WebProNews

Tag: Porn

  • Pinterest Will Soon Allow Nudity, As Long As It’s Artistic

    Pinterest Will Soon Allow Nudity, As Long As It’s Artistic

    Pinterest, like many other social sites, has had to deal with an unavoidable amount of nudity, porn, and the battle between the two. Is a bare breast considered pornographic? I don’t know, ask Facebook. How much porn is too much porn, and how hard should you make it for the average user to stumble upon it? I don’t know, ask Vine. If porn is what the users want, should the company get it the way? I don’t know – Yahoo seems to think they shouldn’t.

    Pinterest has explicitly banned sexual content, nudity, and even partial nudity. It’s right there in the Acceptable Use Policy. “You agree not to post User Content that is sexually explicit or contains nudity, partial nudity or pornography.” If you search a term like “sex” or “nude” on Pinterest, you’re greeted with this message:

    Reminder: Pinterest does not allow nudity. Pinning or repinning photographs displaying breasts, buttocks or genitalia may result in the termination of your Pinterest account.

    Though that sounds pretty straightforward, well, it’s not. Sure, Pinterest says that they do not allow nudity or pornography. Yet there’s plenty of porn and more “tasteful” nudity on Pinterest. See? See? (NSFW, obviously).

    Now, it looks like Pinterest is taking a proactive step (at the behest of users) to make sure that the nudity that exists on the site is an acceptable type of nudity – artistic nudity.

    “Pinterest is about expressing your passions and people are passionate about art and that may include nudes,” Pinterest told the Financial Times. “So we’re going to try to accommodate that.”

    Gizmodo received another quote from Pinterest spokesman Barry Schnitt.

    “Pinners have asked us for a policy on nudity that makes a distinction between works of art and things like pornography. A change like that poses a lot of questions. We’re working our way through those questions but we don’t have any additional details to offer just yet.”

    It sounds like Pinterest wants to avoid the mess that Facebook’s gotten in as of late. Mainly, the banning of not only art featuring exposed breasts, breastfeeding photos, and cartoon boobs, but even photos that resemble breasts but turn out to be completely innocuous.

    Pinterest has to face it: Their UI is great for art and photos. And if the people want tasteful nudes, well, the people should get tasteful nudes. Lest they run off to a place where it won’t be persecuted. Not that Pinterest has done a great job of enforcing their policy up until this point anyway. Moving forward, Pinterest is probably going to have a problem making that distinction between artistic nudity and porny nudity. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

  • Google Puts Out Weird Cartoon About Porn And AdSense

    Google wants to remind you that it doesn’t allow AdSense ads on content containing: nudity or pornography, sheer clothing, strategically covered nudity, sexually gratifying “stuff,” fetish or adult toys, adult language links or comments, or extreme profanity (these are all their words).

    To do so, the company has put out a new cartoon to explain:

    Some screen cap highlights:

    AdSense porn

    AdSense porn

    AdSense porn

    AdSense porn

    AdSense

    AdSense porn

    Yep. Weird.

  • Tumblr Porn Is Here to Stay, Yahoo Won’t Restrict Content

    According to one recent analysis, over 11% of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains are full of “adult” content. Yes, a big part of Tumblr is the porn – it’s not the biggest part by any means, but it’s significant. And ever since news of the big Yahoo acquisition, Tumblr users have worried that Yahoo may attempt to clean up Tumblr’s image by controlling certain types of content.

    Fear not, Tumblr users. Your porn isn’t going anywhere.

    For the first time since the acquisition announcement, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made a clear decree on her company’s role in censoring content – mainly that they have none. During Yahoo’s new Flickr event Monday night in NYC, Mayer was asked directly whether she will restrict content on Tumblr.

    “No, we won’t,” she said. “It’s the nature of user-generated content.”

    She continued on to say that it’s important to have community tool like “NSFW” tags that Tumblr already has in place. There you go, folks, that’s about as definitive as you’re going to get.

