Re: [Air-l] Taxonomy of Content on the Internet
Bob Rehak wrote: "Taking the question in a slightly different direction, I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "content" is pornographic -- a term, of course, with its own fraught definitions, but one that is frequently invoked in "moral panic" characterizations of online information. Do folks here know of any statistical breakdowns of the internet focusing specifically on adult/taboo material?" I'd also be interested in statistical breakdowns of that sort. Cite-u-like gives an article that's of some interest, "Associations between pornography consumption and sexual practices among adolescents in Sweden," Häggström-Nordin, E. et al., published in _International Journal of STD & AIDS_, Vol. 16, No. 2, February 2005. I've only seen the abstract & don't know if the article examines the Net. Cheers, Will William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Get your email and more, right on the new Yahoo.com
William. The stories you've heard the 25% of the internet (or more) is porn are urban myth. Get a list of the top 100 sites. NONE of them are porn sites although some like MySpace may have pornographic content. If you know something about web traffic, a few very popular sites and a very very very long tail all the porn sites that exist are part of that long tail. So porn is clearly a tiny part of the internet. But if you want to find porn, that's easy. "Net Ratings, tracked the number of visitors to porn Web sites. It says that in April 2001, there were 22.9 million unique visitors to porn sites. This says nothing about how long each visitor stayed or whether they spent a dime. In any event, the number of visitors is less than the number who visited news sites (41.1 million), finance sites (34.2 million) or greeting card sites (25.5 million). When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how greeting card sites dominate the Net?" In fact it's impossible to tell exactly where the porn sites are, except by looking. Any photograph may or may not be porn, any text may or may not describe sex in a pornographic manner, any video may or may not be pornographic. So you can't tell by file types what the file contains. Forester Research tried to make the measurement you asked for. They gave up. They said that the margin of error was so great that the numbers they were producing were essentially meaningless. John William Bain wrote:
Bob Rehak wrote: "Taking the question in a slightly different direction, I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "content" is pornographic --
William Bain wrote:
Bob Rehak wrote: "Taking the question in a slightly different direction, I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "content" is pornographic --
So porn is clearly a tiny part of the internet. But if you want to find porn, that's easy.
I am not sure that I agree with porn being a tiny part of the net. To rephrase the question: I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "revenue" is pornographic. I suspect that while it may be a small part in terms of volume of traffic, it certainly is a large part is terms of volumes of cash spent. I completely agree that the big problem with this is the measurability factor. Many companies trading in, or associated with, pornographic content do not publish their turnover (as unlisted companies they are not obliged to). Hearsay, but an integrated e-commerce / net site which uses mobile technology for pay-per-view billing is said to net around 1 million pounds a month. That's a lot of airline tickets. I think that it is almost as if the 'underground internet' - porn, cracks, warez and other not so legal or 'worksafe' activities exist in another space completely. It is possible to spend your whole life online and never stumble into this other dimension.
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Read the book by Frederick Lane (2001) Obscene Profits. It will give you a good look into the subject that you are speaking about right now. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Michele Sohn Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:37 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; jsveitch@ate.co.nz Subject: Re: [Air-l] Taxonomy of Content on the Internet
William Bain wrote:
Bob Rehak wrote: "Taking the question in a slightly different direction, I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "content" is pornographic --
So porn is clearly a tiny part of the internet. But if you want to find porn, that's easy.
I am not sure that I agree with porn being a tiny part of the net. To rephrase the question: I'm curious as to what percentage of internet "revenue" is pornographic. I suspect that while it may be a small part in terms of volume of traffic, it certainly is a large part is terms of volumes of cash spent. I completely agree that the big problem with this is the measurability factor. Many companies trading in, or associated with, pornographic content do not publish their turnover (as unlisted companies they are not obliged to). Hearsay, but an integrated e-commerce / net site which uses mobile technology for pay-per-view billing is said to net around 1 million pounds a month. That's a lot of airline tickets. I think that it is almost as if the 'underground internet' - porn, cracks, warez and other not so legal or 'worksafe' activities exist in another space completely. It is possible to spend your whole life online and never stumble into this other dimension.
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Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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participants (4)
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Heidelberg, Chris -
John Veitch -
Michele Sohn -
William Bain