back to article Salacious smut soaks 12% of web

It brought 8mm film projectors into the home. It launched the VHS revolution. And it has contributed mightily to the success of the internet. What else could we be referrring to but porn? And now Online MBA has provided a staggering set of stats that show exactly how pervasive the ever-evolving effluence of erotica is on the …

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  1. David 45

    Caught out

    It's a fair cop, guv'nor. I really must pull the curtains next time and get rid of the sheep.

  2. wobbly1
    Paris Hilton

    may I toss this in the pot...

    What percentage of cave paintings or the writings on the walls of Roman towns are salacious depictions of sex... might I guess 12%? in which case we have reached porn homoeostasis on the net.

    Paris for her upstanding (so I'm led to believe) contribution to this global achievement.

  3. LinkOfHyrule
    Joke

    6 minuets 29 seconds

    "The average porn site visit lasts 6 minuets 29 seconds"

    Now there's a surprise!

    Interesting fact, the average Register site visit is also 6 minuets 29 seconds*.

    *made up fact.

    1. Havin_it
      Headmaster

      How many minuets?

      The average porn site visit lasts 6 slow, stately dances in triple meter, popular in the 17th and 18th centuries (or pieces of music for such a dance or in its rhythm) 29 seconds?

      Quite honestly I have some trouble with that assertion.

  4. J 3
    Coat

    Sunday and Utah

    Of course, Sunday. They cleanse their souls in the morning, and then need something to justify going to church again next week!

    Anyway, Utah? Hyper-moralistic Mormon-land Utah? Why doesn't that surprise me?

  5. maniax
    Thumb Up

    Only 35% ?

    I thought it was more like 50%. It doesn't say if it's HTTP only, or if it includes the torrents and the like.

    Anyway, 35% from 10% of the sites sounds pretty good :) Although they can do better :))

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    yep

    Wow well if it wasn't for porn a lot of us would be serial killers or something, so thank goodness for porn!!!!!! lmao

  7. Combat Wombat
    Badgers

    So we know the size of the aussie firewall then...

    The final block list will be about 24 million sites...

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Joke

      lol

      Shouldnt slow the internet down at all, should it?

  8. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    wow

    those MBA guys seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time studying and quantizing Internet pr0n. Good to know they still have the proper priorities on Internet usage. None of that "the Internet is for research and connecting with friends and family" stuff from them, oh no.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Joke

      Re: wow

      It's a hard life, but someone had to get stuck in, give it their best shot and cum up with this seminal work......

  9. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Missed one small detail

    All this talk about "porn", but they don't ever say what they mean by it. From their little poster, it appears that"sex" is synonymous with porn - at least in their world. So are "adult websites". Should we therefore conclude that when they refer to porn, they simply mean anything of an adult nature - including, presumably "adult" i.e. cert 18 films?

    So what it seems to boil down to is that in a world populated overwhelmingly by adults, a significant proportion of web traffic, searches, emails and websites either contain or are there to satisfy people's needs for adult material?

    Maybe the real problem is that stunted individuals who felt the need to produce this chart - and the research behind it aren't mature enough to have a "grown-up" discussion about the topic. If they were, they'd realise that there's a tremendous amount of sex going on - everywhere (hint: that's why there are nearly 7 billion people on the planet, and more every day) and that it's a big part of lots of people's lives. To deny it's there or to consider it a bad thing seems rather foolish.

    1. Steven Knox
      Stop

      Missed one huge detail

      This isn't from some anti-porn website, or from a porn industry website. It's from a blog for business MBAs. It's not intended to vilify - or, for that matter, justify - pornography*; this is an informative, not a persuasive, graphic. The numbers behind it are important to business people for reasons ranging from investment strategies to management strategies to procurement strategies.

      The judgment, therefore, which you inferred from this graphic and the research behind it ultimately came from nowhere but yourself. Please consider therapy, or at least defer commenting until you are mature enough to have a frank discussion on this topic.

      *which, by the way, is pretty well defined. If you MUST have a definition provided to you, go here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pornography

      1. Alpha Tony

        Hmmm

        Steven, the definition you posted is:

        'obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit.'

        definition of 'obscene' from the same site:

        'abominable; disgusting; repulsive.'

        Surely that makes the Daily Mail pr0n?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        RE: Missed one huge detail

        ...but "adult dating" is still not the same as porn.

