ABC News: Free Porn Threatens Adult Industry

NEW YORK - Echoing recent reports in the New York Times and USA Today, ABC News has published an online article about the internet's harmful toll on the porn industry.

ABC correspondent Marcus Baram points to a substantial drop in DVD sales over the past two years and a "plateauing" of Web-based porn sales as evidence that the adult industry has begun to "lose out to free videos and photos distributed by amateurs on the Web."

"The DVD market is a battle that we're losing," Hustler Video's Drew Rosenfeld told ABC. "Even a line like Barely Legal, which is our hero brand, [has] gone down to a third of what it used to be a few years ago."

Although some have pointed to cell-phone porn as the adult industry's next big source of revenue, Rosenfeld pointed out that mobile has yet to break through in the U.S. market.

"None of that is being broadcast in the U.S. and it's only softcore right now — naked girls dancing," Rosenfeld said. "The big carriers here aren't willing to broadcast that kind of content."

Meanwhile, Wired magazine offers an unconvincing counter-argument in a column by Regina Lynn, presenting a list of 10 factors other than free online porn that have contributed to the decline of DVD and internet sales.

To read the full ABC News report, click here.