Pornography should remain legal

Resolution - Pornography should remain legalBOP - One key factor to this debate is to realize who the BOP is with. My adversary has took a position that is attempting to alter the status quo, so the BOP is with him. C1) Economic BenefitsThe porn industry itself is a monumental industry that puts out quite a bit of money. World wide the industry is estimated to make around $57.0 billion, and just in the US alone it is estimated to make around $12.0 - 18.0 Billion [1][2]. Another statistic shows that the Porn industries revenue is higher than all professional sports which include football, basketball, and even baseball [1]. We can even check those facts here [3]. On average the NFL earns around 8-9 billion yearly[3]. The NBA earns around 3-3.8 billion yearly[3], and the MLB earns around 6-7 billion yearly [3].Compare this on both a global and local scaleGlobally the Porn industry puts out a whopping $52.0 billion dollars. If you combined all three of these major sports on average they would earn around 18.5 billion dollars. On a Global scale the porn industry earns around 2.81 times this amount. This means that porn alone on a global scale makes almost 3 times the amount of the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. Now let's look at this strictly on a local level. For me Local is the US and where most of these major sports are housed. So we are still going to take into account that all three of these major sports earn around 18.5 billion dollars annually. In the United states alone the porn industry earns anywhere from $12.0-$18.0 billion dollars. This is more than each individual sport combined and if you look at the high end, it is almost more than all of them combined. Some facts about porn in the United States in regards to this topic.Low end statistics. Meaning if we look at the porn industry from a $12.0-$13.0 billion dollar perspective[1] Porn makes more than the NBA and MLB combined[2] Porn makes just as much as the NFL and NBA combined[3] Porn makes more than NFLJust a few other statistics on the porn industry. Porn websites make up 12 percent of all websites on the internet, with nearly 4.2 million websites [1]. On a daily average porn search results average 25 percent of all searches daily[1]. Simplified this means that when you go to you search engine and type something like "DDO" or "x", from a recent study it found that porn search requests make up 25 percent of a days searches on average. This is also on a day to day basis not just the day that was reviewed. Just in California alone the porn industry employs over 12,000 people and manages to pay over 36 million dollars in taxes yearly [4]. I am going to close out this point, but something we have to acknowledge is that the porn industry has a lot of presence. Globally and locally the industry puts out a massive amount of money that equates to almost as much as all three major sports in the United States by itself. The massive amount of revenue that porn makes cannot be questioned. It is huge economic benefit in the United States and produces $12.0-$18.0 billion dollars alone. C2) Decreases rape and sexual actsThere is something we have to realize, which is that there is a huge correlation between legalizing things like pornography and prostitution and how they intertwine with sexual crimes. Just take a look at this statistic from legalizing prostitution. " It is estimated that if prostitution were legalized in the United States it would decrease the rapes in the united states by 25% percent alone or roughly decrease it by 25,000 rapes per year[5]"We can see similar results with the legalization of porn. " First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments. The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines[6]"We can see this from a majority of different statistics as well. When people have an outlet to watch things like porn or go to prostitution brothels, it often prevents rape because it is opening the act of sex up for them. Instead of going out and forcing someone to have sex with them because they can, they can either watch it and please themselves online or go to a brothel and have sex for money. The thought and idea that they can pay money to watch or have sex often far outweighs the need to rape someone and the consequences that come along with it. The fact is that most rapes are not even about sexual desires but about power. " Fact: Studies show that the major motive for rape is power, not sex. Sex is used as a weapon to inflict pain, violence and humiliation. Most rapists appear to have normal personalities with an abnormal tendency to be aggressive and violent. Between 2/3 and 3/4 of sexual assaults are planned in advance.[7]"We can reduce the few times that sexual motivated rapes do occur if there are other outlets like pornography and prostitution. It will reduce the need for a sexual desire through alternative outlets that are more solvent than raping someone. In fact Anthony Amato found this out as well. He is a professor of Northwestern University. " the incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults [8]"C3 ) No Harm to OthersThis is commonly referred to as the "No Harm To Others Principle or the "Harm Principle". The Harm Principle was developed by John Stuart Mills and states this verbatim. " The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. If the action is self-regarding, that is, if it only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself [9] "For the Harm Principle to truly apply, there are a few conditions that must be met. For the Harm Principle to apply, the agent in question must be an adult, fully in control of his or her faculties. A true agent of an action is one who, with respect to that action, is: 1. Free (not coerced). 2. Voluntary (competent to choose). 3. Informed (has sufficient information to choose). [10]So by this principle we can conclude a few things. (1) Pornography is not forced, but is an act between two consensual adults. Either it is consensual or it is a personal choice.(2) It is not directly harming anyone involved. Any harm that comes is a choice by an outside party to engage in watching it. There is no harm to others that directly comes from this. Porn is an act between two adults that is perfectly legal and accepted in the United States. Any harm that comes such as family problems or marital problems happens indirectly and can be avoided if the third party chose not to watch it. Since the third party is openly choosing to watch porn, this is not a direct effect from pornography therefore it does not violate the harm principle. ConclusionKeep in mind my adversary has the BOP and must uphold it. I have shown and how why porn is economically beneficial. In this regard I have shown how much revenue the porn industry generates alone and that it goes above almost all major sports in terms of revenue. I have also shown that there are correlations between things like prostitution and pornography when it comes to reducing rapes and sexual acts of violence. Even in spite of the two previous points, the main thing that we must look at is the harm principle. There is no harm from pornography that directly effects other people or the person involved. Any harm that happens come from pornography is a choice, and not forced. There is no viable reason as to why pornography should be banned. My adversary has the BOP and must rally to change the status quo. I will reply with rebuttals to his contentions in the following round. For now I hand it back over to him. Vote ProSources[1] https://wsr.byu.edu...[2] http://www.familysafemedia.com...[3] http://www.statisticbrain.com...[4] http://www.grabstats.com...[5] http://www.independent.org...[6] http://www.slate.com...[7] https://www.mnsu.edu...[8] http://www.debate.org...[9] https://www.princeton.edu...[10] https://richmond-philosophy.net...