July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The term “glassholes” almost got an entirely new meaning today, as the first porn app for Google Glass was released. And was banned almost as quickly.

Porn company Mikandi (NSFW, in case you couldn’t guess), which calls itself the world’s top app store for porn, released “Tits and Glass” this morning. A very classy title of course, as befits the porn industry. The app was designed to make “authentic” porn, whatever that means, allowing users to create, upload, and share photos — but not videos, oddly — taken with Glass.

“Unlike other hands-free recording devices, wearing Glass is easy and familiar,” MiKandi co-founder Jennifer McEwen told Mashable. “Because of that, you can forget about the technology on your head and be in the moment. The result is an authentic look at the wearer’s experiences.”

Google, apparently, is not a fan.

The company changed its Glass Platform Developer Policies to ban porn apps:

Sexually Explicit Material: We don’t allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of content with child pornography, we will report it to the appropriate authorities and delete the Google Accounts of those involved with the distribution.

The result, as Mikandi posted on its blog, is that the app will need to “change.” How it can continue to be a porn app without “nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material” is a bit of a mystery, but others have sort of managed it on the Apple app store (hello, Playboy).

Jesse Adams, CEO of Mikandai, said that Google gave no warning of this new provision:

When we received our Glass and started developing our app 2 weeks ago, we went through the policy very carefully to make sure we were developing the app within the terms. We double checked again last week when making the site live on the Internet and available for install for testing during last week’s announcement. We were not notified of any changes and still haven’t been notified by Google. We also double checked our emails to see if any notifications of policy changes were announced, but we haven’t found any such emails.

This is clearly a smart decision by Google. While porn is often an early adopter stimulus (hmm) for new technology, Google does not want Glass to become known as the personal porn device. And just imagine the legal and ethical issues that could arise from a poorly coded app, accidental recording, and mistakenly uploaded photos.

Much better to leave those worms firmly in the can.

Set aside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s offer to reinvent the condom; Durex is conducting its own research and development — for underwear.

The condom manufacturer unveiled its new “Fundawear” product yesterday, which is basically a set of undergarments (bras, panties, briefs, and such)  that will vibrate whenever your partner decides you need some sexual attention. Oh, and you can control it from your smartphone — this sort of brings new meaning to the definition of “phone sex.”

According to the demo video, the vibration sensors are supposed to mimic real human touch. You use the smartphone app to specify the portions of your partners body you’d like to stimulate, which are represented through circles on those body parts. When you touch those circles, it activates the underwear’s vibration sensors.

Fundawear isn’t yet available to consumers, so we don’t really know what this kind of tech will set you back. However, the company is running a contest on their Facebook Australia page that offers you a chance to win a set of Fundawear before it goes on sale.

Check out the demo videos below, and please make a slightly inappropriate and witty comment below in our comment section.

Via io9

NEW YORK CITY — Have an adult-themed startup idea? Cindy Gallop, the outspoken founder of Make Love Not Porn, wants your number.

“I would like to start the Y Combinator for porn,” Gallop said this morning at the Start conference in New York City. She noted “there is nobody in the world to mentor” startups related to the adult industry.

Given her difficult experience funding Make Love Not Porn — a process that took around two years — she wants to lend a hand to companies that dare tread into adult entertainment. The announcement came during a panel on hype around startups, moderated by TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis and David Tisch, co-founder of TechStars NYC.

“The people whose brilliant brains are in this room have no interest in this [porn-related startups],” Gallop said, while Tisch looked on with a “get me the heck out of here” expression.

The idea seemed more pie-in-the-sky for Gallop, who has been described as “one of New York’s boldest technocultural ringleaders” by Vice. She’s still busy building up Make Love Not Porn, a site dedicated to promoting more realistic portrayals of adult entertainment, so her Y Combinator-esque ambitions are likely a long way off.

Given how squeamish traditional investors are around anything porn-related, the door is certainly wide open for an accelerator that caters to risque startups.

The porn industry never got such penetrating look as in a report today by blogger Jon Millward, who reviewed data from more than 10,000 profiles of porn stars in the Internet Adult Film Database. The result is the big data of porn, a set of facts that would surprise you and your perceptions about sex films on the Internet.

Millward wrote that the impression of a porn star as a “blonde with big boobs” is actually wrong. Based on his review of about 8.6 percent of the database’s profiles, the average porn star has a bra cup size of 34B. Double-D bra sizes were fourth, behind B, C, and D. The most common set of measurements for women was 34-24-34. And dark-haired porn stars outnumbered blondes by two to one.

The average male porn star is 5 feet 10 inches, while the average woman is 5 feet 5 inches — the same as the average American man and woman.The average female is 117 pounds, or 48 pounds under the U.S. average for women. The average male is 167.5 pounds, or 27 pounds less than the national average for men. The largest woman weighed 719 pounds, and the lightest was 74 pounds.

The analysis took Millward six months. From that come gems such as this: The top 10 most-prolific male porn stars have slept with 1,013 women each, or 45 a year for an average career length of 22.4 years. The top 10 women have slept with 148 men, or eight a year for an average of 17.7 years. Nina Hartley, who started in 1984, has made 938 porn films. Tom Byron has 2,549 film credits since 1982. About 10 to 30 percent of stars quit the business after making one film.

