Archive for the 'Porn' category

Thoughts on CES

Jan 11 2008 Published by under Business, Craziness, Gadgets, Porn, Technology

I just returned from my first trip to the Consumer Electronics show and thought I’d share some thoughts. This is an event that I’ve wanted to attend for years. My first trip was really sort of a shock, awe, and letdown campaign.

Shock - The sheer scope of this thing is incredible. You can’t escape it. Whether its the shuttle bus stops in front of every hotel, the presence of advertising absolutely everywhere, or the size and number of exhibit halls, it is a mammoth undertaking. I’ve been to two GOP conventions, the Iowa straw poll, two cable industry shows, and countless political conferences. Added together, I don’t think they equal the number of people in Vegas for CES. Someone told me (but I have not verified) that between 150,000 and 250,000 people descend on Vegas for the show. The GOP conventions were quoted as 15,000 delegates and 30,000 press for a total of 45,000. Cable’s big show draws around 15,000. They all seemed packed. This was insane.

Awe - The show has the latest and greatest gadgets. I’ve written about a bunch of them on CableTechTalk. You can read those posts here, here, here, here, here and here. My personal favorites had to be the MyVu personal video eyewear, the 3DV camera for gaming, the AnyPlay portable set-top box, DVD and DVR combo, and the Sonos home audio streaming system. If you’re a gadget freak, this is the show for you.

Letdown – The bad news about the show, and what nobody tells you, is how much garbage you have to sift through to get to the gems. For every one cool gadget, there are two places hawking batteries, three places pimping cases for every portable device and four places pushing iPod docks. If I never see another dog shaped, cat shaped, pig shaped, of giraffe shaped iPod dock again, it will be too soon.

The thing nobody tells you is how surreal the whole experience is. I’ve always known that the porn industry schedules its big show (The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo) at the same time. What they don’t tell you is that between porn stars, booth babes, and overweight geeky men, it’s very hard to tell who is there for what. It’s like a giant sea of guys who are absolutely geeked out – only you don’t know if they’re hot for the star of Debbie Does Everything or the latest duck shaped iPod dock.

The other thing to keep in mind is this is a trade show. Like any trade show, it wears thin after the first 36-48 hours – but it lasts four days. Even with four days, there is almost no way you can see everything on the show floor AND go to any of the panel discussions. I could have spent a lot more time doing either, but would have been completely unable to do both.

Would I do it all again if I had the chance? Probably. Would I try to blog it? If I was there for that reason, yes. But otherwise, absolutely not. Trying to squeeze in three to five posts a day on top of the panels and floor was a bit much. It can be done, but you need to get up early, stay up late, and do little else.

In all, it was a fun trip, but I wouldn’t want to do something like it more than once a year.

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Internet Porn – A Favorite Topic

Mar 23 2007 Published by under Craziness, Porn, Technology, The Internet, The Law

I’ve spent more than a few bytes on the subject of the .xxx top level domain (TLD) since I launched this blog. Every time it comes around again, I start harping on the topic and urging rather short sighted people to get behind this idea.

Porn sites are largely concerned that the domain name, while billed as voluntary, would make it easier for governments to later mandate its use and “essentially ghettoize sexual information on the Web,” Kernes said…

Religious groups worry that “.xxx” would legitimize and expand the number of adults sites, which more than a third of U.S. Internet users visit each month, according to comScore Media Metrix…

“They will keep their `.com’ domains, and I have no doubt they will buy their `.xxx’ as well,” said Patrick Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian public-interest law firm. “There will be twice as much pornography on the Internet.”

Now, most people who buy a .com, a .net, and a .org address point all of them at the same site, so the argument that this somehow doubles the amount of porn online is really a specious argument at best. That’s typical of the reactionary religious crowd, but what really strikes me as dumb is the porn producers argument.

As an industry, the porn producers generally go along with zoning laws that are already on the books. Most examples of confrontation between the porn industry and local zoning laws hinges on the lack of zoning against porn and the retroactive establishment of zones after a purveyor of smut has opened his doors. They oppose retroactive laws to put them out of business after they have legally opened.

The .xxx domain is somewhat a similar situation. They see this as yet another attempt to zone them out of business. In this case, though, it’s not quite the same. The cost to redirect .com traffic to a .xxx domain is minimal compared to negotiating a new lease, arranging for packing and moving, and build out costs for new space. The cost side of the question is minimal.

The upside, however, is actually quite beneficial to producers.

Yes, all porn may be corralled into a single TLD. But who cares? It would provide parents with easy to use controls for blocking it, but it would also make things that much easier to find.

