Pornography is always a problem with today’s technology. I am not passing judgment but the easy access is causing some problems. For the adult video rental store, it is easy to manage. The storekeeper just kicks out any curious kids out of the shops. In the world of mobile, it is not so easy. They say porn and technology has always worked together so well because each meets the needs of the other. Nerd needs anorak.
Some see the opportunity and come up with the idea of a Droid phone. Neither Google’s official Android Store nor Apple’s iPhone App Store sells any porn apps, a new store, MiKandi was launched to fill the unmet needs. MiKandi has launched a mobile app store that will exclusively cater to adults whose interest is in erotic art if you want to call it that. They plan to port its app to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices as well as Java-compatible mobile phones next year.
The store offers adult content, but you won’t be able to access it with your iPhone. Oh, we knew this was going to happen. So let’s just get it over with. Someone’s trying to make a lot of money from cell phone porn. Next time people are watching videos on their Blackberries, don’t assume that it is CNN news. The MiKandi Market apps only work with Android phones and not with Apple (or other more morally minded handsets). Adult what is adult is another question. But this is about open source.
The business model? The application attempts to create a red light district for adult Android apps allowing adult content providers to set up shop within a MiKandi app. They promise little to no censorship when it comes to "controversial" apps, except in cases when the law is being broken. Remember this is not just content, these applications can be anything.
We all know how adult video rental fueled the mass adoption of the VHS as well as the Internet. Many early Internet porn start-ups make money day one. Now the porn industry is considering which HD format to adapt. Still, if the porn industry sides with HD-DVD, it would hardly signal a death knell for Blu-ray. From a console perspective, which disc format the porn industry ultimately chooses won’t have nearly as big an impact as could a decision by one of the console makers (Microsoft or Sony) to open up its console to a wider variety of digital video formats, coupled with a highly compatible web browser — currently PS3 has the edge, but the machine is far from perfect. I don’t want to see porn directly downloadable onto a game console, a bad idea.
US Federal campaigns against the porn industry are a relatively recent innovation — largely because the current incarnation of the porn industry is itself a recent innovation. 40 years ago, the porn industry was effectively below the radar and small. A demimonde of grainy stag films and sleazy peep shows, porn was ghettoized in red-light districts. In 1973, when the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Miller v. California. (Miller defined "obscenity," in part, as material that an "average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find offensive.)
By incorporating "community standards" into the test for obscenity, Miller presumed that porn was a local problem, to be dealt with by local communities. But quickly porn was evolving into a full-blown industry with a mass market. This is a difficult one, the Internet or mobile internet is a global thing, the community standards vary from France, Denmark to India and Japan. Expect to see more innovation around pornography in the mobile age – Porn 2.0.
Original Post: http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation_playground/2009/12/the-dirty-open-secret-that-drives-technology-adoption-pornography.html
