It used to be that video porn was only available on VHS tape or through hotel pay-per-view channels, and unless you stole the Playboy channel from your cable provider (or stole videos from your neighborhood video rental store) the option of watching free porn was not really applicable to video. Porn is now available everywhere in digital format: your computer, laptop, or even cell phone can bring porn with you wherever you travel, and this has made it very cheap to distribute adult material to masses of viewers- many who are not licensed to view the content in the first place.
While DVD sales still make up a significant part of the adult content market, the allure of free file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Azureus, combined with amateur driven adult sites, have put a strain on the adult industry to adopt more consumer-friendly business models for distributing video porn online. With emerging encryption technologies and higher bandwidth provided in more communities, Video-on-demand and Pay-per-view distribution models have been adapted to the Web, and adult retailers are starting to re-capture some of the profits lost to digital piracy and amateur-driven porn sites.