The database was started by Dutch fan Peter Van Aarle, who began keeping records in 1981 on the porn films he saw in his home town’s theater. He teamed up with others in 1999 to form the Internet Adult Film Database, which was visited in 2011 by 20 million people. The database keeps stats on names of performers, their heights and weights, their races, the sex acts they perform, and pretty much everything else.

Of the stars, 70.5 percent were white, 14 percent were black, 9.3 percent were Latin, 5.2 percent were Asian, and 1 percent were other. That’s pretty much a reflection of the U.S. population, broken down by race. The average age of a woman starting in the porn business is 22, and that has remained unchanged for decades. But men are getting younger, from 29 in the 1970s to age 24 now.

As for the location, 90 percent of American porn is produced in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. California is the birth place of four times as many porn stars as they next state, Florida. The golden state is the birth place of a third of all female porn stars. The most common stage names: Nikki for women, and Lee as a last name for women; David for men, and Lee as a last name for men. But Lee is the 24th most-common last name in the U.S. After the U.S., Hungary and the Czech Republic have produced the most porn stars. There’s plenty of other data, but we’ll stop there and let you click on Millward’s link to check it out, or see the infographic below.

Twitter-owned video sharing application Vine has raised its age rating from 12+ to 17+ following controversy surrounding pornographic clips shared widely on the service.

Vine is one of the hottest new video-sharing applications, and its quick rise in just a few weeks led to the ouster of rival app Viddy’s CEO. But Vine has had a problem with users submitting easily searchable clips of porn, which was highlighted when someone at Vine accidentally placed a hardcore porn clip to the top of every user’s feed. Twitter responded to that incident by making Vine porn harder to find.

But it looks like that wasn’t enough to please Twitter (and perhaps Apple, who has blocked certain iOS apps for making risqué images and videos available). Now Vine has been bumped up to a 17+ age rating, likely to make sure parents will know questionable content can be found on the service. When you download or update the app, it now warns that the app contains “age-restricted material” and says you need to be 17 or over to download it.

On top of bumping up the age rating, the latest Vine update adds sharing to Twitter or Facebook after you post to Vine. The update also lets users report or block an abusive profile and fixes bugs.

Check out some recent Vine videos below to get a feel for the uses of the service besides porn:

Time for a little Puppy Bowl action. vine.co/v/b106vu7w5jV

— Sean Ludwig (@seanludwig) February 4, 2013

Get off my pier. vine.co/v/bnB7WUW3XUv

— Buster Heine (@BST3R) February 4, 2013

Top image via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Thumbnail image of sexy couple via lenetstan/Shutterstock

Twitter-owned video-sharing app Vine is taking steps to curb access to porn after it attracted a lot of unwanted criticism this morning for placing a hardcore porn video at the top of every user’s feed.

After a few hours with the video up and collecting a great deal of negative feedback, Vine removed the offending clip, and a Twitter spokesperson apologized for the “human error.”

“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake, we removed the video immediately,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat earlier today. “We apologize to our users for the error.”

But now the service is doing more than just being more careful about its Editors Pick’s. Vine now blocks many searches for tags that might lead to pornographic videos, such as #porn, #boobs, #sex, and #booty. Searching for those terms brings nothing up inside the popular app.

While tags such as #nsfw and #pornvine are still searchable, it at least looks like Vine is beginning to take steps to make sure Apple doesn’t remove Vine from the App Store, like it did with 500px for pornographic images. Apple did, however, remove Vine from its list of Editor’s Picks today.

Vine was launched last week by Twitter and has attracted a lot of fans among the tech-enthusiast crowd. We’ll see if that enthusiasm holds up after this controversy.

Check out how some common Vine searches look now below:

Woman with eyes covered via MarcusVDT/Shutterstock

Updated at 7:38 a.m. Pacific with comment from Twitter.

Users of the popular video-sharing app Vine got a surprise this morning when a short clip of hardcore pornography appeared as an “editor’s pick” and placed at the top of every user’s feed.

Twitter launched Vine last week, and the new video app has attracted a lot of fans among the tech-enthusiast crowd. But since the service easily allows porn clips to be shared and found, some are wondering if Apple will take down the service; Apple has a history of removing apps that give access to adult material. Vine’s video slip-up today certainly won’t help matters.

As you can see in the picture above, a video titled “Dildoplay” with the tags #nsfw, #porn, and #nsfwvine was selected as an editor’s pick. Vine selects editor’s pick videos and places them in users’ activity streams presumably to show off the most creative uses of the service.

The video was up for a few hours, but it has since been removed from users’ feeds. Twitter blamed “human error” for the posting of adult content.

“A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor’s Picks, and upon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. “We apologize to our users for the error.”

While the video did not play unless you tapped it, users were not happy about the prominent placement of porn in their feeds today.

Some choice comments from Vine users:

Taylor Winklemeyer: “I clicked on the video bc I thought the warning was a joke. I’m furious I had to see something like this.”

Brendan Wilhide: “First video I see after installing the app. How is this an editor’s pick?”

Curt Voice Allen: “This is garbage man! This should not be the first thing I see when I open this app. UNSUBSCRIBE ME PLEASE!!!”