  10. Ian 31
    Happy

    Boobies!!

    Need I say more.

  11. Maty
    Paris Hilton

    hmmm

    I'm trying to remember if I might have been in Elmhurst, Illinois around the time the survey was taken ...

    If I'd been in Paris I'd have remembered.

  12. Annihilator
    Happy

    Just grab your d**k

    and double click...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Troll

      2 mins later

      Tissue + ctrl F4

      1. John H Woods Silver badge

        you forgot ...

        ... to dismount (your truecrypt volume)

  13. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Stop

    Unlikely.

    The way these results are presented makes them look more like many of those crap surveys that appear in Mens Health or GQ magazines where the population quota sampled is about 15, and then extrapolated out linearly to supposedly represent a total population.

    So I call "shenannigans" on these results - but in all truth don't give a flying toss either way and am off for a w**k off over the latest Jamie Brooks vid.

  14. Graham Marsden
    Megaphone

    Can I just add a big...

    ... SO WHAT???

    People like looking at porn, well, isn't that a surprise! Despite the best efforts of the Mary Whitehouses et al of this world, the human interest in sex and all that goes with it continues unabated.

    In other news, Popes are Catholic and (oh, you know the rest...)

  15. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Thumb Up

    Long may it reign!

    Look, if the good ( pick your deity ) hadn't wanted us to have sex, they wouldn't have put our dangly bits in easy reach!

    What's so special about Sunday? It's the only day the rest of us can get stuff done, not necessarily this of course, as all the God botherers are down the local place of worship and away from us!

  16. jake Silver badge

    I dunno about the stats presented ...

    But I know for an absolute fact that EVERY male college student's computer that I've worked on over the last 25 years or so has contained porn. The coeds didn't start picking up on Internet porn in college until around a dozen years ago ... and now, they are nearly equal to the boys.

    In business, over the last decade and a half or so, probably 80% (or thereabouts) of all male middle management PCs contain traces of Internet porn (in my experience). The ladies started surfing porn around 6 years ago, and are now (roughly) equal to the men.

    Not trying to justify it, nor vilify it, and likewise not drawing conclusions, just stating my observations. Do with them what you will.

  17. John F***ing Stepp

    This bites.

    I have actually stayed away from the Goddamn porn sites because of the trojans.

    Now I find that I am not holding up my side.

    (Oh God, snicker.)

    I will try to adjust this situation by trying to find some good quality porn sites that I can access at work. I think I will start with a deep packet inspection of my bosses web presence; yeah, that ought to do it.

    (Did you know that a Linux machine will automatically log on to an XP?)

    Weird; so let us see what the bigwigs are doing today and hope we do not go blind in the process.

    'Cause we really should have some damn values.

  18. FreeTard
    FAIL

    1 in 3 are women?

    I seriously doubt that. Unless American women are vastly diffferent to the rest of the world, which I doubt.

    I would reckon 1 in a thousand are women, as I've never actually met a girl who has (admitted to) surfed porn.

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      You corrected yourself there...

      The important point is "admitted to"!

      Women will not, as a rule, admit to watching porn except with people they absolutely trust (or their completely wasted). But women do watch porn, just like women do masturbate. They dont talk about it like guys do but they still do it.

      We're all human after all...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      you

      You don't know many woman, out of my circle of friends I can count ten woman all of which look at porn to one degree or another, including an attractive, married, degree educated, senior auditor as well as nutty 19 year old students and a range in between.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Psst.

      A joke about never actually meeting a woman with a handle of FreeTard would be too easy.

      If you're really curious, google up 'yaoi' and 'slashfic.' But not at work, unless you're part of that 20%. Spoiler: Know how there's a lot of straight male-targeted porn of 'lesbians'?

      Also consider how smut is hidden offline. Ever heard of Harlequin Books? Or 'dime dreadfuls'? Or just 'romance novels' in general? They're not technical manuals.

      Paris likes porn, too!

    4. Mark O

      Women won't admit it?

      A lot of women will admit porn surfing to some people but not to others. The same rule applies to a lot of things with women (and to a lesser extent men) - If they trust and feel comfortable with you then they'll admit to all sorts of things, but if they think you're a weirdo then they won't even admit to taking their clothes off before they get in the shower.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      American women

      > Unless American women are vastly diffferent to the rest of the world, which I doubt.

