Online database of US pornographic films and actors
The
Internet Adult Film Database
(
IAFD
) is an
online
database
of information pertaining to the
pornography industry
:
actors
,
actresses
,
directors
,
studios
,
distributors
and
pornographic films
.
[1]
History
[
edit
]
The predecessor to IAFD was
email
- and
FTP
-accessible database of adult film actresses called Abserver that had been created by Dan Abend in 1993.
[2]
IAFD was started by Peter van Aarle, who had collected data on adult movies since 1981, when he began keeping notes on
index cards
on adult movies he had seen or were reviewed in
Adam Film World
.
[3]
In 1993, he began contributing to the
Usenet
newsgroup
alt.sex.movies, where he met Dan Abend. The two exchanged databases and began work on a
WWW
-based database.
[4]
Van Aarle later collaborated on this Web database with Ron Wilhelm, who went by the
pseudonym
of "Heretic".
[5]
The first version of the IAFD was brought on-line in 1995 by the programming efforts of Wilhelm, who used the project as a training ground for
SGML
programming which he was learning in college. After Wilhelm left the Internet to join the military, the site eventually fell victim to
link rot
.
In the fall of 1998, Van Aarle was at a
trade show
with Jeff Vanzetti, who asked if Van Aarle would be interested in resurrecting the IAFD ? this time under its own domain. Vanzetti was looking for a project on which to teach himself on-line database programming using
SQL
Server, and this seemed like a natural fit, since they were both
co-moderators
of the newsgroup rec.arts.movies.erotica (RAME), and members of the newsgroup would often
lament
about the passing of the original Internet Adult Film Database.
[3]
The beginning of 1999 brought the first steps towards the relaunch of the IAFD. Initially, search boxes only searched females, and data was restricted to movies released post-1989.
Van Aarle said on this:
In those early days of the IAFD I had made one stipulation: I did not want the movie info on movies before 1989 to be available. The idea behind this was basically that if I would ever decide I wanted to do something commercially with my database it would be a good idea to keep the most valuable parts of it off limits. The data on older titles was clearly the most difficult to compile (and very few people I ever talked to had much info on the older stuff, with a few notable exceptions like
Jim Holliday
), and therefore the more valuable part of the data. The cut-off date of 1989 was a compromise to include at least the titles of
Buttman
, who was one of the most popular directors of the time.
[3]
Van Aarle died on September 18, 2005, at the age of 42 from a
heart attack
.
[6]
[7]
In 2011, he was inducted into the
XRCO Hall of Fame
.
[8]
On March 1, 2007, the IAFD rolled out information on over 18,000 gay titles and some 39,000 gay performers.
[9]
According to Vanzetti, IAFD adds about 500 new titles a month and processes thousands of corrections?corrections that anyone can submit for review.
[10]
IAFD takes user corrections though forms on the site. The forms are not automated and corrections the site receives are manually updated after having been reviewed by the site's staff. IAFD has a "team of editors" that exercises editorial control over what's posted on the site: "If it's submitted by a fan of the performer and the working editor trusts the submitter, it gets listed. If it's published by someone else, it might get added?we are skeptical of user generated sites since anyone can submit anything to them regardless of accuracy and then it becomes 'fact'. Otherwise, no data."
[1]
IAFD's policy on releasing real names of adult film performers is: "The exception to this rule is when it comes to real names. We're not interested in linking your real name to your porn name, so if your real name appears on the site, we will remove it (assuming we know what your real name is). However, if your real name appeared on a boxcover due to a mix up in the Art Department, there's little we can do about that."
[1]
IAFD gets "paid by sponsors for
ad banners
", and they "get an
affiliate
commission from products purchased" via the site.
[1]
Review and research
[
edit
]
The site has been used as a reference by a variety of outlets that include newspaper articles, books, and research studies.
[11]
The academic and non-academic writing community has also used the site's information to varying degrees.
[12]
[13]
In 2011, the site released a report of compiled data for the year.
[14]
Included in the statistics released were the number of new titles added that year (9,384) and a ranking of who the busiest performers were. The report also included site data, such as that it was visited by 20.7 million unique viewers and that visitors to the site viewed nearly a quarter of a billion pages. An editor at
AVN
magazine stated: "[it] underscores the fact that a lot of people not only like porn but want to research information about
movies
and
performers
."