Alessandro Melandri: “You must be crazy! Editor’s pick?!? Deleting the app now.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Google has modified its popular image search to block many explicit pictures, a move that could be a big win for competing search engines.

While you used to be able to turn SafeSearch off to easily find questionable material, Google now only lets you “filter explicit images” or “report offensive images.” As you can see in the image above, a search for the word “porn” brings up some questionable material but nothing explicit.

Users on Reddit first noticed the changes this morning, and several were quick to label the move as “censorship.” VentureBeat can confirm that common searches in the U.S. and U.K. have blocked steamy images from showing up in image results and that SafeSearch is on permanently.

A Google spokesperson told us and other outlets the following statement about the changes:

We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for — but we aim not to show sexually explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them. We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you’re looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting — you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings now work the same way as in web search.

Essentially, Google’s decision makes it much harder to find porn using Google. This is a big win for competing search engines, especially Microsoft’s Bing and ICM Registry’s Search.xxx. If Google doesn’t want the traffic, the underdogs certainly will take it.

Microsoft’s Bing, the No. 2 search engine on the web, still offers a robust image search, and we can confirm that it works perfectly well for looking at all kinds of explicit images. (Which is sort of funny considering how Microsoft has serious problems with nudity and pornography being hosted on its servers.)

Search.xxx is another winner. While it does not offer a full-fledged image search, Search.xxx does offer a safe browsing experience when you are looking for adult material. Plus, you know exactly what you’ll find when looking for video or images on it. As we’ve written before, Search.xxx only crawls online pages with the .xxx domain and it claims to be “safer” than using other search engines to find porn because all sites found through it are scanned daily by McAfee.

“We are still digesting exactly what this will mean in real-world search queries for the porn-searching consumer, but this seems to continue a trend we have seen in recent months by the major search engines towards adult content,” ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley told us via email. “Google’s decision only serves to reinforce the purpose and usefulness of what ICM Registry has been building: a destination for those adult consumers looking for high quality content.”

Apple has worked hard to keep the app store free of pornography and anything that could be construed as dangerous or distasteful. But it looks like one developer, 36you, has snuck a virtual dating app with violent sexual content — including references to pedophilia — into the app store right under Apple’s nose.

I downloaded and played with the app, which is aimed at teen girls, myself. You give your “boyfriend” a name, tell him yours, and chat via text messages. Some simple form of artificial intelligence then supplies answers … which can trend into saucy and spicy language, and worse.

PocketGamer received a tip from a user who was testing the app and found responses “more explicit than I ever expected.” Here’s the screenshot, which suggests pedophilia:

Source: PocketGamer

Boyfriend Maker screenshot

In my own testing I found spicy language, such as “I like it on top,” in response to leading questions such as “Do you like sex,” as well as “You do yes!!! I am on my way” in response to “I want to have sex with you.” I did not personally find any references to pedophilia.

But the above screenshot — which would be extremely hard to fake, since there is background imagery behind the text — seems clear evidence of, at minimum, very disturbing content.

Based on my own usage, I considered the possibility that the AI engine powering the chat was simply creating gibberish, but the message in the screenshot seems to be just simply too weird, too odd, and too disturbing, and most of all, to specific about a topic that is really on a tangent from the question. A question about sex — which teen girls are going to enter into the app if they’re playing with it — should not bring up a reference to violent sexual assault on children.

I’ve contacted 36you, have received an automated reply, and hope to be able to add their side of the story (perhaps something a disgruntled ex-employee added?) as soon as possible.

Image credits: Boyfriend Maker

This landed in our tips line this morning, and really, how could we not write it up?

Come4.org is a not-for-profit porn site that takes all the glorious ickyness of online porn and channels it toward the greater good.

Here’s how it’ll work: Each video clip on the site will be associated with a specific cause. The Come4 spank bank will feature amateur videos as well as professionally produced erotica, and users can upload their own clips, as well. The site will serve ads and sponsored videos from adult brands, including sex toy stores; that revenue will be used to fund the causes.

If you think about it, the Come4 premise makes a lot of sense. In terms of web traffic, online porn sites are third only to Google and Facebook; Come4′s founders say porn is a $100 billion market. Yet while we spank and buzz our way to self-satisfaction, people around the world go without life’s necessities: food, clean water, shelter, medicine, education, etc.

So why not crowdsource a little free pornography and use the money we spend on it to help those in need?

Here’s a video from the founders explaining what it is and why they think it’ll work:

“The tech is well-known. It is the idea that is disruptive,” wrote co-founder Riccardo Zilli (pictured above) in an email to VentureBeat.

The founders also acknowledge the flawed nature of porn itself, saying on the site that most online porn “fosters a one-dimensional perspective that is often fake, violent, macho-centered, and in many cases barely legal.”

The first cause Come4 will tackle is the Asta Philpot Foundation, an organization that raises awareness about the rights and issues (including sexual issues) faced by disabled people.

Future causes will be selected based on a few criteria, such as whether they provide cost-effective solutions to real problems and whether the Come4 community supports the cause. The organization will also give special consideration to organizations that support and defend individuals’ sexual rights and raise awareness around violations of those rights.

