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'Porn King' Says Google Should Block Porn Access

Posted by Zonk on from the i-guess-he's-thinking-of-the-children dept.

mikesd81 writes "The Register has a story saying that one of the world's biggest porn producers wants Google and other search sites to put up barriers between kids and adult entertainment. 'Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman and co-founder of Vivid Entertainment, is to deliver this message on Saturday in New Haven, Connecticut as he addresses an army of Yale University MBA candidates. "Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material," Hirsch proclaims from inside a Vivid press release. "None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction.'"

74 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Oh the Humanity! by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Steven Hirsch: "Won't somebody please think of my profit margins ... *cough* I mean ... children?!"

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Oh the Humanity! by sm62704 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wish you would have added your reasons for saying "profit margin" , but since you didn't I will.

      Google will find plenty of dirty pictures that don't cost a penny. This asshat's dirty pictures you have to pay for.

      I'd say something about the technical impossibility of filtering out porn but since the thread has been up for two minutes I'm sure someone else has.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    2. Re:Oh the Humanity! by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because Google isn't a porn site?
      Really? Do an image search for some porn. See all those thumbnails? Generated by Google's own software and hosted on Googles own servers.
      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    3. Re:Oh the Humanity! by orclevegam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Google already has a "Safe Search" feature on google images that's enabled by default and blocks (or attempts at any rate) pornographic images. I see no reason to implement something similar in the regular search results, as you won't see anything unless you click through to the site anyway. I'm going to be supremely pissed if I have to start clicking a "Yes I'm 18 or older" link every time I want to do a damn search on google because of this stupid whining. Google is not a "content provider", they are a content aggregator, the fact that they attempt to categorize and sort the content is incidental and they can't be held responsible for it because they didn't actually create it and therefor cannot guarantee it's been identified properly.

      --
      Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
    4. Re:Oh the Humanity! by orclevegam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because Google isn't a porn site?
      Really? Do an image search for some porn. See all those thumbnails? Generated by Google's own software and hosted on Googles own servers. And in doing this research did you happen to notice the "Safe Search" feature that blocks those images unless you agree to view them?
      --
      Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
    5. Re:Oh the Humanity! by plague3106 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well personally I think its the parents job, and not society's, to filter what the children should see.

    6. Re:Oh the Humanity! by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do an image search for porn. The image filter is on by default. If it's not filtering, it's broken.

      Also, if parents let their kids search for porn on Google, it's up to the parents to stop it, not Google. Google is not a Net Nanny (TM) nor should it be one.

      Now, I do see an aftermarket opportunity for value-added software to work with Google, Inc., to develop filters that parents, schools, and others who want "child-friendly" computers can use that will greatly reduce adult-oriented material in Google search results. Even better if the major p0rn industry players help out.

      Just keep the government out and don't make me sign in to avoid the filters.

      Not that I want porn, I just don't want filters.
      --
      Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    7. Re:Oh the Humanity! by dpilot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He's not concerned about people with "safe search" checked. He's fussing over people without it checked getting access to his images without his getting any money for it.

      Or you could say that he's either "insufficiently diligent" or "insufficiently knowledgeable" to protect images on his sites from deep searching.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    8. Re:Oh the Humanity! by crymeph0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I also used to think that it was the parent's, and only the parent's, job to filter out inappropriate content. But then one day, I was in the checkout aisle at the grocery store, and every single one of the women's magazines had a headline like "Have Hot Sex Tonight!!", "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!", "Naughty Nasties You Can Do To Him In The Bedroom!!!!!!!!!!". Right there, in the open, next to the freaking candy.

      Granted, there weren't pictures of the mentioned techniques on the front covers of these magazines, in fact the front cover pictures were your typical fully clothed, respectable looking, successful women, as you'd expect in a modern woman's magazine. But doesn't it seem like having those kinds of headlines at eye-level to a fifth grader might make our children get some wrong ideas about sexuality, as in, it should always be on their mind, because it's always on the front cover of those magazines?

      What am I supposed to do about that kind of situation, keep my kid inside and away from grocery stores until they're 18? The point is, it is the parent's primary responsibility to filter out unwanted material, but that doesn't give you the right to go around glamorizing, or even normalizing, overtly sexual behavior in places you could reasonably expect to find a preschooler.

      I don't believe government regulation is the way to solve this kind of issue, but I think it's well within your rights (including your First Amendment rights), to speak out and ask the corporations, who do have some kind of control what gets displayed where, to do something about it.

      For the record, I plan to use a locked-down computer with all sorts of nanny software when my child gets old enough to use one (he/she is due in July, which is why I've been thinking about it more), so this particular issue of Google and Yahoo possibly not doing enough to filter things for the populace at large isn't going to affect me. I just wanted to point out that society, including businesses and including you, the individual, isn't entirely free of responsibility when it comes to someone else's child.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    9. Re:Oh the Humanity! by blacknblu · · Score: 2

      OK, I'm no longer a kid, but if I was looking for porn, the first thing I would do is change that setting.

