructure often involves some kind of faith. This article considers a pair of experiments in the context of blockchain infrastructure led by entrepreneur Ameen Soleimani: MolochDAO and SpankChain, a grant fund and a sex-worker payments network, respectively. These enact a strategy we describe as “perverse attraction,” or the inversion of dominant moral hierarchies as a means of cultivating faithful practice around a still-incomplete infrastructural project. Although the technology at play is new, the strategy for advancing it reiterates the development of past infrastructures, from print cultures to the early internet. These precursors and the present case suggest that the strategy of perverse attraction, while occurring under the guise of empowerment, risks reinforcing the marginalization of its human participants.
... A indústria pornográfica audiovisual teve seu início aproximadamente em paralelo a indústria do cinema, no início do século XX; as produções atingiram públicos e faturamentos cada vez maiores à medida que novas tecnologias de reprodução foram inseridas no cotidiano de consumo da população. Segundo Coopersmith (2000), o lançamento do videocassete (VHS) foi "o evento mais significante na indústria de filmes adultos da história e junto com o filme Garganta Profunda, o ímpeto para a revolução em pornografia hard-core". O VHS reduziu custos de distribuição e produção, o que ajudou a expandir a audiência de filmes pornográficos. ...
... A mesma lógica se deu com a chegada dos DVD's e, em seguida, com o advento da internet. Coopersmith (2000) aponta que essas transformações provocaram mudanças nas produções: a indústria passou a desenvolver novos nichos para diferenciar seus produtos, ao passo que aumentaram, também, as produções caseiras. Assim, após a facilitação da produção de filmes pornográficos, a diferenciação entre as produções se deu através de criação de conteúdos com atos menos tradicionais sexualmente, muitas vezes até violentos. ...
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O presente estudo trata-se de um ensaio teórico que abordará como a infantilização das mulheres dentro da mídia, mais especificamente na indústria pornográfica, contribui para a normalização da pedofilia. Dentro desse escopo, busca-se investigar a ligação entre a infantilização de mulheres na indústria pornográfica e a normalização da pedofilia por meio de um aprofundamento a respeito da história da pornografia e o que se define por pedofilia no Brasil, bem como uma análise da conexão entre padrões de beleza e/ou comportamentos femininos e a pedofilia, e uma discussão visando explorar a linha tênue entre o conteúdo fetichista produzido e consumido a pedofilia. O objetivo em tese é o desenvolvimento de uma análise (ou estudo) cultural, que tem como foco um aprofundamento em processos socioculturais. Palavras-chaves: Infantilização da mulher; Pornografia; Pedofilia; Estudo de gênero; Análise cultural.
... While being far less prominent in research communities than their traditional counterparts, few studies have been carried out on adult video streaming services (Ahmed et al. 2016;Farrelly et al. 2017;. Coopersmith (2000) has shown the significant role that pornography has had on the promotion of new technologies and described how new technology like video recording devices broke down the distinction between viewer and producer. Tyson et al. (2013) conducted a measurement study in 2013 to characterize YouPorn while Yu et al. (2019) compared three adult streaming services. ...
... Porn is claimed to have been a force in the adoption and improvement in technology (Coopersmith 2000). It appears that while porn has influenced traditional services behind the scenes by pioneering technology including video compression and Internet payment systems (Harford 2019), porn itself is unequivocally influenced by traditional media shown by the heavy borrowing of social networking features that it has assimilated and altered for its own purposes. ...
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Video content on user-generated content services has redefined entertainment and business on the Internet. Adult video streaming services have embraced this evolution to form YouTube style porn sites which combine the features of video hosting websites and online social media services. This paper presents a comprehensive measurement study of one of the most popular new-age porn websites with social networking features—xHamster. Using active measurements, we have obtained metadata on almost 4 million unique videos that span the lifetime of xHamster from 2007 to 2018. An analysis of this corpus allowed us to characterize the service and gain insights into the key players of the website including the website owners, video uploaders, and the viewers. By studying the characteristics of videos such as views, duration, the number of uploads, tags, ratings and comments, we give an overview of xHamster’s current state, compare it to traditional and adult streaming services, and find the niche that xHamster occupies as an amateur content focused service. We find that there are significant differences between adult streaming services and traditional streaming services. The injection rate of new videos is lower but the website does not need a large number of new uploads as long as the front page is constantly refreshed. The length of an average adult video is shorter than that of the average video on traditional streaming services, and we find that there is minimal engagement with ratings and comments. Video tags are actively used to organize and filter through content, and we observe that the more tags a video has, the more views it is likely to obtain.
