While "Its what the Internet is for" can be questioned, there is no argument, among those who've paid attention while it all happened, that without the influence of "porn" the internet would have waited much longer for a number of familiar features to be developed.

One of the first claims that can be made is that porn distributors were the first, and for some time about the only, ones producing "movies on tape." It was early adoption of the VHS format by pornographers that lead ultimately to its adoption and the "death" of BetaMax. Had BM been the standard that survived, movies you could watch at home likely would have been much more expensive and available in fewer titles for decades, and since BetaMax was largely a "captive format" of the mainstream movie people the DRM rules likely would have been much less "gentle" to the users. ("gentle" being relative)

Porn producers have also been active in the popularizing of CD and DVD formats and have been strong influences in what formats have come to market and which ones faded. To some extent they have lobbied, with some success, for more "end-user friendly" regulations than have been demanded by the "mainstream" music and video distributors.

It is also generally accepted that pornographers were almost solely responsible for the development of early "online payment" schemes, and without their influence PayPal (and others of its ilk) likely would have come several years later. While few of the "survivors" are directly linked to the porn industry, it was porn that showed them how.

Internet industry watchers are well aware that "porn sells" and that the "porn producers" have originated and strongly influenced the developing of a whole lot of things that the internet probably would not be able to provide in their absence.

You don't really have to care about watching it in order to get significant benefit from the fact that it's enormously profitable, with lots of people working very hard at improving the means for producing and distributing it.

John