      --
      "Does this wine taste funny to you?" -- Socrates
    10. Re:Oh the Humanity! by mental666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The OP brings up a very good issue. Webmasters should have a means to tell search engines what type of content is ok to index vs what kind is not. For instance, a plain text file at the document root that spelled out what subpaths were ok to spider and cache or not. We could establish a convention for this directive. Perhaps a convention of calling this file of directives something consistent across sites... a 'robots.txt' if you will. Oh..... wait.....

      Seriously though, perhaps it is time to extend robots.txt to include more metadata about more conditions where content can be spidered. Simple augmentation of paths with a few tags such as NSFW, Pr0n, and goatse could go a long way to helping.... blah blah.. insert semantic web tripe here....

    11. Re:Oh the Humanity! by xaxa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd be more worried as a parent if I saw my 14 year old son searching 'guns' on Google than 'porn'. The default filter doesn't block guns -- and it shouldn't. I don't think it should block porn either.

    12. Re:Oh the Humanity! by Irish_Samurai · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Your standard is not the standard.

      Granted, there weren't pictures of the mentioned techniques on the front covers of these magazines, in fact the front cover pictures were your typical fully clothed, respectable looking, successful women, as you'd expect in a modern woman's magazine. But doesn't it seem like having those kinds of headlines at eye-level to a fifth grader might make our children get some wrong ideas about sexuality, as in, it should always be on their mind, because it's always on the front cover of those magazines? Your kid cannot perceive the information the same way as you. They have no running history or experience that might even give them the faintest insight into what "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!" might mean. The closest they can get is to relate it to sex, and in 5th grade, sex is just a barely recognizable concept to them.

      With no trigger time those statements lack context, without context those statements have no meaning other than whatever the kid makes up - which I guarantee will be totally wrong due to said inexperience. The same is true for any subject that child has never experienced. There is no damage being done to children becuase there is nothing to damage, the child's worldview will not allow them to consume the information that way.

      Now, it may bug the shit out of you, because you have real live personal experience to put it into context. And since you're posting on /. I'm going to assume you have an IQ over 60, can see in color, and know how to breathe out of your nose. These assumptions being true, you have the ability to imagine a scenario where the headline has a negative effect on a child and their perception of sex and turns into a real problem for them down the road.

      This is inaccurate. Let's remove from the situation all likelyhood that a fifth grader has no interest in "housewife" magazines, but yet an interest in the more age appropriate materials that the marketers have placed there especially for them to trigger the "nag marketing" effect. So now those "harmful" words can attack a child's fragile psyche unabated. That child STILL has no clue what they mean. So they very well can't extrapolate that the message is telling them to pay attention to sex more often. The only knowledge most kids have of sex at this age is clinically how it works. And even if they have experience first hand, I can promise you it wasn't positive.

      The effect you are describing has no way to manifest anywhere except in your head.
    13. Re:Oh the Humanity! by russotto · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I also used to think that it was the parent's, and only the parent's, job to filter out inappropriate content. But then one day, I was in the checkout aisle at the grocery store, and every single one of the women's magazines had a headline like "Have Hot Sex Tonight!!", "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!", "Naughty Nasties You Can Do To Him In The Bedroom!!!!!!!!!!". Right there, in the open, next to the freaking candy.


      Yeah, there's somebody at the local grocery stores who likes to cover up the women's magazines. It took me a while to figure out their criterion for censorship... it's the word "sex".

      Guess what. It's just a word. I uncover the magazines.

      The point is, it is the parent's primary responsibility to filter out unwanted material, but that doesn't give you the right to go around glamorizing, or even normalizing, overtly sexual behavior in places you could reasonably expect to find a preschooler.


      There's nothing remotely abnormal in the first two of the headlines you posted. And there's no reason the rest of the people of the world should be restricted in their public utterances or publications to that which you find appropriate for a pre-schooler. If you wish your child to have a filtered, desexualized version of the world, there's probably a single-sex boarding school you could send him or her to. Making the entire world, outside a few adult-only refuges, into such a place is not a reasonable demand.
    14. Re:Oh the Humanity! by plague3106 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I also used to think that it was the parent's, and only the parent's, job to filter out inappropriate content. But then one day, I was in the checkout aisle at the grocery store, and every single one of the women's magazines had a headline like "Have Hot Sex Tonight!!", "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!", "Naughty Nasties You Can Do To Him In The Bedroom!!!!!!!!!!". Right there, in the open, next to the freaking candy.

      Which is why many stores have a no-candy lane, which typically also don't have these magazines. The other option is to leave the kid at home. Again, society has apparently decided this is ok, so if you're in the minority that has a problem, YOU need to work around it, not bend the majority to your will.

      Granted, there weren't pictures of the mentioned techniques on the front covers of these magazines, in fact the front cover pictures were your typical fully clothed, respectable looking, successful women, as you'd expect in a modern woman's magazine. But doesn't it seem like having those kinds of headlines at eye-level to a fifth grader might make our children get some wrong ideas about sexuality, as in, it should always be on their mind, because it's always on the front cover of those magazines?