      Vastly? Maybe not, but in my experience they are a lot more open about what they do & what they like, especially in the self-help department, than are English* women. I still remember the weekend I learned that...

      *I use "English" for a reason. Scots & Irish are almost as open as the female yanks (especially the redheads :) )

      Anon. Of course.

  19. xpert_con
    Stop

    116,000

    Can I just say that 116,000 searches for child pornography a day. That's slightly sickening to be honest and is that only in the US? Having the opportunity to view media on the internet is what is making mankind as a collective better in my view not just porn but everything and seeing that stat just makes me feel sick. Wont anyone think of the children?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Isn't that the problem?

      Thinking of the children, I mean...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just calm down.

      First, I don't know how these statistics were created, so I doubt them a lot. As you point out, we don't know anything about the population from which the sample was drawn, and there are lots of other metainformation about the study they'll have to publish before the figures can be believed.

      Second. Even if the figure is accurate, we don't know how many of these searches were by people who wanted to look at child porn. I made such a search once; a friend sent me a cartoon depicting disney's little mermaid Ariel (who is 15 in the original fairy tale) in a hot scene with disney's Jasmine and several miniature replicas of Agraba's towers. So I searched Wikipedia for "child pornography" because I wanted to know if the picture is illegal in my country. But does that make me an abominable paedophile? (BTW, I didn't keep the cartoon anyway).

      Third. Even if most of the 116 K searches are made by actual sickos, ~100 000 people who like to look at kiddies (assuming each is making exactly one query per day) out of ~2 billion Internet users isn't that much, it is 1 in 20 000. To put it in perspective: the prevalence for ASPD (the exact medical term for what is commonly known as "psychopathy") is about 1 in 500 people. So why does the number given here for child porn searches surprise you? Yes, people who like child porn really exist, we don't imagine them. But there aren't many of them around, and the figure here confirms that.

      AC, because this is a british site and I just admitted to having caught a glimpse of the little mermaid sans bikini.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        ,,,and statistics.

        Since we're not told anything about how the survey was done, it's a bit dodgy to compare 68 million seraches per day for all porn (including adult dating) with 116,000 per day for child pornography.

        But it's less than 0.2%, which looks a lot less frightening.

        I wonder how long it will be before politicians start making a fuss about these dreadful totals. It's worth noting that US law, generally, makes it easier for a porn business to stay legal. If your local MP starts flapping about this, blame it on yankee perversion.

      2. James Hughes 1

        title

        And how many 'serious' paedos would actually be dumb enough to type 'child pornography' in to a search engine? From the articles I read here, most are really quite careful about keeping under cover. Using a search engine would be like having a fluorescent sign on your head saying 'please arrest me, I like kiddy porn'.

        1. cosmogoblin

          The stupid ones

          20% of men surf porn at work? That's utterly stupid, yet it happens.

          Unless kiddie porn lovers are of above average intelligence, which I somehow doubt, I wouldn't put it past them to google their hobby.

          I suspect the "rings" we hear of in the news, whilst being the most dangerous, are far from the most representative.

    3. Graham Marsden
      FAIL

      @xpert_con

      And what if someone is searching for oh, I don't know, some stats to *verify* that claim about "116,000 searches for child pornography" per day?

      Exactly what terms do you think they might use?

      Oh, look, someone searching for "child pornography"...!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A bit unfair...

    ...#11 isn't really relevant to the rest of the article, it somehow implies that the porn industry is responsible for child porn - Bollocks.

  21. Rob
    Go

    Don't forget...

    ... multi-angle DVD feature was also developed by the porn industry. The history of porn and how it's driven technology through the years is a very interesting read.

    As for the research these lot did, I think an ursus has defecated in the woods somewhere.

  22. gray_
    Alert

    Search Term != Porn

    The article context makes it seem as if there are 116k pedo's searching for images of child abuse every day. Let's remember there are numerous reasons why someone may use the search term "Child Pornography" which have nothing to do with wanting to consume porn. Maybe I've been the victim of child pornography, maybe I'm studying the psycho/social issues around it, maybe I'm researching it's prevalence on the web...

  23. neverSteady
    Thumb Up

    Love it.

    The stats, not the porn. Okay maybe the porn too.

