(or not), over and over and over.
In a May 2001 interview with NPR, Danni Ashe (pictured), founder of seminal softcore site Danni's Hard Drive, noted that "the adult entertainment industry was the first to use streaming JPEG push video, which was video that worked...in the browser and didn't require a plug-in. I think as an industry we tend to jump in a little bit faster and tweak the technology and try to get it to work faster."
In 2003, Acacia Research sued dozens of porn sites for allegedly violating its patents on streaming video. The patent portfolio company sued the pornsters in part because they were easy targets, but also because that's where most of the video action was. Subsequently Acacia got around to securing licenses from Disney, the New York Times, and other less titillating video streamers.
"Without programming pioneers trying to perfect video streaming software that would deliver images of copulation and procreation to paying customers hooked up with a 28.8kbps dial-up modem, it is unlikely that CNN would be effectively delivering news clips of global breaking news," wrote Lewis Perdue in Eroticabiz.
4. Naughty: Malware
Porn sites in the past were notorious for siccing drive-by malware infections on good-time charlies who came looking for a little fun. Visitors could catch the malicious software either by clicking thumbnail galleries or by downloading new "video codecs" that actually contained Trojans (and no, not that kind of Trojan -- Trojan horses). These days, drive-by infections continue to rage online -- but they're no longer restricted to the seamy side of the Web; you can run into them (if you're unlucky) on legitimate sites, trying to exploit security flaws in Internet Explorer.
The results can be devastating. Just ask Julie Amero, a Connecticut substitute teacher who was horrified to find herself facing prosecution (and the possibility of up to 40 years in prison) after a computer loaded with spyware displayed pornography to her students. Fortunately for Amero, computer security professionals convinced the judge that she was merely an innocent victim of spyware programs that had taken control of the school's computer and had launched a blizzard of pop-up porn windows.
5. Nice: Live Chat
Why would you limit yourself to watching videos of naked people when you could instead chat with them, suggest ingenious activities for them to undertake, test their grasp of Hegel's metaphysics, and whatever else struck your fancy -- all while using the finest in modern electronics? Porn plowed the path for video chat and its boring cousin, Web-based videoconferencing.
"Video chat is a huge area of interaction and profitability in the digital adult business," says Mark Frieser, cofounder of MyVIProom.com, an adult content and dating destination that is scheduled to debut early next year. "Tons of women are selling one-on-one chat at really exorbitant rates. That sort of video technology has definitely been pioneered by the adult industry."
Meanwhile, "teledildonics," in combination with chat, gives new meaning to the term remote control, notes author and sex educator Violet Blue, proprietress of the Tiny Nibbles Web site [this site is Not Safe For Work].
"Live camgirls created the peer-to-peer direct sex work arena, heralded the death of the pimp, and forged new tech paths (such as teledildonic interaction with camgirls where the customer pays for the connection and operates her sex toy live)," Blue wrote in an e-mail. "It remains in lucrative commercial use today."
6. Naughty: Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, Mousetrapping
Upon crossing the threshold of a porn site, a visitor might find it quite difficult to leave, due to site applets that took control of the visitor's browser to deliver ads or to launch new windows to replace each one the user closed.
7. Nice: Broadband
In the 1990s, Penthouse magazine gave away 2400-baud modems
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