    Before those remarks, Mayer had been a little more vague about Tumblr’s porny bits.

    “The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.” she said during a conference call Monday morning. She also said that Yahoo would have to make use of good ad targeting, to assuage any concerns from future advertisers. And there will be more ads inside Tumblr, that’s for sure.

    “We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently,” said Mayer during her announcement.

  • Tumblr Is Full of Porn, Just as We Suspected

    Before Yahoo announced their plans to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion, some analysts wondered if and to what end the fact that Tumblr is full of porn would affect that decision. Apparently, not too much, as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made the thing official this morning. Still, some Tumblr users worry that in an attempt to clean up their new acquisition, Yahoo may go to war on Tumblr’s vibrant adult community.

    But just how much porn is on Tumblr? A lot. We know that. But until now, we’ve never had any real figures. Data from SimilarGroup, obtained by TechCrunch, suggests that more than 11% of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains are very NSFW.

    The analysis looked at the 200,000 most-popular blogs on Tumblr and found that 22,775 would be considered “adult.” That works out to 11.4%. Yes, Marissa Mayer just bought a network that’s more than 1/10th porn.

    SimilarGroup also looked at traffic to said adult Tumblr blogs and found that they account for 16.6% of Tumblr’s traffic. Not only that, but just over 22% of referral traffic to Tumblr comes from adult websites. 8% of outbound Tumblr referrals lead straight to porn.

    Tumblr has a porn empire. Is that going to be a problem for Yahoo?

    Maybe, but Mayer isn’t suggesting that quite yet.

    “The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users,” said Mayer this morning when asked about Tumblr’s “not-brand-safe” content (read: porn).

    In order to deal with it, Mayer said that Yahoo would need to have good targeting for ads. Maybe that will be the strategy going forward – smart ad targeting that will make sure that the porny bits stay away from the non-porny bits. But this study proves that adult content isn’t just a fringe element of Tumblr’s massive blog network – it’s a big part of it.

  • Tumblr Porn Not Likely to Be a Problem for Mayer, Yahoo

    The news the Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion has brought along its fair share of grumbling from the Tumblr community. Though Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promised “not to screw it up,” Tumblr users are worried that Yahoo will march in and paint their beloved blogging platform purple – cleaning it up and making it more “family friendly” in the process.

    If you are unfamiliar with Tumblr, know this: there is a lot of porn on Tumblr – artsy nude content, straight up porn, pretty much all colors of the NSFW rainbow. It makes up a significant part of the Tumblr landscape, and without it, Tumblr wouldn’t really be Tumblr. Some Tumblr users are concerned that Yahoo will waltz in and attempt to change all of that. Before the acquisition went official, some analysts worried that Tumblr’s NSFW underbelly would be an issue for the folks at Yahoo who were considering the deal.

    But it wasn’t. Now that the acquisition is official, it’s looking like Yahoo is committed to keeping Tumblr running as is, and that the porn problem, well, isn’t really a problem. During her conference call to discuss the deal, Mayer had this to say when asked about all of the “not-brand-safe” content out there on Tumblr.

    “The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.”

    And when it comes to possible concerns from advertisers? Well, Mayer noted that Yahoo will just have to have good targeting. Mayer said that Yahoo is going to put more ads inside the Tumblr feed, so we know it’s coming. But Yahoo can pick and choose where they throw those ads, and can steer clear of any content that may concern potential clients.

    “We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster,” said Mayer in her announcement.

    And in his, Tumblr CEO David Karp said that “before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

    That sounds like Yahoo is going to adopt a fairly hands-off approach to the Tumblr, and that’s good news for Tumblr users. Sure, people lie and things change, but as of right now it appears that Yahoo isn’t that concerned about all of those naughty parts on Tumblr. Carry on.

