Amateur pornography
Encyclopedia
Amateur pornography is a category of pornography
that features models or actors performing without pay, or for whom this material is their first or only paid modeling work. Reality pornography is professionally made porn which seeks to emulate the style of amateur pornography. Amateur porn has been called one of the most profitable and long-lasting genres of pornography.
cameras were a big step forward for amateur pornographic photography as this allowed images to be produced immediately, without the need for sending them out for processing, which would have been subject to local obscenity laws. However the largest impact on amateur pornographic photography has been the advent of the internet
, digital cameras, and more recently camera phone
s. These have enabled to take private photos and which have also allowed images to be shared instantly, without the need for expensive distribution, and this has resulted in an ever growing variety and quantity of material. It has also been argued that in the Internet age it has become more socially acceptable to make and view amateur porn. Photo sharing sites such as Flickr
and social networking sites such as MySpace
have been used to share amateur pornographic photographs - usually nudes but also hardcore photos. A more private and easy to control method of sharing photos is through Yahoo Groups or Google Groups
which have access restricted to group members.
Recently the potential dangers of teenagers or children, who may be unaware of the consequences, using their Camera phone
s to make videos and images which are then shared amongst their friends (see Sexting
). Images initially meant to be shared between couples can now be spread around the world. The result is now a small but growing amount of online amateur porn depicting underage models, created by the young people themselves.
s and VHS
tapes couples had to film themselves using Super 8
film which then had to be sent for film processing. This was both expensive and risky as the processing laboratory might report the film to the police.
Amateur pornography began to rapidly increase in the 1980s, with the camcorder revolution, when people began recording their sex lives and watching the results on VCRs. These home movies
were initially shared for free, often under the counter at the local video store, and then amateurs began distributing their tapes for profit. In 1991 in response to a Boston Globe investigation, video store proprietors reported that between 20 and 60% of video rentals and sales were of adult amateur home video
films. One infamous case was that of Kathy Willets and her husband Jeffrey. Jeffrey was a Deputy Sheriff in Broward County, Florida
who had recorded his "nymphomaniac" wife's sexual exploits with up to 8 men a day. Unfortunately he was charging up to $150 an hour and had also taped some significant local figures and so the two were arrested and charged with prostitution. Ellis Rubin
acted as defence council and their defence was that her nymphomania was caused by the use of Prozac. In the end they pleaded guilty and both were convicted, although Kathy has gone on to a career in the adult film industry.
Watchersweb claims to be the first company to distribute amateur home videos. The company was founded in 1998 by Ray and Raven Youngman from Australia and the site was launched in 1999. As demand for films to swap grew, they turned their hobby into a business, advertising for amateur exhibitionists around the world who sent in their private tapes. Several people who sent their tapes to Homegrown Video became professional porn stars
, including Stephanie Swift
, Melissa Hill
and Rayveness
.
The term realcore has been used to describe digital amateur porn, which arose due to the combination of cheap digital cameras and the World Wide Web in the late 90s. The term refers both to how porn is made, with simple cameras and a documentary style, and how it is distributed, mostly for free, in Web communities or Usenet newsgroups. The term was invented by Sergio Messina
, who first used it at the Ars Electronica
Symposium in 2000, and was subsequently adopted by a number of authors and experts. Sergio Messina has written a book on the subject, entitled Realcore, the digital porno revolution.
Amateur porn has also influenced the rise of the celebrity sex tape
, featuring stars like Pamela Anderson
, Paris Hilton
and Kim Kardashian
.
and also to online repositories. While most commercial sites charge for image content, story content is usually free to view and is funded by pop-up or banner advertising. Story submission and rating depends on registration as a user, but this is also usually free. Example sites include Literotica
, True Dirty Stories and Lust Library.
Like traditional magazine
and VHS
/DVD
-based pornography, Internet pornography
has long been a profitable venture. However, with the rise of Web 2.0
ventures and amateur pornography, websites based upon the YouTube
platform of user-generated content
and video sharing
have become highly popular. By January 2008 a search for "porn" and "tube" returned 8.3 million results on Yahoo and 8.5 million on MSN. Video hosting service
"tube" websites feature free user-uploaded amateur pornography, and have become the most visited pornography websites on the internet.
Since the content of these websites is entirely free and of reasonably high quality, and because most of the videos are full-length instead of short clips, these websites have sharply cut in to the profits of pornographic paysite
s and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography. The profits of tube-site owners are also squeezed in an increasingly crowded market, with the number of sites constantly growing.
