Pornography, Technological Innovation, and Moral Panic

Introduction

TIME Cyberporn Cover (July 3, 1995). Credit: Matt Mahurin.

Imagine it: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child - the epitomization of innocence and idealized white Americana. In the midst of exploring the exciting world around him, this sweet young person stumbles into a dark alleyway crawling with violent child molestors, pedophiles, and those who dream of having sex with dogs. Surely, any reasonable adult would want to protect children from a place of such horrors? Well, that dark alleyway as a metaphor for the emergent internet, and that naive child as its unsuspecting victim, is precisely what TIME Magazine relied on as the emotional linchpin of its now-infamous 1995 Cyberporn issue.

This explosive cover study hit the stacks at a crucial point in 20th century American history. As the masses - particularly young people - were entering the new and largely unregulated world of cyberspace at a dizzying, exponential rate, questions were raised about what they might encounter in a place largely beyond the scope of existing censorship laws. These concerns manifested at the federal legislative level in June 1995, when Senator James Exon (D-NE), took to the Senate floor to parade his “little blue book” - a blue folder filled with hardcore pornography downloaded from the internet - in an effort to garner support for the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (Cannon 1996, p. 64). Exon asserted uncompromisingly that the “disgusting material” encased within his Blue Book was ultimately a representation of “the depravity on our children, possibly our society, that is being practiced on the Internet today” (Exon, as quoted in Cannon 1996, p. 64). The Senate subsequently voted 86-14 in favor of the CDA, with previously-voiced concerns over First Amendment infringement paling against senators’ of appearing “pro pornography” to their constituents (Cannon 1996, p. 64). Less than three weeks later, TIME magazine released the Cyberporn issue, its cover depicted a young child staring in open-mouthed shock at a computer screen, with the eye-catching subtitle: "EXCLUSIVE: A new study shows how pervasive and wild [cyberporn] really is. Can we protect our kids - and free speech?" (Mahurin 1995). The cover story - written by established tech journalist Phillip Elmer-Dewitt, centered around the findings of a research study led by Carnegie-Mellon undergraduate Marty Rimm, published in the Georgetown Law Journal (GLJ). The most notable claims conveyed in both the study and article were that pornographic images comprised 83.5% of digitized images on internet message boards, and that the most popular were those depicting nude children/youths, as well as “deviant [...] images of bondage, sadomasochism, urination, defecation, and sex acts with a barnyard full of animals” (Elmer-Dewitt 1995). Although the article does concede, albeit at a much later point, that pornographic images represent a minority of all internet content, and goes on to infuse some contextual nuance, that nuance is largely washed away by its mention more than 1000 words into the story, and the fact that the average reader is far more preoccupied with graphic illustrations accompanying the story of children being lured away by deceitful predators, and sensationalist sub-headings claiming, “IT IS IMMENSELY POPULAR,” “IT IS UBIQUITOUS,” and “IT’S NOT JUST NAKED WOMEN” (Elmer-Dewitt 1995; emphasis in original).

Almost instantaneously, the article ignited a firestorm of debate, with both its critics and supporters quickly galvanizing the story to fuel a broader national debate over pornography and censorship (Lewis 1995). In the coming weeks, the study (and Rimm himself) would be discredited by the academic community for glaring methodological issues and the absence of peer review, and TIME and Elmer-Dewitt raked over the coals for platforming flawed undergraduate research and uncritically highlighting its most alarmist claims (Lewis 1995; Lewis 1995; Meeks 2015). TIME would issue a retraction before the month’s end, but by that time, it was already too late; the story had firmly affixed itself in the public imagination and cultural zeitgeist, and is now credited as a primary contributor to the internet porn moral panic of the 1990s, which culminated in the CDA being signed into law by President Bill Clinton in February 1996 (Cannon 1996).

This chain of events: the popularization of the internet, the presence of obscenity on the novel medium, and ensuing moral panic, is in no way unique. In fact, it is only the latest and most familiar iteration of a cycle that has been repeating itself fairly consistently for much of human history. In this essay, I seek to contextualize the internet porn moral panic that has dominated recent decades by placing it in the broader historical relationship between pornography, technological innovation, public anxieties over moral degradation, and calls for censorship. To accomplish this, I will provide an overview of the two overarching patterns that shape this relationship: the speed at which novel media technologies are used for pornographic purposes and the implications of those technologies on porn economies, as well as the various ways in which pornography often acts as an impetus for technological innovation. Finally, I will examine the effectiveness of protecting society’s most vulnerable as a means of mobilizing public support for censorship.

My aim is not to imply that internet pornography should be beyond criticism for the sake of free speech, or for young children to have wholly unrestricted and unsupervised access to internet pornography. Rather, my aim is to problematize, first, the unfounded exceptionalism that frequently paints internet porn specifically as an unprecedented evil, and second, the conceptualization of porn as existing on the fringe of society. I argue that charting an effective path forward requires an acknowledgement that pornography has long been located at society’s centre, and is far more deeply interwoven with culture and technology than many readily acknowledge.

Part I: Innovation's Effect on Porn

To start, a key feature of the relationship between porn and technology is the fact that the popularization of a novel medium has consistently been followed by its adoption for pornographic purposes. This pattern, in which erotic imagery becomes one of the first widespread uses of a new medium, is what journalist John Tierney termed humanity’s “erotic technological impulse” (Tierney 1996), and it certainly did not begin with the internet. In fact, it dates back approximately 27,000 years, with some of humanity’s earliest recorded art and literature (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019). In recent centuries, instances of note include one of the earliest products of the Gutenberg printing press being a text depicting various sex positions (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019); the first documented erotic film releasing squarely within the dawn of motion pictures in 1896 (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019); and pornographic videocassette recorder (VCR) tapes constituting more than 75% of the total market when VCRs first entered in the home in the late 1970s, to name a few (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019; Coopersmith 2000; Keilty 2018).

