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Iran censored porn so hard it broke the internet in Hong Kong
If you had trouble visiting explicit websites in the last few days, the fault may have come from an unexpected source: Iran. According to a new report from The Verge, a recent attempt to block pornography websites in the country's borders hampered access in Russia, Hong Kong and other nations in the region. What happened? Apparently, Iran's national telecom abused the honor system.
Sex at CES: An uncomfortable coupling
When I arrived at the Las Vegas Convention Center in January 2012, CES was a sexless desert of 4K TVs, second-tier smartphones and (yawn) Ultrabooks for days. I'd heard stories about scantily clad porn stars commingling with the same dumpy tech dudes who continued to stalk the show floor, their oversize polo shirts tucked into ill-fitting khaki pants. Tech veterans recalled days spent rubbing elbows with adult-film stars and nights stuffing dollar bills into G-strings. But from where I was standing, in a sea of brightly lit displays and airborne illness, there was nothing sexy about the world's biggest technology showcase.
Britain's film board to enforce online porn age checks
The UK government is inching closer to a new piece of legislation that will require porn sites to introduce age checks. Such an idea has been kicking around for well over two years, but finally the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) seems ready to implement it. An amendment to the Digital Economy Bill will give the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) the power to block sites that fail to abide by the new rule. Should they find a porn provider breaking the law, they'll be able to contact ISPs, including mobile networks, and request that they restrict access.
Artificial intelligence won't save the internet from porn
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." -- United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart In 1964, the Supreme Court overturned an obscenity conviction against Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland theater manager accused of distributing obscene material. The film in question was Louis Malle's "The Lovers," starring Jeanne Moreau as a French housewife who, bored with her media-mogul husband and her polo-playing sidepiece, packs up and leaves after a hot night with a younger man. And by "hot," I mean a lot of artful blocking, heavy breathing and one fleeting nipple -- basically, nothing you can't see on cable TV.
VR porn to be offered as room service in Las Vegas
For decades, people have been renting naughty movies to watch in the privacy of their hotel rooms. Now, with virtual reality becoming more prevalent, one company is experimenting with a combination of the two -- VR porn room service. To realise this X-rated dream, porn studio VR Bangers has teamed up with AuraVisor, a British company that crowdfunded its first headset on Indiegogo and Kickstarter last year. The complete package will soon be trialled in Las Vegas hotels, cost $19.99 a pop, and offer a few different scenarios for people to choose from.
Virtual reality and pornography: An X-rated debate
The true test of virtual reality is upon us. As the consumer version of the Oculus Rift rolls into homes across the globe, the world is watching intently to see if this is truly virtual reality's moment. But what will be its killer application? Will our basest desires drive adoption as they have with previous mediums? Or has porn been dethroned as a technological kingmaker? Executive Editor Christopher Trout and Managing Editor Terrence O'Brien argue the finer points of VR porn.
Indonesia blocks Tumblr because it hosts pornography
Indonesia has banned Tumblr, the internet's GIF factory and pizza pleasure palace, because the site hosts pornographic content, the BBC reports. Indonesia's Information Ministry apparently didn't consult Tumblr or its parent company, Yahoo, before blocking the site. "We must ban the site first and tell them later," Information Ministry e-business director Azhar Hasyim told the BBC.
UK proposes to starve porn sites that don't verify age
The UK has banded about the idea of forcing porn sites to implement age gates for some time now, and today it's turning that talk into walk. New legislation proposed by the government would require any provider of adult content to verify the age of visitors, or face attacks on their revenue streams and other services that keep them online. In doing so, it hopes to protect the innocence of youth by bringing internet pornography in line with other mediums, such as top-shelf magazines, adult DVDs and linear TV broadcasts. Age verification is already mandatory for UK-based porn sites, but under the new proposals, the UK government wants to hold the whole internet to account.
A first-hand quest for the future of sex, Part 2: Mission diverted
I'd just returned from CES, where it was obvious that sex and tech were finally coming together. Despite my rather unfortunate experiences weeks prior, I was feeling inspired. That's when Kiiroo came into my life. Like a serendipitous orgasm harbinger, it promised to take my "sex life to new heights" through teledildonics. Teledildonics is the sex industry's contribution to the Internet of Things, allowing users to remote control vibrators and sex sleeves, sync those toys to VR videos, interact with an adult cam star in real-time, "feel" a long-distance lover and, as I'd come to discover, bring new meaning to one of my favorite internet initialisms: GFY. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. This is the conclusion of a two-part series exploring the future of sex. To read the first installment, click here at your own risk.
A first-hand quest for the future of sex
Over the past two months, I've been intimately involved with a series of machines. On a mission to find the future of sex, I've masturbated into a crowdfunded sex sleeve, been transported into a porn star's anus and quite literally fucked myself. On Friday, I reached my final destination. I can now say that it is a clumsy, unremarkable future. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. This is the first in a two-part series exploring the future of sex. To read the conclusion, click here at your own risk.
FBI Dark Web hacks were a part of a global child porn bust
That FBI hacking initiative that caught 1,500 pedophiles on the Dark Web? It was just the tip of the iceberg. Motherboard has discovered that the operation was just one part of Operation Pacifier, a global campaign to fight child porn hidden through anonymity networks like Tor. The effort had the FBI hacking systems as far afield as Chile, Denmark and Greece -- there are also hints of possible operations in Colombia and Turkey. The US agency wasn't working alone, either, as it teamed up with Europol to collect information and pass it along to local law enforcement.
