Dirty video on demand

    Not to be overlooked either is the response to the new wave of computer pornography from the established publishers of the glossy paper variety. Seeing as a large amount of online porn actually consists of pictures scanned straight from these publications, and much of the rest from videos, surely there would be an interest in some form of restrictive legislation from these concerns? After all, the drop in circulation rates of many of the adult magazines since the Internet has arrived on the scene cannot just be a coincidence. These magazines are distributed mainly by subscription, simply because readers are embarrassed about buying them over the counter in the high street. The Internet provides almost total perceived anonymity and very cheap thrills. The would-be patron of the pornographics arts needs to shell out only ten quid for a month's Internet sub, and with telephone charges at 1p per minute at off-peak local call rates there is low-cost access to an almost limitless choice of perversion - no coughing up £3 per copy for a small selection of soft porn pictures in a mag. Of course, the clever players are moving their magazines onto the Web themselves and publishing them alongside the traditional paper versions. They charge a small subscription fee to view, don't incur much in the way of extra production costs (the magazine is already produced on computer anyway), and can rake in a small fortune from willing advertisers drawn by the huge readership potential such ventures can attract.

    When Playboy launched online it broke all Internet records with an estimated 880,000 visitors in the first day! Penthouse got in on the act and some observers reckon that the online version could be the saviour of the paper version in a time of declining fortunes for the Guccione empire. Making pornography available to the computer owning public is nothing new to the porn publishers: CD-ROMs are a booming industry in the US and account for a huge volume of adult material sales. What is new is the notion of giving a product away, or at least not charging a fortune for it.

    Adult magazines have never been cheap. Publishers don't want to see their content given away free online, but if it is, they will have to find new ways to make money either by milking advertisers or by finding new and more imaginative ways to entertain the reader.