A major driving force behind this pattern is that new technologies carry with them enticing new possibilities of production and distribution that not only promise profitability but also reflect popular sentiments among laborers regarding the organization of work culture. To elaborate, the rise of the camcorder, webcamming, and platforms like OnlyFans have given performers newfound autonomy to film and distribute their own content directly to consumers, marking a major intervention in the long-established monopoly held by production companies (Coopersmith 2000; Martin 2010; Mowlabocus 2010). This is often referred to as the “democratization of porn”, the modern porn era, and “Porn 2.0” (Coopersmith 2000; Martin 2010; Mowlabocus 2010), and fits into a much broader societal trend towards a decentralized, democratized, so-called “gig economy,” in which flexibility in working hours, increased [perceived] autonomy, and being your own boss, are all positioned as highly desirable for today’s emerging working class. With laborers hungry for new ways of doing business that reflect this shifting socioeconomic mentality, and companies responding to that demand with technologies that will prevent them from losing labor control - the true lucrative heart of capitalism - it makes sense that the porn industry is no exception. Overall, recognizing the continuously central position of porn at the advent of new major technologies is significant because it disrupts the fallacious but widespread perception of internet porn as an uniquely pernicious and unpredictable entity. This history demonstrates that the implications of new media technologies on porn are actually - in many ways - highly predictable and logical in terms of following a consistent historical pattern and fitting in with broader economic and cultural shifts.

Part II: Porn's Effect on Technological Innovation

Furthermore, the relationship between pornography and technology is not unidirectional, but rather mutually constitutive; with the porn industry not only responding to innovation and the emergence of new technologies, but also acting as an independent force driving invention and popularization. Lack of public awareness of the latter fact largely stems from frequent mischaracterization of the internet’s most frequently visited porn streaming websites, the top three being Pornhub, Xvideos, and Xhamster, as relatively rudimentary and/or sloppy in their design (Keilty 2018). However, lacking the aesthetic cohesion and polish of more mainstream social media platforms like Instagram or Youtube does not change the reality that the aforementioned sites are all highly sophisticated platforms designed with intention by large and experienced teams well versed in maximizing traffic and profit (Keilty 2018). To place these explicit content sites in a class entirely separate from and below more readily-acknowledged industry giants, such as Meta, is to severely underestimate the actual size, scope, and nature of their operation, and to fundamentally misunderstand the global technological sector. Moreover, far from being several paces behind, these sites are consistently on the cutting edge of software engineering, and many mainstream technologies that now enjoy ubiquity owe can be traced back to an initial implementation in the context of porn (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019; Coopersmith 2000; Keilty 2018). A major example is online advertising in the forms of banners and pop-up ads; with these sites acting as a blueprint for how revenue could be generated through a free-to-use online platform and thus catalyzing further development of what would become the veritable lifeblood of contemporary open-access internet (Keilty 2018).

Further, porn is often responsible for not only the creation of these technologies, but also acts as a primary catalyst for their adoption by the masses. In addition to online marketing and transactions as mentioned previously, cable TV, VCR/VHS, dot.com internet, digital streaming, live video chatting, and privacy and copyright management, are all technologies whose introduction to the general public was facilitated primarily by porn (Tierney 1996; Kushner 2019; Coopersmith 2000; Keilty 2018). A major reason for this is that, due to pervasive societal stigma and silencing surrounding sexuality and eroticism, the pornography consumer has long been economically marked as an actor with a particularly heightened desire for increased privacy and ease of access, creating a cost-benefit analysis in which higher prices are perceived as far more acceptable (Coopersmith 2000). Using the example of VCRs in the home, while the average 1970s consumer who did not engage with pornographic films indicated the high price and risk of a novel medium as not equaling the potential benefits they would gain from it, particularly given that the existing system for accessing such content (movies theatres) was socially acceptable and not associated with much inconvenience (Coopersmith). Contrastingly, the average consumer of porn was far more likely to accept higher upfront costs because of how significant the perceived benefits were - in this case, the skirting the social challenges and potential pitfalls of viewing erotic materials in the public sphere (Coopersmith 2000). Consequently, a positive feedback loop was initiated, in which the new technology was sold in notable quantities despite initial cost due to the presence of a motivated consumer base, initial success reduced perceived risk and encouraged further investment, increased demand allows for price reduction which only further increases demand, and so on until widespread usage was achieved. Recognizing the consistency of this pattern helps us to dispel the image of porn as a specter lurking on the cultural fringe, rather than an industry comparable to those entities we are far more likely to correctly view as catalysts of innovation.

Conclusion

Ultimately, porn has long existed at the epicenter of culture, technology, and economy, and the historical relationship between porn and technology is one of inextricable connectedness and mutual constituency, with technology shaping porn and porn shaping technology. A fluid and dynamic product of the contexts and media that it occupies, porn has always and will always with humanity in some capacity. Therefore, when seeking answers to the quandaries raised by its increasing availability, one should recognize that the goal of eradication is futile. Looking at the history of porn and its various intertwinings allows us to make sense of how we got here, learn from both successful and failed responses to the problems we continue to wrestle with, and navigate what the future of communication and collective wellbeing looks like - not from a place of blind fear, but rather awareness, nuance, and collaboration.

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