To date, the Milan-based company has raised just a bit more than $4,000 through crowdfunding on Ulule.

ICM Registry is the company behind the .xxx domain, and it’s launched a new search engine called Search.xxx that intends to make looking for online adult entertainment safer and easier to access.

Search.xxx works similar to Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, but it only crawls online pages with the .xxx domain. ICM says that it manages more than 240,000 unique .xxx domain, and its search engine scans more than 21 million pages to finds its results. Plus, at the top of the search page you can select between 19 languages and sexual orientation of the content you’re looking for.

“ICM Registry has worked for more than a decade to build .XXX into a globally accepted place for responsible adult online entertainment,” ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley said in a statement. “With a search engine dedicated to helping people find precisely what they want amid millions of pages of content, we’re providing an entirely new adult content experience in a safe, privacy protected, and trusted environment.”

Search.xxx claims it is “safer” than using any other search engine to find porn because all sites found through it are scanned daily by McAfee. These sites also carry a MetaCert Family Safety label that make it easier for parents to restrict access to these sites in their browser settings. Basically, the .xxx sites found on Search.xxx remove the worry of getting malware from looking for adult content and makes it easier to block sites.

“This is a safer, responsible environment where users aren’t subjected to potentially annoying images and offers that plague some porn portals,” Lawley said. “The site is also free of pop ups, pop unders and other unwelcome distractions.”

Palm Beach, Fla.-based ICM Registry opened up bidding for sites wanting a .xxx domain about a year ago and officially launched the domain last December. ICM charges a quite-pricey $60 a year for .xxx domains.

Three months ago, Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning unveiled Airtime, a web-based video chat service explicitly billed as a service to find and connect to new friends, in a glitch-filled PR disaster of a launch. It was supposed to be a better ChatRoulette, the fad video-chatting service that hit four million monthly visitors shortly after launching but ultimately fell victim to the one-eyed monster.

So far, it seems that the rocky beginning successfully presaged the future, as usage of the Facebook-connected app has made massive moves in the wrong direction, while competitor ChatRandom’s traffic is soaring.

Currently, according to AppData, AirTime has only 500 daily active users, and only 10,000 users have accessed the app in the last month — a 50 percent drop from the previous month. Plus, only just over 18,000 people have liked the app on Facebook.

Source: AppData

AirTime audience drop

Conversely, ChatRandom, which explicitly bills itself as a “ChatRoulette Alternative” offering “Free Webcam Chat with Strangers,” is killing it, according to the site’s co-founder, Allen Fox.

He says the site is getting 250,000 visitors a day and over 8,000,000 users a month. (A quick peek at Compete.com stats says he’s not completely talking out of his hat.)

ChatRandom was founded earlier than Airtime, in mid 2011, but with much less money and much less fanfare. Why is that site seeing successful user growth while Airtime, with its star founders, tens of millions in cash, and celebrity endorsements is failing?

Fox cites just one reason, but I see at least two.

The first, and the claimed reason, is anonymity. ChatRandom allows people to pull up the site, hit a button, and immediately start chatting. Airtime, on the other hand, wants you to log in via Facebook, tying your live video chat very definitively to your identity.

That is the key differentiator, according to Fox.

“Users on video chat sites are meeting people they have never met before, and that fundamentally drives the demand for privacy and anonymity,” Fox said in a statement, adding that ” … it’s clear that most chat users prefer anonymous private chat versus a more revealing option linked to social media.”

I don’t completely buy it. Yes, the anonymity is important, and it’s an important part of ChatRandom’s success. But it’s not the only factor. Another important factor — put simply: ChatRandom is essentially a porn site.

ChatRandom’s “chat with girls”

In three minutes playing with the site, I encountered the famous ChatRoulette “penis problem.” And when I couldn’t find anyone else to actually chat with – very few users seemed to be available for a site with 250,000 visitors a day — I clicked the “Chat with Girls” button.

Shocker of shockers, there’s an over-18 verification step, scantily-clad ladies of the nighttime variety, and an invitation to chat with “the hottest girls” for free.

Hmmm … I may be naive, but somehow I don’t think these are just random strangers, unless the population’s average hotness number has just gone WAY up.

Porn is huge on the web; this is no shock. And for Airtime, trying to compete against anonymous adult encounters was always going to be tough. So I’m not surprised that ChatRandom, essentially a slightly more sophisticated and more monetized version of ChatRoulette, is seemingly succeeding.

But I am surprised that Parker and Fanning aren’t putting up a better show in creating and developing their own audience for random stranger chat. Somehow, the product needs to be more compelling to attract more users.

Even if Mark Zuckerberg did try it out.

photo credit: Stewf via photo pin cc

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and SugarSync are quickly changing how consumers deal with content on a day-to-day basis. Being able to access your photos, movies, music, and important documents at any time on any device can help with productivity — or just organizing your life.

It seems like an easy sell: Pay a reasonable monthly fee, and cloud storage will simplify your life.

But while these services promise storage nirvana, each company has its own set of policies and restrictions that determine what you can or cannot store there.

