Techdirt. Stories filed under "pornography"

iNanny: Apple Takes Down Popular Photo Apps Because They Made Searching For Nude Photos 'Too Easy'

Tim Cushing — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:50:12 PST

We've written here before about Apple's autocratic control of its app store, which has resulted in many questionable removals. To date, Apple has blocked a dictionary (because it contained profanity), a Project Gutenberg scan of The Kama Sutra (ancient sexytime), any app that connects to Dropbox (because... Dropbox?), an educational game based on the current war in Syria (too topical?), a DUI checkpoint location app (political pressure), an app that allowed a mute 4-year-old girl to communicate with her parents (patents!), as well as many apps that were potentially competitive with its home-grown software.

Now, Apple has pulled apps related to the 500px photography network, citing the "easy" availability of nude photos.

Apple has pulled the apps from photography network 500px from its App Store because, after 16 months of use, their clearly marked nude photo galleries suddenly became intolerable.

In addition for 500px's own app, the third-party 500px app ISO500, whose parent company 500px acquired because of ISO500's excellent integration, has also received notice that its app will be removed from the App Store shortly - for the same reason.

500px was notified by Apple that its software update made it "too easy" to find nude images via the integrated search. Initially, Apple said the app wouldn't be pulled but reverted to an earlier version. An hour later, it apparently decided that potentially searchable nudes was too much of a threat to its walled ecosystem and yanked the apps entirely. This seems a little harsh, considering the precautions taken by the software.

Just as it has the whole time, the app defaults to a Safe Search mode that excludes nudity, and you have to log in on the desktop version to change that.

Apple has responded to the strange and sudden removal of 500px's software with the following statement:

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.

Child pornography accusations notwithstanding (back to that in a moment), Apple's stance on nudity (or "pornography," as it prefers to term it) in its "curated" apps is ridiculous. 500px took steps to prevent just anybody from picking up the app and loading up on explicit images. But whether or not 500px made access to explicit images easier ultimately makes no difference. If it's nudity Apple wants to be rid of, it's going to need to shut down a whole lot of software.

But here's the thing: Flipboard integrates completely with 500px as well. Everything you can do on 500px's app, you can do on Flipboard. Is Apple going to pull Flipboard as well? What about Tumblr, Instagram and all browsers - including Apple's own Safari? You can get to nude images with them pretty easily, too.

And the child pornography concerns? 500px claims it was never informed about any alleged child porn -- not by Apple and not by its users.

Tchebotarev has responded to us, saying that 500px was not told about the child pornography complaints and that Apple had not mentioned any issues around nudity until a phone call yesterday. "We've never ever, since the beginning of the company, received a single complaint about child pornography. If something like that ever happened, it would be reported right away to enforcement agencies."

Apple is prone to overreaction when apps are criticized or accused of possible moral/legal issues (see opening paragraph). Rather than contact 500px and have them investigate the offending account(s)/images, it simply dumped the app. On top of that, it didn't even bother to tell the involved parties about this accusation. Apparently, developers should just find articles involving their embattled software and hit F5 until Apple's official explanation is appended to the post.

Yes, child pornography is serious and should be dealt with expediently, but knocking apps out of the market without verified claims is ridiculous. As was pointed out, if a user wants to access child porn, he's got plenty of options, all contained within Apple's approved apps, including its own software. It's a shoot-first approach that does a lot of damage to its relationships with its developers -- but the collateral damage is apparently acceptable.

Apple's arbitrary decisions on apps like this and the ones listed above make it harder and harder to respect its position as a self-appointed moral guardian of all things i-related. Its lack of communication and questionable tactics seem to be the unfortunate byproduct of its position as the most desirable market.

Personally, I'm glad I have an Android. As an adult, I prefer to be given the options befitting an adult, rather than have my software choices limited by a corporation's belief that I shouldn't be trusted with anything "mature" on the off chance that a child might access it. The Android marketplace is full of questionable apps, malware and outright sleaze, but at least it assumes I can make my own decisions on what sort of content I want to view or interact with, rather than pre-screen everything like a helicopter parent rummaging through the Halloween "take," looking for anything with loose wrappers or heavily processed sugars.