      That line of thinking is just plain dumb. Parents are the single greatest influence on their children, not all this outside stuff. Sex gets on your mind because of biological reasons, not because you saw magizines at an age where you might not even know what is being talked about. Do you think a kid that doesn't know about sex has any idea what the "naughty things you can do to him in the bedroom" implies?

      What am I supposed to do about that kind of situation, keep my kid inside and away from grocery stores until they're 18? The point is, it is the parent's primary responsibility to filter out unwanted material, but that doesn't give you the right to go around glamorizing, or even normalizing, overtly sexual behavior in places you could reasonably expect to find a preschooler.

      You're delusional if you think that a preschooler can even read the magazine cover and even know what is being talked about. You're also delusional if you think that hiding magazines will keep kids from ever knowing about sex. At some point biology enters into it. As a responsible parent, you should have discussed the relevent issues before that happens. There's a reason girls brought up in a strict Catholic upbringing and going to all Catholic schools become the campus slut in college.

      I don't believe government regulation is the way to solve this kind of issue, but I think it's well within your rights (including your First Amendment rights), to speak out and ask the corporations, who do have some kind of control what gets displayed where, to do something about it.

      No, its not. Instead of getting government to censor people, you're trying to get corporations to do it for you. Same result, different tactic. Censorship is censorship no matter what group is enforcing it.

      For the record, I plan to use a locked-down computer with all sorts of nanny software when my child gets old enough to use one (he/she is due in July, which is why I've been thinking about it more), so this particular issue of Google and Yahoo possibly not doing enough to filter things for the populace at large isn't going to affect me. I just wanted to point out that society, including businesses and including you, the individual, isn't entirely free of responsibility when it comes to someone else's child.

      If its my responsiblity to help raise your child, than I should get a say in how you're raising your child. If you're going to blame me because your child didn't come out the way you wanted, then I certainly can be more involved in how you raise your kid. For the record, I think religon is garbage, so when raising your kid, raise them atheist. I don't want you filling your kid's head with fairy tales and myths.

    15. Re:Oh the Humanity! by crymeph0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If they're smart enough to sneak around the walls I set up around them undetected, I've raised them right, and they're probably ready to start facing the "real world". If they aren't, they need to get smarter and start thinking more for themselves before they can get out. The "wall" is as much a training mechanism as a protection mechanism, in that it makes them think.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    16. Re:Oh the Humanity! by g0bshiTe · · Score: 4, Funny

      deep searching

      I think I saw this Vivid video.
      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    17. Re:Oh the Humanity! by crymeph0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your kid cannot perceive the information the same way as you. They have no running history or experience that might even give them the faintest insight into what "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!" might mean. The closest they can get is to relate it to sex, and in 5th grade, sex is just a barely recognizable concept to them.

      Even if the child doesn't really understand what sex is, those headlines will make him or her think it's something they should be doing a lot of, because those magazines straight-up glamorize it on the front page. I don't think I can say with a straight face that won't have an effect on how they view sex, and particularly how much they should be having, when they do come to understand more about it. "The formative years" isn't a cliche, it's true.

      I will agree that the particular issue of these magazines in the newsstands is a gray area, where reasonable people can disagree (you and I are two such). The gray area aspect of the whole "where is the border between acceptable displays of sexuality and porn" is precisely why I say I am against government intervention in this space, and would rather have a conversation with the owners of the newsstands/websites/etc. directly, as a consumer. This allows them to make an informed choice themselves about what their consumers want. I'm not going to sue them if they refuse to take the magazines down, but I will go to another store if I can find one that does agree with me.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    18. Re:Oh the Humanity! by mental666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, the abuse is a side issue. I understood the article as someone trying to push the burden of not displaying smut onto google. The reality is that had they implemented a sane robots.txt file in the first place, this would never have happened.

      So, from the perspective of liability, IMO the webmaster is responsible for exercising due diligence in creating a robots.txt that would have prevented booby thumbnails from turning up on google when little johnny was searching for legos (spelled 'big titty chicks', but he really meant legos... his mom swears).

      Now, in that circumstance abuse or compliance of the contents of a robots.txt file still falls to the site owner and not some third party (google).

      Are there flaws in my idea? Certainly, it's the product of 5 minutes of thought and a bit of sarcasm. However, it seems to me that demanding google or any other search engine not show porn it spidered is silly especially since google actually honors robots.txt. Were the situation different I would argue that if a webmaster doesn't want something spidered you should adhere to that.

    19. Re:Oh the Humanity! by Mister+Whirly · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel." - Homer Simpson

      --
      "But this one goes to 11!"
    20. Re:Oh the Humanity! by mental666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're kind of conflating two issues. It isn't so much about security (so password protection doesn't apply). Nor is it about robots.txt (vivid wants to be found).

      The issue is that what vivid would like to have happen is that if an 18+ year old person were to google for 'return to booby island' he would find links to or images from vivid entertainment.

      If someone underage were to search for the same thing, google should magically know and display more appropriate images.

      The current industry standard comes up a little short WRT robots.txt since it's a binary statement and what they're really after is conditional qualifiers. Essentially they're looking for a way to express situations when that content is valid to display or not.

