Mobile Porn Ban?

March 3, 2005 10:44 AM

Will mobile phone porn be banned before reaching the mainstream? Startup Companies as well as established veterans alike have been itching to make a buck from the mobile market. Will they ever get the chance? Not in Israel.
posted by analogue (30 comments total)

It would seem this kind of porn could only to to more public masturbation...
posted by AMWKE at 10:51 AM on March 3, 2005

One more reason why I want to move to Israel.
posted by koeselitz at 11:04 AM on March 3, 2005

I'd rather they did something about spam sent to your mobile phone. I had to drop text messaging from my subscription because of all the spam Verizon happily forwarded to my phone in the middle of the night. Maybe it's just that Verizon had crappy spam filters...
posted by Triplanetary at 11:10 AM on March 3, 2005

I hope so. Anything that will give the masses an avenue to be more rude with their phones in public is a bad idea.

If the ads I'm seeing are to be believed, we're just weeks away from asshats playing music videos while you're stuck sitting next to them on the train. Videos of people fucking would be only slightly better, and it's just more content. So ban it, I say.
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:11 AM on March 3, 2005

Has anyone ever seen the assholes that drive around in big SUVs with multiple tv screens all playing porn? This is designed for them.
posted by bob sarabia at 11:14 AM on March 3, 2005

I never understood the idea of commercial mobile phone porn. You can't wait till you get home?

But then again I've never understood the popularity of the mobile phone. For the same reason.
posted by jonmc at 11:23 AM on March 3, 2005

bob, I don't think anyone who's currently enjoying DVD porn on the screens of their Escalade will be content watching it on the tiny little screens of their phones.
posted by tommasz at 11:37 AM on March 3, 2005

i don't like it. ban it. thanks :)
posted by nequalsone at 11:58 AM on March 3, 2005

I'm not sure why this would need to be banned specifically. My girlfriend and I sat behind a guy browsing pornography on a bus this weekend. In a magazine. How is mobile porn more insidious than analogue?

'FAP' is an acronym we used while developing the software, meaning 'Filtered-file Access Protocol'. The name was catchy and it stuck.

I'll bet.
posted by rafter at 12:19 PM on March 3, 2005

Um, I don't really understand the practicalities of this. As far as I remember it (I haven't worked in this area for a couple of years), you can divide mobile networks into those who put their users with walled gardens (e.g. 3 in the UK) and the rest.

If you're not in a walled garden (and most mobile subscribers aren't), then you can roam anywhere on the Internet on your mobile device. The only way I can see to prevent these users from consuming porn would be to cripple the bundled browser with porn filters, but who's going to do this? The manufacturers won't be interested, and the networks shy away from software development (what they want is just high ARPU).

Even if the bundled browser were crippled, people could get around it: that Fapfone application is basically a J2ME-hosted porn browser; it probably uses the J2ME HttpConnection object to screenscrape porn straight off Web sites. This is way too low level for a mobile network to stop without manufacturer involvement...
posted by runkelfinker at 12:30 PM on March 3, 2005

I guess they want to avoid a new `worst job on the planet' entry (used cellphones reconditioning.)
posted by NewBornHippy at 12:35 PM on March 3, 2005

runkelfinker: good point, but it won't be the first time someone disabled inherent functionality in a device to appease The Man.
posted by analogue at 12:50 PM on March 3, 2005

On those long business trips... sometimes only 100x150 "Candy" can keep me going.
posted by thanatogenous at 12:52 PM on March 3, 2005

rafter: I'd say that mobile porn is more accessible. And also that people who wouldn't necessarily go out and buy a magazine would look at stuff on the Internet, or on their mobiles.

I can't imagine what life would be like with people accessing this sort of stuff in public. I find it interesting that the articles only mention children being exposed to porn. I am pretty sure that the level of public harrassment of women would increase with more availability of mobile porn. I'm not talking about sex crimes or anything, just the jerks who hassle people in the street and stare at them on trains. It gives them one more weapon.

I'm not necessarily anti-porn, but I think that mobile live objectification of women is the last thing I need in my life right now.
posted by different at 1:01 PM on March 3, 2005

So, following your logic, we should ban games from mobile phones because if people play them in public they'll be more likely to shoot people in the street?

