Is Everyone Who Received Monday's Metro Toronto Guilty Of Child Porn Possession?

from the certainly-seems-that-way dept

We were just talking about how current child porn laws that make you a criminal based on incidental possession alone can be quite problematic. Reader Jesse highlights an example of this. If you happen to have been in Toronto on Monday, and received a copy of Metro Toronto, a popular commuter paper, buried a few pages in was a "featured picture" of some kids celebrating at an annual parade by jumping around in a hot tub. The only problem? The male in the photo appears to be, well... having a wardrobe malfunction. Not unexpectedly, a bunch of sites were having some fun with this... until some realized that these were high school students. At that point, even Gawker -- who will post almost anything -- removed the photo realizing that under current laws, it was likely child pornography. Jesse points out that this would appear to make a bunch of people at the Metro, all the recipients of the paper on Monday, many people who visited blogs like Torontoist and Gawker while they had those photos displayed... potentially at risk for possessing child porn (and in the case of Metro employees and these blogs, for distributing it as well) -- making them all potential felons who could be required to sign up to be on sex offender lists for the rest of their lives. Isn't something wrong with the law when that happens?

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French Porn Execs: Ignore Piracy, Focus On Quality; Japanese Porn Execs: Sue Everyone

from the a-bit-of-a-split dept

It seems that the porn world has had a "love/hate" affair with file sharing. Over the years, we've seen stories of porn film makers embracing piracy to their advantage, and others complaining about it. It's really not all that different than the rest of the entertainment industry. So, it should come as no surprise that different porn execs are responding quite differently in two recent stories. First, comes the news that Japanese porn film producers are looking to sue 65,000 people in South Korea for uploading. That's about double the number of people that the RIAA sued in the US for uploading. Wow.

Meanwhile, reader PrometheeFeu alerts us to quite a different story in France, where industry execs are taking a much more reasonable view on things (article in French, translation provided by PrometheeFeu). The execs admit that it doesn't make sense to try to keep things from users:

"Today all of our new productions simultaneously come out in DVD, download and streaming on our website and on our partner's VOD platforms. Back then, we looked at the music market as an example of what not to do and how to react"

And they know piracy happens, but they figure that it's just a part of the market, and you can't blame people (or sue people) for file sharing:

"If you leave unattended a bag of candy and some children, they will not understand why you punish them for eating the candy. Illegal files are 3 clicks away for just about anyone. It's normal that consumers will take advantage of those."

But, they're figuring out ways to compete, by focusing on high quality, high-end material:

"Of course, the large majority of free and illegal content is low-end. [...] The public rejects this mass of identical video. Whatever small amount of high end content obviously stands out."

The producers in Japan might want to visit France for a lesson on how this works.

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Porn Studios Sue 10,000 Korean File Sharers

from the that'll-work dept

Apparently some porn studios haven't realized what a disaster the RIAA's "sue 'em all" strategy has been. A bunch of US- and Japan-based porn studios have supposedly decided to sue 10,000 individuals in South Korea for uploading unauthorized porn. Do they actually think this will help their business models? On top of this, they're asking the police to investigate as well, hoping to get some of the lawsuits to lead to jailtime. I'm sure that South Korean citizens are happy their gov't signed a "free trade" agreement with the US that included a bunch of provisions put there by US entertainment industry lobbyists, resulting in these strict new copyright laws.

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The Porn Industry, Free And Basic Economics

from the a-primer dept

Someone who apparently disagrees with our stance on using free within a business model submitted a recent LA Times article about struggles in the porn industry as proof that "free" doesn't work. I always find these sorts of claims amusing. First of all, even if "it doesn't work," it's happening anyway. So, the real question is what are you doing about it. Bitching and moaning that "free" doesn't work doesn't change reality.

But, even then, the article doesn't actually support the claim at all. What it does find is that adult performers can't make as much money as they could before, but that's not at all surprising. That's just basic economics again. The tools of production, distribution and promotion have all become much cheaper, and the marketplace has become more crowded. By every conceivable economic measure, it makes sense that the price for the talent may get lower. That's just competition and supply and demand at work.

But does it mean that "free" doesn't work? Again, the evidence is lacking. While some producers who relied on old business models may be having trouble, we've seen others learn to embrace what the technology allows. It doesn't seem that anyone is going to be left wanting for a shortage of porn any time soon -- and give the amount of traffic driven by porn, plenty of producers are figuring out ways to make plenty of money (especially now that their overall costs have gone down).

