Porn Valley [from the LA Times] Last year may have marked the beginning of the end of the Internet’s greatest financial success story: hugely profitable pornography. While the mainstream media spent billions of dollars and nearly a decade trying to make a buck off the Internet, the porn industry raked in cash from the moment Al Gore invented the thing.

But with the rise of such free sites as YouPorn (the YouTube of the pornography business), the online subscriber model is imploding. DVD sales are plummeting too, and the adult video business is actually laying off workers (no pun intended). YouPorn is now the most-visited adult site in the world, and its traffic is growing at nearly 40% a month.

Smut’s not going away, to be sure. But its industrialization may finally be in retreat.