Adult entertainment is so lucrative and profitable that it's become part of the mainstream culture -- readily available, easily accessible, and all but impossible to legislate away.
How did it happen? It began 25 years ago with a brand new household appliance: the video cassette recorder.
“The first thing that a lot of people did when they got their VCR was rent or purchase an adult movie. ‘Deep Throat.’ ‘Devil in Miss Jones.’ ‘Behind the Green Door.’ ‘Debbie Does Dallas.’ That's what they asked for,” says Fishbein, who publishes The Adult Video News, the porn industry’s trade magazine.
“Most people had never seen an adult movie, because they had to go out in public, to a theater, to see it. I mean, sex is a very private thing. So, now that you can watch it in the privacy of your own home, nobody has to know. And I think that's what drove the VCR. And I think, to a degree, it's what drove a lot of people to get on the Internet.”
In fact, pornography has helped drive early sales and the development of most new entertainment technologies for the past 25 years - providing software for the latest gadgets, and a reason to buy them. And usually the first people who do are affluent young men who like porn.
Type the word "sex" into an Internet search engine like Google and you will get 180 million hits. For years, adult sites were the only ones to turn a profit. They have pioneered and helped to develop numerous technological breakthroughs from online payment methods to streaming video | 