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Turns Out It's Not Sex Discrimination To Get Fired For Looking At Porn Sites

from the who-knew? dept

Eric Goldman alerts us to an appeals court ruling finding against a guy who claims that his firing was gender discrimination after the hospital he worked for found that he had been surfing porn and "hacking" sites. The guy's entire case seems like a huge stretch. In the department he worked for, there was one computer shared between 7 people, with this guy, David Farr, being the only guy. While each employee had a separate login, apparently whoever logged in first usually just stayed logged in all day. When it was discovered that a number of porn sites were listed in the favorites, the hospital did what sounds like a decently thorough investigation, and found it quite likely that it was Farr who visited the sites (one of the days the activity occurred was a Saturday where he was the only one there). He eventually admitted to visiting 17 of the 31 sites in question, but then later claimed that he had visited sites that installed malware on the computer that added the bookmarks to the porn sites. But then... when confronted again, admitted to visiting the 17 sites.

He claimed that it was gender discrimination, since he was the only guy, there was an automatic assumption that he had visited the porn sites. Yet, the court points out that (1) he failed to show that a female employee wouldn't have been treated in the same way and (2) the hospital was incredibly thorough in investigating the issue, especially after he denied visiting some of the sites. They didn't just jump to a conclusion and fire him, but apparently went into quite a lot of detail in making sure that he had actually been visiting those sites. On top of that, the court notes that his employment was at-will, so the hospital had every right to fire him. It's difficult to see how he thought a gender discrimination claim would get very far given that he admitted to visiting some of the sites, as well as the amount of investigation that was done by the hospital. But, these days, people seem to think that anything they don't like that happens to them must be against the law.

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Googling For Porn Makes You Absent Minded?

from the well-that-explains-it dept

With China trying to stop Google from helping internet users find pornography, it appears that China has picked up its propaganda campaign. Boing Boing points us to the news that a guy quoted as part of a "man on the street" interview by China's state-owned TV news network claimed that searching for porn online can make you absent-minded:

"I have this fellow student and he's been curious about these kinds of things. He visited porn Web sites and ended up becoming absent-minded for a while."

Very convincing. Apparently, lots of other people weren't convinced by the guy's performance, and looked into his background... and discovered that he just happens to be a student intern at the very same TV news network that was asking the questions. So, if you can't find a man on the street to give you the answers that you want, apparently China finds someone they can coach.

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Supreme Court Won't Hear Case Over Computer Tech's Right To Search Your Computer

from the older-ruling-stands dept

A few years back, we wrote about the case where a guy was arrested for possessing child pornography after techs at Circuit City found child porn on his computer, while they were installing a DVD player. The guy insisted that the evidence shouldn't be admissible since the techs shouldn't have been snooping through his computer -- and a lower court agreed. The appeals court, however, reversed, noting that the guy had given Circuit City the right to do things on his computer -- including testing out the newly installed software (which is how the tech claims he found the video). The guy appealed to the Supreme Court, who has declined to hear the case, meaning that the ruling stands for the time being. So, basically, if you hand your computer over to someone else for repairs, at least in some jurisdictions, they may have pretty free rein in terms of what they're allowed to access on your computer.

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That's One Way To Grab Search Traffic

from the we've-got-porn! dept

When Microsoft launched its new Bing search engine recently, we didn't really know what to say about it. Some of us felt like Microsoft was trying to win the last battle against Google, rather than looking ahead to the next one; others pointed to pieces saying that Bing seemed more about knocking off Yahoo than Google, which it looks to have already done; others still pointed to all the next great search engines that have emerged over the years, and failed to unseat Google (remember Cuil?). But none of us mentioned Microsoft's apparent efforts to grab lots of search traffic by making Bing better at delivering porn results. There's been a minor flap over the way Bing displays videos in search results: users can access videos directly from the Bing site, and play a thumbnail version of them by putting their mouse over a preview image. This means that companies, schools or anybody else who wants to block the porn with web filters would have to block Bing completely (Microsoft has given a workaround, but it's pretty cumbersome). The uproar comes despite the fact that it's not all that different to the results delivered by other engines when searching for porn, although Bing seems to be a bit more, uh, comprehensive. While this sounds like a juicy mistake, the more cynical out there might see it as an intentional effort by Microsoft to grab search-engine market share by making Bing great for porn surfers. After all, it only delivers the videos -- and other sexual content -- to users from certain countries, so it seemingly is possible for Microsoft to keep at least some of it out. But with all the attention Bing's grabbed because of the uproar, and not to mention the traffic from porn surfers, it's hard to imagine they're too bothered.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Egypt Bans Porn Websites: Good Luck With That