    Although stat #11 is very disturbing.

  24. alyn

    This is new?

    All visual media have always been for porn. Artists have been painting and sculpting nudes for centuries, or millenia.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @FreeTard

    "I would reckon 1 in a thousand are women, as I've never actually met a girl who has (admitted to) surfed porn."

    And I have never met one (with whom the topic has come up in conversation) who claims to never surfed for porn.

  26. Doug Glass
    Go

    So? What's Your Point?

    BFD. As soon as all the apple and lummox fanboys learn about sex the percentage will rise precipitously. Oh no, that's wrong ... division by zero not allowed.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @John Stepp

    "Did you know that a Linux machine will automatically log on to an XP?"

    What?

    Elaborate please!

    1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
      Happy

      Hmmmm

      Some sort of euphamism for playing with you and/or your chosen partners danglies?!

  28. Asgard
    Happy

    Bias in these figures...

    There is a moralistic anti-porn bias in these figures. Its trying scare tactics from all directions.

    My suspicion was first raised when it said "$3,075.64", that's intentionally trying to make it look like a big number on a quick first glance. $3075 looks less but thats a small point compared with what follows it.

    I'm not sure if the moralistic anti-porn bias was coming from www.onlineschools.org ... my first thought was they were biasing it, but the more I read it and look at their web site, I think the bias is second hand so to speak, as its coming through the statistics from other sites they used as reference as some of these are using anti-porn biased figures.

    Not sure what to make of the church on Sunday image, as there is two ways to interpret it. Either its the anti-porn moralistic brigade annoyed at porn on Sunday or its the anti-porn moralistic brigade showing their voyeuristic porn fetish hypocrisy on Sunday. :)

  29. Lonesome Twin
    WTF?

    Out of date?

    Am I alone in having been online so long that the thrill of online thrusting bits has waned immensely? In days of yore I was way up there with my 56K modem, but it seems to me that a one-day sub on any major site would satisfy even the most 'ardent' teenager for months? Broadband has therefore freed me to research youtube's cat collection, which is apparently even more infinite (??) than the other kind of pussy!

  30. a_c_g_t
    Pint

    Dhuuuuuu

    Tell me something we don't know! I am suprised it's as low as that. I always thought WWW stood for (W)orld (W)ide (W)ank.

    Even back in the early days of the closed university systems I worked with there was always the smut pictures going around.

    Pass anything to the masses and you will always end up seeing the base denominator. Take aways the porn hunters the freetards the net would not be as big as it is now.

    Take away the KP peddlers and other such deviants, it beats having to wait in line at the cornershop whist the guy in front with the sheepish look buys a copy of Reader Wives and 1/2 a pint of milk.

  31. Magnus_Pym

    88% of the internet is not porn!!!!

    That would have made a better headline. Most people believe that almost all of the internet is made of pron.

    Also looking at the way these people have judged their statistics you could probably say 88% of the internet is suitable for children of all ages.

  32. Chris Seiter
    Joke

    Definition of Porn

    I heard there were two definitions for the difference between porn and art:

    a government grant.

    or

    if you take a midget and put it in the scene and it doesn't look out of place, it's porn.

  33. beanfeast
    FAIL

    Those search engine figures look a bit strange

    comScore shows Google, Yahoo and Bing in December 2009 performing about 4.5 billion searches per day, That's significantly more than the 272 million searches performed daily as suggested by item 6. This might give an idea o how seriously some of the other items should be takes

  34. Lord Raa

    Perhaps

    Perhaps these stats are for the US only?

    It would explain why they seem a little on the low side.

  35. Francis Davey 1
    FAIL

    All lies probably

    How is a search for "adult dating" or "sex" for that matter a search for *pornography*? Or perhaps Online MBA are a bit weak on what "pornography" means. In statistics the easily spotted rubbish is usually just the tip of the iceberg. I strongly suspect that not much of what comes out of this is of much use.

  36. Mr Bear
    Paris Hilton

    Damnit!!

    I did a search for 'salacious smut' and ended up with this story.

    And to make matters worse, the paris hilton picture has put me right off.

  37. Bryan W
    Welcome

    Its been said but....

    Only 12%?

    Looks like there's still plenty of room for MOAR Pr0ns!!!

    Dirty, dirty Internets...

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