More on the rise of amateur content

If you want to know what happens next for media, keep an eye on the porn industry. It rarely fails: most media innovations start off as pornography (if you don't believe me look up the evolution of the novel or think for a moment which industry would really be first to market with holodeck technology) and this is only to be expected since the few research houses that track numbers for "adult content" show that it is one of the very few types of content that can consistently demand a subscription.

Now, today I owe a hat-tip to The Onion - increasingly earning its self-conferred soubriquet "America's Finest News Source". According to The Onion, professional porn DVD sales are down 30% since 2005 due - it is claimed - to homegrown, amateur alternatives emerging online. And a quick check on more seriously-intended news sources, for example the Times and SMH, reveals that, yes, the porn industry is taking a hit as consumers turn to amateur alternatives.

Which is good news for almost everyone, really, since we know from Todd Kendall's meticulous research (pdf) that wider availability of online porn reduces instances of rape (here's Slate with a more digestible summary of Kendall's findings). Costs for access going down as the medium moves from professional to amateur should make everyone a bit safer. Of course, there's also a $14 billion industry to worry about but as The Times speculates that might just move to a Hollywood-esque big-budget, hit/miss model that can't be readily copied by non-professionals.

And the implications for media in general? Nothing we didn't know already, just a bit more data to support that knowledge. People are willing to do for free something that was once a $14 billion industry. Which brings me back to my favourite quotation from Everything is Miscellaneous - that sometimes "what appears to the business to be its "added value" turned out to be mere inefficiency in the customer's eyes". Adult DVDs turn out to have been just another temporary gatekeeper/distribution choke point. Spend another moment today wondering whether what your business calls value-add your customers would call a nuisance.

Update: Baldur Bjanarson accuses me of "complicit(y) in the dominance of misogyny in western culture" and points out here that Kendall's research showing that porn reduces rape isn't conclusive since it only shows that porn reduces  reported rapes. In fairness I record (an excerpt from) his counter-argument here: "An increase in porn exposure results in a measured increase in misogyny. There might be fewer reports simply because the victims know that there's a less of a chance of a conviction, the police brush them off, or their family will blame them."

I still think this conclusion less plausible than the conclusion of Kendall's original research. To believe that porn really reduces instances of rape we only really have to believe that porn and sex are substitute goods and that people using the Internet at home cannot simultaneously be out committing horrible crimes, both of which seem almost self-evident. Noami Wolf makes the first point rather well; Stephen Landsburg confirms the latter point in the Slate article in which he discusses Kendall's research. Still, I write this blog to learn things and that belief that the research I'd cited is not as definitive as I'd thought is an interesting thing to know.   

Comments

[Baldur Bjarnason]

I sounded way harsher than I meant it to be. :)

I still disagree:
"To believe that porn really reduces instances of rape we only really have to believe that porn and sex are substitute goods and that people using the Internet at home cannot simultaneously be out committing horrible crimes, both of which seem almost self-evident."

They are not because neither are goods and can't be quantified in simple economic terms.

There are several factors here:

1. There have been a few studies that show that exposure to child pornography not only desensitises a person to the crime but is also a strong factor in mentally and emotionally enabling a child molester "go to the next level" so to speak.

It doesn't take much of a leap to at least wonder if traditional pornography has a similar effect.

2. Porn browsing and rape take place in different activity spheres. Porn and browsing take place during private downtime while rape tends to follow social events, gatherings, parties. Even if you subscribe to an economic view of social theory, those two activity spheres are not interchangeable commodities.

3. Relying on reported cases makes the study insignificant in any case. Official numbers are useless when researching subjects clouded by a multitude of taboos ranging from the social to the theological. Even the numbers from rape crisis centres have an agenda and so need to be taken with a grain of salt.

4. It's very difficult to prove a social theory hypothesis simply with statistics and economics. Ethnographic research is a must.

I'm not trying to be overly harsh here or actually criticising you personally, it just came out that way in the heat of the moment :-)

The point is that even if there was a 10% decrease in rape, it's still an endemic problem in our so-called civilised world. Much worse than most of us realise. It's a problem that is very difficult to study and is so painful that "The Problem is Magically Going Away" articles need to be put under extra scrutiny.

Again, I apologise if I got out of hand. I can get quite enthusiastic at times :-D

[Baldur Bjarnason]

Additionally: I have nothing against the kind of porn that is already legal nor do I think it needs to be banned.

That would be about as effective as the prohibition was at diminishing crime.

