Archive for Porn

More US States Restrict Access To Porn…. VPN Usage Spikes As A Result…. Shock… Not….

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 2, 2025 by itnerd

About two or so years ago, a trend in the US started where individual states started to require online porn sites to do some form of age verification to keep kids from accessing online porn. Now whether that is the true goal of the states who do this is an open question as some would argue that these states are trying to restrict access to the Internet. But I will leave you to form your own opinion on that.

As of the new year, the list of states that restrict online porn is as follows:

  • Virginia 
  • Montana
  • North Carolina
  • Arkansas
  • Utah
  • Mississippi
  • Texas
  • Nebraska
  • Idaho
  • Kansas
  • Kentucky
  • Indiana
  • Alabama
  • Oklahoma
  • Florida
  • Tennessee
  • South Carolina
  • Louisiana

Georgia has a law that takes effect in July.

The net result of this is that porn sites such as PornHub which is apparently the biggest player in the online porn space have outright blocked access to their sites in those states. Why? Well, for sites like PornHub to comply with these laws, they would have to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material, which usually involves uploading your ID to them for verification purposes. PornHub clearly doesn’t want to play gatekeeper, nor do they want to be responsible for all that personally identifiable information, so they blocked access instead.

Now history has proven that if someone wants to ban something, those who want access to what is being banned will find a way to access it somehow. Which is why it isn’t surprising to me that according to VPN Mentor, in the state of Florida alone, they detected a surge of 1150% in VPN demand in the first few hours. You have to assume that similar things are happening in other states that have been geo blocked by PornHub. Meaning that the efforts to restrict access to online porn are completely ineffective. Not that I am surprised by that because anyone who has been on the Internet for something longer than 60 seconds could have predicted that this was going to happen. Thus it will be interesting to see what these states do next? Do they ban VPN usage? Do they force ISP’s to hand over info on which of their customers use VPNs? Do they go after PornHub or other online sites for not doing enough in their eyes? Or do they do nothing?

Get the popcorn ready.

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Searches For “VPN” Have Skyrocketed In Utah Since The State Introduced An Age Verification Bill For Online Porn

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on May 5, 2023 by itnerd

Recently, the state of Utah passed a bill that requires age verification to access online porn. It went into effect a couple of days ago. But before that happened, PornHub who are from what I understand are the kings of online porn basically cut the state off from accessing their site and cited this bill as the reason for doing so. That’s lead to a massive spike in searches for “VPN” using online search engines. You can see this in Google Trends where Utah is the number one place in America who are searching for “Virtual Private Network”:

Tech Radar explains why VPN use by Utah citizens is skyrocketing:

By downloading a VPN service, pornography fans will be able to keep accessing Pornhub and similar sites with ease. That’s because a virtual private network is security software able to spoof users’ IP address (digital location and device identifier).

Hence a surge of interest in VPNs across Utah as people will simply need to connect to a server located in a US state or foreign country where the restriction isn’t yet enforced.

This whole episode illustrates that these sorts of measures are totally ineffective. And there’s nothing a government can do to stop people or moderate people from watching porn, or anything else that the government in question doesn’t like. I’ll be interested to see if Utah bans VPN’s next. And more importantly will the state of Utah will do to enforce any of this? This will interesting to watch.

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Man Steals Computer From Church And Demands Removal Of Porn Filter #FAIL

Posted in Commentary with tags , on August 9, 2013 by itnerd

Sometimes you have to just shake your head. A guy steals a computer from a church. If that isn’t bad enough he contacts a software company who makes the porn filter that was installed on the computer to demand that be removed. The computer had Covenant Eyes installed on it, and when they started to get calls from the thief about removing the software, they contacted the church who contacted police. Needless to say the cops were able to put him jail rather quickly.

Clearly he’s no criminal mastermind. Or his mind was on other things. It could be either from what I see.

 

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Time Warner Cable Losing Money Because You Watch Porn Online…. WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on August 6, 2011 by itnerd

I have now officially heard everything. Time Warner Cable is complaining that it’s Video On Demand revenues are down because…. Wait for it…. We’re watching porn on the Internet (because it’s free) rather than on their Video On Demand service (which costs money). Don’t believe me, here’s a quote from an article posted on All Things Digital:

One of the things going on with VOD is that there’s been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down, largely because there’s that kind of material available on the Internet for free. And that’s pretty high margin. That’s been not just this quarter, but going on for some time period.

