New York Times today has a very revealing (yeah, yeah) article on the spread of pornography thanks to technology, and the usual hypocrises. Among the interesting findings:

General Motors sells more graphic sex films per year through DirecTV than Larry Flynt of Hustler ($200 million worth). A.T. & T. (through Hot Network) is also doing well on its broadband cable service.

Sex movie rentals: 71% by men alone; 19% by men with women; 7% by men with men; 2% women alone.

711 million hardcore sex video rentals a year in America

20% of Americans with VCR or cable access will pay to watch explicit hard core sex. They buy $4 billion of graphic sex videos, and $800 million on soft-core videos, for 32% of the general interest video store market.

Adult pay-per-view programs are in nearly 1.5 million hotel rooms (40% of all hotel rooms). Half of all adult guests rent these, accounting for $190 million a year in sales, and 85-90% of all in-room revenues.

21 million Americans visit at least one of the 60,000 "sex sites" (no further breakdown of what that means) on the Internet once a month, and these sites are estimated to already generate $1 billion in revenue (the numbers are hard to calculate).

Says Bryn Pryor, technology editor for Adult Video News: "This just happens to be a business where you can't lose money".

yours, Peter T.