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Pornography in the United States of America has existed since the country's origins. First introduced by immigrants and then later produced domestically, pornography has been ever present, and more readily acknowledged in the 21st century. Advanced by technological development, it has gone from a hard to find "back alley" item to being readily available and accessible by anyone with a computer or other device connected to the internet. Attempts made to suppress it include: outright bans, prohibitions of its sale, censorship or rating schemes that restrict audience numbers, and claims that it is prostitution and thereby subject to regulations governing prostitution. Legal decisions affecting production and consumption of pornography include those relating to its definition, its relationship with prostitution, the definition of obscenity, rulings about personal possession of pornography, and its standing in relation to freedom of expression rights. Advocates for pornography are staunch defenders of the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution, protecting freedom of speech. Pornography's critics and detractors have blamed it for a succession of societal and spiritual ills. ==History== Although pornography dates back thousands of years, its existence in the U.S. can be traced to its 18th century origins and the influx of foreign trade and immigrants. By the end of the 18th century France had become the leading country regarding the spread of porn pictures. Porn had become the subject of playing-cards, posters, post cards, and cabinet cards. Prior to this printers were previously limited to engravings, woodcuts, and line cuts for illustrations. As trade increased and more people immigrated from countries with less Puritanical and more relaxed attitudes towards human sexuality, the amount of available visual pornography increased. In 1880, halftone printing was used to reproduce photographs inexpensively for the first time. The invention of halftone printing took pornography and erotica in new directions at the beginning of the 20th century. The new printing processes allowed photographic images to be reproduced easily in black and white. The first porn daguerreotype appeared in 1855 and with the advent of "moving pictures" by the Lumière brothers the first porn film was made soon after the public exhibition of their creation. Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, ''Le Coucher de la Marie'' showed Louise Willy performing a striptease. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films. In the United States, one of the Thomas Edison's first efforts using his methods and equipment for making moving pictures was of a nude woman getting up from her bath tub and running away. In the 20th century, the era of "blue movies" began with the silent films of the 1920s and continued throughout the post-war era as film technology improved and equipment costs were reduced to a consumer affordable level. Particularly with the introduction of the 8mm and super-8 film gauges, popular for the home movie market. Until the advent of electronic and digital video technology, the mass production of pornographic films was tied to directly to the mainstream film industry.〔(CBSNews.com Porn in the U.S.A. )〕 In the 1970s, more permissive legislation permitted the rise of adult theaters in the United States and many other countries. There was also a proliferation of coin-operated "movie booths" in sex shops that displayed pornographic "loops" (so called because they projected a movie from film arranged in a continuous loop).〔 By 1982 pornographic film production had switched to the cheaper and more convenient medium of video tape. Many film directors were hesitant to switch because of the different image quality that video tape produced. Those who did make the change benefited from greater profits since consumers preferred the new format. This change moved the films out of the theaters and into people's private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions and the beginning of the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and expanded to cover every fetish possible since video production was inexpensive. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands of videos were including compilations of just the sex scenes from various titles. In the late 1990s, pornographic films were distributed on DVD. These offered better quality picture and sound than the previous video format and allowed innovations such as "interactive" videos that let users choose such variables as multiple camera angles, multiple endings and computer-only DVD content. The introduction and widespread availability of the Internet further changed the way pornography was distributed. Previously videos would be rented or purchased through mail-order, but with the Internet people could watch pornographic movies on their computers, and instead of waiting weeks for an order to arrive, a movie could be downloaded within minutes (or, later, within a few seconds). As of the 2000s, there were hundreds of adult film companies, releasing tens of thousands of productions, recorded directly on video, with minimal sets. Of late, web-cams and web-cam recordings are again expanding the market. Thousands of pornographic actors work in front of the camera to satisfy pornography consumers' demand. By the 2010s, the fortunes of the pornography industry had changed. With reliably profitable DVD sales being largely supplanted by streaming media delivery over the Internet, competition from pirate, amateur, and low-cost professional content on the Internet had made the industry substantially less profitable, leading to it shrinking in size. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pornography in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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