Obscenity and Pornography: Behavioral Aspects

The availability of pornography and obscenity has increased steadily over the centuries, reaching a peak in the year 2000. The spread of such material has been associated with the growth of democracy (extending rights of expression to more citizens over time) and the rise of such new forms of technology as the printing press, photography, mass publishing, modes of transportation to deliver material over long distances, videos, cable television, and, more recently, the Internet. In 1992, Americans rented 490 million hard core videos, compared to 75 million in 1985; and in 1997, 10 percent of the money earned on the Internet (up to $1 billion) came from pornography that could be found on about 34,000 web sites. The easy international availability of pornography over the Internet increasingly poses and creates legal confusion, for the law differs in each country, and no authoritative international standard has been promulgated. Studies in the 1980s maintained that the production of pornography was often associated with organized and other forms of crime, such as prostitution; yet no consensus reigns on the extent of underworld complicity in the pornographic industry today, especially given the lowered barriers of entry into the market provided by videos and the Internet.