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
that features models or actors performing without pay, or for whom this material is their first or only paid modeling work. Reality pornography is professionally made porn which seeks to emulate the style of amateur pornography. Amateur porn has been called one of the most profitable and long-lasting genres of pornography.
Photographs
PolaroidInstant camera
The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation....
cameras were a big step forward for amateur pornographic photography as this allowed images to be produced immediately, without the need for sending them out for processing, which would have been subject to local obscenity laws. However the largest impact on amateur pornographic photography has been the advent of the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, digital cameras, and more recently camera phone
Camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs . Since early in the 21st century the majority of mobile phones in use are camera phones....
s. These have enabled to take private photos and which have also allowed images to be shared instantly, without the need for expensive distribution, and this has resulted in an ever growing variety and quantity of material. It has also been argued that in the Internet age it has become more socially acceptable to make and view amateur porn. Photo sharing sites such as Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
and social networking sites such as MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
have been used to share amateur pornographic photographs - usually nudes but also hardcore photos. A more private and easy to control method of sharing photos is through Yahoo Groups or Google Groups
Google Groups
Google Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. The service was started in 1995 as Deja News, and was transitioned to Google Groups after a February 2001 buyout....
which have access restricted to group members.
Recently the potential dangers of teenagers or children, who may be unaware of the consequences, using their Camera phone
Camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs . Since early in the 21st century the majority of mobile phones in use are camera phones....
s to make videos and images which are then shared amongst their friends (see Sexting
Sexting
Sexting is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, primarily between mobile phones. The term was first popularized in early 21st century, and is a portmanteau of sex and texting, where the latter is meant in the wide sense of sending a text possibly with...
). Images initially meant to be shared between couples can now be spread around the world. The result is now a small but growing amount of online amateur porn depicting underage models, created by the young people themselves.
Home movies and videos
Before the advent of camcorderCamcorder
A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...
s and VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
tapes couples had to film themselves using Super 8
Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
film which then had to be sent for film processing. This was both expensive and risky as the processing laboratory might report the film to the police.
Amateur pornography began to rapidly increase in the 1980s, with the camcorder revolution, when people began recording their sex lives and watching the results on VCRs. These home movies
Home movies
A home movie is part of the motion picture filmmaking process made by amateurs, often for viewing by family and friends. When the hobby began, home movies were produced on photographic film, but accessibility of video production with video cameras and low cost data storage devices has made the...
were initially shared for free, often under the counter at the local video store, and then amateurs began distributing their tapes for profit. In 1991 in response to a Boston Globe investigation, video store proprietors reported that between 20 and 60% of video rentals and sales were of adult amateur home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
films. One infamous case was that of Kathy Willets and her husband Jeffrey. Jeffrey was a Deputy Sheriff in Broward County, Florida
Broward County, Florida
-2000 Census:As of the census of 2000, there were 1,623,018 people, 654,445 households, and 411,645 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,346 people per square mile . There were 741,043 housing units at an average density of 615 per square mile...
who had recorded his "nymphomaniac" wife's sexual exploits with up to 8 men a day. Unfortunately he was charging up to $150 an hour and had also taped some significant local figures and so the two were arrested and charged with prostitution. Ellis Rubin
Ellis Rubin
Ellis S. Rubin was an American attorney in Miami, Florida who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida...
acted as defence council and their defence was that her nymphomania was caused by the use of Prozac. In the end they pleaded guilty and both were convicted, although Kathy has gone on to a career in the adult film industry.
Watchersweb claims to be the first company to distribute amateur home videos. The company was founded in 1998 by Ray and Raven Youngman from Australia and the site was launched in 1999. As demand for films to swap grew, they turned their hobby into a business, advertising for amateur exhibitionists around the world who sent in their private tapes. Several people who sent their tapes to Homegrown Video became professional porn stars
Porn Stars
Porn Stars is the second studio album by the band Pretty Boy Floyd. It features re-recordings of five tracks from their debut album Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz, a re-recording of one track from Tonight Belongs To The Young, and a re-recording of one track from their EP A Tale of Sex, Designer...
, including Stephanie Swift
Stephanie Swift
Stephanie Swift is a former American pornographic actress who starred in over 370 adult movies between 1995 and 2009. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. Following her diagnosis and subsequent treatment, she decided to quit the adult movie industry, a move she had been considering for...