... The benefits of leveraging sex to drive emerging technology are particularly pronounced when products are intended for private consumption; for example, the VCR benefitted from an early surge in X-rated prerecorded tapes, which constituted half of all video sales in the late 1970s (Coopersmith, 2000). By the mid-1980s, the demand for pornography had not diminished, but the rest of the film industry surpassed it in production. ...
... Photography, paperback books, modern video conferencing, and even answering machines received early support from sex media consumers before the technologies went more mainstream. In perhaps its ultimate coup, pornography also helped establish the market for the internet (Coopersmith, 2000). Should a similar development trajectory be anticipated for sex robots, wherein they will shed their sexual nature for the mainstream as their technology is transferred to profitable non-sexual purposes? ...
... Desde los anuncios clasificados hasta el uso del teléfono, las trabajadoras sexuales siempre han estado presentes en la vanguardia y han incorporado estas tecnologías en su día a día desde sus primeras fases de desarrollo. Según Jonathan Coopersmith (2000), la pornografía ha desempeñado un papel fundamental en el avance técnico de las tecnologías de la imagen, así como en la financiación de las infraestructuras que han hecho posible Internet tal como lo conocemos. Desde la popularización del vídeo a mediados de los años setenta hasta la transición a Internet, el modelo de negocio relacionado con la creación de imágenes pornográficas ha seguido una trayectoria marcada por la privacidad, tanto de las espectadoras como de las productoras. ...
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En el presente artículo se revisan críticamente elementos tecnosociales y legislativos que dan contexto a los ecosistemas de plataformización y comercialización de actividades limítrofes para con el sistema-trabajo donde la intimidad juega un papel fundamental. El análisis propone un escenario de desigualdad de partida respecto a poblaciones altamente feminizadas que hacen uso de tecnologías y plataformas de intercambio de bienes y servicios sin relación laboral, especialmente en aquellas que producen materiales visuales sexuales o eróticos. El artículo ofrece una crítica a las barreras en el acceso a los derechos digitales y una lectura situada desde la particularidad del ámbito online sobre las actuales propuestas de reformas legislativas acerca de la tercerización de servicios en el sector de la creación imágenes.
... Before the advent of internet and internet enabled devices, use of porn magazines, video CDs, cable television were a 4,5 major source of porn consumption . With the ubiquity of internet over the past few decades, the dissemination of sexually explicit material has been enabled for every age group. ...
Article
Background: India now has easier access to sexually explicit media (SEM) on more platforms given the technological revolution. Less research has been done on how viewing it affects youth regarding their sex related concepts. To comprehend the connection between its exposure and sexual misconceptions,empirical analysis is necessary.Aim:We aimed to investigate the extent of exposure to SEM including various modality of exposure like images, audio, video or their combination; sex related misconceptions held by study population and a possible correlation of exposure of SEM and the number of misconceptions held. Materials and Methodology: Through the use of an online survey,data from 504 participants were gathered, and regression and factor analysis were used to examine the results. Results: The results showed a statistically significant positive link between the two variables, which supported the hypothesis that SEM exposure and sexual misconceptions are related.Plus, compared to frequency of viewing,the length of time spent watching SEM had a bigger influence on the development of misconceptions. Additionally, the study found that there were three major categories of misconceptions,indicating that the formation of misconceptions is not a uniform process and may vary widely among individuals. Conclusion: Overall, the results of this study are consistent with the premise that SEM exposure influences college students' development of sexual misconceptions.To completely comprehend the connection between SEM exposure and the development of sexual misconceptions, additional research is required. However,the study also raises the possibility that there may be other factors at work.
... Investigating messaging-and app-based drug marketplaces offers further opportunities for ongoing research on drug distribution and consumption. First, drawing on studies on how technology has been crucial in explaining the diffusion of pornography (Attwood, 2010;Coopersmith, 2000), it is worth asking whether technologies such as messaging apps increase drug consumption. Two aspects suggest that this hypothesis is worth exploring: ...
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Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram have become an increasingly attractive tool for drug dealing. The combination of easy opening and closing of user communities, powerful anonymity features, and operability on smartphones is changing the way drugs are delivered at the end of the chain. However, much of the recent research on Internet‐based drug markets has focused on cryptomarkets, but also on social media and the clear web. Drawing on economic sociology literature on marketplaces and partial organizations, this article fills this gap by analyzing the social organization of drug economies based on messaging apps. We argue that this form of drug trade enhances the experience of both selling and consuming drugs. Based on a unique set of in‐depth interviews with drug sellers and users belonging to four different Telegram groups in Argentina, this article shows that Telegram communities offer a wider variety of substances, speed up drug delivery, create the perception that police detection is unlikely, and promote drug specialization among sellers. This research expands our understanding of how technology and specific organizational forms transform both drug provision and consumption.
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