  • Kids Are Browsing Porn Earlier Than You Can Even Imagine, According to Study

    As a parent, the internet is both a useful and possibly scary tool. It opens the world up for your kids and allows them to experience a ton of info that they wouldn’t have been able to access before the advent of the web, and that’s a great thing. But of course, with open information comes open information. All of it. The scope is broad, and includes things that you may not want your kid seeing in their formidable years.

    I’m sure many parents can relate to this scenario: You’re browsing the web and you happen upon a saved site, or maybe check your history. And there it is – a porn link that you didn’t access. What do you do? At what age do you think you have to start worrying about this?

    Well, according to a new study, it’s a lot earlier than you think. Apparently, kids are starting to look at porn by the time they reach the age of six. Yes, six.

    The study comes from internet security and antivirus software provider Bitdefender, who released the results to USA Today. Bitdefender used data compiled from its various parental controls services alongside a survey of over 19,000 parents worldwide.

    The survey found that kids start watching porn as early as 6, and are “flirting” on the internet by the ripe old age of 8.

    Social media use is also starting earlier – 17% of kids had an account on some social networking site by the age of 10 and 25% had one by the age of 12.

    “Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” says Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.

    Of course, parents are the key. Both in limiting what young kids see on the internet, as well as having important conversations about both the good and the bad that exists on the web.

    And it looks that those conversations need to start happening early. Very early.

  • Why Porn Acts Like a Drug [VIDEO]

    First off, nobody is here to bash porn. Like plenty of drugs, everything in moderation, right?

    And that’s the simple fact about porn. It is a drug. Well, at least it acts like a drug on your brain. AsapSCIENCE‘s newest three-minute video tackles the very real problem of pornography addiction. If you find yourself in a vicious porn-watching cycle where real life never seems to measure up to what you’re imagining in your head, well, this is the reason.

  • Behold, the Mother of All Porn Infographics

    Jon Millward has spent the last six months carefully analyzing porn. So what, right? Who hasn’t? No, my friends, you haven’t been analyzing porn in the way that he has.

    “For the first time, a massive data set of 10,000 porn stars has been extracted from the world’s largest database of adult films and performers. I’ve spent the last six months analyzing it to discover the truth about what the average performer looks like, what they do on film, and how their role has evolved over the last forty years,” he says on his site.

    And thus begins a truly fascinating look into the world of porn – its demographics, characteristics, trends, history, and more.

    Millward combed through the Internet Adult Film Database, the porny version of the IMDb, which houses records of over 120,000 adult films and over 115,000 adult film actors/actresses. Through careful analysis of a very large sample size, Millward has put together the mother of all porn infographics.

    According to his research, the average porn star is a dark-haired caucasian girl from California, measuring 34-24-34 and coming in at 5’5″ and 117 lbs. She has a 34B bra size, probably has a tattoo, and will most likely spend three years in the industry. Over the course of that career, she’ll appear in 19 films. Her name is Nikki Lee.

    Check out his handiwork below. There’s a little bit of NSFW content in the graphic, but no NSFW images.

    (image)

    [via Gawker]

  • Jon Stewart Isn’t Surprised About Vine and Porn

    Twitter’s six-second video-sharing app Vine launched with a bit of a porn problem. Vine scurried around and quickly turned the porn problem into a much lesser porn problem by banning many porn-related searches and hiding NSFW material behind warning screens.

    Today, they launched an update to the app that carries a new 17+ rating in the App Store. Short of banning nudity, Vine has done pretty much all they can to make pornography as inaccessible to the wrong kind of eyes as they can.

    Anyway, Jon Stewart finally got around to addressing the porn issue. Watch the whole thing for some bonus jabs at Facebook.

  • Vine’s Age Rating Jumps to 17+ with Update

    Twitter’s six-second video app that used to (and kind of still does) have a porn problem has just seen its age rating jump from 12+ to 17+.

    Now, iOS users must be at least 17 years old to download the app – a change that came along with the new version 1.0.5., which just launched on Wednesday. The update gives users the ability to share Vines to Twitter and Facebook after posting and also ships various bug fixes. Although the age rating jump isn’t mentioned in the update text, users will see the age-restricted warning box pop up when they attempt to download the app.

