Sales of illicit sex in the form of pornography are a $10 billion industry in the United States, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Among porn profiteers are major corporations that are household names in America. Writes Timothy Egan of the New York Times News Service: "The financial rewards are so great that some of the biggest distributors of explicit sex on film and online include the country's most recognizable names."
The story says General Motors and AT'T sell far more pornography than Playboy Enterprises and Larry Flynt's Hustler empire combined. One primary outlet is a special television box in many of the nation's hotels, 40 percent of which are equipped to show pornographic movies.
Mr. Egan's account includes the assertion that 21 million Americans visit at least one of the 60,000 pornographic Internet Web sites once a month or more. (Source: The Corpus Christi Caller-Times .)