None is more restrictive than Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Check out the first two parts of the Windows Live code of conduct that governs SkyDrive:

You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute, or facilitate distribution of any content (including text, images, sound, video, data, information or software) or otherwise use the service in a way that:

• depicts nudity of any sort, including full or partial human nudity, or nudity in nonhuman forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga.

• incites, advocates, or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence.

The code of conduct is much larger than this, but already this list has some serious issues. From the looks of it, you can’t store nude or partially nude drawings (sorry, Titanic fans and fine art lovers) or your favorite legally purchased adult porn movie. Because Bugs Bunny wears no clothes, I guess he’s off limits, too.

Note that this applies to anything you upload to your SkyDrive, including private files.

Here’s another issue: SkyDrive is connected to your Microsoft account. If Microsoft suspends your SkyDrive, you also lose access to any connected Outlook or Office software or Windows Phone and Xbox 360 devices. This incredibly strict code of conduct could end up cutting off other services you depend on.

And another problem: Microsoft is pushing you to use SkyDrive in Windows 8 and Office 2013. SkyDrive is deeply embedded into the Windows 8 OS. In the new version of Office, the default for saving files is now SkyDrive instead of your local hard drive. Microsoft is making it incredibly easy to save to the cloud. What happens, though, if I write a story with one too many swear words in Word and save it to SkyDrive?

Windows Phone 7, too, has an option to automatically upload any picture you take to a private folder on your SkyDrive. If you take a bedroom photo of your significant other and your phone uploads it automatically, you are technically violating Microsoft’s policy.

We asked Microsoft about its code of conduct and why the heck its policies are so strict. We asked why so many things weren’t permitted. We wanted to know if we uploaded a gritty short story we wrote that included lots of curse words, would Microsoft suspend that account?

Microsoft wouldn’t play ball. A Microsoft spokesperson refused to answer any specific questions about its policies, instead providing me with this lengthy statement that hardly addresses our concerns:

With 60 million SkyDrive customers in more than 100 countries, Microsoft works hard to keep SkyDrive available around the world as the trusted place for people to store personal data. In order to do this, we’ve built SkyDrive to respect the privacy of our users while also ensuring it is not used for illegal activity – such as the distribution of child pornography. As a general practice, we do not comment on internal processes; however, we have strict internal policies in place to limit access to a user’s data, and we have advanced mechanisms to ensure users abide by our Code of Conduct. For example, we pioneered automated scanning for child pornography through the PhotoDNA project — now used by other industry leaders. Any content we find to be in violation of our Code of Conduct is subject to removal — and in rare cases, can lead to temporary or permanent shutdown of an account. We understand no system is perfect. That’s why we are constantly improving our ability to ensure the privacy, security and availability of our users’ data around the world.

OK, so Microsoft’s scanning SkyDrive for child porn to make sure it doesn’t get shared around the web. We sincerely appreciate that. But why not amend the code of conduct to make it more specific about what’s allowed and not? How does it define “obscenity” and “vulgarity?”

While we’re troubled by Microsoft’s policy, we decided to look at four other top cloud storage providers to see where they stood on the issue of content restrictions. We asked each if its cloud service would allow a user to store legally purchased adult porn without sharing it to others. We figure if you can store adult porn on a service, semi-nude drawings and Bugs Bunny are fine, too.

Check out our findings below.

Box

While Box targets businesses, consumers can easily use the service as well. Part of Box’s strategy is to entice people to use its services through promotions like 50GB storage giveaways to Android and iPhone users and then hope those consumers encourage businesses and teams to use it. So we’re sure there are a fair number of consumer signups, too.

A Box spokesperson said he wasn’t comfortable answering our questions about storing porn in Box, but he did point us to this part of the company’s terms of service:

You may not use Box in any way that violates applicable federal, state, or international law, or for any unlawful purpose.

He said as long as someone does not violate the law in any way, including the DMCA, a customer will generally have no problems from Box.

Dropbox

Dropbox also refused to answer our questions directly, but the company did direct us to its terms of service, DMCA policy, and acceptable use policy. The policy does not mention any content restrictions (such as porn or nude drawings) besides telling you not to break the law in any way.

Google Drive

Google Drive‘s policies aren’t as ridiculous as Microsoft’s, but the company does have a lot of restrictions on content. Google has rules against “publishing” (read: sharing) content that includes sexually explicit material, bullying, violence, and more.

Google would neither confirm nor deny if a user of its Drive service could upload legally obtained porn to the cloud, even if it was just for personal use. A Google spokesperson told us the following:

We work hard to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide services like Google Drive, and we ask that everyone abide by the policies to help us achieve this goal. That said, a user’s private content is private. This means that unless a user publishes content that could be reported by another user for violation of our Abuse Program Policies, we would have no reason to investigate or take action against a particular account.

Basically, without admitting it in full, Google is saying you’re usually fine to store adult content in Drive as long as you don’t share your favorite Jenna Jameson joint with your friends.

Another note on Google: Like Microsoft, it’s easy to be connected to several Google services through a single account. If you were to upload and store something Google didn’t like, you’d have to worry about losing access to Gmail and other services.

SugarSync

SugarSync was by far the most forthcoming in answering our questions. Like many other services, it also doesn’t have any specific content restrictions, as long as you’re being lawful.