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ITU Boss Explains Why He Wants The UN To Start Regulating The Internet

Mike Masnick — Thu, 8 Nov 2012 08:40:08 PST

We've written a few times about why we should be worried about the ITU (a part of the UN) and its attempts to regulate the internet, to which some have responded by arguing that the ITU/UN doesn't really want to regulate the internet. However, the Secretary-General of the ITU, Hamadoun Toure has now taken to the pages of Wired, to explicitly state why he believes the UN needs to regulate the internet. And it appears that many of the initial fears are 100% accurate. We've already covered how the ITU seems to be hiding all sorts of awful scary things by claiming they all fall under the "cybersecurity" banner, and we've noted that the ITU's mandate over cybersecurity is imaginary and its history with the subject is sketchy, at best. However, in the op-ed, Toure doubles down on why the UN should be there helping countries censor things like "porn and propaganda" on the internet as a part of its "cybersecurity" efforts

Governments are looking for more effective frameworks to combat fraud and other crimes. Some commentators have suggested such frameworks could also legitimize censorship. However, Member States already have the right, as stated in Article 34 of the Constitution of ITU, to block any private telecommunications that appear "dangerous to the security of the State or contrary to its laws, to public order or to decency." The treaty regulations cannot override the Constitution.

Many authorities around the world already intervene in communications for various reasons – such as preventing the circulation of pornography or extremist propaganda. So a balance must be found between protecting people's privacy and their right to communicate; and between protecting individuals, institutions, and whole economies from criminal activities.

First, it should be made clear that Toure is being somewhat disingenuous here. The ITU's mandate concerning such communications were written for a different time, when telecommunications meant limited communications systems -- initially the telegraph (yes, that's how far this goes back) and then the telephone. Toure claims that the ITU is "charged with coordinating global information and communication technology (ICT) resources," but that's only in his own mind. The "Constitution" he so proudly points to only refers to telecommunications -- which in this context has a very, very different meaning than broader "information and communications technology." The ITU's charter is for telecommunications only. That is, old telephone networks (and telegraphs before that). In such cases, there was a need for a group like the ITU to help deal with standardization and interconnection among large companies. But, with the internet, their role is basically obsolete. There are other basic standards bodies -- ones that are more open and understanding. But Toure is focused on helping out authoritarian states like Russia and China that want to claim that "pornography or extremist propaganda" should be censored.

This is a serious problem for those who support an open and free internet that provides greater ability for free expression to occur. If people are doing things that violate local laws, go after them legally and prosecute them under those laws. To put it on telcos -- often ones with close ties to state governments -- to block and censor, all in the name of "cybersecurity," is opening up a huge can of worms. There is no need for the ITU to get involved in this situation at all.

Then, there's the second big problem -- and what this story is all about in reality. As we've noted in the past, large, slow, lumbering legacy telcos (many of them either state owned or formerly state owned) haven't innovated at all. They see big internet companies, who are building awesome and fantastic services that consumers want -- and getting rich doing so. In response, they get jealous, and say that they deserve some of that money. And that's what this plan is really about -- the ITU helping its "member" telcos try to divert money from the successful services out there to the big lumbering telcos who failed to innovate. Toure more or less says that in his op-ed, by labeling it as a more "fair" distribution of revenue:

An important and influential factor is network financing, so the conference may consider strategies around sharing revenues more fairly, stimulating investment, mainstreaming green ICTs, and expanding access as widely as possible to meet booming demand.

And that's what this comes down to. It's about diverting revenues from companies who earned it in the market, to the telcos who did nothing, often getting fat and lazy on the back of government subsidies and who are now jealous. But since they make up the core of the ITU and give it its purpose, suddenly it's all about "sharing revenues more fairly."

Thankfully, it appears that most of the commenters on the Wired piece see through this and are calling Toure out on it.

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GOP Platform May Include Internet Freedom Language... But Also Wants Crackdown On Internet Porn

Mike Masnick — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:22:56 PDT

We've discussed the push to get both major political parties in the US to adopt language around internet freedom in their official platforms. With the RNC Convention happening, there's been some news that they are, in fact, putting in some internet freedom language, but the specifics do matter. The Daily Caller report indicated that the language was based on the manifesto that Ron Paul and Rand Paul released a few weeks ago, which had serious problems (such as arguing that the public domain was a "collectivist plot" and that the end-to-end principles of the internet were also some sort of awful conspiracy). One would hope that cooler heads would prevail.

Of course, at the same time, there are numerous reports saying that the same GOP platform will include significant anti-porn language. The GOP has had anti-child porn language before, which makes sense, but they're expanding it to porn in general. And it's being cheered on by various groups who seem... a little excessively happy about this (you should see some of the press releases I've been getting from groups in favor of this). They argue that porn, in general, is "a major, major problem." And Mitt Romney seems to support this, arguing that "every new computer sold in this country after I'm president has installed on it a filter to block all pornography."

No matter what you think of pornography, it's hard to square the idea of supporting internet freedom (or freedom of speech in general) with mandatory filters. Porn filters already exist and are widely available in the market. For those who wish to put them on their computers, it's not like they have a lack of options. To make them mandatory seems highly questionable, and it's difficult to see how one can argue for both internet freedom and mandatory filters at the same time.

