WebProNews

Tag: Internet Porn

  • “Penthouse” Magazine Stops Publication After 50 Years, Goes to Digital Format Only

    Penthouse magazine, typically known as the raunchier rival of Playboy, is ceasing its print publication after 50 years, and will be available in digital format only. This comes just months after Playboy announced it would no longer feature nude photos within its pages, beginning with its March 2016 issue.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that adult publications like Penthouse magazine and Playboy have taken huge hits in recent years since adult content is easily found online–and often for free.

    Penthouse magazine once sold over five million copies. Business waned after founder Bob Guccione filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and eventually lost control of the company. Now operated by FriendFinder Networks, they, too, declared bankruptcy in 2013.

    Penthouse magazine will close its New York offices and move to FriendFinder Networks offices in L.A.

    The publisher issued a statement regarding these big changes for Penthouse magazine.

    “Reimagined for the preferred consumption of content today by consumers, the digital version of Penthouse Magazine will combine and convert everything readers know and love about the print magazine experience to the power of a digital experience,” the statement reads.

    “This move will keep Penthouse magazine competitive in the future and will seamlessly combine our unmatched pictorial features and editorial content with our video and broadcast offerings,” CEO Jonathan Buckheit added.

    It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Penthouse magazine sales have fallen drastically and mandate this kind of business move. The internet makes a wealth of porn available at reader’s fingertips.

  • Egypt Bans Online Porn, Some Fear It Could Go Further

    Censorship is a tricky subject. It’s especially bad when said censorship is taking a place in a country without proper protections for free speech and expression. One of those countries is Egypt where the government has just banned online porn. Some fear that the ban is just the beginning of a crackdown on other freedoms.

    The EFF reports that Egypt’s Prosector General, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, ordered an online porn ban on Wednesday. Mahmoud is using a three-year-old ruling from Egypt’s administrative court that said “freedom of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism.”

    The first thing to go under this ruling will be porn, but what’s to follow? The court ruling is too broad and can be used to block numerous forms of speech just because it goes against the ruling party’s views on religion or morality. It’s particularly worrisome in Egypt as the country is trying to transition away from the Mubarak regime to a more democratic government that claims to respect the rights of all citizens, regardless of their views.

    The EFF says that Egypt could go one of two ways with the ban. The country go just go all out and ban every porn site that it finds. This would require a rather expensive and extensive filtering system that Egypt might not be able to afford at the moment.

    The other option is that porn ban opponents take the ruling to the high courts. The courts might throw out the ruling, or they might uphold it. It’s hard to tell what will happen in Egypt at the moment due to numerous parties from many different walks of life all vying to have their voice heard.

    Regardless of what happens, the EFF is right in that Egyptian citizens will most likely turn to VPNs and Tor for the time being. These services were used during the Arab Spring in Egypt to protect the identities of bloggers and social media users who were using the Internet to spread information to the outside world. Now these same services will be used to protect the identities of those who only want to use the Internet as they see fit.

  • Porn Surfing Is Safer Than Browsing Religious Sites

    Is this a good definition of irony? The fact that, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, porn sites are, by and large, safer for web surfers than sites dedicated to faith and religion? If irony is getting the opposite result than what was expected, then the fact that surfing porn is safer than surfing religion fits almost perfectly, especially when you consider the social ramifications.

    Yes, porn is much more mainstream than in the past, but the anonymity of the Internet has contributed directly to porn’s popularity growth. Would porn be as openly popular if people still had to go to the local gas station to get the mylar-covered magazines or if they had to go to video stores to rent the adult movies they want? Considering the personal embarrassment people are always looking to avoid, it stands to reason that this kind of adult content would not be as popular as the Internet allows it to be.

    And that’s why Symantec’s report concerning sites dedicated to faith and religion are three times as likely to contain malware than porn sites is considered ironic. When you consider the fact that Internet porn has long had the reputation of being a malicious file haven, Symantec’s findings (PDF) are surprising:

    …we’ve determined that 61% of malicious sites are actually regular Web sites that have been compromised and infected with malicious code. It is interesting to note that Web sites hosting adult/pornographic content are not in the top five, but ranked tenth…

    The illustrate their point, Symantec introduced a graphic listing the top ten list of dangerous sites in regards to malware:

    Dangerous Sites

    Concerning the more religious sites out there, Symantec pulls no punches:

    Moreover, religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites. We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free – it’s not good for repeat business.

    Does this mean that porn site owners are more diligent about keeping their service malware-free than personal blog owners are? That’s actually not too much of a reach. Many porn site owners are business people who understand that infecting the machines of your customers is not a good business strategy. Meanwhile, maintaining a personal blog does not require a great deal of web programming savvy, which could lead to a lack of platform updates, which are normally introduced to plug security holes the previous editions had.

    Of course, this only explains the increase in relation to personal blogs. It does not explain why business and shopping sites, groups that should be able to afford respectable web programmers, are more dangerous than porn sites. Perhaps porn site owners are more conscious of malware, considering the industry’s reputation, and therefore, are more willing to keep their services malware-free.

