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.[1] Amateur porn has been called one of the most profitable and long-lasting genres of pornography.[2]
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Polaroid 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.[2] However the largest impact on amateur pornographic photography has been the advent of the internet, digital cameras, and more recently camera phones. 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.[2] It has also been argued that in the Internet age it has become more socially acceptable to make and view amateur porn.[2] 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 phones to make videos and images which are then shared amongst their friends (see Sexting).[2] Images initially meant to be shared between couples can now be spread around the world.[2] The result is now a small but growing amount of online amateur porn depicting underage models, created by the young people themselves.[2]
Before the advent of camcorders 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.[2]
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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
Watchersweb claims to be the first company to distribute amateur home videos.[7] The company was founded in 1998 by Ray and Raven Youngman from Australia and the site was launched in 1999. [8] 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.[7] Several people who sent their tapes to Homegrown Video became professional porn stars, including Stephanie Swift, Melissa Hill and Rayveness.[7]
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.[9][10]
Amateur porn has also influenced the rise of the celebrity sex tape, featuring stars like Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.[7]
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.stories 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.[11] Video hosting service "tube" websites feature free user-uploaded amateur pornography,[11] 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 paysites and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography.[11][12] The profits of tube-site owners are also squeezed in an increasingly crowded market, with the number of sites constantly growing.[11]