Britain is increasingly witnessing record numbers of people - men and women - downloading porn from the internet, spending millions on sexual imagery and voyeurism.
As many as nine million men, almost 40 percent of Britain's male population, used adult sites last year, compared with two million in 2000, according to Nielsen NetRatings, a leader in internet analysis.
Calling it Britain's first definitive portrait of the nation's consumption of porn, The Independent reported that as per the research, women were among the fastest growing users of porn on the internet, with a 30 percent rise from just over one million to 1.4 million in the past 12 months.
"Until now, the extent of the use by Britons of internet pornography had not been accurately measured. But the new figures show that one in four men aged 25 to 49 have visited an adult website in the past month - a total of 2.5 million," the report said.
In 2005, Britain's censors reportedly cleared more hardcore sex films than movies rated 18. According to the report, some specialists welcomed the figures on the ground that they showed Britons had a more liberated attitude toward sex.
The newspaper reported that the British porn industry is estimated to be worth about one billion pounds, compared with 20 billion pounds worldwide and that British Internet surfers look up the word "porn" more than anyone in the English-speaking world.
