EFF evangelist and techsex columnist Annalee Newitz is holding forth at Etech on the history of the camouflaging of pornography and sex toys, and how this drives development of free speech and privacy technology. She starts with the equation: "Everybody wants porn + nobody will admit it + everybody loves tech = innovating ways to look without being seen."

She starts with talking about how yesteryear's vibrators were a kind of camouflaged technology. "I only use it for therapeutic purposes," reads an ad from 1910. In the 1920s, you saw porn showing people using vibrators for sex, when they were eventually outlawed, until they came back in the 1960s and 70s as actual sex toys.

One of the driving forces behind VCRs was the porn industry. The VCR became a way of camouflauging porn consumption. Before 1976 you had to go to a theatre -- local people knew you were going to theaters -- a very public experience. Now people could watch dirty movies in their own homes. The adult industry flocked to this new technology. A cheap way of disseminating porn.

Obscenity law. The standard is the Miller test, which says: it has to appeal to prurient interest; has to be offensive "based on contemporary community standards", and have no "social, literary, artistic or scientific value." Broadcasters are under "decency" laws which are stricter than "obscenity" law.

Before VCRs, porn called attention to itself much more (titles on marquees, people can see who's going to the theater, etc.). Now that it's a more private affair, you're going to have fewer complaints about it; it's less visible. The law pushed people towards the adoption of these technologies.

Meanwhile back on the Internet, quality wasn't very good. (She shows an ASCII art image from www.asciipr0n.com.) "Porn built the Internet. It's such an obvious use of the medium; because it's so private and widely available. It broke one of the prongs of the Miller rule (contemporary community standards): it's unclear what the "community" is when you're downloading and uploading to and from everywhere in the world.

Important obscenity cases:

• ACLU v Reno (1997), which struck porn bans from the Communications Decency Act (the Internet can be indecent).
• US v Extreme Associates (2005). This site may redefine obscenity on appeal.
• Nitke is challenging obscenity provisions of the Communications Decency Act: what are "community" standards?

Private past/anonymous futures. It's likely that Congress could require porn sites to geographically locate users. So some workarounds:

• prepaid porn cards
  
• user-friendly anonymous proxies (Anonymizer)
  
• Anonymizing networks like Tor ("Roger did not design this for porn; but it is my prediction that people will use it for porn.")
  
• Anonymous IM - Off-the-record messaging:
  www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
  

Annalee's bottom line is that "what's good for porn is good for free speech." And: "Today's porn tools are tomorrow's human rights protections."