Robb Henshaw, the director of corporate communications at SugarSync, told us:

There are no restrictions on what can be uploaded and stored on SugarSync account for your own personal use. However, if you use SugarSync to share/distribute obscene content in a way that violates our Terms of Use, we do reserve the right to disable your account.

Wrap up

From our research, Microsoft appears to be the most restrictive cloud storage provider on the market. Its policy concerning what can or cannot be stored in SkyDrive is outrageous in its rigidness. We appreciate the company is trying to deter criminals, but it also doesn’t allow “profanity.” Are you kidding me?

The other four companies we spoke to appear to allow you to store whatever content you want as long as you legally obtained it, it doesn’t violate the DMCA or other laws, and as long as you’re not publicly sharing obscene content.

Boiling it down further, Dropbox and SugarSync seem to be the two best consumer options for storing content without worrying about Big Brother snooping on your account or disabling it for questionable content. Box is more ideal for business use, and Google’s policies still have more restrictions than we’d like.

h/t The Compass Project

Nearly naked romantic couple photo via Shutterstock.

Earlier this year, Apple rejected an app, Geometric Porn, that featured squares, triangles, circles, and even rectangles in juxtapositions reminiscent of intercourse. Fairly tame stuff, one might think, but it contravened both Apple’s and Google’s app store guidelines.

Some surfing on the app store turned up some surprising images. And it turns out that the stealthy way to sneak erotic images past Apple censors is via the Catalogs section of the app store.

This is Geometric Porn: inspected and rejected.

And yet, a cursory look at the Catalogs category reveals what you’d think are much more erotic images.

For instance, the many, many tattoo apps are a common means of showing a little ink and a lot of skin:

And, of course, there is the eagerly-anticipated and much-needed Short Skirts Catalog, shown at the top of this post, which dainty young women doubtless peruse daily for shopping inspiration.

Not to mention Love Master, an app to master — if not your own domain — the finer arts, of shall we say, intimate connection. And a Supermodel Fashion for people 17+ that includes the “hottest,” “sexiest” models from all over the globe …

Those are all images that I captured today, months after Geometric Porn was rejected. And they are not the most explicit on the app store.

There’s an app that asks users to trace their fingers over a woman’s body, slowly revealing some of the more interesting parts:

And “Terror at Bikini Beach,” with both a wonderfully campy title and very little left to the imagination … much less, actually, than the denied iKamasutra application:

It’s no surprise that Apple’s app store guidelines are vague, capricious, and perhaps even somewhat randomly applied.

The confusing part is that still, four years after the app store opened, there are still huge grey areas in an approval process that denies some seemingly tame apps, and allows others that seem to be harder core.

Steve Jobs famously argued with Gawker’s Ryan Tate about app store review guidelines, saying that the iPhone offered “freedom from porn.” The real question is what one considers porn … and it turns out that app store rejections are as vague and capricious as the answer to that question.

The upshot?

If you’re looking to sneak erotica onto the app store, Catalogs is the category for you. And, if you’re on Apple’s review team, there are definitely teammates who think different.

Image credit: Lucky Business/ShutterStock

The massive media conglomerate is refusing to comply with court-ordered requests to deliver the names and contact information of its customers to porn studios. The studios claim that Comcast’s clients have illegally downloaded their pornographic movies, and plan to use that information to sue the individuals for cash.

Comcast, which provides video, voice, and Internet to millions of Americans, has inspired numerous hate websites including Comcast Sucks and Comcast Sucks Balls, and routinely ranks high in the list of companies with the worst service. But with this latest stand, Comcast could actually be seen as a friend of Internet privacy.

Realistically, the reason Comcast is standing up for its customers’ privacy is probably less altruistic than practical.

For the company, dealing with the courts is a major (and costly) pain in the posterior. Hundreds of thousands of BitTorrent lawsuits, many but not all of which are from porn studios seeking damages for pirated videos, have been winding their way through the hallowed halls of American justice over the past few years.

Enough is enough, say Comcast’s lawyers.

Well, since they are lawyers, they actually said “plaintiffs should not be allowed to profit from unfair litigation tactics whereby they use the offices of the Court as an inexpensive means to gain Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce ‘settlements’ from them.”

Unscrambled, that means they don’t want foreign and domestic porn studios using Comcast as a proxy for badgering randy Americans into massive cash settlements.

Whether Comcast is doing this out of the goodness of its heart, concern for its clients, or simply because dealing with all these cases is an expensive, draining hassle hardly matters. The good news is, someone is finally stepping up to protect some level of privacy.

At least, in this case, if you’re downloading naughty videos.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Someone has created a new site called BateFlix that will allow you to search the bulk of Netflix’s DVD-rental and streaming video library for all the titles that contain nudity.

Think of it as sort of a cross between Netflix recommendation search engine InstantWatcher and Mr. Skin, a site that specializes in locating, rating, and posting instances of nudity in major movies. With all the creativity and specialization happening on the Internet, I’m kind of shocked something like this hasn’t popped up sooner.

The site appears to use an API to draw in all the movie information from Netflix, including categories and genres, into the search site. Out of the thousands of movies available, BateFlix’s about page indicates that only 6,411 movies fall under its criteria for films containing nudity.

