We're not ones to throw a word like "addiction" around lightly at Camp Valleywag, and we'd never rob a nerd icon like Duchovny of some dignity on his way to dry out. But come on, you're wondering too: What kind of Internet porn is Duchovny into? Log your suspect sites in the comments. (Photo by Andy Johnstone/Pacificcoastnews.com)

(Photo by Violet Blue)

Is this a license to freak out? Walters says no:

The ultimate purpose for this analysis was to demonstrate that “community” for the McCowen prosecution was quite a bit more receptive to, and accepting of, sexual subjects than the prosecution either suspected or wanted to ever admit.

Should the Google Trends obscenity defense get its day in court, it's not likely anyone will be taking the stand, defending their sexual interests after being presented with a Google Doc breaking down their search history. What the frequency of search terms could reveal is that one's neighbors are searching for the same things, no matter what they tell their spouse. Just looking up how to hire an escort, for example, doesn't mean one's going to do it. But prosecutors may not be able to claim that a sex act disgusts a community when computer logs show no one can stop Googling it.

Everyone agrees that an individual's sexual curiosities should never stand trial. Overwrought privacy fears, however, shouldn't stop us from using anonymized search data to define community standards accurately and scientifically. A judge can no longer declare that he knows indecency when he sees it. Thanks to Google, we now have real data on the subject. Not using it seems obscene.

Not to mention the lawyers along the way happy to take 40 percent, knowing all along that at best a confidential deal would be struck so that Francis could get on with the business of spooning out the dozens of hours of Dupré footage to horny Web gossips. But then maybe waiting to settle was the smart economic move — the GGW site no longer features Dupré as a come-on, and if I were Francis I'd sign whatever it took to restore my sagging search rank.

Human-powered filtering may still be the most reliable tool for searching out porn. But the guidelines by which porny videos are judged down in YouTube's San Bruno headquarters are unclear. Which is the point, and one I'd even argue, if YouTube weren't playing peek-a-boo with their actual porn prevention practices. If people don't always know what's pornographic, how can an algorithm? Oh, the IMs I used to get from a pal at Yahoo asking my opinion on whether or not a man in a rubber catsuit was too much to let slide! Nobody knows for sure what other people are wanking to anymore. Yet that's what we're led to believe, like when YouTube touts its in-house pattern-matching porn-searching software.

YouTube's been owned by Google for a while now. And if anyone knows what's turning their users on, it's search engines. Are they running text queries, as well, to establish a lusty link between how many times one hunts down boot-fetish videos with how many requests they bang the YouTube database with for Style.com runway clips showcasing fall footwear collections? And are they then blocking that user from uploading some over-the-top shoe-shining clip?

The only way to keep people who don't want to see porn from seeing it is to pay other people to watch it for them. If anyone has some YouTube-produced "How to Spot Smut" training documentation around, we'd love to spend a nice night in going over it with you.

Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.

So says Kate Sylvan at porn site Pink Visual:

Sylvan says many porn consumers access adult materials on their iPhones while traveling, because they're wary of using company-issued laptops or public computers to access adult entertainment.

Yes, major online smut shops are feverishly preparing for the launch of the latest version of the iPhone, too, as the handheld device may be the best porn delivery platform in history.

But when the arbiters of what's too naughty for even the Constitution to cover are themselves secretly hording an outré fetish porn stash, how can "obscenity" apply to the rest of us? In order to make an obscenity ruling, after all, judges have to be able to review the material in question. Meanwhile, Isaacs's trial is currently suspended while the judge's photo collection is being evaluated at his own request — presumably by other judges. All in a day's work, eh, Your Honors?