    Vine was found to have a porn problem pretty much as soon as it launched. That problem was exacerbated when a very NSFW six-second clip somehow made its way into the “Editors Pick” section of the explore page.

    That was quickly remedied, but the fact that porn was easily accessible on the app remained. In order to help keep pornographic imagery off of the eyes of youngsters, Vine began to censor porn-related hashtag searches like #porn, #nsfw, and #boobs.

    As of now, porn is still able to be found on Vine, as the app guidelines don’t ban it outright. It is a lot harder to find than it was surrounding launch, however. Plus, many NSFW videos are hidden behind a warning screen that users must tap through in order to reveal the video.

    Last week another controversial photo app, 500px, was restored with a 17+ age rating after Apple previously yanked it for pornographic content.

  • Vimeo Adds Content Ratings to Videos (Mature, All Audiences, Not Yet Rated)

    Vimeo allows non-sexual nudity (anything expect explicit porn). Everybody knows that. It’s one of the things that sets it apart from other video streaming sites like YouTube.

    Vimeo says that it’s a testament to their “unflinching belief in the integrity of visual storytelling,” because “one cannot ignore the naked, the violent, and the swearing when striving to capture the breadth of the human condition.” Amen to that.

    But not all video ares suitable for all audiences, even if they do accurately depict the human condition. With that in mind, Vimeo is introducing new content ratings.

    Starting today, you’ll see a new badge next to the title/artist info on all videos on the site. It will either read “mature,” “all audiences,” or “not yet rated.”

    “This means we’ll ask creators to tell us if there’s nudity, violence, or illegal substances (e.g., plutonium) in their videos, which can still be uploaded to Vimeo as long as they comply with our Guidelines. For those who never upload videos with mature content, it’s easy to mark everything as appropriate for all audiences in your global video settings,” says Vimeo.

    YouTube, for instance, has featured warnings on some videos that they have been restricted due to age guidelines and that they may contain mature content. Vimeo, who has always been known for allowing a little more artistic freedom should we say, isn’t limiting any of that. They’re just giving people an additional heads-up.

  • 500px Now Back in the App Store After Apple Yanked It for Porn

    After a week in App Store limbo, photography app 500px has made its return.

    As you may remember, Apple booted the app from its App Store for violation of Apple’s rules on pornography. Apple said that the app was removed after many user complaints regarding the porn.

    But apparently, Apple has rethought their decision. It looks like 500px has done enough to assuage Cupertino’s concerns.

    Upon yanking the app, Apple had this to say:

    “The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines. We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We’ve asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app.”

    It appears that 500px has inserted at least one new “safeguard” into the app – a new “report this photo” button.

    They’ve also instituted a new age warning within iTunes. It now says that you must be 17 years or older to download to app due to “frequent/intent sexual content or nudity.”

    But nudity is still accessible within the app. And Apple has approved it. Perhaps all of that media attention surrounding Vine and its porn problem (many pointed out that Apple was allowing it to stay in the App Store, alongside Twitter, which also contains frequent nudity) softened Apple up a bit. Or maybe it’s just another hard-to-explain move from a company whose nudity policies are notoriously hard-to-explain.

  • Vine Says Bye to Porn with Full Block of NSFW Tags, Removal of the “All Videos” Browsing Option

    Vine, Twitter’s hot new 6-second video app with a porn problem, no longer really has a porn problem.

    Yesterday afternoon, Vine began to block certain porn-related tag searches. Trying to search for #porn? Sorry, you’re out of luck. What about more specific tags like #dick, #ass, or #boobs? Yep, out of luck.

    But there were still a few workarounds. Mainly, some porn-related tags still existed – #NSFW and #pornvine, for instance.

    Now it appears that Vine has really cleaned house and purged most of the porn from the app. #NSFW is no longer accessible, and #pornvine is no more. Any tag search of any common sexual terms yields no tag results containing porn. It looks like Vine has made it much, much harder to find porn on the app.

