“MIDDLE MEN” Preview

“Inspired by a true story” — the lead characters are all fictitious, as is their story.  But the timeline and history of internet porn is somewhat accurate.

In the mid-1990s, Richard Gordon pioneered the process of accepting credit cards securely online, and marketed this technology directly to “disreputable” adult sites, while accepting a commission on every sale made.

The “drama” in this film seems to revolve around Luke Wilson’s character, who is a family man trying to balance a lucrative career in adult entertainment, with a sleezy nightlife and run-ins with FBI agents, Russian mafia, and more.

Early reviews are saying this is Luke Wilson’s best performance ever.  Is that saying much?

Others compare it to “Boogie Nights for the internet age.”

48% on Rotten Tomatoes

5.5/10 on Comingsoon.net

53 on Metacritic

HISTORY

Before the Internet — BBSs

●     You’d dial in to a local number (or not local, risking long-distance fees) and access their file system.

●     Adult content was frequently allowed without age verification, but some enterprising BBS owners charged a “verification fee” for access.

●     There was a local BBS in my area that had a HUGE adult picture library, with no age restriction.  You could NEVER get away with that these days… it was this dude’s private collection, available for every teen in the neighborhood to dial up to and check out his nudie pics. 

A handmade timeline by Jeremy!  Enjoy…

●     Feb 1993 — the Internet is officially launched

●     Mar 1993 — the largest ‘child pornography’ investigation in history is initiated, after a series of websites (eventually tracked to Denmark) make huge vaults of underage smut available to the masses, via the internet.

●     1995 — A study of Usenet reveals >80% of traffic is porn-related.  TIME magazine runs story as “CYBERPORN” exposé.  Study was later found to be flawed, and TIME issued a partial retraction.

●     1996 — The Communications Decency Act is signed into legislation, and the AVS is born (though later turns out to be more of a profit-driven enterprise, than anything altruistic).

●     Later in 1996 — ASACP is formed, and supported by the adult industry, to prevent minors from accessing internet pornography.

○      Among the group’s code of ethics, is tagging adult websites with a flag that can be easily read by software intended to block these sites from being accessed (RTA label)

●     1997 — “Reno v ACLU” overturned portions of the CDA due to infringing upon freedom of speech.

●     2001 — Adult entrepreneur Danni Ashe became the first person in the world to appear on the covers of both “Wall Street Journal” and “Juggs” after her website tops more than $6million in annual sales.

●     2004 — China ‘urges’ ISPs and websites to sign a self-disciplinary act, to stamp out pornography.  The following month, Chinese government terminates 700 sites & arrests more than 200 people in censorship crackdown.

●     2006 — “Adult Friend Finder” becomes the #1 adult-themed website, supplanting produced pornography for the first time as a leader in the industry.

●     2009 — The increasing ease of streaming media, coupled with decreasing bandwidth costs, lead to the prevalence of adult “Tube” sites offering ad-driven movie viewing without membership costs.  Paid sites suffer cataclysmic collapse and adult industry reels from sudden recession.  Future plans to move more mobile to combat this fallout.

●     2009 — CraigsList institutes their first-ever “human monitored” category (Adult Services), after coming under increasing scrutiny for allowing widespread prostitution.

Random Statistics:

●     Nearly 90% of all ‘legal’ pornography is created and/or distributed from the San Fernando Valley area of Southern California (Van Nuys, Chatsworth, Canoga Park, etc)

●     AVN Magazine (a leading adult trade magazine) reports that online traffic increases during working hours.  As much as 70% of reported traffic occurred during hours of 8-5 on weekdays, in 2006.

●     It is estimated that less than 10% of E-Commerce is adult-oriented.  While this is one of the largest single chunks of this multi-billion dollar economy, it pales in comparison to what many assume.

TECHNOLOGY

Many make claims that the porn industry drives technological innovation, but the truth is closer to the fact that they drive us to adopt new technology.  Meaning, when a new or interesting device or development comes out, without pornographers embracing it, the general population doesn’t find an immediate need to grab hold.  But if the adult industry rolls with it, we all get on board.

Examples:

●     Many attribute the success of Polaroids to adult entertainment.

●     When the porn industry backed VHS over Betamax or LaserDisc, they died out.

●     The whole video rental industry is rumored to have been driven by adult films.

●     They then jumped to DVDs, even while it was still a more-expensive media, because it offered a more on-demand experience

●     After that, they pioneered the option of digitally delivering their content (as seen in hotels and cable TV services, or on today’s TiVO).

●     Streaming media was perfected and tweaked to a large degree by webmasters and techies working with Adult Industry attachments.  They didn’t invent it, but they worked tirelessly to make it better, and still do.

●     Experts also attribute the success of AOL, MySpace and Facebook, to people seeking adult content online.

●     BAD NEWS:  Porn proliferation is also the #1 growth reason for Spam, Malware, Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, Browser Hijacking and more.  All in the name of spoofing advertising figures to bring in money.

CLEAN UP (AKA: POST RESEARCH PROCEDURES)

NOD32 Online Scanner – Good overall virus scanner

Malware Bytes – Can get rid of some of the really nasty ones

Windows Live OneCare safety scanner – Does a good job looking for crap in the registry.

CCleaner – Crap Cleaner, and they mean it! Run this before your AV scan and save your self a ton of time from scanning temp files all over your system.

AntiVir Solution Pro – Recommended by Mitchell S on Buzz! – Noted for getting rid of those fake Antivirus 2009/2010 infections.

SAFE LINKS

ASACP — Protect your kids from online pornography

NetNanny — A leading online content filter

Google’s Directory of Adult News Sites

“The Internet is for Porn” — from “Avenue Q” (audio might be borderline NSFW)

NSFW LINKS

AVN.com — The leading trade magazine for Adult Entertainment, online and offline

XBIZ.com — An industry insider look at adult entertainment (could be SFW with AdBlock?)

Fleshbot.com — A news site dedicated to adult entertainment.