"Camcorder and VHS video machines were pioneered by porn barons anxious to find a cheap way to mass market blue movies. Take-up of DVD players was driven by pornographers and their customers because the technology enabled users to skip to and from their favourite scenes."
This is true, but also not true. Home video recorders were pioneered by Sony with their
Betamax system, released in Japan on May 10, 1975. JVC released their incompatible
VHS system over a year later, on September 9, 1976. So Sony was the pioneer and JVC was just a copycat.
But what has this got to do with porn? The porn industry was quick to take advantage of this new technology, just like it had with photography and cinema film many years before. VHS had significantly worse image quality than Beta, but it had several advantages. Firstly the mechanism had fewer parts making it cheaper to manufacture. Secondly JVC carefully avoided Sony's patents and freely licensed the design to other manufacturers. Thirdly the larger cassette gave it a longer recording time. All these things made VHS more attractive to porn producers. Cheaper recoders meant more potential customers, and they could squeeze more onto a tape (porn consumers weren't so concerned about image quality).
Now the perverse part. Video hire shops rented out regular movies as well as porn, but porn was inially a large part of their business. Porn producers 'standardized' on VHS, which helped to make this format more popular. Video stores also stocked Beta movies for 'normal' customers who had Beta recorders. Initially the split was fairly even, but porn pushed the needle towards the poorer quality VHS. Eventually video stores stopped offering Beta because there weren't enough customers to justify stocking both formats. By this time porn was only a minor player in the video hire industry, but it contributed to the worse technology taking over the market.
Another interesting titbit is that
Video CD, a format that failed in the West, was a popular format for porn in Asia. This was tied in with general piracy, particularly in countries which had strong anti-porn laws.
These are just examples of how the porn industry uses whatever technologies are useful for it. Computer porn started even before they had graphics, but the develpment of powerful PCs with photographic quality displays made it commercially viable. The internet then provided a more convenient distribution method. The final key was online payment via credit card. Therefore I expect you will now be riling against Visa and Mastercard for their part in it.