Okay. When your business depends on porn in whole or in part, you have a problem. That’s not meant to be a value judgement. Just an observation. Though it can’t be that bad based on their latest numbers where they still managed to make a pile of cash. Still, this is going to be a trend for Time Warner, not to mention any other cable or satellite provider. The Internet is the future for content distribution. No wonder ISP’s who have TV and Internet offerings want to throttle you to death to make sure their revenues on their TV side of the business stay high.

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Jobs And Porn On The Same Side When It Comes To Flash… WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on June 30, 2010 by itnerd

If Apple God CEO Steve Jobs was looking for allies in his fight against Adobe Flash, he’s got a powerful one now. Digital Playground who produces porn movies wants Flash dead as Michael Jackson. Ali Joone, the founder and director of Digital Playground stated in an interview with Conceivably Tech:

Mobile browsers run HTML 5 very well. Flash brings everything to a crawl and has an impact on battery life. With HTML 5, there is no reason to show our content in Flash.

And:

“We are waiting for browsers to catch up. As soon as they are ready, we will move everything to HTML 5,” Joone said. He noted that he was grateful for what Flash has delivered, but said that it was “just a matter of time” until Flash disappears. “It’s the next passing of the torch.”

This is ironic as “The Steve” is on record as wanting to not have porn on any of his shiny iDevices. Now, Digital Playground is not a small porn company. They’re one of the top five porn companies according to Wikipedia having hits like “Pirates” and being one of the first companies to produce HD porn. The reason why this might matter is that there is an urban myth that porn drives technology citing the VHS vs. Beta fight back in the 1980s and how porn’s choice of VHS killed Beta. People are arguing that if porn gets behind HTML5, Flash is doomed. I’m not entirely sure that’s the case. But it will be interesting to not only see how this plays out in the Apple vs. Flash debate, but how “The Steve” reacts to having a porn company being on his side.

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Why Does Apple Hate Porn?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on May 24, 2010 by itnerd

Now let me be clear. I’m not a porn advocate. Yes I’ve watched porn, but I don’t say that everybody has to. Apparently Steve Jobs doesn’t agree as he seems to be at war with porn. Let me recap what’s happened to this point:

  • This past February, Apple removed thousands of apps that were considered to be “overtly sexual.” These apps included ones that had jiggly boobs and other things that could be considered juvenile rather than sexual. But that’s a matter of perspective. Phil Schiller of Apple offered this reason to the New York Times: “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,”
  • This past April, Steve Jobs answered a question from Ryan Block in a very strange way. The question was “Are there any plans to allow unsigned applications on the iPhone?” His answer? “You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there.” Sorry, I might have missed a memo, but how does unsigned apps equal porn? I don’t get it.
  • Finally there was a much publicized e-mail exchange between Steve Jobs and Apple customer Matthew Browing. The aforementioned Mr. Browning said: “It appears that more and more Apple is determining for it’s consumers what content they should be able to receive… I’m all for keeping porn out of kids hands. Heck – I’m all for ensuring that I don’t have to see it unless I want to. But… that’s what parental controls are for. Put these types of apps into categories and allow them to be blocked by their parents should they want to.” What did Mr. Jobs reply? “…we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.” Okay then.

Here’s the bottom line. When Apple first came out with the Macintosh, they launched it with the now famous 1984 advert which claimed that “1984 won’t be like 1984.” Here’s a news flash. Apple has strayed away from that. I’m not saying by any means that Apple should have a free for all when it comes for porn, but it’s all about two things in my mind. One it’s about freedom of choice. If I want to watch boobies on my iDevice, that’s my choice to do so and not Steve Jobs choice. Second as Matthew Browning pointed out, parental controls can deal with stuff that parents don’t want their kids to see. Is it perfect? No. But in an ideal world parents would catch whatever parental controls miss. After all, that’s what parents are there for.

So to answer my original question, I don’t have a clue why Apple hates porn. But I do know this. Apple better get a clue here. Otherwise all the Apple fanbois in the world won’t be able to stop Apple from being assigned the perception that Apple is a controlling, dictatorial, judgmental company.

Oh wait. They already have that perception.

Oh by the way Steve, I hate to point it out to you but sex blogger Violet Blue has already pointed out that you in fact get porno onto your shiny iDevices [Slightly NSFW] and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

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Going To Australia? Leave Your Porn At Home…

Posted in Commentary with tags , on May 20, 2010 by itnerd

I don’t know what’s up with Australia, but they seem to be intent on keeping porn out of their country. According to a recent report, travelers to the land down under are required to fill out Incoming Passenger Cards that list what they’re bringing into the country. There’s nothing new about that as I’ve had to do something similar when I travel to the US or I come back into Canada. But here’s where things take a twist. The Australian cards have included a “Pornography” category. If you don’t check the box but have porn on your laptop or phone, you’re breaking the law. If you do check it, Australian customs types are going to see what kind of porn you like. Oh yeah, that includes any pics or vids of you and your significant other doing the mattress mambo. Why are they doing this? Here’s why:

A spokesman said officers were trained to apply “tact and discretion” in their dealings with passengers.

