CYBERSPACE – Religious and political conservatives have plenty bad to say about the adult Internet, but very few of them seem aware of the many advances that the plugged-in mainstream have enjoyed thanks to innovative thinking, problem solving, and technological risk-taking on the part of online smut.Pop-up advertisements, video streaming, paid website memberships, and electronic billing have been available on the adult Internet for a decade – long before the mainstream realized their potential and benefited from the bug testing and application refinement performed by pornographers whose company – but not innovations – the more respectable professionals eschew, up to the Fortune 500 level. In spite of such snubbing and because online web entrepreneurs have dared to go where no image nervous IT geek has gone before, the industry is one of the most profitable to have made the jump to virtual space.

Now the innovations that result from the world of explicit content are venturing into newer and bolder technological fields, including digital-rights management, geo-location software, and wireless services. Although still unwilling to publicly acknowledge that the federally reviled industry is a tech leader, those in less politically sensitive eight-to-five businesses are watching and waiting much in the same way that the music and film industry have been watching as pornographers tackle issues of digital content protection.

It’s believed that millions of adult video clips and images per day find their unauthorized way onto users’ hard drives and are then spread through inboxes and Usenet addresses around the world. With theft like this going on daily, the industry has had to be wily and innovative. In the past, its novel solutions to commonly experienced problems have influenced respected giants including Yahoo and Microsoft MSN, which both use paid subscriptions and video streaming as part of their vital services. Other mega stars of the Internet including but not limited to Amazon.com have jumped on the affiliate bandwagon, allowing as many as 900,000 small sites to use free content in an effort to lure millions of customers and promote brand recognition and loyalty. Pop-up ads are now so common that Yahoo and Google toolbars can be configured to block them from any site, not just those related to adult matters.

Although both Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales have vowed to effectively destroy the adult industry, economic and cultural pundits wonder if the federal government truly comprehends the negative impact that such a development would likely have upon a limping U.S. economy. Sites such as Danni’s Hard Drive and CyberErotica lead the pack with increased earnings of approximately ten-percent to 15-percent from 2002, each generating $2 billion in revenue last year, as well as employing untold numbers of performers, models, and IT professionals. Given that these two monsters represent a mere ten-percent of the domestic porn market according to the National Research Council, and that adult sites have increased by eighteen-fold – clocking in an impressive 1.3 million since 1998 – that’s an enormous contribution to the American economy not merely in business taxes but in employment, as well.

The number of sites is only expected to increase, as more Americans subscribe to broadband connections, and there appears to be no visible end in sight to the general public’s interest in porn, given that approximately 35 million people are believed by Nielsen/NetRatings to have visited adult sites in December of 2004 alone. That translates into one out of every four Internet users – a sizable number. When the names of major corporations that work with adult content is added, the potential for economic hard is further brought home. Cable and satellite companies including cable powerhouse Comcast provide pay-per-view TV services, although Comcast does not provide revenue numbers for adult programming apart from its other offerings.

Titillating material has long been at the forefront of technological revolutions, including some of the earliest cave drawings, paintings, photographs, print, 900-telephone numbers, pay-per-view television, and video tapes. Some of the newest and most cutting edge offerings either now or soon to be available include software from Playa Solutions that wraps digital content in a protective shield that allows users to play clips after notifying a computer system that requests payment or requires ad views before activating. Vivid Entertainment Group is developing an e-billing system that will allow blocks of content to be downloaded and recorded onto CDs with charges accruing by the minute. On a much smaller scale, XTCMobile.com provides “groan” and “moan” ring tones and erotic video clips lasting up to four minutes that can be used to personalize mobile devices including cell phones, digital cameras, video games, and web browsers. In order to prove its child-protection credibility, the company is working with wireless carriers to keep the content out of the hands of minors. Adult sites are also exploring more precise means for identifying the location of users in order to better customize content via geo-location software.

It’s hardly a surprise that more timid and broad-based mainstream companies are watching these developments with keen interest. What is, perhaps, a surprise is that so much has been developed by a marginalized industry that often has more creative than financial wealth. The majority of adult Internet professionals work from home, have little or no venture capital available to them, prefer not to work for large corporations, often work with intensely short deadlines, and are far more willing and capable of taking calculated risks that those working outside of the industry. In other words, not only is the adult industry fueled by unique levels of creativity but its work force consists of precisely the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that helped make the United States a professional entity to be reckoned with.