A HyperLink Network Analysis of the UK Mobile Porn Industry

1. A HyperLink Network Analysis of the UK Mobile Porn Industry By Steven McDermott, Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds cssem@leeds.ac.uk

2. Introduction • The so-called ‘free stuff’ “is either a product that gets you hooked on to another one or makes you just consume more time on the net [...] The objective is to have you consume bandwidth.”(Horvarth, 1998) • Mainstream space of flows of a highly commercial activity, not just on the Internet but on mobile devices. • The next wave of the distribution of pornography via the ‘free stuff’ model.

3. 23% of United Kingdom residences got broadband to access pornography. (British ISP Homecall in Orlowski, 2004) • iPod launched in October 2005 • 20 Days later Apple Inc. announced that it had sold 1 million videos and tv shows at $1.99 each. • After 3 days of suicidegirls (pornographic site)movies being available via iTunes it had 1 million downloads (Bakker & Taalas, 2007).

4. “It is the paramount duty of the Board of Directors to oversee the CEO and other senior management in the competent and ethical operation of the Company on a day-to-day basis and to assure that the long-term interests of the shareholders are being served. To satisfy this duty, the directors will take a proactive, focused approach to their position, and set standards to ensure that the Company is committed to business success through maintenance of the highest standards of responsibility and ethics.” • (http://www.apple.com/investor/) • The claims of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by the industrial players needs to be something other than hollow assertions of misguided virtue (Henderson, 2001).

5. Hyperlink Network Analysis • A report titled Mobile Adult Content 2008 Securing revenue from adult entertainment published in July of 2008 targeting UK consumers by Visiongain views the dissemination and profiteering from pornography as a “success story”. • It is this report that provided me with the list companies, movie production companies, distributers, mobile infrastructure, magazines and a small number of child protection agencies. • I began with 179 companies and found 171 URLs or html addresses.

6. 970 nodes or Mainstream Websites, of companies.

7. Social Network Analysis • I then manually removed the 835 nodes that were not part of the original list of companies in the Visiongain report. • I then conducted a betweenness and closeness centrality test on the remaining network. • Betweenness centrality refers to the ‘importance’ or ‘power’ of a node within the network. Controlling the flow of information/data/images in the network.

10. Discussion • Allusions to social responsibility are simply misguided. The current provider of pornographic material as evident in the graph is Penthouse, which is one geodesic from Apple Inc., in figure 2. Apple then openly allows for its vast iTunes ‘music download’ business to facilitate the distribution of pornographic material from third sources.

11. The network is dominated by companies founded and based in the United States of America (Apple Inc.) and a mobile phone producer with a global reach (SonyEricsson), the gateway into the UK market is via IPCMedia which distributes an old media form - magazines. This is not a surprise with the global reach of numerous technology companies and the revitalisation of older media as a result of the Internet.

12. The software for converting online Internet pornography to mobile pornography is freely available.