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The porn industry is in a bind

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Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

otoburb wrote: post #44
TeMPOraL wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right this moment I'm sitting in an office in the place that represents our hope, a capital of continued progress[0] - Shenzhen, China. Everything Facebook, Google and Microsoft designs gets built here (or nearby) anyway. China has a... quite healthy attitude towards copyright and trade secrets. That is, they don't give a flying fuck here. There was even a term for that, that eludes me at the moment, which described…

>> There was even a term for that, that eludes me at the moment, which described the idea of "I share my specs today with you, you'll share your specs tomorrow with me". Andrew "bunnie" Huang coined the term gongkai to explain this concept, as differentiated from the Western-originated idea of open source ( kaiyuan )[1]. It was based entirely on his observations of the semi-open hacking culture that is hopefully stil…

Yes, gongkai was the term I thought about and this is the blog I first learned about it. Thanks!

EDIT: [0] was the post that introduced the term to me.

[0] - http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#52

Post by vezzy-fnord »

sandworm101 wrote: post #49
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if Insex was that influential that it influenced the modern "torture porn" films. Those were brewing for a long time since the exploitation films of the 70s onward. The interview was definitely an Insex plot device, as well. Though my point was the S/M subculture should not really be viewed negatively or marginalized. I somewhat received that sentiment from your parent post.

Give insex time. Playboy has been around for generations. Insex did interviews during, Kink cut those. Kink does interviews afterwards, out of character, as evidence that the violence was consensual. These are not normally reproduced in filesharing communities. So when someone downloads one of these via filesharing it often looks fare worse than it is. Some investigator (me) then has to dig up the interview to assure…

I can see how that'd be painful, though not the fault of the producers. Is Kink and Insex-level stuff the worst of legal/gray area pornography that you have to analyze, because that'd be surprising.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#53

Post by kragen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50
kragen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I share my specs today with you, you'll share your specs tomorrow with me" This is how Silicon Valley worked, back when the silicon was actually made there. My impression is that Google's obsessive culture of secrecy (necessary because it grew up in an environment where loose lips really did sink ships) is the strongest influence in destroying that culture of information-sharing, although of course NDAs, interface…

> I'm interested to hear about the abuse and impoverishment. Disclaimer: I've only been in China for a week so far, so what I can tell is just what I see (besides what everyone hears in Western media, that is) and it may be biased. Shenzhen is a city of many contrasts. I work in a relatively modern office building and live in a not-totally-crap hotel. I travel to work via taxis which seem to be staffed by poor people…

Here in Buenos Aires we have a lot of entrenched poverty too, in slums that are often only tens of meters from rich areas. What I wonder most about is: what is the relationship between the poverty and the prosperity? Are the people in the "labour camp" able to go out and shop for meat, fruits, and barber services? Can they go get another job? Or are they in some kind of debt bondage? Have they been forced out of their homes by the electronics industries, or are they sending money to their parents and grandparents back in the village? Are the street food vendors and desperate taxi drivers better off than they were before the electronics industry came along, or are they finding themselves unable to pay the escalating bribes and taxes, forced off the land their families farmed, and occasionally beat up by police for scaring rich teenagers? What was their life like five or ten years ago, and what do they expect it to be like five or ten years from now? Can they walk to the KFC, or will the police pick them up as if they were Maciej Ceglowski walking around in the wrong neighborhood http://www.idlewords.com/2006/08/i_spy.htm or a black person walking around in a white neighborhood in the US?

Why is there only trash on the poor street? Do people not throw trash on the ground on the rich street, or is there a municipal street sweeping service that takes care of that? If so, why doesn't it clean the poor street? What's up with the lack of safety equipment? I'm happy to live in a country where I can still enjoy fast merry-go-rounds, but safety equipment in construction work is super important for preventing accidental death.

The derivative and the causality are more important than the current state.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#54

Post by TeMPOraL »

jenmcewen wrote: post #2

I was just about to share this. That's my company (and me in 2 of the pictures). Thanks for sharing it.

Hi Jen!

I just want to say, it was a nice stunt you did with Google Glass! I think the jokes were even better than the... more explicit part. It was also the first time I heard of MiKandi. Please do something like this with HoloLens as well, such take on up-and-coming technologies is a material for infinite amount of laughter over at watercooler at work.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#55

Post by cinquemb »

mindcrime wrote: post #47
backprojection wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with your sentiment. I think there's an important distinction to add. By and large, people don't fully expect their mobile devices to be general purpose computing machines in the same way that their PCs are. What I expect from my phone, primarily, is convenience and usability. Of course, at least on android devices, it's not at all uncommon to install custom variants of the OS (CyanogenMod, etc.), s…

Yes, it does happen, but the device manufacturers (for the most part) don't exactly go out of their way to make it easy. And other than Android forks, there aren't exactly a ton of choices. It's a pretty sad situation in many ways. Of course, I recognize that most people aren't going to want to install a different OS anyway. And that's OK. Most people didn't install a new OS on their PC's either. But some do, and som…

>And if we slip into a world where that's not possible, or where it's incredibly difficult…But some do, and some want to tinker, create, invent, hack, and innovate.