      Now, all of this comes with a big grain of salt. The actual article and opinions expressed are... not very reasonable or well thought out IMO.

    21. Re:Oh the Humanity! by crymeph0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If its my responsiblity to help raise your child, than I should get a say in how you're raising your child. If you're going to blame me because your child didn't come out the way you wanted, then I certainly can be more involved in how you raise your kid. For the record, I think religon is garbage, so when raising your kid, raise them atheist. I don't want you filling your kid's head with fairy tales and myths.

      So you agree with my idea in principle, we're just quibbling over price. I can deal. I will agree that my child will be raised to respect your opinions, and not in a Southern Baptist "I respect your opinion, you hell-bound faggot" sense, but really to accept that you have the right to live your life the way you want. My child will also not kill you or your family for sport.

      In exchange, I only ask that you not swear or talk about sex in front of my child before they're at least in middle school. That's all

      Everybody in this thread has assumed that I am somehow hell-bent on keeping my child away from all uncomfortable subjects until they're 18, and that I want everyone else to stop what they're doing so it doesn't interfere with my master plan. That's not the case, I just think people need to respect that children are impressionable, and just because it's primarily the parent's job to filter out the bad, it's not necessarily alright for you to act like there will never be children in a public place.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
    22. Re:Oh the Humanity! by greenbird · · Score: 4, Insightful

      but that doesn't give you the right to go around glamorizing, or even normalizing, overtly sexual behavior in places you could reasonably expect to find a preschooler.

      Yeah, because we all know that any kind of sexual behavior is abnormal and only perverted sickos think otherwise. Now hurry up so I can get home and watch my Rambo V rental video.

      Why is it sex is sick and perverted while glamorization of mayhem and violence is accepted as good and normal. A video game company makes a game in which the objective is murder and mayhem of every form but when it comes out that is has a hidden scene depicting consensual sex it becomes a major scandal. A nipple slipping out during halftime of a game dedicated to violently slamming people to the ground turns into a national crisis. I just don't get it.

      --
      Who is John Galt?
    23. Re:Oh the Humanity! by severoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In all fairness, I like Google and freedom and all that good stuff, but they messed up safe search. It shouldn't be a user settable option, the safe Google search engine should be at a different URL. Like safe.google.com or something like that. This way, if I'm a parent I can whitelist safe.google.com and ban www.google.com at my router. Kids still get google and all the wonders of the Internet and I get to exercise soul-crushing control over every aspect of their lives. (Not that I would, as a parent, do this...but we must recognize that there are irrational people out there that believe it's a good idea to shield their kids from having to deal with the world in the hopes that, at some point in the future, thrusting them into said world with a complete lack of practice, understanding, and context will allow them to flourish. And these irrational people will make life difficult for us all unless we may it easy for them to corrupt their children by pervasively imposing limits on every aspect of their existence.)

      Wikipedia could do the same thing too—it wouldn't be hard to create, say, a couple or three categories of safety and then create subdomains like safe1.wikipedia.org and safe2.wikipedia.org that only allow browsing of that safety level (inclusive of safer levels, obviously). Same as before, parents block wikipedia.org and whitelist the safety level they're comfortable with. Best of all, with this approach specific content can be targeted at different levels of safety. Say I view an article on xtina piercing, for example. The helpful image might be listed as "unsafe" whereas the text describing the topic might be at safety level 5. Viewing that article via www.wikipedia.org would show the whole deal. Viewing at safe5.wikipedia.org would show the text and a placeholder for the image. Viewing that article via safe4.wikipedia.org would show a placeholder for the entire article: "This content is unsafe for viewing at safety level 4." Or vice versa—maybe if I'm browsing an article on an organization called "Kill the Purple Beast", the text of the article exceeds my safety level but the image of Barney is just fine for display, so that's all I see. Then at least I know the "purple beast" they're referring to is Barney, and I've gotten some value from the experience.

      --
      but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
    24. Re:Oh the Humanity! by penguin_dance · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That being said, we are sexualizing our children at an alarming rate. What bothers me more than titillating (pun intended) headlines is when we, as a society, think it's okay, even cute, to let our daughters dress up like the little slut girl bands they admire. And I'm not sure why any parent would think it's okay to let their pre-teen (or teen) wear a shirt or pants that say things like "juicy" on them. Or sending babies out in beauty pageants made up like little adults. What message are we sending to both our children and to those who prey on children? Children are much more aware of things than they used to be. No wonder, we're throwing it in their face in every area of society and then saying, "Ignore this until you get older." Yes the fifth-grader might not be interested in the "housewife" magazines. But he will be sure to notice the anime girl on the latest gaming magazine that looks like she walked out of Penthouse.

      --
      If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
    25. Re:Oh the Humanity! by caluml · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well personally I think its the parents job, and not society's, to filter what the children should see. We've got to turn to "Frosty Piss (770223)" to save us all have we?
      --
      Get your own free personal location tracker
    26. Re:Oh the Humanity! by glitch23 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      .but we must recognize that there are irrational people out there that believe it's a good idea to shield their kids from having to deal with the world in the hopes that, at some point in the future, thrusting them into said world with a complete lack of practice, understanding, and context will allow them to flourish.