from the yeah,-that'll-work... dept

It appears that Egypt is the latest country to think that it can ban certain websites by court mandate. In this case, it's all pornographic websites, which have been deemed "venomous and vile" by the court. The lawyer who was arguing against those sites responded happily: "Thank God we won, now the government should stop these electronic dens of vice immediately." Of course, what's been left unstated is exactly how the government can stop pornographic websites? My guess is they'll demand ISPs do it for them. However, in the meantime, we're left wondering how these "venomous and vile" sites are forcing themselves on poor Egyptians. I do plenty of web surfing and have found that simply not surfing porn websites is a rather effective way to not have to deal with such "electronic dens of vice."

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When Does It Stop Being 'Sexting' And Start Being Something More Serious?

from the gray-areas dept

The debate about "sexting" rages on, both here at Techdirt and elsewhere. One of the major points of contention has been that child-pornography laws don't make any distinction about who creates child porn, meaning that kids who take nude photos of themselves and send them out can be viewed in the same way -- in the eyes of the law -- as child pornographers who abuse and exploit children for commercial gain or personal titillation. The catch is that "the eyes of the law" are really the eyes of human prosecutors, who hopefully should realize that charging kids with child-porn offenses is an overreaction. CNN's got a story touching on this issue, but they didn't find a particularly good example: instead of talking about kids who took pictures of themselves, they lead with the story of an 18-year-old guy who sent out a nude picture of his 16-year-old girlfriend to "dozens" of friends and family after they'd had a fight. The guy was subsequently prosecuted under child-porn laws and has had to register as a sex offender. While it's clear the guy wasn't a commercial porn producer, it's also clear that he went a lot further than teens who take photos of themselves, send them out, and then find themselves in hot water. His actions, while caused by a moment of stupidity, were intended to hurt his girlfriend -- much different than teens taking and sending photos of themselves as an expression of their sexuality. To compare the two seems pretty disingenuous, and it's hard to imagine the guy will attract a whole lot of sympathy, but the story does illustrate the very black-and-white world of child porn laws, and how they can be applied with little distinction (or perhaps common sense) by some prosecutors.

Meanwhile, over at the WSJ, the "Numbers Guy", Carl Bialik, has taken a look at the survey that has been widely cited in sexting stories, claiming that 20 percent of teens have taken and sent nude photos of themselves. Bialik points out that the survey was conducted online, calling into question just how representative of the wider teen population the sample was. To ask teens about their online behavior, but only ask teens who are online, seems suspect. But hey, the stat sells the story, right?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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When Having Somebody Transfer Your Data From An Old Phone To A New One, Delete Your Self-Porn

from the helpful-reminders dept

A former Miss Britain who posed for Playboy is suing UK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse after one of its employees copied some "very intimate" pictures from her phone and tried to sell them to some newspapers. The woman, Danielle Lloyd, left her phone at the shop so employees could transfer data from it onto a new phone, and is seeking 50,000 pounds in damages for her stupidity the employee's actions. It's slightly ironic that the woman would be upset about the photos getting out, seeing as she once had a flourishing "glamour model" (Britspeak for soft porn) career, but the episode goes to show how easily privacy can be undermined these days. There's a presumption of privacy when people take a picture on their phone, or put something online on their private or semi-private space; but as we capture and share more and more of our lives, the presumption that the content we capture will remain private should probably diminish.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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After Finding No Joy Elsewhere, SCO Chairman Takes Anti-Porn Fight To ICANN

from the silent-majority dept

A few years ago, Ralph Yarro, the chairman of everybody's favorite tech company, SCO, put forward a plan to ban all internet porn from port 80, the port used by HTTP traffic. He later added that open WiFi should be banned as a means to stop porn. Not surprisingly, his ideas failed to find traction (except with the governor of his home state, Utah) but Yarro and his anti-porn group are pressing on, and are now asking ICANN to set up a "Cybersafety Constituency" to create binding rules on how to deal with net porn. How's this for a binding rule: don't access porn sites, and you won't be bothered with it? The idea that anybody -- let alone ICANN -- should be able to play the role of global web censor is scary, and opens the door to restrictions on all sorts of objectionable, but not illegal, content. As The Register notes, Yarro called for supporters to make comments on the proposal at ICANN's site, and plenty of people from Utah obliged. Wonder what all the people in the state who love net porn think of the proposal...

