I don't know if it would have mattered if the big guys did things differently. First off, if I recall, the biggest players had really minimal online presence... they came into the game pretty late, after there was already a booming market and a proven customer base... but even if they were there at day one, if Heffner and Flynt et al came online the same day NCSA Mosaic appeared on the scene, I still think things would have ended up the same way it has.
At its simplest, porn is a bottomless (heh) infinately renewable resource. The barriers to entry weren't that great to begin with and nowadays literally anyone with a $250 digital camera and a host can produce tolerable content that can turn a profit, although probably a meagre one.
(Note: I am in no way meaning to denigrate the outstanding work of many of the industry's established content producers. Some of the stuff I've seen could function equally well in an art gallery as on a website, and all props are given duely. I'm only trying to say that the barriers to entry are so low now that nearly anyone can get in the game, although many can't survive in it!)
When you have a virtually limitless resource available to you, the value doesn't come from the resource itself. You have to value-add it. Where people end up making their money is on aggregation, delivery, and other convenience factors. Prices will always fall in a market scenario like that... it also explains why more obscure fetish/niche markets reap more profit per unit sold: higher ratio of demand vs. supply in that arena.
In order for the big players to have obtained a 'lock' in that environment would have meant they would have had to have tight control over most or all porn production... and that's just not physically possible. Where the big guys DO have an advantage, and may yet develop at least a proto-hegemony, is the fact that it costs money to develop those value-added services... in the end, by commoditizing the content itself, they're creating a barrier to entry for the actual services of categorization and delivery. Sort of like how water is more or less free from the tap, but people who bottle it and sell it can make some decent coin.
Downside to that, of course, is that anyone with a clue can just hop on kazaa now and spank away to random clips at any time, day or night.
-whew- Massive post from hell.