      Yes, because *sarcasm on* simple nudity and exploitation of nudity, people, and sex for profit (i.e. porn) are the same thing so kids should be educated early about both without prejudice.*sarcasm off* Obviously one person's irrational ideas of what irrational parenting is is another person's rational parenting when examined properly. Parents will shield their children from porn but they can make the distinction between porn and nudity in and of itself. I have a feeling anyone can make it through the world without being informed of pornography (your complete lack of practice, understanding, and context is fine in this case) and I'm sure many people were able to do so prior to the proliferation of porn via the Net.

      I do agree that Google should make it easier for their search capability to be used by children while still making it easy for parents to filter out what they don't want their children to see. Doing it at the domain level would indeed make this easy. This is also why I thought having an entire TLD for porn (.xxx) was a good idea because it would make filtering it easy assuming you could enforce porn sites to only use that TLD. I know some conservative groups thought it a bad idea though because it would lend credence to porn. It would allow easier filtering when desired IMO.

      And for search engines to accidentally bypass those filters to display porn isn't their fault. As someone stated, there are ways to prevent search engines from indexing it. Vivid's IT department needs to read up on that before someone complains needlessly. By the way, Porn King? I thought they were talking about me but I guess there is more than 1.

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
    27. Re:Oh the Humanity! by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Here's an easy solution and you don't even have to teach your kid to not kill atheists in their spare time.

      Every time you see a magazine: tell your kid how stupid those magazine are. By the time they can read the word sex they'll have gotten impressed into their impressionable young mind that those magazine are stupid and to be disregarded. If they don't trust your assessment then you're screwed either way and no headline is ever going to do more damage than that setback. Don't say the magazine are "bad". Just belittle them and immature and stupid.

      While they're young they'll believe you because you're like a God to them. When they're old they'll believe you because you've told them every day of their lives that they're for "desperate old ugly housewives who have nothing to do with their time and live sad pathetic lives". Nothing enticing. Just something the 'uncool' mom would read. Something you wouldn't be caught dead by your friends reading or even looking at.

  2. XXX domain names. by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Insightful

    .XXX domain names would help here. Sure, it won't prevent kids from accessing 100% of adult content, but it would certainly make it easier for sites like Google and applications like Net-Nanny filter the adult sites with that domain. It would also go a long way toward showing that adult site operators can be responsible and are putting forth an honest effort to limit "adult content" to adults only.

    --
    There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
    1. Re:XXX domain names. by rs79 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I see it took slashdotters about 3 postings to figure this out. Rocket science it aint.

      " No they wouldn't. Repeat after me, "DNS is not a content classification system". "

      Inherently, not, you're right. But it can be used as one. Look at .museum which is only for museums, or .arpa or .coop or .mil or .aero for example(s) which all have specific uses. New DNS names are what we define them to be and have no intrinsic semantic property that precludes using them in this or any other way.

      So, if porn slowly migrated over to .xxx and google "safe search" filter ignored .xxx sites it would be possible by fairly simple technical means to do exacly what TFA wants.

      You'll note that .xxx passed ICANN approval at one point and went up to the Department of Commerce, ICANN's overlord, for rubber stamp approval, the last stop before being put in the legacy root zone. Insiders tell me Karl Rove himself nixed it as a political favour to the Southern Baptist convention who demanded it never see the light of day.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    2. Re:XXX domain names. by SCHecklerX · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's stupid. If you must do something with domain names, then create '.kids' and make it kiddy safe. This makes much more sense, since then you can 'deny all; allow *.kids' on your censoring device of choice.

    3. Re:XXX domain names. by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with .xxx is that - no matter how many times people thoughtlessly suppose otherwise - it would not remove a single pussy or cock shot from the .com namespace. The owner of xxxample.com isn't going to drop that domain; he'll just fork over the cash for xxxample.xxx and operate both.

      The only way .xxx would accomplish anything is if its use were required by law. Even if the U.S. legislature did that, and it passed Constitutional review, all that would do is send the porn sites to incorporate and operate overseas... so not only would it be ineffective, we'd be exporting yet another industry out of the U.S.

      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
    4. Re:XXX domain names. by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's stupid. If you must do something with domain names, then create '.kids' and make it kiddy safe. This makes much more sense, since then you can 'deny all; allow *.kids' on your censoring device of choice. So you're telling me I should block all content, including Linux.com, distowatch, slashdot, CNN.com, NYT.com, FoxNews.com and so on just so my 12-yr old doesn't accidentally stumble upon a porno site while researching the dangers of breast enlargement surgery? Why not just block the bad stuff. Sorry, but it doesn't make much sense to stunt the intellectual development of kids just so you can still "accidentally" stumble upon porn. If you want to find porn, you should LOOK for porn! Using the .xxx domain also keeps those pesky breast enlargement danger sites off my porn search!