“Including an express reference to pornography is intended to enhance the interception of prohibited pornography at the border, by making passengers aware that some forms of pornography may be a prohibited import,” the spokesman said.

I’m sure that this means that they’re trying to keep things like child porn and the like out of the country. I don’t have a problem with that, but the cure sounds worse than the disease as it’s a real invasion of privacy.

What do you think? Is this justified or does it go too far. Leave a comment and share your thoughts. In the meantime, if you go to Australia you may want to leave your stash of boobs at home.

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Buy A Used Apple Notebook, Get Porn For Free [UPDATED]

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 24, 2009 by itnerd

I don’t make this stuff up people….

I found this posting on eBay for a used PowerBook G4. From the ad:

It also comes with it’s stock power supply, and a grey laptop case, that I got along with it. EVERYTHING is in working condition, and it will run out of the box.

*******SPECIAL********
Includes over 50 full length porn movies (100 hours) From such producers as Digital Playground, Brazzers, Vivid, etc.

Some people will do anything to get stuff to move on eBay. I hope this laptop has been disinfected before it gets shipped to the lucky winner of this auction (which has no bids as I type this).

UPDATE: The listing has been removed…. I gues someone complained to eBay.

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How The CRTC Spends Canadian Taxpayer Money 101: They Approve A Canadian Porn Channel

Posted in Commentary with tags , on August 15, 2008 by itnerd

Okay. I usually don’t post stuff like this, but this is too dumb to ignore.

The CRTC has just approved a license for a company called “Northern Peaks” (which will be run by a company called “Real Productions” (the link isn’t even remotely suitable for work by the way)) who has pledged to have a 24 hour porn channel with 50% Canadian content. Here’s where it gets stupid:

  • They have to carry drama and comedy, long-form documentary, mini-series, theatrical feature films, game shows and human interest programming. I wasn’t aware that porn was that diverse. And who exactly is going to be making sure that they are doing that? Oh yeah, can they (whoever “they” are) even judge what is a drama from a comedy from a porn perspective?
  • They are required to have closed captioning. Are you kidding me? How do you do closed captioning for a porno? Do you print “ooohh” and “aaahh” along with a lot of f-me’s on the screen? The last time I watched porn, there was very little dialogue beyond that.

As for the 50% Canadian content, I guess that if you take the content that Real Productions make and add in all the porn that are produced by people like these (this link is also NSFW), I guess you can get to 50%. Someone who watches a lot of “Canadian” porn will have to tell me if I’m on the mark or not.

I really don’t understand why the CRTC has spent from 2007 to now looking at this. I also don’t understand why the license has these stipulations. This really just seems like a supreme waste of taxpayers money to come up with this stuff. It makes you wonder what they’ll come up with when it comes to real issues like net neutrality.

Okay. Now that I’ve got that off my chest I feel much better. Now back to my usual technology related ranting.

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The Geek Squad: Out For Your Porn

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 22, 2008 by itnerd

If you look at my about page, I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years. Whether I’ve worked on a help desk or in a computer repair shop, I tried to do my job as efficiently as possible. That means getting the problem that the user has fixed and getting out as quickly as possible. That does NOT include going through the users hard drive looking for porn. So it sickens me to read about the Geek Squad’s ongoing problem with it’s employees going through the hard drives of of its customers looking for porn to copy. Violet Blue of the The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about it yesterday, but this story has been floating around for a while. What kills me is the absolute denial from The Geek Squad, as if blaming bloggers and anyone else who talks about this is the way to solve this problem.

Here’s why you should care about this: These jokers are going through your hard drives looking at your private information. They could be your banking records, or your will, or anything else that isn’t porn related. In this age of identity theft, that should scare anyone who takes their computer in for repair at their local computer shop. So it’s not just about porn, it’s about your right to privacy. To be fair there are likely other companies that do the same thing, but this is the one company who has the spotlight on them at the moment. Avoid them until they decide to wise up and deal with their issues.

I’ll be posting a “How to get your computer fixed” guide shortly so that you don’t end up having something like this happen to you. Watch for it.

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