OGDEN, UT — TopTenReviews.com, the self-proclaimed “leading review site of entertainment and technology,” this week issued its latest report on the pornography industry, claiming (among other things) that “worldwide revenues for the pornography industry in 2006 were at least $97 billion,” and that “every second, $3,075.64 is spent on pornography.”“These statistics are the most accurate and complete report of the worldwide pornography industry to date,” asserted Jerry Ropelato, CEO of TopTenReviews, in the company’s press release. “The revenue numbers worldwide are actually higher, but finding documentation for countries outside the top 20 is almost impossible.”
In the press release issued Monday by the company, TopTenReviews notes that a previous estimate “put the worldwide revenues for pornography at $57 billion for the year 2003,” and asserts that the “worldwide revenues of the pornography industry today equal more than the revenues of the top technology companies combined – Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink.”
In a release dated February 6th, 2004, TopTenReviews reported that the worldwide revenues for the pornography industry were estimated at $57 billion for 2003. In the same release, the company claims that as of 2003, there were 4.2 million adult websites – a total which comprised, according to the release, “12% of the Internet” – and there were “100,000 websites offering illegal Child Pornography.”
Looking over the data reported in latest research published by TopTenReviews, some eyebrow-raising similarities arise.
For instance, according to the report on TopTenReviews.com entitled “Pornography Statistics, 2007,” apparently there are still 4.2 million adult sites on the Internet, and that number still amounts to 12-percent of “total websites.” The report also indicates that there remains “100,000 websites offering illegal child pornography.”
Among the non-attributed, non-statistical claims contained in the TopTenReviews.com is a single line assertion that accompanies the section of the report titled “Women and Pornography.”
“Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life,” the note asserts flatly, “such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.”
In the “Women and Pornography” section of the report, TopTenReviews.com claims that women account for “1 in 3 visitors” to adult websites and that 9.4 million women “access adult websites each month.”
If women account for one in three visitors to adult websites, and 9.4 million women access adult websites each month, this means that adult websites are accessed by a total of 28.2 million people each month. In another section of the report, however, it states that there are 72 million visitors to pornographic websites, monthly.
As the report does not specify whether “visiting” a website is the same thing as “accessing” a website, and does not differentiate unique visitors from repeat visitors, it is hard to gauge whether the report merely suffers from inadequate labeling and documentation, or if more fundamental errors of math and method are to blame for the mismatched data evident throughout the report.
In its press release, TopTenReviews.com states that in compiling its report on the pornography industry, the company “researched more than 10,000 sources, including Web sites and statistics, and reports from international media, from the pornography industry and from anti-pornography organizations.”
On its website, TopTenReviews provides little more detail on its sources, specifying only that the statistics were assembled from reports originally published and/or disseminated by “ABC, Associated Press, AsiaMedia, AVN, BBC, CATW, U.S. Census, Central Intelligence Agency, China Daily, Chosen.com, Comscore Media Metrix, Crimes Against Children, Eros, Forbes, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Free Speech Coalition, Google, Harris Interactive, Hitwise, Hoover’s, Japan Inc., Japan Review, Juniper Research, Kagan Research, ICMEC, Jan LaRue, The Miami Herald, MSN, Nielsen/NetRatings, The New York Times, Nordic Institute, PhysOrg.com, PornStudies, Pravda, Sarmatian Review, SEC filings, Secure Computing Corp., SMH, TopTenREVIEWS, Trellian, WICAT, Yahoo!, XBIZ.”
In noting that the statistics were “compiled from the credible sources mentioned,” TopTenReviews concedes in a note at the bottom the company’s report that “In reality, statistics are hard to ascertain and may be estimated by local and regional worldwide sources.”
The report does not indicate what source was responsible for each given statistic or claim, further clouding the ability of readers to ascertain independently the veracity of each item of data and/or assertion concerning the data – a very interesting vagueness given the TopTenReviews.com slogan: “We do the research so you don’t have to.”
