12 Ways the Sex Trade Has Changed the Internet
From PC World: "The sex industry is behind many innovations that today's Netizens can't live without, as well as some nasty bits we wish had never existed, including:
1. Online Payment Systems. The next time you buy something at Amazon or another online retailer, marveling at the ease and security of e-commerce, don't just thank Jeff Bezos, thank Richard Gordon. In the mid-1990s Gordon founded Electronic Card Systems, which pioneered credit card transactions for a wide range of disreputable sites, according to the New York Times.
2. Streaming Content. Before CNN.com or YouTube started filling the Internet with streaming video, X-rated sites were pumping out videos of adult stars doing what comes naturally (or not), over and over and over.
3. 3G Mobile Services. Pocket porn is the new frontier. Just as adult content helped push the propagation of cable and DSL connections, mobile porn will undoubtedly arouse demand for high-speed 3G data services."
It's not all good though, we can
HT: Juandos
7 Comments:
This is fun talk over a beer on a sunny summer Saturday -- but porn is still bad. All this stuff would have come eventually without it.
Porn is not like the space-program for internet development.
How much did the tales that Amerigo Vespucci (or the forgers using his name) told of sex-hungry females contribute to the New World being named after him?
Porn also did this 30 years earlier with VCRs.
"All this stuff would have come eventually without it"...
Well that seems like an illogical leap of faith...
What drove all 12 innovations wasn't porn but the fact that people are willing to pay for porn...
"Porn is not like the space-program for internet development"...
No its much better than the government's foolish and overly expensive fumbling of the socialist space program...
I'm guessing if the space program had been left to those who were making money off of porn and brothels (low g but expensive sex trade) we would've had a very sizable colony on the moon and in the L5 regions...
Low g and zero g manufacturing would've quickly followed porn & brothels into space and each industry type could've actually fed off each other to one degree or another...
Instead we watched what had one time been an insurmountable lead in the space race that was then left to 'over compensated clowns' who didn't have to make a profit (why bother? the taxpayers will just give them more money to blow uselessly) or answer to shareholders...
Instead these NASA clowns would troop up to Congress every year and make plans with Senators and Representatives that would accomplish damn little and cost a lot more...
When I lived in NYC in the late 90s, I dated a gal that was with a company that was able to stream color porn videos over phone lines; and while I was working for Bank of America, the best they could do was courier text over a 16mbps network.
I worked at 3Com Corporation from 1996 to 2001 on their server-side modem projects. Relatively free access to pornography was driving a lot our business. Some of our marketing people put that number at 50 percent, but I have no information to back that up.
The person that said it "would have come eventually" may be a little optimistic. Less opportunity for profit or a more niche market would have meant less investment from companies like 3Com into telecommunications technology.
Finally, computing is a lot like sex. There is relatively safe behavior and high-risk behavior. Visiting porn sites, downloading and installing premium software, music, and movies for "free" from "sharing" sites is high-risk behavior. If you engage in that high-risk computing, be sure you have the appropriate level of protection...
> but porn is still bad. All this stuff would have come eventually without it.
Nothing really personal, but "you're an idiot".
Porn is inherent in human behavior. We're sexual creatures. Sex is an important factor in everything we do -- if it weren't, then your parents' parents would not have begat your parents, and they would not have begat you.
In every culture, there is porn. There is a sex trade. On the walls of greek bathrooms there are the equivalent of "Call 342-0352, ask for Jessika" and "Alexos has a big wang"
The more it gets suppressed, the more twisted and perverted it gets.
"All that stuff would have come eventually without it".
BWAAAAAhahahahhahahhaaaaa...
Again: "idiot".
It would have taken 50 years longer, but yeah, it would have.
Porn was behind VCRs -and- DVDs becoming cheap and accessible, and quickly, a span of years, not decades -- because they provided a guaranteed market for them which no other thing would slake.
> Porn is not like the space-program for internet development.
A ThreeFer!! "Idiot".
Porn is the driving force behind most audio-visual technology, throughout human history. Art, music, Barry White -- it's all about getting laid.r
> Visiting porn sites, downloading and installing premium software, music, and movies for "free" from "sharing" sites is high-risk behavior. If you engage in that high-risk computing, be sure you have the appropriate level of protection...
Ah, "LOL".
Yeah, there are lots of sites that will give you a virus if they can. A fair percentage will attempt to install a tracking cookie -- not the greatest thing in the world but hardly the end of the universe.
It's really fairly easy to find sites that don't, however.
And, while downloading software is a clearly risky proposition, music and video are inherently almost impossible to transmit malware by. The only way to catch anything through a downloaded music or video file is pretty much to be a completely ignorant moron. There have been rare instances of someone taking an advantage of a specific player flaw to make an exploit, it's pretty rare, and, if you're not running WMP, you're almost certain to be safe.
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