The consequences of the sex industry in the European Union (draft report)

The part of the report provides overview of  VAW issues in ICT 
70% of the £252 million that European Internet users spent on the net during 2001 went to various porn sites.
On the Internet images and video clips can be found both free of charge and for payment. The porn companies produce everything from ordinary films and magazines to interactive DVDs and CD-Roms.
As a surfer on the Net it is possible to feel completely anonymous and pretend that you are someone else. This is why many users who are interested in paedophilia enter certain chatrooms for children and young people in order to get in touch personally at a subsequent time. This is where  ‘employment agencies’ can also be found.
The Internet is also an excellent outlet for images, the distribution of which is banned in most countries. The accessibility of ‘kinky sex’ has rocketed. A sharp increase in violent pornography has been noted, such as:
-fist-fucking
-torture scenes (people who are tied up are whipped and tortured in various ways),
-rapes (often claimed to be authentic),
-child pornography (various forms of sexual assaults on children),
-necrophilia and bestiality (images of deceased persons in a sexual context),
-murder and dissection of bodies (placed in a sexual context),
-war-related accidents (presented on sex pages),
-animal pornography (images of sexual acts between humans and animals),
-excrement (images of defecation and urination in a sexual context),
-foetuses (images of damaged and dead foetuses presented in a sexual context)
There are new sites which aim to ‘mainstream’ pornography, where porn is presented as something smart and amusing, for well-educated, trendy men.
‘Spam’ with advertisements for prostitution and pornography inundate us via email, which - it has proved - entails a considerable loss of production for companies.
Companies active in the porn industry are now also attempting to capture market shares by selling their products via the mobile phone network. 3G is a new technology which makes it possible to send and receive images via mobile telephones. For many mobile telephony operators, however, the 3G networks and licences for them have become a costly business and the majority of European operators are therefore seeking to finance their activities by providing pornographic material by means of agreements with porn producers.
A Norwegian survey from 2001 shows that between two to three hundred women in Norway are in the telephone sex industry. The person responsible for the porn industry's sales promotion fair, 'Sexhibition', is the head of operations. The telesex market in Norway has a turnover of approximately 200 million Norwegian kroner per year.
It is more the rule than the exception that hotels in the EU's Member States provide pay-TV channels which show pornographic films. Pay channels supplied to homes operate in a similar manner. The subscriber orders a 'family package' which includes porn. In order to protect children - as it is called - there is normally an option of coding the programmes.