IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wikwps/308077.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economics and regulation of adult online content

Author

Listed:
  • Happ, Marina
  • Harpenau, Franziska
  • Wiewiorra, Lukas

Abstract

Pornographic websites represent a significant component of the digital ecosystem; however, comparatively limited research has been conducted on this subject in comparison to other websites. This paper aims to gather and enrich the extant literature on the subject. For this purpose, a comprehensive analysis of the diverse business models is conducted, regarding factors such as their design, content uploaded and revenue generation. Furthermore, an analysis of the market structure of the various companies operating within this sector is undertaken, which reveals a high degree of vertical and horizontal integration, with several tube websites as well as websites employing interactive models demonstrating particular significance. The utilisation of such services is frequent across the population, which raises several societal concerns. These include the presence of illegal content such as copyright-infringing material, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensually shared intimate material (NCSM), potential issues regarding the protection of privacy, potential negative effects due to harmful material, access by minors and potential negative effects on the mental health. Several potential mitigation measures are presented and current approaches outlined, including age verification, verification of uploaders and performers, content moderation and changes in functionality. Especially tube websites appear to have little intrinsic motivation to remove illegal content and should therefore be examined more closely.

Suggested Citation

  • Happ, Marina & Harpenau, Franziska & Wiewiorra, Lukas, 2024. "Economics and regulation of adult online content," WIK Working Papers 9, WIK Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste GmbH, Bad Honnef.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wikwps:308077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/308077/1/1913368831.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fiona Vera-Gray & Clare McGlynn & Ibad Kureshi & Kate Butterby, 2021. "Sexual violence as a sexual script in mainstream online pornography [‘Pleasure Zones and Murder Boxes: Online Pornography and Violent Video Games as Cultural Zones of Exception’]," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 61(5), pages 1243-1260.
    2. Kim-Marlène Le & Julien Penin, 2017. "Appropriation Under Low Intellectual Property Regimes : The Role of Communities in the Online Alternative Adult Entertainment Industry," Post-Print hal-02167211, HAL.
    3. Adib, Saif Ahmed & Mahanti, Aniket & Naha, Ranesh Kumar, 2021. "Characterisation and comparative analysis of thematic video portals," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mengchi Xing & Haojiang Deng & Rui Han, 2024. "A Method for 5G–ICN Seamless Mobility Support Based on Router Buffered Data," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-19, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Online Pornography; Adult Entertainment; Societal Issues; Digital Services Act (DSA);
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:wikwps:308077. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.wik.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.