I don't know, I think there will always be people who will drift towards areas where they feel/embody this, and where the field is so niche that most people just don't care about what you are doing at that moment in time or it's so far removed from what most people engage with on a daily basis.

Fields where the current "monied" players are all running like chickens with their heads cut off, peddling snake oil (too many times have friends heard about some device and asking me if it can really do xyz, and I just facepalm to myself only to realize that things are just so new and most people have the faintest idea of what is actually possible now and what will be possible in the near future), and things like laws/incentives restricting xyz aren't even talked about because people are still trying to figure out what the hell is going on (at least from my perception working in a research lab on the outer tech world).

And even if it is not bad for Google, Samsung, Apple, et al today, years from now, they'll be where ibm is, peddling their watson equivalents to everybody that will listen fighting off their own obsolescence.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#56

Post by TeMPOraL »

kragen wrote: post #53
TeMPOraL wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm interested to hear about the abuse and impoverishment. Disclaimer: I've only been in China for a week so far, so what I can tell is just what I see (besides what everyone hears in Western media, that is) and it may be biased. Shenzhen is a city of many contrasts. I work in a relatively modern office building and live in a not-totally-crap hotel. I travel to work via taxis which seem to be staffed by poor people…

Here in Buenos Aires we have a lot of entrenched poverty too, in slums that are often only tens of meters from rich areas. What I wonder most about is: what is the relationship between the poverty and the prosperity? Are the people in the "labour camp" able to go out and shop for meat, fruits, and barber services? Can they go get another job? Or are they in some kind of debt bondage? Have they been forced out of thei…

I wish I could answer your questions. I keep asking them myself. I want to talk about it with someone local, but it's incredibly hard to find someone speaking English here outside work (and incredibly awkward to ask those questions at work), and my Chinese currently is limited to "hello", "thank you" and "goodbye" (I try to learn some as fast as I can; I only had a week's notice I'll be flying here so there wasn't time to prepare).

My Polish co-worker who is here with me and has been here before tells me of a girl working here who somehow escaped the poor villages far away from the metropolis and ended up working as a software tester. He says that he tried to talk with her about life, but that her English proficiency is limited to the technical matters; she can't express herself in English if asked about non-work topics, probably due to lack of general vocabulary.

I'll be happy to post something if I learn the answers to those questions.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#57

Post by sandworm101 »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #52
sandworm101 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give insex time. Playboy has been around for generations. Insex did interviews during, Kink cut those. Kink does interviews afterwards, out of character, as evidence that the violence was consensual. These are not normally reproduced in filesharing communities. So when someone downloads one of these via filesharing it often looks fare worse than it is. Some investigator (me) then has to dig up the interview to assure…

I can see how that'd be painful, though not the fault of the producers. Is Kink and Insex-level stuff the worst of legal/gray area pornography that you have to analyze, because that'd be surprising.

I don't know about worst. There is some pretty strange stuff out of japan, but it isn't as violent. There are a couple Russian websites that make Kink look like Disney in terms of violence, but they aren't a sexual with it. They are annoying because they don't comply with s2257 recordkeeping requirements. Most people would be shocked at how many overseas sites don't comply. That law only applies to "actual sexually explicit conduct" ... not all pornography and certainly not simple nudity.

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#58

Post by kragen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #56
kragen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Buenos Aires we have a lot of entrenched poverty too, in slums that are often only tens of meters from rich areas. What I wonder most about is: what is the relationship between the poverty and the prosperity? Are the people in the "labour camp" able to go out and shop for meat, fruits, and barber services? Can they go get another job? Or are they in some kind of debt bondage? Have they been forced out of thei…

I wish I could answer your questions. I keep asking them myself. I want to talk about it with someone local, but it's incredibly hard to find someone speaking English here outside work (and incredibly awkward to ask those questions at work), and my Chinese currently is limited to "hello", "thank you" and "goodbye" (I try to learn some as fast as I can; I only had a week's notice I'll be flying here so there wasn't ti…

I'm very interested!

Re: The porn industry is in a bind

#59

Post by rickdale »

prawn wrote: post #34
rickdale wrote: post #9

Back in the day, when porn was in the big online bubble state, sites would offer over $.50/click to their site. When I first started (ab)using that system, the sites immediately bumped it to $.25/click and then $.10/click, and now I think its like $.000034/click, or basically nothing. They would also give you additional money for actual sign ups, and had a bonus day on every month where you made a significant amount…

We might've had similar starts. I bought my first computer with cheques from a porn affiliate program. Soon after I started, they required visitors click through an age-verification to confirm and pay out. So I put together a protected zip file of M-rated images and set the password as the xth word of the yth paragraph on the page after the age verification. That only worked for a couple of weeks, but it was enough.

Thats great. I remember at some point they would only accept users from their direct banner ads, which I could never generate money from. I am sure a lot of people used these affiliate programs, but I rarely ever hear anyone talk about it. Only one other time and it was in a movie and I am not certain it was as similar as we are talking about. Great stuff, thanks for sharing!
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