Penthouse drops print magazines to deal with internet porn (updated)
Internet porn just claimed another casualty. Penthouse has announced that it's dropping its print magazine after 51 years of publication -- from an unspecified point in the future, you'll have to go online to get those articles and racy photos (okay, mostly the photos). There will be a transition period, if you're not yet ready to ditch paper. Also, the move will see the magazine close its New York City offices and move into the Los Angeles location of its parent company, FriendFinder Networks.
Sex is back at CES
For years CES shared the Las Vegas Convention Center with the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE). But when AEE decided to reschedule its show in 2012, the biggest tech show on earth lost its adult edge. That is, until this year. Over the course of three days, I met with four companies showcasing sex-related products in and around the show.
Kink.com's VR porn experiment is a lesson in extreme anatomy
Six years ago, I exited the porn industry after the studio I worked for succumbed to a decline in DVD sales. Toward the end, I was one of two employees. I answered phones, designed box covers, scripted Brazilian gang bangs and spent hours airbrushing razor burn and other skin conditions in Photoshop. I thought I'd seen everything until I saw inside Ella Nova's anus.
PayPal, Square and big banking's war on the sex industry
For nearly a decade, PayPal, JPMorgan Chase, Visa/MasterCard, and now Square, have systematically denied or closed accounts of small businesses, artists and independent contractors whose business happens to be about sex. These payment processing authorities have also coerced websites to cease featuring sexual content under threat of service withdrawal, all while blaming ambiguous rules or pressure from one another.Monday a federal appeals court ruled that pressuring credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard to stop doing business with speech-protected websites violates their First Amendment rights. Specifically ones that feature content from sex workers. And in June, the FDIC clarified that it's against the rules for businesses like PayPal, Chase and Square to refuse business or close accounts based on "high risk" assessments related to human sexuality. But it may not be enough to stop what's become an entrenched pattern of systematic discrimination by payment processors -- one that disproportionately denies financial opportunities for women.
Pornhub streamlines revenge porn reporting process
Pornhub has introduced a new online form (NSFW) that will help identify and remove nonconsensual revenge porn from the site. In the past, victims could only send through removal requests via email, but the new process hopes to cut out all the red tape people had to go through in the past. The company's vice president Corey Price said: "It is vital that we continue to make our community feel safe. We want all Pornhub users to know that this new reporting process is for their security and peace of mind first and foremost." Most US states have already set laws against this type of porn, with California being the first state to convict someone running a revenge porn site. The essence of the online form is to act quickly before the video goes viral, because once that happens, it's nearly impossible to remove all traces of it. [Image credit: Getty creative]
UK government plans to block porn sites without age verification
It's election season in the UK, so get ready for a near-endless stream of new policies, proposals and promises from the major political parties. The latest from the Conservatives is actually an old idea that's been kicking around since last autumn: to force sites containing adult material to introduce proper age checks. It goes beyond the UK government's rather unpopular porn filters, which ISPs are now forced to offer customers as an "unavoidable choice." Simply highlighting the feature was supposed to encourage adoption, particularly from parents, but the latest figures from Ofcom suggest its impact has been limited. Now, the Conservatives want "effective age verification controls" for all online pornography, and plan to block sites which refuse to implement proper checks.
Porn studios' copyright takedowns are making it hard to find code
Aggressive anti-piracy efforts often have their share of unintended victims, but the porn industry's crackdowns are leading to some decidedly unusual collateral damage: open source software. TorrentFreak notes that copyright takedown requests from studios like Wicked Pictures are removing Google search results for GitHub code projects whose names are only vaguely similar to adult movies, or even the studios' names. Among the casualties are Facebook's Rebound (a spring physics add-on), Netflix's Lipstick (workflow visualization) and OpenSUSE Linux's Wicked (a network setup tool).
Posting revenge porn could soon become a serious criminal offence
The posting of 'revenge porn' may become unequivocally illegal in England and Wales soon, after the House of Lords agreed yesterday the law should be amended to specifically include the practice. Currently, anyone that shares explicit images to humiliate a former partner can be prosecuted under sex offense laws -- something the Crown Prosecution Service was keen to highlight in new guidance released a few weeks ago. To deal with the growing problem more directly, however, the Lords' amendment would consider the sharing of such images a serious criminal offense in its own right, carrying a maximum prison sentence of two years. Should MPs in the House of Commons approve the amendment, perpetrators would be more easily punishable, and victims would have stronger grounds to demand the removal of any published images. Clarifying the law with regards to revenge porn isn't the only crackdown on bad internet behaviour currently under consideration, as the UK Justice Secretary recently called for the maximum prison sentence for serious trolls to be increased from six months to two years.
Vine bans pornographic material, says artistic nudity is okay
Consider it an unspoken, but universally true rule: if it can be used for porn, it will be. Texting, Snapchat, Skype and video streaming technology have all fallen to mankind's more base desires, and now, Vine has too. According to a post on the Vine blog, the company has determined that a small percentage of its users are posting videos that "are not a good fit" for its community. In response, Twitter has changed its terms of service to ban sexually explicit Vines, specifically prohibiting videos of sexually provocative nudity, obviously aroused genitalia, sexually graphic art or animation and clips of sex toys being used erm.. as intended. That said, the company doesn't want you to think it prudish -- nudity in natural, artistic or documentary context (such as unclothed models in an art class or nude protesters) are A-OK, as are the swaying hips of any fully clothed erotic dancer. "We don't have a problem with explicit sexual content on the internet," the company wrote. "We just prefer not to be the source of it." Fair enough, but if we were to guess, we'd say the move has more to do with upsetting App Store policies than maintaining a squeaky clean community.