    Whatever the case, Symantec’s report is clear one thing, malware deployment is not decreasing. In fact, the opposite is true:

    Malicious Attacks Skyrocket By 81%
    In addition to the 81% surge in attacks, the number of unique malware variants also increased by 41% and the number of Web attacks blocked per day also increased dramatically, by 36%…

    Meanwhile, the U.S. government is more concerned about placating the entertainment industry, at least when it comes to Internet regulation. Clearly, as Symantec’s report reveals, there are far greater issues that need to be tackled.

    [Lead image courtesy]

  • Internet Porn Might Be Banned In Egypt

    Internet Porn Might Be Banned In Egypt

    Rick Santorum riled up Twitter last week when he announced his intentions to ban Internet porn if he were to be elected president. Even if he were to win the presidency, the plan would be met with too much resistance. Too bad the same doesn’t apply to Egypt.

    The Egypt Independent is reporting that the government is taking the first steps to ban all online pornography. The ban is being instigated by Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology Mohamed Salem. The first step is to create a National Telecommunications Regulation Authority that will discuss how they can control porn sites.

    Salem must have a good reason for wanting to ban access to porn sites, right? He says that the issue of porn is becoming “persistent and worrying to families.” I think that porn has always been “persistent and worrying” to anybody who has children. That’s why families install filters or keep a close watch on their child’s Internet usage. That’s apparently not good enough for the People’s Assembly Transportation and Telecommunications Committee as they asked the government in February to ban access to all porn sites within the nation.

    The Next Web reports that a similar law was almost passed in Tunisia. That one didn’t make it through because critics found that it would allow the government to block any Web site that was deemed immoral or offensive. The Egyptian courts might throw out the law or they might pass it. Either way, the Egyptian people will probably see it as an affront on their freedoms and protest again.

    From Santorum’s speech on porn to these new attempts to ban it just go to show you how far people will go to protect families and children. Yes, porn should be kept out of the hands of children, but governments shouldn’t punish an adult’s individual freedom in the name of protecting children. There are ways to protect children from offensive content than just an outright ban. This also puts the responsibility to protect children on the parent’s heads and I know that’s so hard these days. The government shouldn’t be your children’s parents as that leads down the road to them becoming big brothers.

  • Digital Playground Hack Found Government and Military Email Addresses

    In the ongoing war over digital privacy, copyrights, and internet freedom, hypocrisy just keeps rearing its ugly head. This isn’t surprising, given that there are millions of people employed by the U.S. and foreign governments, and corporations with a vested interest in restricting online media sharing. These millions of people like to listen to music, play games, read e-books, watch movies and television shows, and even watch porn. Yeah, I said watch porn. And you knows it’s true. It’s a mere question of statistics that some of these people–people who say we shouldn’t engage in such acts ourselves–are going to give themselves the ol’ “Get Out of Ethical Responsibility Free” card and pirate an episode of Dexter here and there.

    Just yesterday we brought you news of a potential embarrassment for some government employees, when MegaUpload’s Kim Dotcom revealed that among MU users were government officials from the DoJ and Senate. More news of RIAA and DHS employees’ illegal downloading came out back in December. And now yet another potentially embarrassing situation presents itself to members of the U.S. government and military, following an attack on porn site DigitalPlayground.com a little over a week ago.

    The attack was the debut work of a group calling itself Th3 Consortium, which claims ties to Anonymous and related hacking groups. Th3 Consortium announced the success of its first operation on Twitter March 4th, and alluded future attempts would follow.

    (image)@Th3Consortium
    The Consortium    #Anonymous Today we will be releasing free premium porn to our friends & frenemies #th3consortium #PenetratingThePenetrators(image) 9 days ago via twidge ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@Th3Consortium
    The Consortium    As we promised this is our first but not last release http://t.co/ZnARtiGG #Anonymous #freebies @YourAnonNews @TheHackersNews @anonymouSabu(image) 9 days ago via twidge ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    According to the hacking group, “27 admins’ names, usernames, e-mail addresses, and encrypted passwords; 85 affiliates’ usernames, plaintext passwords, and in some cases, IP addresses; and 82 .gov and .mil e-mail addresses with corresponding plaintext passwords” were compromised, reports AVN.

    (image)

    In a post left on DigitalPlaygrounds defaced homepage immediately following the attack, Th3 Consortium made light of the porn site’s numerous security lapses:

      “This site has so many freaking holes that if I didn’t know it was a porn site, I would have mistaken it for a honeypot” – [Redacted]

      We did not set out to destroy them but they made it too enticing to resist. So now our humble crew leave lulz and mayhem in our path.

    The post also claimed that the group retrieved information on over seventy-two thousand users and forty thousand plaintext credit cards, including ccvs, names, and expiration dates. In addition, the group claimed to have tapped a DigitalPlayground conference call. They also directly mentioned their discovery of the .mil and .gov email addresses.

    Eighty-two email addresses may not seem much when you’re looking at 72k total compromised accounts, and some of those 82 doubtless belong to bureaucrats, civil servants, and enlisted men on the very lowest rungs of the federal ladder. But others may very well belong to fairly high-ranking officials in both the government and military, and no matter the rank and responsibility of their owners, eighty-two individual representatives of the United States government may soon be outed for using federally-funded accounts to get their jollies off. That could be a lot of egg on the face of a government that wants to bring you digital privacy restrictions under the guise of child porn prevention.

    Hat Tip: The Atlantic Wire