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The Internet and the Global Prostitution Industry |
Donna Hughes |
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Biography |
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Sexual Exploitation on the Internet Global sexual exploitation is on the rise. The profits are high, and there are few effective barriers at the moment. Because there is little regulation of the Internet, the traffickers and promoters of sexual exploitation have rapidly utilized the Internet for their purposes. Traffickers and pornographers are the leading developers of the Internet industry. PC Computing magazine urged entrepreneurs to visit pornography Web sites. "It will show you the future of on-line commerce. Web pornographers are the most innovative entrepreneurs on the Internet" (Taylor & Jerome, February 1997). The pornographers and other promoters of sexual exploitation are the Internet leaders in the developing privacy services, secure payment schemes and online data base management. The development and expansion of the Internet is an integral part of globalization. The Internet sex industry has made local, community, and even, national standards obsolete. Nicholas Negroponte, Director of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founder of Wired magazine said, "As we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation-state will give way to those of both larger and smaller electronic communities" (Negroponte, Being Digital, 1995). The standards and values on the Internet are being set by the sex industry and its supporters and users. This economic and electronic globalization has meant that women are increasingly "commodities" to be bought, sold, traded and consumed. |
Donna M. Hughes was born in USA in 1954. She holds the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Women's Studies, and is the Director of Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island, USA. She is the Education and Research Coordinator of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. She is the author of Pimps and Predators on the Internet: Globalizing the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children, and the editor of Making the Harm Visible - The Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls - Speaking Out and Providing Services. NOTE
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