{Berek thinks that mobile politics should be banned to prevent people voting Republican in public}
posted by berek at 1:13 PM on March 3, 2005

berek: I fail to see how your example makes any sense. In order to shoot someone, you need a gun. In order to annoy someone and make them feel uncomfortable, you only need to stare or leer or comment.

Anyway, how does playing snake make you want to shoot someone?

I agree with your mobile politics example though ;)

I'm not suggesting that porn leads to harrassment - only that mobile porn gives street harrassers one more weapon.
posted by different at 1:24 PM on March 3, 2005

My barber has recent copies of Playboy along with the National Geographics and Golf Digest. Rarely do I see anyone checking out the centerfolds, so I doubt mobile porn is going to lead to porn addicts jacking off in public.
posted by disgruntled at 1:24 PM on March 3, 2005

I don't know if that's a valid comparison. After all, there's a difference between having porn available when you happen to be somewhere, and being able to access porn when you, erm, happen to feel like it.
posted by different at 1:28 PM on March 3, 2005

I don't like this for one simple reason: you give control to some regulatory agency to decide what "porn" is. No thanks -- I take my freedom of speech seriously. Even if it is annoying or troubling sometimes.
posted by teece at 1:34 PM on March 3, 2005

to appease The Man.

god forbid someone not being able to make a buck. are you really this big a doofus?
posted by quonsar at 1:38 PM on March 3, 2005

The main result of banning legal mobile porn will be to vastly increase the profit potential of any illegal mobile porn.
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:40 PM on March 3, 2005

Now I don't even use a cellphone. Soon, I'll "check my messages" at least 2-3 times a day.
posted by graventy at 1:54 PM on March 3, 2005

quonsar: yeah, god forbid, doofus.
posted by analogue at 2:09 PM on March 3, 2005

I just can't wait until I enjoy sitting next to a guy on an airplane with porn coming out his mobile speakerphone.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:23 PM on March 3, 2005

Well, unless they start using a filtered list of domains to block internet access to, there's no way to stop porn on mobile phones, which is already quite possible, no company needed. Newer phones have web browsers built in, people can go point them at porn sites right now.

Since porn companies change domain names, server addresses, etc constantly, and since there are a million ways to use redirection and anonymous proxies to visit sites, there's nothing they can do (in a technical sense) to stop this.

Nor should they, really -- it's already illegal to display this stuff in public. I remember at least one recent case of a man arrested locally for driving around with porn easily visible in his car DVD system. So we already have an enforcement mechanism for those using it for harassment or otherwise. Banning people from using this in their hotel room on a trip, say, is just silly.

I don't understand why people are so quick to want to prevent all uses of something just because some people might abuse it. There's very little people can't abuse if they are assholes. Why don't we just prosecute the assholes and leave the other people alone?
posted by wildcrdj at 2:37 PM on March 3, 2005

what is, and always has been, the litmus test of any new technology?

"can it be used for porn?"

i work for a large cutting edge phone company. we sell porn to users - both licensed inhouse content, and as an onseller of third party content.

it's fairly tame. it sells (unsurprisingly) very well.

we also have a check linked to the user's details to ascertain that they are 18 years of age or over.

nothing to see here. move along.
posted by soi-disant at 3:00 PM on March 3, 2005

well. if someone would post some porn there would be something to see here.
posted by disgruntled at 3:08 PM on March 3, 2005

moving along now
posted by disgruntled at 3:09 PM on March 3, 2005

Soi-disant, how does a large cutting-edge phone company produce porn inhouse? "Come on girl, V***zon loves ya baby. ... Oh yeah, money shot coming, who's your daddy, V***fone's ya daddy!"

( a world where TMT stands for Tits, Muff and Testicles )
posted by runkelfinker at 3:12 PM on March 3, 2005

runkelfinker: heh. perhaps i've been misconstrued. although i did make a similar suggestion myself -

"we have a meeting on level 2 with the marketing girls. come immediately. bring a camera and tissues."

what i meant to say was that some of the content is produced specifically for us, and for that medium, and some is more generic, um, titillation.
posted by soi-disant at 5:00 PM on March 3, 2005