The depiction of sexual acts is as old as civilization (and can be found painted on various ancient buildings), but the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. Previous to that time, though some sex acts were regulated or stipulated in laws, looking at objects or images depicting them was not. In some cases, specific books, engravings or image collections were censored or outlawed, but the trend to compose laws that restricted viewing of sexually explicit things in general was a Victorian construct. When large scale excavations of Pompeii were undertaken in the 1860s, much of the erotic art of the Romans came to light, shocking the Victorians who saw themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Roman Empire. They did not know what to do with the frank depictions of sexuality, and endeavored to hide them away from everyone but upper class scholars. The moveable objects were locked away in the Secret Museum in Naples, Italy and what could not be removed was covered and cordoned off as to not corrupt the sensibilities of women, children and the working class. Soon after, the world’s first law criminalizing pornography was enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1857 in the Obscene Publications Act. The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few can be seen in the wording of the Hicklin test stemming from a court case in 1868 where it asks, “whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” Despite the fact of their suppression, depictions of erotic imagery were common throughout history.

From Cavemen to Kinsey. Civil war to civil unions. A funny cartoon talking about porn and sex history by director, Lance Tracy from his film “Adult Entertainment: Disrobing an American Idol”

Each video consists of an actress who plays a typical everywoman who is “picked up on the street,” and is then persuaded to engage in sexual intercourse with men in the back of a van - the titular Bang Bus. Each storyline usually ends with the woman being dropped off unpaid and in the wrong location, shouting at the men as they drive off laughing. The series is shot primarily in Miami, Florida.

The Bang Bus usually contains three men: the driver (known as Ugly in early episodes), the camera man (Greg Entner aka “Dirty Sanchez”), and an actor who plays a “random” guy who gets to engage in sexual intercourse with the woman picked off the street. Sometimes the driver and camera man will randomly pick up a man first then pick up a woman and persuade the two to have sex. In most cases, the woman is convinced to get into the van under the guise that they are making a documentary about people in the area. They offer money, usually around a couple hundred dollars, just to answer questions about their life. After some “interviewing”, they usually offer more money to disrobe, and then additional money to have sex. The woman usually is persuaded to enter the van in less than 5 minutes, then persuaded to strip in 20-50 minutes (during which Entner is often verbally abusive to the woman), and is dropped off in a random location after the completion of the sex act, ostensibly without being paid.

Although the theme of the site is the ease with which supposedly unknown women can be persuaded to engage in hardcore sexual acts, the videos are in fact staged and all the women shown are actresses paid a pre-negotiated price. Some have gone on to work in other pornographic productions or even became regular performers (e.g. Annie Cruz appeared as “Kyra” in 2004). Despite this, Bang Bus is regarded as a highly controversial website, in part due to its popularity and Entner’s misogynistic behavior. For these reasons, it has appeared in multiple news stories, particularly in the Miami area, where the site has earned a certain degree of infamy.

On October 14, 2004, Miami New Times published an investigation of the porn site based primarily on interviews with a woman who performed for the site to pay for an abortion. She claimed that her ex-boyfriend, father of the child, kept all of the payment.

On November 18, 2004, the South Florida news station and website WPLG ran a video segment and article revealing the staged nature of the videos, as admitted by a Bang Bus videographer. They also ran a follow-up in which they asked police whether the activities depicted on the Bang Bus site are illegal. The police responded that they were not, because the van’s windows are tinted to avoid violation of indecent exposure laws and because the women consented.

A former police child protection officer who downloaded thousands of images of child pornography - many featuring children under three - has been jailed for more than four years.

Dozens of the pictures were rated “level 5″ by prosecutors - the most serious on the scale of child pornography images.

Source: The Press Association (ya, we’ve never heard of it either).

A star prosecution witness grew emotional Monday as she alleged at R. Kelly’s child pornography trial several three-way sexual encounters with the R&B superstar and the alleged victim, some of which she said were videotaped.

Lisa Van Allen, the last witness before prosecutors rested their case, also told jurors in more than three hours of graphic and dramatic testimony that Kelly last year offered her $250,000 to recover a tape of one of the trysts.

Defense attorneys accused her of trying to extort the singer.

Prosecutors rested their case in R Kelly’s child pornography trial after a day of sensational testimony about alleged trysts, extortion plots and a duffel bag full of sex tapes.

Star prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen cried on the witness stand, pausing to regain her composure, as she described several alleged sexual encounters with the R&B star, some of which she claimed Kelly videotaped.

Van Allen, 27, also told jurors that Kelly offered her $250,000 (BD94,500) last year to recover a tape of one of the trysts.

The witness said that after she and Kelly met in late 1997, they filmed each other with the alleged victim on two occasions in 1999 and 2000, although prosecutors stressed that neither tape was the recording shown the jury at the trial.

During cross-examination, a defence attorney accused Van Allen of plotting to extort money from the singer, which she denied. Under further questioning, she admitted she once stole Kelly’s $20,000 (BD7,560) diamond-studded watch from a hotel.