      And, yeah, I think there should be a .kids domain as well. It would work great for small kids in the home. Unfortunately, there is a large range where they are too old for the .kids stuff, but not quite ready for hard core animal anal action yet.
      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
    5. Re:XXX domain names. by hymie! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      " No they wouldn't. Repeat after me, "DNS is not a content classification system". "

      Inherently, not, you're right. But it can be used as one.

      You're only half-right. DNS as content classification can be used to keep people out -- as you noted, .museum is only for museums, .edu is only for schools. No non-porn sites would have a .xxx domain name.

      But that does nothing to stop porn sites (or museums or schools) from having .com addresses.

    6. Re:XXX domain names. by rs79 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "None of which are content classification. Tell me, should a pornography museum be under .xxx or .museum? DNS is not a content classification system and is totally unsuited for such (mis-)use."

      This is not a subtantive argument demonstrating the idea will not work. Just an edge-case that probably nobody cares about.

      "Um, yeah, and if 13-year-olds stopped looking for dirty pictures on the web, that'd solve the problem too. That's not going to happen either."

      Of course not. Nothing will stop a determined 13 year old. But an 8 year old that types "pussy" into google? That's different.

      The key here I think is "progess not perfection".

      I don't have a dog in this fight, I jsut think it's funny a solution is sought to what some perceive is a problem and a fairly elegant tehnical solution almost made the light of day but was squashed by the Bush administration; the net effect of which keeps porn in "the mainstream".

      I love irony like this. I live for it.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    7. Re:XXX domain names. by houghi · · Score: 3, Informative

      " No they wouldn't. Repeat after me, "DNS is not a content classification system". "
      Inherently, not, you're right. But it can be used as one.Look at .museum which is only for museums
      http://www.sexmuseumamsterdam.nl could then be http://www.sexmuseumamsterdam.museum/

      Those people are right. It is NOT about content. The welcome page has a female nipple. That could be seen as adult content in some countries. Also some of the content might not be seen as fit for children by some.

      Now I am not talking wether or not it is, what I am talking about is that a museum domain does not tell anything about the content.
      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    8. Re:XXX domain names. by rs79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "I was pointing out that your scenario was just a naive and simple-minded as expecting people to stop looking for it. Sorry if that went over your head. "

      It didn't go over my head and it's rediculous to assume people will stop searching for it. Porn is what drove the internet to the length, depth and bredth is it today. Half the .com zone are porn names - or were last time I looked at around the 30 million name mark.

      Of course it's a simple plan. Very simple. You then have to ask yourself what returns you get for such a tiny amount of effort and it appears to be substantial.

      The .com namespace is overloaded. There has been widespread consensus on this for almsot 15 years. It was supposed to be split up according to Jon Postel's plan a decade ago but big bussiness in the form of their intellectual property attornies colluded with the US government behind the scenes to block the introduction of new tlds. These (mostly 3-letter companies) spent tens of millions of dollars that I know of to lobby in DC to block new tlds that I know of, and dollars to donuts it was way more than that. It was never part of the "open and transparent" process the government insisted was the mandate. The inflection point should you care to look, was when Mike Robbers scuttled the 4th IFWP meeting in Boston; by then the fix was in and it was clear Ira Magaziner had lied to us.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
  3. Title is incorrect by Malevolent+Tester · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Should read:
    'Porn King' Says Google Should Block Internet Competition As It Hurts Video Sales

    --
    If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
  4. What about me? by edmicman · · Score: 4, Funny

    How the heck am I supposed to find stuff?

    1. Re:What about me? by edmicman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On a more serious note, it's not Google's job (nor should it ever) to filter it's results. This idea is horrible - does this guy even understand how the Internet and search engines work??? Does he expect Google to have one of those "I agree I'm of legal age to view these results" screens? Because those work so well as it is.....

  5. Heh, nice try by Applekid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I sure wish I could call for google to block searches that wind up returning my competitors' sites in the name of the children.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  6. SafeSearch?? by Zebraheaded · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google has a SafeSearch option. That's a deterrent to accessing adult content. Granted, it's only default on for images...and there's no restriction I know of to turning it off. But it's certainly something.

  7. Translation: by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Translation: It isn't OUR fault that children can see porn on the Net, it's Google's and Yahoo's, since they don't filter search results for children. (Which is not actually entirely true in either case.)

    --
    My blog
  8. is it on the internet? by SoupGuru · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use a search engine to search the internet.

    There is pr0n on the internet.

    I think it's pretty simple...

    --
    What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
  9. Google Does, Its Called SafeSearch by Johnny_Law · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google does block results for certain sites unless you turn off SafeSearch.

    http://www.google.com/safesearch_help.html

    This is merely a PR ploy, which is fine, to deflect some question away from Vivid.

  10. In other news, Microsoft denounces Open Source by jollyreaper · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "People are finding the same sort of stuff we're selling but they're getting it for free," Mr. Gates fumed.

    Though I do have to say, I sure am glad Google hosts the thumbnails on image searches, especially when a wholly innocent search returns the occasional hardcore goatporn image. "No, I can explain! It was actually a quite humorous and unexpected confluence of search terms!" "Yeah, yeah. Yell it to HR."

