Along with virtually every other communication technology ever invented, the Internet has been used to communicate pornography. One particular genre of pornography that, as it turns out, has become particularly popular over the Internet is pictures of nude celebrities. The latent demand for such images has been known for many decades--Playboy magazine is renowned for offering famous women large amounts of money to appear nude in its magazine, more downmarket pornographic magazines search far and wide for nude pictures of celebrities taken unawares (for instance, when they are bathing topless or nude at what the photographic subject thought was a secluded beach, or taken before the individual was well-known).
The possibility of civil court action restricts the availability of such photos through the print media. On the Internet, the difficulty of applying court sanction makes circulation of such photographs much less risky. Additionally, the lack of legal restriction makes it commonplace for digitally-altered photos giving the appearance of a particular celebrity nude, where the celebrity's face was taken from a published non-pornographic photo and edited in to existing pornographic imagery. Untold numbers of such photographs circulate through Usenet, and fly-by-night commercial operators, often in countries beyond the reach of U.S. courts (the celebrities concerned are more often than not from the U.S.) also offer such photos for commercial gain.
See also: pornography; nudity?; [nude celebrities]?; celebrity
Further subtopics that you can help flesh out: estimating the size of the "nude celebrity" industry; who the most popular "nude celebrities" have been; perhaps a few details on the effects of a celebrity's career when she, or he, decides to do a nude scene in a movie (or a Playboy spread, for example) (but this is probably better put on an article about [nude celebrities]? in general); etc.
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)