    We also noticed that Vine has removed the ability to view “all videos” from the Explore tab. Now, you can only choose between SFW tags, “Editor’s Picks,” and “Popular Now.”

    It’s important to note that Vine hasn’t amended their Terms of Service or anything. Technically, nudity and sexual content is still allowed on the service. But the restrictions on tag searches make it nearly impossible to find porn on the app. The old trick of spring-boarding from one NSFW tag search to another by clicking tags is no longer an option. I was able to upload a video with the #porn and #nsfw tags, but when I attempted to click them to find other content with those tags Vine told me they couldn’t load the posts.

    It looks like Vine and porn have ended their short relationship. At least their truly visible relationship.

    But that doesn’t mean that users can’t still upload explicit videos and share them to Twitter. But they’re going to be incredibly hard to find on the actual Vine app, unless someone is specifically looking for them by username. I was able to find porn by searching for specific user names, but that’s about it. No porn in the Editor’s picks, no porn in the “popular now” section.

    What Vine has done is make it pretty hard to just stumble upon porn when using the app.

  • Vine Starts Censoring Porn-Related Tag Searches

    In a move that’s hard to say wasn’t expected, Twitter’s new six-second video sharing app Vine has begun to filter out some porn-related searches.

    No longer can you search for the tags #porn, #boobs, #dick, #sex and many other NSFW tags.

    Oddly enough, you can still search for the #NSFW tag.

    Also available are more specific tags that contain plenty of nudity such as #pornvine, #dicks, and more. It appears that Vine is just beginning the process of censoring these types of tags. Before it’s said and done, it’s unlikely that any of these kinds of porn-related tags will remain. And Vine will probably censor any new porn tags as soon as they pop up.

    What users can do, however, is tag their Vine videos with these tags. Users can still access the tag pages by clicking on the tags under videos they do find. So there’s a workaround – for now. Still, many popular NSFW tags no longer appear when users try to explore them.

    It appears that there had already been a small change in Apple’s promotion of Vine inside the App Store which was conspicuously timed with this porn controversy.

    For more on the Vine-porn controversy, check out our in-depth writeup.

  • Did Apple Reduce Vine’s Visibility in the App Store Following Porn Controversy?

    It looks like Apple may have decided to back away from Twitter’s new Vine video-sharing app, just a little bit.

    It appears that Apple has stopped promoting the app as an “Editor’s Choice” selection. Vine isn’t even highlighted in the App Store’s social networking section. It’s not a “new and noteworthy” app either. That’s odd, considering that Vine is the number one free social networking app and the number four overall free app in the entire App Store.

    As you may have heard, Vine finds itself in the middle of a porn controversy. Just days after launch, we told you that Vine has become a pretty hot destination for six-second porn clips.

    Although we don’t think that the porn is that huge of a problem for the Vine app in and of itself (it’s not really that visible and is often hidden behind a click-through warning screen), we noted that it could be a problem for Vine’s chances of survival within the App Store.

    Apple has always held a pretty strict no nudity policy for its approved apps, even banning photo-sharing apps like 500px because Apple thought the app made it too easy to find pornographic images.

    It’s important to note that Apple has yet to ban Vine, even though it clearly contains its fair share of porn. Apple has also let the Twitter app hang around for years, even though Twitter also allows nudity in its posts. Apple and Twitter are partners, as Twitter is fully integrated into iOS. Maybe Apple won’t be as drastic as to ban Vine altogether, but it sure looks like the’ve reduced its visibility in the App Store.

    [Business Insider via The Verge]

  • Of Course Vine Is Full of Porn, and It’s Not Really a Problem Until You Consider Apple

    Hey everyone, can you believe that people are using a new video-sharing app to share porn videos? An app that makes it easy to record quick clips and share them on Twitter? People? The internet? Porn? Crazy.