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  11. Flickr? by SilverBlade2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Better do something about Flickr too...it is pretty much the largest source of free pornographic pictures.

  12. Leisure Suit Larry by Statecraftsman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The most entertaining way to keep children away from inappropriate content is to quiz them on things only adults would know. Of course, if a kid knows how to google for answers it may not work so well but there must still be some questions most adults know but for which google can't provide a solid answer. Not that I can think of any of those questions. If you can think of any please reply.

    The central problem is that adult content providers(which could just be some guy with a big hard drive and the ability to upload to a youtube clone) have an incentive to make it simple to access their content if only for the ad revenues. So maybe the best way to attack this is via the advertising. Don't block the content. Block getting paid for posting the content in a form that's too easy for minors to access.

  13. .xxx domains by asterix404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .XXX domains were shown to actually be less effective against under age porn viewing mostly because it would create a very close grantee that any domain name with a .xxx suffix would be hit thus making even search engines useless. I mean think about it. If you are say... 14, and want to find free porn and type in freeporn.com, NO! freeporn.net, NO! ahhh freeporn.xxx oh yea...

  14. Don't know about Yale. by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But my college is putting a large effort in its MBA program to push Business Ethics. Yale may be doing the same thing. Even in a "Unethical" indrustry there is a degree of ethics that they follow and support. Either that or because minors won't pay for the stuff so by blocking them they save the trouble having to deal with "Think of the the Children Groups". There is nothing to gain by not blocking minors so why not.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  15. Who's Protecting Whom? by Gallenod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did Hirsch just say that the online porn industry is doing more to protect minors from porn than Google or Yahoo?

    Isn't that a lot like the Mafia saying they're doing more to protect people from criminals than the police?

    And, as absurd as it sounds, are those statements maybe more correct than we'd like?

    Trying to make search engine providers responsible for regulating online behavior is Nannyism taken to absurd lengths.

    Teach your children to make good choices, turn them loose, and be available to them when they need you.

    --

    TLR

    A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
  16. Bootleggers and baptists by homer_s · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is just a very obvious illustration of Yandle's theory:

    The Baptist and the Bootlegger

    This happened before when the CEO of some major airline called for more regulation of the airline industry and, more recently, when big agri business corps talk about 'our dependence on foreign oil'.

    Nothing to see here (for economists anyway), move along.

  17. Vivid's Little Ploy by ausoleil · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Google does have some cursory protection against adult material appearing. From the Google site's Preference's page:

    Google's SafeSearch blocks web pages containing explicit sexual content from appearing in search results.

    Granted it is not a completely effective deterrent, but the Vivid web site offers little more than an assent click and age verification -- not exactly a strong wall to keep out minors either.

    That leads me to believe that Vivid is more interested in squeezing out the little guys (pun unintended) in the business and gaining larger market share through greater obscurity on search engines.

  18. Re:Meta Tags by KillerCow · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are already numerous meta tag schemes for content rating.

    http://www.icra.org/label/
    http://www.w3.org/PICS/
    http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/

  19. Will never work... by owlnation · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a teenager, in the days when there was no internet and a computer took up a medium sized building, I found porn. I found it, because I was actively trying to. So were most of my friends.

    I cannot think of any way you could have stopped me then, nor any way you could stop a teenager now. Age verification etc is simply a token gesture to shut-up the lunatics on the religious right-wing. It's a worthless annoyance.

    Porn isn't a big deal. It's people having sex, it's good thing. I do not want to have to jump through hoops to find it, and I am sick of paying the price for bad parenting. Educate the damn kids and leave the rest of us alone.

    Your kids are your problem, not society's.

    1. Re:Will never work... by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Back in your day the book stores or your buddies dad did not have "midget fisting magazine" or "gang raped Asians weekly"

      The pre internet available porn was insanely tame compared to what is easily found on the internet today. Most things on youporn.com make hustler magazine look like softcore crap in Magnum and Mens Health.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Will never work... by ruggerboy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Kids these days. To think they'll never know the joy of the JC Penny catalog's bra section. /nostalia

    3. Re:Will never work... by vidarh · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In other words you didn't have any friends with access to German or Danish porn mags. Hustler has always been tame - I remember how disappointed I was the first time I saw Hustler and realized how soft it was.

  20. Re:Meta Tags by grumbel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How about the other way around? Add a meta tag for stuff that isn't porn. Pages that are ok for children can be unlocked and the rest be easily blocked. This would be basically the same like most other rating works, when you have a game that isn't ESRB, USK, PEGI or whatever rated it is handled the same as an age-18/AO title, it doesn't go into the shops, it doesn't even get released for a console.

    There simply is zero hope to ever get everybody to mark their 'bad' content, but there is a good chance that some people will mark their 'good' content.

  21. Re:Meta Tags by tverbeek · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or just implement RFC 3514. That would solve so many problems in addition to porn.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  22. All about Free Porn by Alsee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material"

    Ah, no. I think they have been doing what they can do deter non-paying people from accessing adult material. When a 16-year-old types in a valid credit card number there really isn't anything they sanely can or should be expected to do to prove how old that person actually is. But heay, the fact that minors generally don't have credit cards sure is a handy-dandy public relations score for them.

