- Two weeks ago a group of adult movie companies (Malibu Media, Patrick Collins and Third Degree Films) sued Verizon for failing to hand over the personal details of alleged BitTorrent pirates. This week Verizon responded to the claims with a frontal attack. For the sake of those who’s privacy the porn companies sought to violate, I hope Verizon buries them.
Verizon Determined to Expose BitTorrent Copyright Trolls (TorrentFreak)
- MetaCert web crawler has indexed 645m web pages and found 31bn links to porn – but says the overwhelming majority is on the .com domain, not the specially created .xxx domain.
.xxx domains pale as porn destinations compared to .com, filtering firm finds (Guardian UK)
- Peers and scientists including Professor Stephen Hawking are once again pushing for an official pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing. Turing’s death from cyanide poisoning in 1954 was ruled a suicide, coming after his conviction for gross indecency at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
Stephen Hawking pushes for posthumous [homosexuality] pardon for Alan Turing (The Register)
- The most popular sex doll in China does not bear the face of Chinese movie actress Fan Bingbing or Japanese porn star Sora Aoi but Taiwan’s top model Lin Chi-ling, reports our Chinese-language sister paper China Times.
Taiwan’s Lin Chi-ling bestraddles China sex doll market (Want China Times)
- David Cameron has rejected proposals for an automatic block on online pornography over fears parents would assume the internet was safe for their children.
David Cameron rejects automatic block on porn to protect children (Telegraph)
- The owner of YouPorn, Pornhub, Brazzers (Manwin) websites has been extradited to Germany after being arrested in Belgium on suspicion of tax evasion.
YouPorn, Brazzers – Manwin – Porn site owner extradited to Germany in tax case (Miami Herald)
- It’s a holiday ornament testicles as cheeky cancer awareness-raising publicity stunt – that worked! Sadly, they’re all sold out.
Check Your Bauballs (checkyourbauballs)
- At a moment when erotica is mainstream, and when the issue of who controls a woman’s body has never been more relevant, “Nine and a Half Weeks,” and its frank, poetic treatment of illicit sex, has lost none of its disturbing power. But what’s stranger is that Day chose to reveal even more disquieting aspects about herself under her real name than she ever did with a nom de plume.
Who Was the Real Woman Behind “Nine and a Half Weeks”? (The New Yorker, via Thomas Roche)
- “Japan’s e-book market is flooded with boys love (novels or comics about male homosexuality, often written for a female audience) and teen love (sexually charged manga and novellas aimed at teenage girls) content.”
Erotic Content and Cheap, Throwaway Titles Driving E-Book Sales in Japan: An Industry Insider Speaks Out (RocketNews24)
- I’m not one to link to celebrity upskirts, but it’s true about the boots. I want them. Also, Catwoman.
Anne Hathaway’s Coochie Hair Made An Appearance Last Night, But More Importantly What Are Those Boots?! (Dlisted)
- Google.com image search now restricts sexual or not-safe-for-work content, thanks to changes in the search engine’s SafeSearch settings. However, some are calling it “censorship.”
Google.com now ‘censors’ explicit content from image searches (ZDNet)
- Yes, there’s a gallery: Japanese erotic games do feature hardcore sex scenes, but there is an “adventure” part during which players interact with fully clothed characters. While there are exceptions, those clothes are often dorky.
Why Do Erotic Game Characters Wear Such Dorky Clothes? (Kotaku)
- Forbes take a serious look at sex and asset allocation. Really!
Sex And Asset Allocation (Forbes)
- This is a gratuitous post of boyflesh. It gave me a happy moment. Or two.
32 Man Candiest Moments Of The Year (Buzzfeed)
- Warning: trigger alert for violence, abuse scenarios: “To save themselves, some of the women in the group approached the soldiers and told them what they knew would divert their attention: They pointed to a [transgender] sex worker cowering among them who goes by the street name of Raissa. And they sold her out.”
Transgender sex workers face abuse by military in Ivory Coast (Star Tribune)
- AP examines South Korea’s members of the “Nuri Cops” (roughly “net cops”), a squad of nearly 800 volunteers who help government censors by patrolling the Internet for pornography in their spare time.
South Korea’s porn fight ‘like shoveling in a blizzard’ (Yahoo! News)
Main post image: Kate Upton by Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia November 2012 (Touchpuppet).
Whenever Alan Turing is mentioned it should be remembered that there is an excellent case to be made for his death having been accidental. The case is summarised in this BBC piece from last summer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092
“The day of the trial was by no means disagreeable.
“Whilst in custody with the other criminals, I had a very agreeable sense of irresponsibility, rather like being back at school.”
Turing had a brilliantly analytic mind and I don’t think he mistook the state of society at the time for the way things should be. He was not a victim. He was, however, as I have been, a careless experimenter who took his life in his hands during the pursuit of an interesting hobby. One can get carried away with one’s enthusiasms even when potent poisons are being used.
“Turing was hounded,” he told the BBC, adding: “Yet he remained cheerful and humorous.”