[tor-talk] Porn make the world more free: Tor Porn Bundle?

[Julian Yon]

A few things to consider (some practical, some political):
* It's possible to wank without porn. We can reach places in our
  imagination that no amount of “reality” can take us. In my experience
  an orgasm that starts in the mind is *much* more fulfilling than
  one involving porn. It's also possible to reach orgasm without wanking
  (i.e. by having sex). I'd rather work towards full sexual liberation
  than encouraging people to continue seeing sex as a base instinct best
  satisfied by masturbation.
* While there's nothing at all wrong with pictures and videos of
  people having sex (hell, I like them) it is an undisputed (AFAIK)
  fact that the sex industry (including porn) is an exploitative one,
  especially of women. Getting into bed with the porn producers risks
  alienating the feminist movement who would otherwise be naturally
  aligned with Tor's goals.
* The term “Tor Porn Bundle” would undoubtedly have the word “Child”
  inserted in some people's minds. While others on this list have made
  it clear that they disagree with me, personally I believe this is a
  bad thing and would harm the project.
* I fear that the mere presence of such a TPB on a person's computer
  would be construed as evidence of lawbreaking and lead to arrests and
  everything bad that follows that. The beauty of the generic TBB is
  that all its presence implies is that you value anonymity. It gives
  no clue as to *why* you do.
* As others have pointed out, if you're thinking in terms of
  facilitating Flash videos, you are setting yourself up for a security
  nightmare. If you want to build a secure Flash player from the ground
  up then that may be a worthwhile project, but I'm not sure that it's a
  realistic one. HTML5 video is already viewable over Tor.
* Have you ever actually tried visiting a porn site over Tor? It's
  painful, or at least it was when I tested it a while back. The
  bandwidth requirements for thumbnail sites in particular are quite
  high and I'm not sure the network can handle it (yet).
* More so than any other resource I've seen, porn sites bombard the user
  with requests and incentives to provide credit card information. You
  talk about targeting teenagers. This worries me. Aside from the
  wider moral debate over children and sex, this is a group who have
  limited experience of the world and are likely to naïvely trust Tor
  to protect them from harm no matter what they do. Once you
  steal your parents' credit card details and use them over
  Tor you've lost. Ethically, are we right to assume we can educate
  them sufficiently at a distance? Imagine copies of Tor being passed
  around on USB sticks by 12 year olds in a classroom, saying “this
  will let you see porn” with no explanation of the risks. This makes
  me deeply uncomfortable.
* Due to the prevalence of anti-porn legislation, making supporting the
  porn industry a direct goal of the project may put exit node
  operators at an increased risk and be off-putting for people
  considering setting up a relay, *especially* if the goal is to allow
  minors access to sexual content. It already takes serious balls to
  run an exit.

Julian

On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 09:48:14 +0200
"Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)" <lists at infosecurity.ch> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> i've been at internet governance forum (in italy) yesterday and
> starteddiscussing a topic with several internet freedom/policy
> activists:
> 
> "porn make the world more free"
> 
> It seems a joke, but it maybe an important consideration.
> 
> A teenager (12-18 yo) in 2012 use internet porn websites for
> masturbation. That's a real facts, i expect, almost everywhere.
> 
> In places like Saudi, a 14th years old young have a strong need of
> masturbate like in any other place in the world.
> But he don't have access to internet porn with his broadband internet
> access.
> 
> In the Saudi example there are already now people providing paid (and
> risky) access to porn for masturbation's needs:
> http://arabnews.com/jailed-facilitating-porn-site-access
> This as an example of a real need that stimulate people in finding
> circumvention methods.
> 
> So, when a teenager in Saudi need to masturbate he have to find out a
> censorship circumvention tool.
> 
> From a marketing perspective this is a clearly definable "need" .
> 
> Ok, how can we think to make out of it (masturbation and porn)
> something good for freedom of speech?
> 
> Imho we may think to create something like "Tor Porn Bundle": A
> version of TBB specifically designed to provide easy access to Porn.
> Then promote it trough custom targeted campaigns across all Arab World
> (and language/countries where internet porn is censored).
> 
> Which would be the main result in mid-term?
> 
> That most teenagers (and also non teenagers, but probably in minor
> part) in that closed-society will learn, understand and start using
> censorship circumvention tool for an important, basic need:
> Masturbate!
> 
> We should not underestimate the relevance of this need because it fit
> along with the "Basic" human needs, like eating.
> So the effort and perceived rewards that a person have working on the
> path to satisfy that need is very high.
> 
> In that hypothetical Torn Porn Bundle, we may deliver a pre-populated
> in-language list of porn websites.
> But also some "free" "in language" media website and other free / non
> censored information sources and social networking tools.
> 
> That way, after masturbation, the user will be able to have a clear
> and simple path to start accessing the web in a free way.
> 
> As a side node i would like to remind that the "porn industry" is
> valued billion of USD.
> If porn industry would became partners of freedom of speech players,
> it could means a lot of money for investment in campaigning and
> technology development, because it would means opening new markets to
> them. Opening a new market means having new consumer that means they
> would be able to calculate the economic ROI of an investment.
> 
> * Porn supported the development of internet backbone
> * Porn developed early internet multimedia streaming technologies
> * Porn may make the world more free
> 
> -naif
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-- 
3072D/F3A66B3A Julian Yon (2012 General Use) <pgp.2012 at jry.me>
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