According to one estimate, there are nearly 25 million porn sites worldwide and they make up 12% of all websites. A writer at “ExtremeTech” reported that Xvideos is the biggest porn site on the web, receiving 4.4 billion page views and 350 million unique visits per month. He claims porn accounts for 30% of all web traffic. Based on Google data, the other four of the top five porn sites, and their monthly page views (pvs) are: PornHub, 2.5 billion pvs; YouPorn, 2.1 billion pvs; Tube8, 970 million pvs; and LiveJasmin, 710 million pvs. In comparison, Wikipedia gets about 8 billion pvs. Yet, despite this, the commercial porn industry in Los Angeles and throughout the US is seeing a sharp decrease in profits.
Most commentators identify five factors contributing to the predicament now facing the commercial porn industry: (i) the wide scale pirating of copyrighted porn and its illegal resale and posting by opportunistic websites; (ii) the ease of producing do-it-yourself (DIY) amateur porn videos; (iii) the enormous increase of “free” porn sites; (iv) the resulting change in business economics; and (v) the ongoing recession with cuts discretionary spending, especially among a certain sector of the male audience. Porn power-house veteran Steven Hirsch said: “To compete against free [porn] you need to produce and distribute unique products whether celebrity sex tape or our superhero parodies or our swinger stuff that can’t be found on free sites, so you have to be clever to survive.” And, porn patriarch Ron Jeremy said: “So as it is now we’re going out of business because of the internet…”
The greatest threat to studio production porn is the above listed top porn sites: which allow for users to upload their own home-made (DIY) porn videos. For example, by January 2008 a search for “porn” and “tube” returned 8.3 million results on Yahoo and 8.5 million on MSN; by October 2012 searches for “porn” and “tube” returned 1420 million results on Google. What changed? In the 1980s, and even when I got into porn in the 1990s, being a porn actor was not something you particularly bragged about; except within your tight inner circle of fellow sub-culture deviants. You kept it somewhat secret; you tried to hide the truth from your family. Early 80s porn super-star Shauna Grant told the people back home she was a fashion model. Things started to change when Savannah came to prominence during the early-90s, yet, even she was relegated to dating B-list celebrities who quickly dumped her once the word got out. Nowadays, international careers have been founded on porn: Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, and the most famous woman in the world – Kim Kardashian. It’s become an acceptable career choice and a benevolent hobby or past-time. The porn stars of today are ordinary American men and women – who perceive nothing wrong with being naked on the net, or even performing various sex acts and then posting them online. Because, after all, the Hollywood elite do it – and still walk the red carpet with their heads held high, appear on the cover of “Vogue,” and get their own clothing lines at major department stores. It’s no longer shameful to be in porn.