    Sarcasm aside, Twitter’s new 6-second video app Vine is already full of porn. And that’s potentially a huge problem for Twitter and Vine.

    First off, let’s make it clear that having NSFW content on Vine isn’t really a problem on its own. Besides the slip up of showing a girl using a sex toy as an “Editor’s pick” earlier today, Vine makes it fairly difficult to simply stumble upon a giant cache of 6-second porn.

    The home feed of editor picks is (usually) SFW, and the explore feature doesn’t consist of any hand-picked NSFW categories. On the Vine app, they suggest hashtags like #pets, #food, #fashion – but no #penis #porn or #ass. Sure, you can search for those latter hashtags within the app – and you’ll definitely find what you’re looking for. But then again, you’re actively looking for it at that point.

    And Vine even has a mechanism for putting another layer between your eyes and some random person’s junk. If a video is tagged as inappropriate, Vine will throw up a warning screen that users must tap through to access the NSFW content. “WARNING: This post may contain sensitive content,” reads the message.

    Also, if you want to see just how much of a non-issue the porn thing is on Vine right now, check out Vinepeek. That single-purpose site provides an unmoderated stream of the latest Vine videos. I watched it for quite some time and I saw no porn. Literally, zero NSFW videos. Plenty of dogs, babies, more dogs, and food – but no penises, no vaginas, no boobs, no butts.

    Plus, there’s no ban on nudity in Vine’s ToS. There are bans on impersonation, spam, abuse, harassment, copyright infringement – but no porn ban. Being that Vine is a Twitter product, this should come as no surprise.

    And as far as Vine porn existing outside the app’s walls (let’s say on Twitter), the fact remains that you’re probably only going to see Vine porn if you’re looking for it (for the most part). At least no more than you’re likely to see porn on Twitter anyway, seeing as to how Twitter is one of the few social networks that doesn’t ban nudity in posts.

    If you follow people who like to post 6-second porn, you’re going to see 6-second porn. If you search “vine #nsfw” or “wine #porn” on Twitter, you’re going to find what you’re looking for. It’s a simple as that.

    But though porn shouldn’t be considered a “problem” for Vine on that level – it could be a problem in another way. A really, really, huge problem.

    Last week, Apple yanked photo-sharing app 500px from its App Store.

    “The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines. We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We’ve asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app,” said Apple.

    As you’re probably well aware, Apple is really serious on the no porn thing among apps it approves for its App Store. Yeah, it’s ludicrous at times. They essentially just banned an app for letting users search for adult content. It’s a good thing that an app like Google Chrome or even Apple’s Safari doesn’t allow people to find porn.

    For Vine, this should be a bit troubling. Maybe the content safeguard screen will be enough to assuage Apple’s concerns. Maybe not. You can find images of boobs all over Twitter, but not only has the Twitter app remained in Apple’s good graces for years, but Twitter has been integrated into iOS.

    It’s possible that Apple will leave Vine alone, at least for the time being. But if Vine becomes an app that primarily caters to 6-second porn (as in it becomes to majority, not the exception), it’s going to have a hard time hanging around the App Store.

  • Parents Sent to Sex Site Thanks to Typo in School Email

    Shock! Horror! Impending lawsuits!

    Parents of children who attend one of the many schools in the Chicago Public Schools system were inadvertently directed to a soft-core adult site, after the school system sent out a mass email containing one slightly altered link.

    The point of the email was to notify parents that CPS was raising their standards when it comes to the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, or ISAT. The new standards for the ISAT are being implemented by the Illinois State Board of Education, or ISBE.

    A link at the conclusion of the email wanted to direct parents to the ISBE site more more information. Instead, the addition of one extra letter wound up directing parents to ISBEL.com, which happens to be a “private invite only community” with the goal of “enriching the modern woman’s sex life and sensuality.”

    Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who you ask), the site’s home page only features an artistic photo of an open Kama Sutra book, placed on a bed. No real hardcore porn stuff or anything.