[Seamus McCauley]

Hey Baldur -

Thanks for commenting. No offence taken: I've chosen to discuss a complex and emotive issue extremely reductively which approach very much invited an emotive response. To address some of your points in order:

"neither are goods and can't be quantified in simple economic terms"

Economically, both are goods. You can (and at various points do) dispute that they should be examined purely economically, of course, but if you do consider the matter from an economic point of view they are goods.

1. There have been a few studies that show...

Not seen them: do share.

2. Porn browsing and rape take place in different activity spheres...

Fair point.

3. Relying on reported cases...

You imply we can't rely on any of the data we might realistically hope to collect, which might be true but makes it impossible to talk evidentially about the subject. Also...you seem to be implying that if we used the numbers from crisis centres rather than the police we'd get different results. We don't know that if no-one's done that study (has anyone done the study?): with respect I think you're disputing Kendall's research results with guesswork as to what he might have found if he'd employed a different data collection method. You might be right, but you haven't shown any evidence that shows you are.

The point is that even if there was a 10% decrease in rape, it's still an endemic problem in our so-called civilised world. Much worse than most of us realise.

Another fair point - I don't think anyone was saying that it was magically going away, but "getting a bit better" - for whatever reason - is of course nowhere near good enough.

[Baldur Bjarnason]

"You imply we can't rely on any of the data we might realistically hope to collect, which might be true but makes it impossible to talk evidentially about the subject. Also...you seem to be implying that if we used the numbers from crisis centres rather than the police we'd get different results. We don't know that if no-one's done that study (has anyone done the study?): with respect I think you're disputing Kendall's research results with guesswork as to what he might have found if he'd employed a different data collection method. You might be right, but you haven't shown any evidence that shows you are."

Yes, I haven't shown any evidence but that's not my responsibility when it comes to the scientific method. Kendall's report hinges on the idea that his methodology is appropriate to test his hypothesis. I'm saying that it isn't, given the subject matter. It's flawed and his efforts to disprove his own hypothesis and come up with possible alternative explanations aren't convincing. I don't need to have facts for the research to be flawed.

Besides, there was a highly publicised report here locally a few weeks ago in Iceland (second highest broadband adoption in the world after Korea) that showed a 30% increase in rape incidents last year as reported by the rape crisis centres here in Iceland. I blogged it at the time.

The previous year also showed a substantial increase.

Police reports did not show any measurable change.

The media blamed the trend on increased immigration while ignoring that the report found 8 out of 10 perpetrators to be friends or family.

Despite this I am saying that you can't rely on a purely statistical approach as a basis of research into this subject matter. Even the most detailed study of correlation will be subject to too many possible explanations.

If you want meaningful research results about a subject this sensitive you'd need ethnographic studies which take years and manpower.

Statistical research can be a useful supplement and can be used to indicate further avenues of study. It is also a great way to observe trends even if they don't explain the trends.

I'll have a dig around my old notes and see if I can't find those references I mentioned above. Feel free, of course, to ignore them if I can't find them. Most of my old research notes are still in a box since I moved back home to Iceland last autumn.

In any case, if I were Kendall I'd follow this up with an ethnographic study, choosing the subjects and geographical locations based on the trends he exposes in the paper.

Just outlining a sound, bullet-proof methodology for the study, with exploratory research, could take him a year. More if he doesn't have experience in ethnographic research.

That's when the real work would start.

Besides, based on Cialdini's ideas I'd hypothesise that what is most likely to decrease misogyny and sexual violence would be the desegregation of the sexes. Diminish the differences of the sexes as social and cultural groups and integrate them more aggressively and you're likely to make sexual discrimination of any kind less acceptable by both individuals and the whole. Of course, the problem with that hypothesis is that it is exceedingly difficult to test.

Finally, I apologise for taking over your comment section like this. I just kind of enjoy studying and analysing the methodology of academic and scientific research. Kendall's report is actually quite good as it is a useful addition to the field and highlights avenues of potential research. We just can't draw unproblematic conclusions from it.

Let's just put it this way, to abstract it away from the subject matter: I wouldn't make a strategic decision in the management of a company based on a report with a methodology as problematic as that of Kendall's report. I might ask somebody to follow it up, but that's as far as it would go.

[UnlonaPlada]

All this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar
crime? Who enjoys his job today? You? Me? Anybody? The only satisfying
part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time. Years ago
there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more
important jobs to come. Once you can be sold the myth that you may make
president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps. But nobody
believes he's going to be president anymore. The more people change jobs
the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for
a living and total stupefying boredom. So why NOT take revenge? You're not
going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his
home stationery carries the company emblem. Take away crime from the white
collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest.
-- J. Feiffer

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[CoxOsteodysox]

I'm new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.