The devil's workshop: Pornographic industry

 12 Facts You Didn't Know About The

Porn Industry

1.  In the late 19th century, a film by Thomas Edison which depicted a kiss was denounced as obscene in the United States, while Eugène Pirou's 1896 film Bedtime for the Bride was received very favorably in France.

 

2. In 1969, Blue Movie by Andy Warhol became the first film to depict unsimulated sex and receive a wide theatrical release in the United States. This was followed by the Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984), a time period when many high quality pornographic films played in theaters and became part of popular culture. The introduction of home video and the Internet in the late 20th century led to worldwide growth in the pornography business, generating billions of dollars annually.

3. In 1969, Denmark became the first country to abolish censorship, thereby decriminalizing pornography, which led to an explosion in investment and of commercially produced pornography. However, it continued to be banned in other countries, and had to be smuggled in, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.

4. In 2001, commercialized pornography in the United States accounted for over US$2.5 billion, this included the costs for production of various media, and associated products and services.

5. In 2006, the worldwide revenue from pornography was estimated at 97 billion dollars, with the U.S. estimates at around $10–$12 billion.

6. In 2018, pornography in Japan was estimated to be worth over $20 billion.

7. The industry in the U.S. employs thousands of performers along with production and support staff. It has its own industry publication, AVN; a trade association, the Free Speech Coalition; and an award show, the AVN Awards. Apart from coverage from mainstream press, the industry also receives considerable attention from private organizations, government agencies, and political organizations.

In the 2020s, issues of popular pornographic sites hosting content by unscrupulous uploaders, and cybersex trafficking have been reported.

8. The word pornography is a conglomerate of two Ancient Greek words: πόρνη (pórnē "prostitute" originally "purchased", related to pernanai "to sell", from the Proto-Indo-European root per- "to hand over", alluding to the notion of a person sold), and γράφειν (gráphein "a writing, recording, or description"). Thus meaning depiction of prostitutes or prostitution (πορνεία porneía).

9. Fanny Hill (1748) is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel."

10. It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. The authors were charged with "corrupting the King's subjects."

11. The world's first law criminalizing pornography was the English Obscene Publications Act 1857 enacted at the urging of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. 

The Act, which applied to the United Kingdom and Ireland, made the sale of obscene material a statutory offence, giving the courts power to seize and destroy offending material. 

The American equivalent was the Comstock Act of 1873 which made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. 

The English Act did not apply to Scotland, where the common law continued to apply. However, neither the English nor the United States Act defined what constituted "obscene", leaving this for the courts to determine.

12. Data from 2015 suggests an increase in pornography viewing over the past few decades, and this has been attributed to the growth of Internet pornography since widespread public access to the World Wide Web in the late 1990s. Through the 2010s, many pornographic production companies and top pornographic websites such as Pornhub, RedTube and YouPornwere acquired by MindGeek, which has been described as "a monopoly".