    But of course, CPS had to make a public apology.

    “As soon as it was brought to our attention, we sent out an updated letter with a corrected link and apologized for any inconvenience it may have caused,” said a spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools system.

    Let’s just see how many parents come out and say they were scarred by CPS’ carelessness. Maybe their kids even saw the landing page. THE CHILDREN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

    [CBS Chicago via CNET]

  • Revenge Porn Site and Its Host GoDaddy Face Class-Action Lawsuit

    Operating on the outskirts of morality in porn (an already hard-to-define gradient), so-called “revenge porn” sites host images and videos of what are described as “exes.” Basically, the point is that guys extract “revenge” on their ex-girlfriends by posting their private sexual communications for the world to see. I know that it’s not always guys in the exploitative position and girls in the victim position – but that’s what happens in the vast majority of circumstances. We’ll just assume this going forward.

    “Revenge porn” has been the topic of much discussion recently, as pioneer in the field Hunter Moore has been in the news as of late. But now, a group of advocates against the genre are looking to put it in the news for another reason. They’re banded together and filed a class-action lawsuit against a prominent site and the company that hosts it.

    The group is “End Revenge Porn,” and the defendants are Texxxan.com and its host, GoDaddy.com. End Revenge Porn calls revenge porn a “form of cyber-rape.”

    Texxxan.com is a site that specializes in pornographic images of girls from Texas, searchable by region. Users are allowed to submit images anonymously, and viewers can rate the images on-site. It’s clear from the site’s most-viewed submissions that it is or at least attempts to appear as a “revenge porn” site, as many of the images are of the amateur or candid variety.

    GoDaddy, of course, is one of the biggest and best-known purveyors of domains around. You probably know them from their famously racy television ads.

    In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that Texxxan.com is “dedicated to publishing intimate photos of young women, and also publishing private facts about these women, all of which are done without obtaining permission of authorization from the women who are victims of the website.”

    “The defendants are all acting in a deliberately reprehensible manner to participate in activity that they know to be malicious, hurtful, and harmful,” they say.

    They are suing Texxxan.com and GoDaddy for invasions of privacy, intrusion on their right to seclusion, the public disclosure of private facts, the wrongful appropriation of their names and likenesses, gross negligence, and a handful of other wrongs.

    They are asking for punitive damages, as well as an injunction shutting down the site.

    Texxxan.com has yet to respond publicly to the lawsuit, but they have a disclaimer section on the website that reads:

    TEXXXAN.com is only a platform for the viewers, users and members that visit the site to do as they wish. Those who find this website unacceptable must understand that if TEXXXAN.com did not exist their would most certainly be something else in its place. No one has ever been forced to visit TEXXXAN.com. On a side note the morality of this website has been discussed, reviewed and contemplated leading administrators to pass the decision on to the public due to the fact that this website is populated with content submitted only by viewers of the site. After running a poll asking the public if this site should be relaunched or shut down completely, the following results shown below where obtained clearly displaying that most of the population would rather the site continue on as it has in the past.

    You can probably guess that their poll showed that 87% of voters think Texxxan.com should continue to operate as is.

    The site also provides a sexting disclaimer, that basically says that people shouldn’t assume that anything they send should remain private, and that they shouldn’t feel bullied into sending something they’re uncomfortable with.

    That doesn’t really cut it for the plaintiffs.

    “I live in an extremely small town and the website was flooded with people that I knew,” said class-action member Hollie Toups. “Those of us on there go to the grocery store and everybody recognizes you. Not everybody says something, but you get a lot of like, ‘Hey, do I know you?’ or, ‘I recognize you from somewhere.’ But then you also get people that will just come out and say it.”

    Like many revenge porn sites, Texxxan.com stands behind the famous section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from being liable for user-submitted content. Of course, lawyers for the plaintiffs says that doesn’t fly in this case.