As for the search itself, users can choose the type of nudity, film genre, release date, MPAA rating, Instant or DVD availability, and general rating. The results will display a block of movie thumbnails that are arranged according to the level of nudity — from XXX to XX to X. Each title has a place for users to write reviews and rate each movie, much in the same way that you can on Mr. Skin — [Uhh... or so we've heard. Swear!]

Since Netflix doesn’t have family accounts, nor does it let you delete viewing history, BateFlix might come in handy for some people. As one VentureBeat staffer (who will remain anonymous) remarked: “Now I can find all the British period pieces that my wife likes to watch which also have a little something for me. win-win!”

We’re not entirely sure who’s responsible for creating BateFlix, but the chances are pretty high that it’s someone who frequents community news site Reddit that has a lot of free time. The Whois information indicates that the BateFlix domain was bought last month.

If the site’s creator does respond to our requests, we’ll update the post with more details.

Update 4/10/2012 (6:17 a.m. PST): The site’s creator responded to our inquires. Turns out he’s not a regular Reddit user, but he is a code geek with lots of time on his hands. Check out the response below:

I created BateFlix to learn PHP and HTML. I’m not a Reddit reader but I have seen some interesting stuff people share from the site. BateFlix took a week to build. Most of the time was spent on finding a domain name, hosting a WordPress on GoDaddy, and customizing the twenty eleven theme. The rest of the stuff came naturally since part of what i do for a living is presenting actionable information from large complicated datasets. The Netflix API is really nice and i wish more people will use it to create something other than a movie queue management app.

Screenshot via BateFlix

Specifically the Luxembourg-based company that operates YouPorn and Playboy.com wants to block the adoption of the .XXX domain and alleges that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), as well as ICM Registry, the company responsible for managing the domain, have engaged in ”monopolistic conduct, price gouging, and anticompetitive and unfair practices,” according to court documents first obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

In March, ICANN awarded the ICM Registry a contract to assign .XXX domain handles, and there have been more than 80,000 applications for related addresses, according to the Journal. Manwin Licensing and Digital Playground, who are party to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California are mad because the ICM is charging $60 per domain name. Manwin’s network of porn properties get more than 60 million repeat visits, and at $60 per name, that’s likely to be a significant chunk of change.

When new top-level domains are unfurled, there is always a rush to claim names to protect individual copyrights and to safeguard company brands against impostors who might masquerade as the genuine article by domain squatting. As an example, the website whitehouse.org (which has been suspended), was a parody site that called itself the “officious website of President George W. Bush” but had no affiliation with the president or any connection to the U.S. government. Companies rush to snap up new domains as soon as they become available in order to prevent confusion, or to avoid similar embarrassment. But the only real winner is often the domain registrar, who makes money selling the website handles.

[Image Credit: XXX via ShutterStock]

The network contains a roster of successful sites, from Lifehacker and Gizmodo to Jezebel and Jalopnik, each relatively well respected in its niche.

However, Fleshbot doesn’t seem like such a good fit for Gawker anymore. The site doesn’t appear in Gawker Media’s public lineup of online properties, and Fleshbot editor Lux Alptraum wrote recently that Gawker’s “sales strategy and technology platform have ceased to effectively support Fleshbot’s needs.

“We think someone else could be a much better partner to grow the site with us, and as such, Fleshbot is for sale.”

Gawker Media chief Nick Denton told All Things D this morning that Fleshbot “Just hadn’t fit for a long long time” but that he held onto the property “because [he was] slow to realize the inevitable.”

Of course, being cynical journalists, we’re wont to follow the money when inexplicable business decisions come to light. After all, bad fit or no bad fit, Denton held onto Fleshbot for eight long years — in Internet time, that’s something close to the lifespan of your average Galapagos tortoise. The site may have been simply underperforming financially (which Alptraum hinted at in noting a lack of marketing support, perhaps?), making it an easy target for amputation from the Gawker family — or making its own leadership seek out new owners.

One thing you can take to the bank, though: The day a porn site can’t make money on the Internet is the day we all pack up and go home.

Many of the giant social network’s 800 million active users have found a flood of pornographic and gory images popping up on their news feed lately.

The reason for this is a linkspam virus (under the guise of celebrity news about Kim Kardashian — among others) that’s exploiting Facebook’s new media-rich Timeline upgrade. When users click a malicious link, it turns their news feed into a stream of pornographic, gory, violent and/or just plain unpleasant images.

It’s unclear who is to blame for the linkspam attacks, although many are pointing the finger at online hacktivist group Anonymous. Facebook isn’t saying much about the incident, but the company did send us the following statement:

“Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms. We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue.”

Have you experienced unpleasant images in your news feed due to the recent linkspam virus? Leave us a comment below.

Update – 1:10pm (PT): Facebook sent us another statement with some additional information about the exploit.

Recently, we experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability. Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible.    During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing malicious javascript in their browser URL bar causing them to unknowingly share this offensive content. Our engineers have been working diligently on this self-XSS vulnerability in the browser. We’ve built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious Pages and accounts that attempt to exploit it. We have also been putting those affected through educational checkpoints so they know how to protect themselves. We’ve put in place backend measures to reduce the rate of these attacks and will continue to iterate on our defenses to find new ways to protect people.