, Melissa Hill
Melissa Hill
Melissa Hill is a former pornographic actress and director. She has made over 200 movies during her career.-Awards:*1997 AVN Award – Best All-Girl Sex Scene, Film – Dreams of Desire...
and Rayveness
Rayveness
Rayveness is a former pornographic actress.-Biography:Rayveness grew up in the Quaker faith and married a year before she left high school...
.
The term realcore has been used to describe digital amateur porn, which arose due to the combination of cheap digital cameras and the World Wide Web in the late 90s. The term refers both to how porn is made, with simple cameras and a documentary style, and how it is distributed, mostly for free, in Web communities or Usenet newsgroups. The term was invented by Sergio Messina
Sergio Messina
Sergio Messina is an Italian musician, radio maker, writer, teacher and artist.In 1989 his no copyright, self distributed song Radiogladio got him international attention. Subsequently he produced Curre curre guaglio, 99 Posse's debut album, and then his own La Vendetta del Mulino Bianco...
, who first used it at the Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
Symposium in 2000, and was subsequently adopted by a number of authors and experts. Sergio Messina has written a book on the subject, entitled Realcore, the digital porno revolution.
Amateur porn has also influenced the rise of the celebrity sex tape
Celebrity sex tape
A celebrity sex tape is typically an amateur pornographic video recording involving one or more celebrity famous person which has been, intentionally or unintentionally, made available publicly....
, featuring stars like Pamela Anderson
Pamela Anderson
Pamela Denise Anderson is a Canadian-American actress, model, producer, author, activist, and former showgirl, known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch, and V.I.P. She was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990...
, Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton
Paris Whitney Hilton is an American businesswoman, heiress, and socialite. She is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton . Hilton is known for her controversial participation in a sex tape in 2003, and appearance on the television series The Simple Life alongside fellow socialite and childhood...
and Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian
Kimberly Noel "Kim" Kardashian is an American socialite, television personality, model, actress and businesswoman. She is known for the E! reality series that she shares with her family—Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and its spin-offs including Kourtney and Kim Take New York...
.
Literature - sex stories
The internet has also had an impact on amateur authors sharing their pornographic stories. Text is much easier to disseminate than images and so from the early 1990s amateurs were contributing stories to usenet groups such as alt.sex.storiesAlt.sex.stories
alt.sex.stories is a Usenet newsgroup for erotic stories.Alt.sex.stories was created on May 7, 1992 by Tim Pierce as an alternative to pre-existing alt erotica newsgroups....
and also to online repositories. While most commercial sites charge for image content, story content is usually free to view and is funded by pop-up or banner advertising. Story submission and rating depends on registration as a user, but this is also usually free. Example sites include Literotica
Literotica
Literotica is a free erotic fiction website. It allows any user to register as an author and submit stories and has over a million registered users as of April 2010. Amateur authors contribute stories, poems, essays, illustrated stories and audio stories in a variety of categories...
, True Dirty Stories and Lust Library.
User generated online content
- Main article: Porn 2.0Porn 2.0Porn 2.0, named after the Web 2.0 is a concept of internet-based websites featuring user-generated content. These ideas are sometimes described as intermediate social networking mediums using dynamics contents such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting in ?tube as opposed to static contents in...
Like traditional magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
and VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
/DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
-based pornography, Internet pornography
Internet pornography
Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups...
has long been a profitable venture. However, with the rise of Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
ventures and amateur pornography, websites based upon the YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
platform of user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
and video sharing
Video sharing
Video hosting services refers to websites or software where users can distribute their video clips. Other sites such as file hosting services image hosting services and social network services might support video sharing as an enhancement to their primary mission, but in general, they are not...
have become highly popular. By January 2008 a search for "porn" and "tube" returned 8.3 million results on Yahoo and 8.5 million on MSN. Video hosting service
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...
"tube" websites feature free user-uploaded amateur pornography, and have become the most visited pornography websites on the internet.
Since the content of these websites is entirely free and of reasonably high quality, and because most of the videos are full-length instead of short clips, these websites have sharply cut in to the profits of pornographic paysite
Paysite
A paysite, in pornography jargon, is a website that charges money to become a member and view its content, and often produces original adult content. They can be contrasted with "free-sites", which do not charge a membership fee. Most paysites offer "free tours" which allow non-members to view a...
s and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography. The profits of tube-site owners are also squeezed in an increasingly crowded market, with the number of sites constantly growing.