    You can check out the full suit below:

    Class Action Suit Against GoDaddy.com & Texxxan.com by betabeat

    [via Betabeat]

  • Shock Porn Director Ira Isaacs Sentenced To 4 Years Under Obscenity Laws

    It’s rare that we get an obscenity conviction in the American legal systems these days. Compared to the early 20th century, people are far less likely to find content “obscene.” One porn director, however, was found on the wrong side of the law when he produced a number of films with titles like Mako’s First Time Scat, Gang Bang Horse and Hollywood Scat Amateurs.

    The FBI announced today that Ira Isaacs has been sentenced to 48 months in prison “for engaging in the business of producing and selling obscene videos and distributing obscene videos.” Alongside the prison sentence, Isaacs was also sentenced to three years of supervised released and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.

    Evidence presented at trial established that beginning in or about 1999 and continuing until at least 2011, Isaacs, doing business under the name LA. Media, operated numerous websites, through which he advertised and sold obscene videos that he acquired from other people. The obscene videos included a video approximately two hours in length of a female engaging in sex acts involving human bodily waste and a video one hour and 37 minutes in length of a female engaged in sex acts with animals. The evidence presented at trial also established that in approximately 2004, Isaacs began operating under the name Stolen Car Films and made obscene videos in which he instructed women to engage in sexual activity involving human bodily waste.

    As is the case with all obscenity trials, the poor jurors had to sit through Isaac’s films to determine if they had any artistic value whatsoever. Then they had to apply a three-step test that was first laid out by at the time Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1973’s Miller v. California:

    The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

    If Isaacs could prove that his films fell under one of these three exemptions, he would be found innocent. The jury obviously felt that his films lacked any kind of artistic value, and the obscenity conviction was upheld.

    It’s increasingly rare to see convictions for obscenity in our nation. I’ll leave what that means for the moral fiber of our citizens up to you. That being said, you probably shouldn’t start a career in directing scat porn anytime soon.

    [h/t: LA Weekly]

  • 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.

  • News Flash: Your “Private” Porn Has a Good Chance of Going Public

    If you are uploading sexually explicit photos and videos or yourself and/or your partner to the internet, you’re already living dangerously, my friend. And if you think that you will be able to keep it relatively private (or at least control who gets to see it), you’re probably kidding yourself.

    That’s the takeaway from a new study by the Internet Watch Foundation. According to the study, 88% of sexually explicit content uploaded by young people made its way to third party porn sites – or what the IWF calls “parasite websites.” These are defined as sites that take pornographic images and videos from the original source and make them public.

    Basically, if you think only one person or a couple of people are going to see your business, you’re gonna have a bad time.

    The IWF spent 47 hours on the research, and they looked at 12,224 images and videos. Of those sexually explicit items, 10,776 had been taken from the original source and been made available for all on the parasite porn sites. That means that 88% of the content had been lifted and republished. The study found that the images and videos were appearing on 68 different “discrete” websites.

    “During the course of our work we encounter large quantities of self-generated sexual content which has been copied from its original location and then uploaded elsewhere to form collections, but this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate the extent to which this occurs,” said IWF researcher Sarah Smith.

    The IWF does provide this disclaimer:

    This research did not attempt to discover if the person/people in the images had willingly taken part, or were coerced, or knew the images were going to be uploaded to the internet. It aimed to provide a snapshot of statistics about the amount of content that is currently in circulation on the internet.

    But it’s safe to say that many of the owners of the 10,000+ scraped images and videos were probably not OK with winding up on a porn site.

    We’ve reported on these types of porn sites before, many of which use teens’ Facebook photos. One notable example came out of Boston, when seventeen girls (some aged as young as fourteen) found that their photos had been lifted and republished in a porn setting.

    The bottom line is that you should never post anything online that you expect to keep private. It’s simply not the nature of the beast. Teens need to be extra careful, because they never know how a couple of pics on a porn site could wind up negatively affecting future aspects of their lives. But as a general rule, nobody should be surprised if their nudie pics wind up on porn sites.