“You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed,” Cuomo told the New York Times. Double negatives aside, we wouldn't argue with Cuomo — except that most of Usenet, no matter how offensive or value-lacking, does not contain child pornography. As journalist Debbie Nathan reported from The Academy of Forensic Sciences conference on child porn, even the feds are having a hard time deciding what's real and not out there. In this case, Cuomo's office is armed with software that compares this "established" child porn with possible child porn, an application that sounds a lot like the one YouTube offered up to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children earlier this year. They say their database of searchable child porn contains 11,000 images. If anyone wants to know where to find some "disturbing material", at least they know where to start.

Implying that buying and selling online porn should be taxed to offset the "harms" of porn, as Calderon says in his bill AB2914 thrusts Republicans into a nasty position when it comes to their constituents. How can cultural conservatives promise to not raise taxes and appease their smut-hating bases — especially when those same voters would never admit they don't want to eat a hefty tax for their monthly membership fee for NakedSword.com, too? (Photo: Madison Young, San Francisco-based porn star, writhes somewhere in-state for JulieSimone.com)

So concerned that he monitors articles on child sexuality on Wikipedia personally. So concerned that he has started Wikiyouth, an organization unaffiliated with Wikipedia which attempts to "protect" children from "fearful adults." So concerned that he has, in the past, posted naked pictures of children in sexual poses to his website, The Humanist.

Before becoming the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy director, Möller was elected to the nonprofit's board of directors by Wikipedia's users. What this points to: The problem goes much deeper than Möller. Wikipedia's inner circles have been taken over by an extreme cadre of advocates of "free culture" whose beliefs boil down to not having a problem with children seeing porn.

They're entitled to their point of view, of course. But they can hardly pretend that, compared to mainstream thought on the subject that it is, in Wikipedia parlance, a "neutral" one. And Wikimedia Foundation can hardly expect to continue raising millions of dollars from mainstream organizations like the Sloan Foundation if it tolerates the likes of Möller in its top ranks.

Each of the videos have received more than 5,000 views, suggesting they've been around for quite a while. Other videos on that page have view numbers in the single digits. I guess Yahoo has the same video filtering problems that YouTube has.

Still, some say porn industry consolidation is around the corner and that's reason for hope. New VC firm AdultVest is betting on it. Though one private equity expert says porn peddlers won't get anywhere with VCs until they look more SIlicon Valley. Ditch the pimp hats and chains and "at least [wear] khakis and a blue Brooks Brothers blazer," she said.

On CinemaNow's company background page, it lists Hollywood studios such as 20th Century Fox and Disney as well as TV networks ABC and NBC as suppliers. But there are a few more. Like Vivid and Hustler, for starters. Also: Red Light District, Evil Angel Video, New Sensations and Elegant Angel.

How big a part of CinemaNow's business is porn? CinemaNow marketing director Lawrence Novitch told me "it's a big piece of the pie" but didn't provide exact figures. However, traffic stats provide a clue. When CinemaNow customers go to rent an adult film, they're redirected to a separate domain, AllAdultChannel.com. One way to see approximately how much of the company's business is porn is to compare traffic to CinemaNow.com and AllAdultChannel.com.

As you can see, for most of 2007, traffic to AllAdultChannel.com exceeded CinemaNow.com considerably. Traffic to each site is about even now, though Compete.com puts AllAdultChannel's "people count" slightly higher. If that's a good predictor of usage, then porn's piece of CinemaNow's pie is big indeed.

Not that we blame them for a second. Porn could be CinemaNow's secret weapon in the online-video battle. In a comparison test between online movie rental stores Amazon Unbox, Apple iTunes, Netflix and CinemaNow, Bloomberg News today rated CinemaNow the highest with an 8/10. Bloomberg's writer rewarded the site for its mix of new and old titles and its easy user interface. (The review did not clarify whether the site can be operated one-handed.)

The porn business has always been the first to monetize new technologies on the Internet. So while Apple, Amazon.com and Netflix wait around for watching movies online to become a mainstream activity — some go as far as to predict Netflix won't survive to see it happen — Microsoft, Cisco, Lionsgate, and CinemaNow's other backers may come to know the true meaning of "money shot."