Of course, this is politics that we're talking about, where it's pretty common to hold two completely conflicting viewpoints at the same time. I expect we'll see similar contradictions in a couple weeks when the Democrats hold their convention as well...

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Parent Claims 'Ender's Game' Is Pornographic; Teacher Who Read It To Students Put On Temporary Leave

Mike Masnick — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:07:36 PDT

Like many kids, I read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game around the time I was in middle school (where I was from, it was junior high school) -- which is about when it came out. I don't remember exactly when I got the book, but I do remember that the reason I read it was because my father had heard about it and after reading it himself thought I'd like it. He was right. As the next two books in the series came out, I read those too. About five years ago I reread the whole series (including the additional "Shadow" books that came out later) and it's still an enjoyable set of books, even if the first book is by far the best of the bunch. So it's a bit crazy to hear that a middle school teacher in South Carolina was put on paid administrative leave for reading part of the book in class, after a parent argued that the book is "pornographic." I have to admit, I can't remember anything about the book being even remotely "pornographic," though, as Julian Sanchez joked, the book is full of "buggers."

As Reason points out, the police were even called in to investigate, though (thankfully) they quickly determined that no criminal charges should be filed. But, seriously, what is wrong with people that they'd claim that such a popular book, and one that so many young teenagers read, is pornographic, and that a teacher should be investigated for reading it? Since when did we become so fearful of words and stories? Ender's Game is widely considered a good book for teens to read, and with very good reason.

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Senators And Reps Grandstand Against Online Pornography Which Is Destroying Our Social Fabric

Mike Masnick — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:24:50 PDT

Ah, pornography. It's so easy for politicians to grandstand against. Senator Orrin Hatch apparently sent a letter, co-signed by 41 other Senators, to Attorney General Eric Holder, urging him to start enforcing US obscenity laws in going after online pornography.

"Adult obscenity is increasingly harmful, addictive and associated with domestic violence, sex trafficking and other crimes," Hatch said. "It harms women, children, families, and communities. Congress has overwhelmingly passed laws to limit the production and distribution of this illegal obscene material. I am deeply concerned that these laws are not being enforced. I am gratified that so many of my colleagues have joined me on this letter to Attorney General Holder, asking him to enforce the anti-obscenity laws that are already on the books."

In the parlance of our times: [citation needed]. Radley Balko goes through the various claims that Hatch makes about online pornography and debunks them all pretty thoroughly:

The rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s made porn increasingly accessible to the point that today, just about everyone can watch people have sex damn-near any time of day, in every conceivable manner, in every possible vareity. If Hatch and his colleagues are right, over the last 15-20 years, we should have seen a massive increase in the social ills listed in Hatch's letter.
And in fact, every single one of these problems are trending in the opposite direction. It isn't even close:

Sex crimes against children: Down 53 percent between 1992 and 2006.

Abortion: The abortion rate has dropped by about 25 percent since 1993.

Teen pregnancy: In 2009, teen pregnancy hit its lowest rate in the 70 years that the federal government has been tracking the statistic.

Divorce: The U.S. divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1970.

Domestic violence: The rate of reported domestic violence in the U.S. dropped by more than half between 1993 and 2004.

Rape: The forcible rape rate in the U.S. has dropped from 41.1 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 28.7 in 2009. That latter figure is also an all-time low.

These numbers are overwhelming. What's more, there are at least a couple of studies suggesting that the widespread availability of pornography is partially responsible for some of these trends, especially the drop in reported rapes.

Is it really so much to ask our politicians to actually back up some of the claims that they make?

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UK Citizens Worked Up About Broad And Vague Obscenity Law

Mike Masnick — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:55:00 PST

I have to admit that I've never quite understood the point of any sort of obscenity laws. Perhaps it's just my inner-libertarian, but why should the government be outlawing what people look at -- especially when it comes to such a subjective standard as "obscenity." Over in the UK, many people are up in arms over a new pornography law that is so broad and so vague that it could outlaw certain Batman comics, among other things. Defenders of the law will say that this is a ridiculous claim and that the law was intended for no such thing, and, in fact, police have said they don't plan to actively enforce the law.

Of course, that should be a sign of why the law is so problematic. Basically, officials are admitting that they're only going to use it in cases where either they can't find something else on someone, or they just want to pile on. It's not a law for any good reason... it's giving prosecutors an extra tool to take someone down. In the end, it looks like this was just another grandstanding law -- allowing some politicians to announce that they were able to help "protect the children" -- with little thought given to the actual details. That's why it includes a carve-out for movies. So, in theory, you could watch a movie with graphic pornography in it -- but then writing a description to someone else about it would be illegal.

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