    And oh joy, now the porn industry wants to do as much as they can to make Google suppress all the free competition out there. Thanks but no thanks. Google is merely building a "phone book" of addresses out there and it is not reasonable or possible for them to play policemen judging each site out there if it is "acceptable" or "not acceptable", and it is not reasonable or sane to demand Google play policemen on who is forbidden to look up what phone numbers in the phone book.

    Google's already going above and beyond what they need to do in offering their "safesearch" option and (if I'm not mistaken) defaulting it to on. No demand or expectation that safesearch is supposed to be accurate, just a "whatever effort we felt like putting into a maybe useful but not necessarily accurate automated grouping" sort of thing, and an if you don't like the results don't use it sort of thing.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    1. Re:All about Free Porn by CodeBuster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ah, no. I think they have been doing what they can do deter non-paying people from accessing adult material. Bingo. This is a clear case of rent seeking on the part of Vivid. They don't like all of the competition in their industry so they are lobbying the government to throw up barriers to entry by imposing regulation and licensing. This is the same reason why cosmetologists are licensed, taxicabs have medallions, and labor unions lobby for the minimum wage. They claim to be concerned about workers, customers, or even the children but in reality they are concerned with protecting themselves from competition and using the power of the government to do it.
  23. Vivid by king-manic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hirsch is the CEO of a mostly offline porn company. Vivids web presence isn't as great as say Girls Gone Wild or even Playboy or Penthouse. Thus he has an economic interest in minimizing competition for porn entertainment dollars by reducing Internet porn availability.

    --
    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  24. PLUG THE HOLES! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pun intended.

    "No free peeks" says profit-oriented smut-peddler!

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  25. Dirty pictures on Google by davidwr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Soil.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you *ducks*.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  26. Dr. Cox (from Scrubs the TV series) by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be 1 website left, and it would be called Bring Back The Porn.
  27. Re:Meta Tags by jbeaupre · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd be happy if the tags were as general as the sections in a bookstore. Not the same, but large groupings of subjects. News, blogs, kids, abstracts, social, commercial, etc. Something like that. Save on having to always be creative with Boolean searches.

    --
    The world is made by those who show up for the job.
  28. There is already a solution to this - robots.txt by seifried · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Robots.txt

    Maybe a simple addition to this standard for a couple of categories like "adult" or "dynamic" or "temp" to designate a simplistic "why" content should not be indexed, thus allowing for some flexibility

  29. Re:When did sex become a bad thing? by mirshafie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I just read about that video on Wikipedia and decided I would never want to watch it. Which is why I never will. There's the problem with people on internet communities that get a kick out of luring people to sites like that, but that's what moderators are for. The internet is of course full of awful pictures; for example you can find pictures of people that have died in accidents (now that's sick). Personally I find that much more disturbing than people that eat vomit and feces, but I'm not the one to draw the line. I wouldn't want my kids watching that sort of thing either, on the other hand there are many things that I wouldn't want my kids to do.

  30. average user cannot make this distinction by v(*_*)vvvv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google is not a "content provider", they are a content aggregator Technically correct. It is unfortunately the average user cannot make this distinction.
  31. Re:Ah, and whither goest the .sex domain? by Cyko_01 · · Score: 2, Informative

    actually I believe the proposed TLD was .xxx . See the wikipedia article for details

  32. Re:.kids domain names. by Shadowlore · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unfortunately for your proposal, many sites can not be stuffed into .kids but are "kid safe" while also being not "kid safe".

    The main issues with your proposal is that only parents can truly decide what is "kid safe". For example, my 4 year old might not need to access wikipedia, but my 9 year old will.

    "Kid safe" is mostly shorthand for "let me use the Internet as a babysitter and blame someone else when my kids inevitably find something I would have objected to had I been paying attention to my children".

    And before someone starts going off on how hard it is, know this: I have three children and put in more than 12 hours a day of working. My wife and I also home school our children. We still manage to monitor what our children do, and even better educate them on why. It is known as being a parent. If you "don't have the time" to pay attention to your kids, you should rearrange your priorities. Otherwise porn is the least of your worries to come.

    --
    My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
  33. Yes I am 18 years or older? by slserpent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material Yes, I'm sure an index page with an age verification is all you need.
  34. Comcast deja vu.... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just by reading the summary, I'm reminded of what someone (was it the FCC?) compared Comcast bittorrent throttling and to horse races. It's all about competition and monopolistic practices.

    I think this porn king, whoever he is and I don't care, isn't worried so much about free peeks on *his* servers but rather about "social networking" style sites and other collections that "take away" profits from him.

    So what this is really about is old-model media distribution versus new business models. This guy gets rich by selling content, and obviously he's "suffering" from the thousands of amateur sites available on the web. Welcome to the 21st century.

    Going back to the "think of the children" thread, the .xxx suffix was a nice solution IMHO.