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Group Reveals There Are Ways To Fight Child Porn Other Than Useless Web Filters

from the progress,-perhaps dept

There has been something of a stink made in the UK after some children's charities complained that some ISPs weren't implementing web filters designed to stop people from accessing child pornography. While trying to stop child porn is certainly an admirable cause, the problem here is twofold: first, the filters simply don't work, and often do more to block access to legitimate content than to stop access to undesirable or illegal material. Second, simply thinking filters will solve the problem focuses only on catching consumers, rather than working to stop the producers and distributors of such reprehensible material. Stopping it at the source would seem to be a much more effective way to combat child pornography, rather than to just focus on the point of consumption. With that in mind, it's nice to see that a new pan-European alliance has been formed to go after child-pornography producers by tracking the flow of money around trade in it. The goal is to track the money back to those who are abusing children and making the porn, which would seem a much better way to fight the real problem. By only focusing on stopping consumption through filters, little is done to actually prevent kids from being abused, or to put the dirtbags who make this stuff out of commission.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Agenda For Sunday Morning: Paper, Brunch, Porn

from the moral-decay dept

According to a British video-on-demand site, the most popular time for British people to watch its porn films is 11:16 on Sunday mornings. Meanwhile, Hitwise, which tracks internet traffic, says Sundays' most popular destinations are shopping and social-networking sites. But its most interesting bit of research is a bit buried: it contends that since September, social-networking sites have garnered more web traffic than porn sites. But, as the video-on-demand guy points out, it's possible, or even likely, that a certain amount of adult content has merely shifted onto the social networks.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The IPO Market Is Dead... Except For Porn?

from the seems-unlikely dept

The IPO market had almost entirely dried up already, before we reached financial meltdown in the second half of the year -- and the resulting financial crisis certainly hasn't made the IPO market any brighter. So, we certainly weren't expecting to hear of any internet companies trying to go public... but it seems at least one company thinks that now's the right time for an online porn company to go public. Apparently, Adult FriendFinder has filed to go public. The company, which used to be known as Penthouse Media Group until it bought the startup Adult Friendfinder not so long ago, is hoping to raise a bunch of money. I'd be surprised if this actually went anywhere. While some might claim that porn is always a growth market, it's a highly competitive one, and often seen as a bit sketchy on the business side. Plus, the underwriters are a little known Russian investment bank. On top of all that, it's looking to use the money not for expansion, but mostly to pay off debt. In this economic climate, with the current IPO window slammed pretty tightly shut, does anyone actually expect this one to go anywhere?

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Davenport Lyons Reported To Authorities; DigiProtect Insists Its Actions Are Aboveboard

from the the-developing-story dept

It seems things kept getting worse for Davenport Lyons and DigiProtect, who have teamed up to threaten an awful lot of people that they need to pay up to avoid getting sued for file sharing, usually on extremely flimsy evidence. That means, way too often, the letters are received by innocent people who wonder why they should pay £500 to avoid being sued for something they never did. It certainly feels like a good old fashioned protection racket, and a UK consumer group has now complained to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) in the UK, noting that a number of innocent folks have been apparently bullied by Davenport Lyons into paying up just to avoid being sued for something they never did. The group points out:

Davenport Lyons' letters to alleged file sharers: make incorrect assertions about the nature of copyright infringement; ignore the evidence presented in defense; and increase the level of compensation claimed over the period of correspondence. In addition, the letters threaten, incorrectly, that failing to properly secure an internet connection is grounds for legal action.

Meanwhile, last month we talked about a clause in DigiProtect's contract that appeared to say that the firm promised to upload the content to various file sharing networks, which certainly looked like they were going to spread the content more widely in order to be able to send out more of these "pre-settlement" letters. Considering DigiProtect promotes its service as helping companies profit from piracy, it wouldn't be surprising to find out that in order to increase profit, it has every incentive to first increase the "piracy." However, the company (who has been rather quiet during all of this) has granted an interview to xbiz where it refutes the arguments that it's uploading content, saying that the terms of the contract were simply necessary to transfer the legal rights to DigiProtect. Of course, if that were true, why not say they transferred the actual copyrights, rather than say they had obtained the rights to make content available, along with listing out the specific file sharing networks. Oddly, DigiProtect then goes on to claim that any online distribution of porn is illegal online due to laws against distributing porn to minors. That seems like a total nonsequitor.

