【英语生活】丈夫常去色情网站

Having become more computer-literate in recent months, I have made an unpleasant discovery. My husband has been visiting pornographic websites and has also downloaded explicit videos. I love my husband, but am not sure what to do now. Is his behaviour common?
Katie Durlap, Cincinnati, Ohio

Dear Katie,

If only you had a subscription to the Journal of Economic Perspectives. One of its regular features is a data-driven description of different markets in action, most recently a study by Benjamin Edelman asking “Who buys online adult entertainment?”

The latest data reported are from 2006, when adult entertainment clocked up $13bn in retail sales in the US – about $50 per adult, presumably somewhat skewed towards men. Much of this was video sales and rentals, but internet and cable subscriptions are also substantial and, unlike video, growing briskly.

Paid subscriptions to internet porn sites remain a minority hobby. Edelman studied subscriptions to one top 10 service provider and found that almost all states had between two and three subscribers per 1,000 home broadband users. Ohio, incidentally, is towards the low end of that range.

Is your husband, then, unusual? Not that unusual. Scale up Edelman's numbers to include other service providers, add cable subscriptions and you'd conclude that about 5 per cent of connected households are paying for regular porn. This doesn't include the largest category, video rental – and more importantly, doesn't include free internet porn. Since free internet porn is ubiquitous and presumably more private, one can only surmise that it is far more widespread.

I can't tell you what to do about your husband – but he is certainly not alone.

最近几个月，随着我对电脑的使用更加熟悉，我不愉快地发现，我丈夫一直在浏览色情网站，还下载了色情视频。我爱我的丈夫，但不知道现在该怎么办。他的这种行为很普遍吗？

凯蒂•德拉普(Katie Durlap)，俄亥俄州辛辛那提市

亲爱的凯蒂：

你真该订阅《经济展望期刊》(Journal of Economic Perspectives)。该期刊的一个专栏就是用数据描述各种不同的市场。本杰明•爱德曼(Benjamin Edelman)最近在专栏发表了一篇研究报告，题为“是谁在线购买成人娱乐？”

报告中的最新数据来自2006年，当时，美国成人娱乐业零售收入达到130亿美元——平均每个成人约50美元，大概男性花得多些。大多数收入来自视频销售和租赁，但互联网和有线电视订阅收入也很可观，而且增长迅速（与视频不同）。

付费订阅互联网色情网站仍然是少数人的爱好。爱德曼对排名前十的一家色情服务提供商的订阅情况进行研究后发现，几乎在所有的州，每1000户宽带用户都有两到三名订阅者。顺便说一下，俄亥俄州接近这个范围的低端。

那么你丈夫是否反常呢？并不那么反常。按比例扩大爱德曼的数据，把其它服务提供商包括进去，再加上有线电视用户，你就会发现，大约有5%的联网家庭在定期为色情内容付费。这还不包括最大的种类——视频出租，而且更重要的是，还不包括免费网络色情。既然免费网络色情普遍存在，而且可能更隐密，人们的推测只能是，这种现象十分广泛。

我无法告诉你该怎么对待自己丈夫，但他肯定不是唯一浏览色情网站的人。

译者/君悦