[14]
Media outlets
[
edit
]
On October 1, 2007, an article about the Internet Adult Film Database appeared in the online equivalent of the Brazilian newspaper
Folha de S. Paulo
.
[15]
Considered the "
Internet Movie Database
" of the adult entertainment world",
[16]
the site is also routinely quoted or referenced by the majority of the industry trade publications, such as
Adult Video News
(
AVN
) and
XBIZ
.
Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars
[
edit
]
On February 14, 2013, a study was released by
freelance journalist
Jon Millward
that sampled the data from 10,000 actors (7,000 women and 3,000 men) from the site to, among other things, compile a profile of the "average porn star" as well as generate some statistics about adult industry actors based on IAFD data.
[13]
[17]
The study was written about several days later on Playboy.com.
[18]
It showed that the typical female porn star was a five-foot-five-inch brunette with B-cup breasts.
[17]
The survey was started in 2011, with the researcher's first visit to IAFD.com, with the bulk of Millward's research taking place in the six months prior to the release of the study. For comparative results, the study also cites
Center for Disease Control
and
U.S. Census
statistics as well as information from a
Stanford University
linguistics professor.
[19]
The survey covers roughly a 40-year span of the adult industry and presents statistics on categories such as age, race, state of origin, chosen screen name, biological data (height, weight, hair color, etc.), and the type of
sexual acts
performed over an actor's career.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Internet Adult Film Database ? frequently asked questions"
.
IAFD
. Retrieved
January 6,
2017
.
- ^
"Adult Film Database"
. Retrieved
March 8,
2007
.
- ^
a
b
c
"remembering peter van aarle"
. IAFD
. Retrieved
January 5,
2008
.
- ^
"ASM File Server"
. Retrieved
March 8,
2007
.
- ^
"25.2 Heretic's Adult Movie Database"
. Retrieved
January 5,
2008
.
- ^
"IAFD Curator Has Died"
.
Adult Video News
. September 20, 2005
. Retrieved
October 25,
2009
.
- ^
"Van Aarle "Irreplaceable"
"
.
Adult Video News
. September 22, 2005
. Retrieved
October 25,
2009
.
- ^
Peter Warren (February 22, 2011).
"XRCO Announces 2011 Nominations"
.
AVN
. Retrieved
February 26,
2011
.
- ^
"Internet Adult Film Database Adds Gay"
. XBIZ. March 5, 2007. Archived from
the original
on January 5, 2013
. Retrieved
April 25,
2007
.
- ^
Bob Preston (March 5, 2007).
"IAFD: Looking Ahead"
.
XFanz
. Retrieved
December 3,
2010
.
- ^
Eric Danville (2003).
The Penthouse Erotic Video Guide
. Warner Books.
ISBN
978-0-446-61293-7
. Retrieved
January 6,
2017
.
- ^
Purcell, Natalie J. (2012).
Violence and the pornographic imaginary: the politics of sex, gender, and aggression in pornographic fantasy
. New York: Routledge. p. 77.
ISBN
9780415523127
.
- ^
a
b
Millward, John.
"Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers"
.
jonmillward.com
. Retrieved
February 21,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
"IAFD.com Releases Compiled 2011 Data"
.
Adult Video News
. Retrieved
December 31,
2013
.
- ^
"Brazilian Online Newspaper Article"
. Retrieved
October 1,
2007
.
- ^
"IAFD.com Pays Tribute to Den, Luc Wylder"
.
Adult Video News
. Retrieved
December 31,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
O'Connor, Maureen (June 2017). "Pornhub is the Kinsey Report of our Time".
New York
: 30?39.
In 2013, a data scientist named Jon Millward analyzed 10,000 performer bios on the Internet Adult Film Database and found that the 'typical' female porn star was not the fake-boobed blonde of the stereotypes but a five-foot-five-inch brunette with a B-cup.
- ^
Butler, Vanessa.
"UP IN SMOKE: PORNSTAR ANALYSIS 101"
. playboy.com. Archived from
the original
on February 22, 2013
. Retrieved
February 21,
2013
.
- ^
Zwicky, Arnold M.
"Name that porn star"
(PDF)
.
stanford.edu
. Retrieved
February 21,
2013
.
External links
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]
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