tuscl

Mobile Porn Marketplaces: Two Down, One to Go

Microsoft follows Apple down the ‘no porn here' mobile app rabbit hole
Jun 11th, 2010
REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft has followed the mobile app leader (i.e. Apple) with a firm no-porn policy for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

"Images that are sexually suggestive or provocative, Content that generally falls under the category of pornography, or Content that a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content," states Microsoft in its Windows Phone 7 app guidelines.

While not yet clarifying whether it will offer any alternative way of loading applications, the software company appears to be as determined as Apple to control apps deployed on the Windows Phone 7 OS.

“Businesses wanting their own privately developed, privately deployed software will still have to go via Marketplace,” wrote Ars Technica. “Their programs will still be private, but as things stand, there won't be any mechanism for cutting out the middleman.”

The resolve by these two corporate giants to exert complete control leaves the open source-oriented Google and its Android operating system as the last man standing in terms of giving app developers the freedom to create sexy, if not downright pornographic, applications for consumers to enjoy on their mobile devices.

No one thinks it's a big deal, because porn is massively accessible through browsers anyway and developers have yet to reach the outer limits of HTML5 capabilities. But in time it may well become a very big deal, and when and if it does, Android may very well be the last man standing as the only place where real creativity, and not just of the sexy sort, can be practiced for the real-world enjoyment of the masses.

Like all modern wars, however, this one will continue for years to come, with corporate strategies changing as quickly as the tides of fortune. In other words, to be continued …

http://business.avn.com/articles/Mobile-…

5 comments

  • sharkhunter
    14 years ago
    They should have a safe business mode and a home take off the safety mode so the customer can use the internet however they like. I'm sure the CEO's of both companies would not like it if some bigger company required their wives to keep their clothes on whenever they saw them at work and at home. If you said the wife was like an app, maybe they would suddenly get the point. Of course some people like to hack away at such devices and make their own alterations. I think they call it jailbreaking and I wouldn't be surprised if jailbreaked phones could have apps like people want them. However I'm not an expert on this yet.
  • deogol
    14 years ago
    Sounds like a trust and collusion to me.
  • georgmicrodong
    14 years ago
    Uh, boys and girls, there is no attempt at censorship here. All Apple and MS are doing is refusing to sell pornographic app in *their* store. They're not trying to keep you from getting porn, just declining to be the conduit. In addition, neither company has made any attempt to restrict what you look at on the Internet.

    You *can* get porn apps on your iPhone or your Windows phone. In the iPhone case, it's a little tougher; you have to jailbreak the phone, but that's not particularly hard, and recent techniques are even reasonably safe. In MS's case, you simply buy the app from somebody else. Not only that, a web application, such as the Google Voice one, can provide any content it wants, without even slowing down at the app store.

    In any case, you can unrestricted access to far more porn on the Internet than *any* app could ever hope to provide.

    In short, relax. It's no big thing. It's barely even a little thing.
  • samsung1
    14 years ago
    You can open the safari browser on the iphone/itouch and visit porn sites but a lot of them are not optimized for the small iphone/itouch screen.

    Ironic how Apple allowed strip club apps like the one founder helped with (Gentlemen's Club Finder) but no porn apps.

    Despite the ban on porn apps, Apple/AT&T are overwhelmed with pre-orders for the new iphone. According to an official Apple press statement more than 600000 pre-orders were taken, making it the largest single pre-order day in the company's history
  • samsung1
    14 years ago
    speaking of phone apps...the gentlemen's finder that uses tuscl for the ratings (and advertised on the home page of tuscl), is now priced at $0.99 instead of the original $2.99.

You must be a member to leave a comment.Join Now
Got something to say?
Start your own discussion