[ih] Porn on the net

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 20-Sep-22 14:09, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It appears that Dave Taht via Internet-history <dave.taht at gmail.com> said:
>> Prior to the advent of the vcr, where would porn on the arpanet have come
>> from? Scanners? 8mm films? ASCII art?
> 
> There was certainly ASCII art. I recall one of a nude woman with
> strategically placed close parens.

That of course started as EBCDIC art on IBM line printers, or earlier.
I suspect that scurrilous material was available for sending long before
there was any network to send it on.

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/i-fJcVXkCLU/m/VFBYHdMuhdMJ

      Brian

> 
> I don't remember many details but there were also FTP servers where
> people swapped naughty GIFs, mostly scans from magazines. The picture
> section of a server at a university disappeared one day, replaced by a
> note saying that they'd put the material back if someone could explain
> what its educational purpose was.
> 
> Early on it was all just single images. Video was too big for dialup
> connections, and it took a while for people to build up libraries
> of MPEGs and connections fast enough to download or stream them.
> 
> R's,
> John