Getting back to the zealots, here’s the problem. You’re never going to make porn go away – try as you might. There is several thousand years of artistic evidence that the expression of sex through every possible medium is a staple of society. Culture after culture has depictions of sex on everything from cave walls to ornate vases and urns. It’s not going anywhere.

Why let beliefs that you can somehow change human nature prevent you from taking steps to at least curb the problem? The internet is the medium where you actually could make it relatively difficult for kids to find porn. Embrace that fact.

I hope ICANN finally passes .xxx. It really is an idea whose time has come.

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When Pandering Goes Bad

Dec 13 2006 Published by under Congress, Craziness, Government, John McCain, Legislation, Pandering, Politics, Porn, The Law

Let me first reiterate that all comments on the blog reflect my personal opinion and not the view of my employer. That is very important to note when I feel compelled to make comments about something as stupid as the new McCain effort to pander to the electorate.

Social networking sites and message boards face the same regulatory burden as internet service providers (ISPs) in a new bill proposed by ex-US presidential candidate John McCain. McCain wants sites to report all child pornography to authorities.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of trying to eliminate kiddie porn. Those who are found to support it need to be punished extensively and a special place in hell should be reserved for them. Having said that, let me also point out why this is one of the dumbest public policy ideas ever floated by someone with an IQ higher than his shoe size.

Under this law, this web site, which routinely gets overrun by comment spam, would count as a message board. In the eighteen months I have maintained this blog, I have deleted nearly 10,000 spam comments – the overwhelming majority of which are labeled as some sort of porn.

How many of them are child porn? Honestly, I have no idea. I have yet to click through to one. It’s not that I have anything against porn, but I’m going to find my own if I want to partake, I’m not going to click some skeevy link in a post about Survivor’s season debut.

Under the McCain law, however, I am required to click through to every single one of them, determine whether it is kiddie porn (or, I assume, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2257 requirements for secondary producers), and if I cannot verify the age of anyone present in the pictures, I am to report it, or face criminal charges myself.

The only other option is to report every single link. That would create 10,000 leads the investigative authorities must inspect – creating a massive backlog of investigation if those 10,000 porn spam links are multiplied across the tens of millions of blogs that allow comments. Does the FBI really have the manpower to inspect the 500 billion links that have to be reported by blogs alone?

This proposal clearly indicates two things. First, John McCain clearly knows nothing about technology, blogs, the web, and the practical implications of this asinine proposal. Second, this is nothing more than an attempt to pander for votes by inserting the heavy hand of the federal government.

Here’s a better idea, John. Implement the .xxx domain. Mandate instead that all porn be relegated to that domain, and any porn, of any kind, that is housed at another domain be punishable by fines and jail time. It will a) allow filters to block porn very quickly and easily by simply restricting access to any .xxx address and b) make regulating all porn (kiddie or otherwise) easier by providing stiffer criminal penalties for violations.

(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should, in no way, be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)

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Denise Richards’ Sworn Statement Against Charlie Sheen

Apr 22 2006 Published by under Celebrities, Crime, Porn, Sex

PornCelebritiesCrimeWow!

If you’re a fan of the train wreck that is celebrity life and the media coverage of it, you’ll love this one. Denise Richards’ response to Charlie Sheen’s request for joint custody is an amazing read. It details his fondness for drugs, violence, porn, prostitutes, and generally wacky behavior. This is one that will go down in the history of celeb news. It’ll be bigger that Heidi Fleiss.

Denise states upfront that she was pressured not to file the statement out of a healthy respect for the damage it could do to Sheen’s reputation. Given everyone knows he’s a hooker and drug addict, it shouldn’t be a stretch to see him as an abusive porn addict also. His fans look past that anyway, so I don’t know that this will hurt him too much. Given the power and influence of the Sheen clan in Hollywood, I’ll be curious to see if it damages Denise’s ability to get work.

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Paris Hilton to Play Mother Theresa?

Apr 04 2006 Published by under Celebrities, Movies, Pop Culture, Porn

moviesParis Hilton is going to portray Mother Theresa?

Has the whole world gone nuts? Or should that read Paris Hilton will play Mother Theresa Spanksalot in the new film Mother Theresa Does Dallas?

That’s about the only way this makes sense. Come on, Paris, become the world’s richest porn star. Your sword swallowing turn in One Night In Paris was the only role you’ve had that was believable and the only one people wanted to see.

On a related note, Warhol missed an exception. Apparently billionaire heiresses can afford some sort of snooze alarm and buy more than 15 minutes.

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