[Photo via Reddit user HLef]

Vivid for Google TV promises Vivid subscribers free access to porn 24 hours a day — in high definition, no less. Programming includes adult movies, celebrity sex tapes, XXX parodies of popular superheroes and educational videos (of the adult variety, presumably), according to the announcement.

The dedicated channel for porn is said to be the first of its kind and will up the sex appeal of Google’s modest entertainment platform.

“Vivid for Google TV gives our fans a new way to enjoy Vivid movies in high quality HD and with other benefits that provide a very appealing, highly enjoyable, and user friendly experience,” Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Vivid, said. “We spent more than a year developing a code base for a robust, standalone Internet-TV channel with a friendly interface for the consumer.”

Google TV has heretofore underwhelmed consumers, but it’s just been revamped with an improved interface and Android applications. Sounds enticing, right? Okay, maybe not. So perhaps porn will better help the Google TV cause. At the very least, splashy headlines announcing free porn will net Google TV some much-needed press and attention.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

After a decade-long battle, adult entertainment sites today can start bidding for their own .xxx top-level domain, which will make porn sites easier to find for lonely souls.

Today marks the beginning of the domain’s “sunrise” period, a 50-day long stint in which companies and brand owners can apply for a .xxx domain, reports the Independent. It’s the start of a new era of porn on the web, as adult websites will be more easily recognizable, which will be helpful both for adult entertainment customers and for parents who want to keep naughty things away from their kids.

Registration for the domain will be handled by Florida-based ICM Registry. Stuart Lawley, who heads ICM, has been fighting to get the .xxx domain approved since 2000. It was finally given the go-ahead last year by the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The site Casting.xxx was the first to be approved in August, and since then 1,500 additional sites were approved as part of ICM’s founders program. Lawley expects that the domain will attract over 500,000 sites within the next few months.

Access to the domain will slowly relax over time. Starting November 8, a “land rush” period will give adult sites premium access to remaining domains. 17 days after that, the .xxx domain will open up for anyone to register, making it no different from registering a typical .com or .net domain today.

In addition to being easier to find, .xxx domains will make porn sites safer to visit. ICM has contracted antivirus company McAfee to scan all .xxx domains for malware, viruses, and other malicious content. Typically, porn sites are known to be breeding grounds for malware (Lawley notes there’s little evidence for this claim though).

The fight for the .xxx domain has cost ICM $20 million so far, but Lawley tells the Independent that it hopes to raise around $30 million in its first year. Its founders program has already made ICM around $4 million. ICM charges $60 a year for .xxx domains, but average folks will have to buy them via other registers who charge more: GoDaddy will sell the domains for $99 a year, while Domainmonster will charge $77.

Trademark owners can remove their names from the .xxx registry entirely, but they will have to pay $200 to do so. Still, the cost will likely be worth it to prevent cybersquatting.

After a decade-long review process, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to grant final approval for the domain proposal for the porn industry. The whole affair shed light on both the politics and technology behind starting new domain names.

At its annual meeting in San Francisco today, ICANN voted 9-3 to approve the domain, which allows web sites to end their web addresses in .xxx, rather than .com or .biz.

The .xxx web sites will likely start appearing in the coming months. Sometime in the fall, a big land rush will take place for companies applying for .xxx domain names. The domain name application was originally submitted by Stuart Lawley, chief executive of ICM Registry, who said he wants consumers to make safe and secure transactions on .xxx sites. Lawley proposed the .xxx domain names in 2004, and he plans to make money selling domain names. A number of national governments, including the U.S., opposed the creation of the domains.

Adult sites won’t be forced to use the new domain. The Free Speech Coalition, which represents some of the adult industry, opposed the domain name on the grounds that it would raise costs for porn providers. The domain names cost $60 each, and the porn sites will have to register a lot of them to keep their brands from being hijacked. The FSC said the new domain would make it easier for filters to block adult sites and that it would appeal the decision to an advisory board consisting of government representatives.

Lawley said he has received requests to reserve more than 200,000 domain names. Here’s a partial chronology of the whole process.

Once it becomes official, porn sites will be able to end with the characters .xxx rather than .com. The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to grant the domain proposal for the porn industry.

The body made the decision after studying whether the XXX domain name could meet the criteria for a sponsorship domain, which is a domain such as dot-aero that has a specific community backing it. Groups that advocated the change hailed the decision, including the ICM Registry, which made the proposal but says it has no affiliation with the porn business.

“It’s been a long time coming,” ICM Chairman Stuart Lawley said in a statement. “The decision should soon bring to fruition our effort to create a specific Web address for online adult entertainment, and comes on the heels of an independent review that declared that ICANN’s previous decision to deny dot-xxx was wrong.”

ICANN will conduct a due-diligence study of ICM’s business plan for the domain, and ICANN’s board will review it. The process could take time, so dot-XXX sites will not start appearing immediately. ICANN had previously rejected proposals for the dot-XXX domain in decisions dating back to 2000. Advocates of the dot-XXX domain say it will make it easier to wall off porn sites from young viewers, but those who oppose it said the domain would legitimize the porn industry. Here’s a chronology of the process (PDF).