Chris Sells talks about how the porn industry has figured out a way to combine peer-to-peer distribution technology with digital rights management. The solution allows widespread distribution of content but ensures that people pay a small amount of money to consume that content.

No matter what you feel about the porn industry, you have to acknowledge that porn has been the driving force behind almost every major advance is media distribution technology to date. Back in the VHS-vs-BETA days, VHS won out because the format was backed by the porn industry. When DVD's were first coming on to the scene, they were initially successful partially because of the amount of porn that was available for that format. And I'm not even going to touch the Internet.

The thing I love about the porn industry is that they're so pragmatic when it comes to adopting new technology. Instead of bitching about people using Kazaa to steal their product (a la the recording industry), they found a way to leverage this technology and make money at the same time. That's capitalism. That's innovation. If the porn industry can make this work, it's likely that this distribution technology will be picked up by other more "legitimate" industries and we'll see a successful and profitable peer-to-peer distribution channel for digital media.

Even if you think pornography is morally reprehensible, you cannot deny that today's technological landscape would be drastically different without it.