The company doesn't explain the claims from its only named client, Evil Angel, about the fact they were told the pre-settlement letters would be for more like $50. It also refuses to name any other customers, though points out that it works with companies besides porn movie makers, specifically noting that it works with software companies too, but it refused to name any. Perhaps that's because software firms like Atari have backed away from these tactics after all of the negative publicity.

In the end, the whole thing seems pretty questionable. Trying to force people to pay up with threatening, misleading letters with extremely flimsy evidence (which has been barred in some countries) is hardly a reasonable business model. Hopefully, companies think twice before signing up for such a program -- and perhaps the SRA will sanction Davenport Lyons for its participation in this scheme.

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Australian ISPs Refuse To Censor The Internet

from the thanks,-but-no-thanks dept

It looks like the Australian government's latest plan to censor the internet is running into a few snags. Earlier, one big ISP had agreed to take part, but only to show how stupid the plan was. However, a few readers have sent in the news that both Telstra and Internode have refused to take part in the trials that are starting up. Plus, the government is now claiming that the trials won't involve any actual customers. And, from the sound of things, there is growing opposition to the entire plan, with opposition politicians pushing to scrap the whole thing. Maybe the current government officials pushing this plan should have thought through how this would go before unilaterally announcing the plan, and spending plenty of money on it.

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Porn Company Claims DigiProtect Lied About Davenport Lyons Settlement Letter Fees

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

The saga of UK law firm Davenport Lyons, and its ongoing efforts to extract money from people for a promise not to sue them, for copyright infringement continues. The BBC is the latest publication to pick up on the story, noting an awful lot of upset people are pissed off at bogus claims from Davenport Lyons about downloading porn films which they insist they had nothing to do with. Since Atari backed out of its deal with Davenport Lyons following the negative publicity, it seems that the law firm is focusing on its porn clients -- the same ones that apparently encouraged middleman DigiProtect to upload their content widely, to make sure more people were "pirating" it.

But the really interesting claim comes buried at the end of the article. The BBC contacted the porn company, Evil Angel, which hired DigiProtect, to get their thoughts on the negative reaction to the whole campaign, and the guy in charge claims that DigiProtect misrepresented the details to him, and he believed the pre-settlement demands were much lower than the £500 that is in the pre-settlement letter:

"It's not my understanding that they ask for anything near that. I think the amount was $50 or €50. I would be very surprised and I wouldn't be happy because it would mean it was completely misrepresented to me."

Of course, this probably means that Evil Angel is only getting $50 (or maybe even less) per "settlement" leaving somewhere in the range of $700 (depends on the exchange rate) for Davenport Lyons and DigiProtect to split. For doing what? Getting some IP addresses and sending out auto-generated form letters. Nice margins, but sort of proves that these settlements have nothing to do with compensating the content creator.

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Latest Australian Internet Censorship Campaign Begins To Widespread Protests

from the free-the-internet dept

The latest in a long line of attempts by the Australian government to censor the internet is now starting, as ISPs are beginning to filter the internet (sometimes under protest), agreeing to block access to sites on a government blacklist. This plan will cost Austrlian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, on top of the large amounts already spent on earlier plans that failed.

In response to the start of the new filtering, Australian citizens are taking to the streets in protest, though it's unclear how much of an impact that will have. Once these "trials" fail, with both false positives and false negatives, maybe, just maybe someone in power down under will recognize that censorship is just a bad idea.

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UK Says You Can't Have Some Kinds Of Porn, But It Determines What Kinds

from the confusing-much? dept

The Register is covering the rather confusing porn guidelines in the UK, which add certain types of porn to the list of what is illegal to possess. Plenty of countries have laws against possession of child porn, but the UK is extending that to cover images that are "pornographic, grossly offensive and portray activity that threatens harm to life or limb, or involves sex with a corpse or animal." Of course, some of that is open to interpretation -- and TheReg points out that plenty of movies that were approved for viewing in the UK contain footage that probably meets those criteria. The question, then, is, if you have an offending still image from a legal UK video, do you run afoul of these guidelines? Also, oddly, the law says that you're okay if you delete an image -- but not okay if you can retrieve it after deleting. While, undoubtedly, this law is well-intended, it seems to be quite vague and it's difficult to see what public benefit it serves. If the concern is about the harm done in the making of such porn, why not go after the pornographers, rather than the possessors?

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