Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn

A Crowd of Cowards submitted the news found in this LA Times article that Yahoo! will now sell pornographic videos though an online store. The new section ("Adult & Erotica") is not exactly flashing on the Yahoo! front page, but it's only a few clicks away. (And wants your valid credit card number as proof of age, btw.) Does this mean that all of Yahoo! will be blocked by the various censorware companies? Reader fezzgig points to coverage on CNN as well.

Re:10 commandments

Cats Standard Version

1 THEN God spoke all these words, saying,
2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and set us up the bomb.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. What you say!!
4 Thou shalt not have any chance to survive. Maketh thou time.
5 Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or all his base, which belong to us.

Yahoo Reports Itself...

Right Here [yahoo.com].

Now that's funny...

Jethro

Re:I KNEW This was coming!

Please. Porn involving CowboyNeal? I just ate lunch!

AN OUTRAGE, I TELL YOU! AN OUTRAGE!

DAMN STRAIGHT Yahoo selling porn is an OUTRAGE!

PR0N WANTS TO BE FREE!

Goddamn, I remember the good ole days of the Net, before the stinking web and its stinking crass commercialism invaded this golden land of cyberspace -- back when there was actually CONTENT, by goddess, on alt.sex.bondage -- and people made and shared porn from the goodness of their gonads, without any thought of profit.

Oh, this is filth all right -- FILTY LUCRE! Yahoo should be ashamed, contributing to the perversion of the Net like that.

There is only one response! I call on /.ers to rise up (as it were) and contribute OPEN SOURCE PR0N for the good of humanity!

Re:This is a moral outrage!

> [Pr0n] runs women through a blender, converting their bodies into liquified youth.

Really? Hey, that's a new one, even for rotten.com! Wonder if there's a market for that? And if there is, can I get some from Yahoo?

> Every dollar Yahoo makes is now tainted with the blood and tears of exploited women.

You forgot their vaginal juices! And the lube! And what about the jizz of the exploited men who have to lay pipe all day long, or stand erect with their schlongs in some fluffer's mouth while the director sets up the cameras for the next scene, to make these movies? Blue balls hurt after the first couple of hours! Where's your compassion, woman?

> The Bible also tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yahoo fails.

I tried that with Mrs. Jones across the street. She wasn't too happy with me. Umm, neither was Mr. Jones, for that matter. Guess I failed too!

(Though I admit it was a brilliant troll, Anne. Well done! ;-)

cause/effect

Don't remember where I saw this, but I'm sure it's legit: "Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible."

Rape a feminist for Jesus!

"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton

Re:The internet corrupts people

"After all, if they are not safe on Yahoo, where are they safe?"

pifft! Gwah ha ha ha!

Seriously though, if you are concerned about your children surfing pr0n online, supervise them. I mean, seriously, if you are really that concerned you will take time out of whatever schedule you have and maintin whatever level of modesty you deem is necisarry. While you are right that a lot more people should probably use internet filters, they are far from perfect and can sometimes be overly-restrictive (censoring news, etc...).

My own viewpoint on the whole "internet = = porn" thing is fairly Liberal, but I do respect your viewpoint and I think it is valid for those who care. I don't think restriction should be forced upon those who don't want it though.

BTW: I know your post was a troll (even if you don't think it was) but c'mon isn't "Every site, even supposedly respectable mainstream sites such as Yahoo, are peddling filth. " a little too broad of a generalization?

-----

I KNEW This was coming!

Remember a few months ago when I suggested that pr0n, being by far the most profitable industry on the net, should be used to subsidize every legitimate web site? Apparently someone at Yahoo was reading /. that day and thought "Damn! That makes a lot of sense." I probably won't get credit though. Bastards.

So when will Slashdot start selling pr0n? I look forward to the day when I can get my pictures of CmdrTaco and Cowboy Neal doing pr0n0graphic stuff with dallas cowboy cheerleaders and/or live goats...

Re:This is a moral outrage!

do u have any nudes

Re:The internet corrupts people

How about you worry about regulating your children and the rest will worry about ours. It is not any government's job to teach your children what is right or wrong but your own. If you can't find time to do this then perhaps you need to reprioritize your life.

The Internet is a place for expression of ideas. Some of those ideas you might not care for. Likewise someone else might not care for your ideas. Who says your ideas are correct and everyone else's are wrong.

If "innocent websearches" are turning up mountians of porn then perhaps you need to use a good search engine(http://www.google.com [google.com]) or stop using, "britteny spears pictures" as a search sting.

Your children have not been "safe" on Yahoo since the begining. It always has had a search engine and a listing of adult sites.

Do you want to say that Blockbuster video is the most famous place to rent videos. They rent what some people would call softcore pornography. Should the government regulate them too?

Re:No

The war on drugs is an unfortunate attempt by conservatives to impose their own blind view of proper private behavior upon others.

Isn't this what you're doing, only it is proper public behavior? If a woman and I made a private video of us having sex, would this consititue pornography in your opinion?

Pornography, in contrast, is a public enterprise dealing in wares that are by definition non-consensual.

Dictionary.com states the definition of pornography is Pictures, writing, or other material that is sexually explicit and sometimes equates sex with power and violence.. I don't see anything mentioning non-consentual, do you? [dictionary.com]

No one can consent to participating in pornography...

So you are saying that each and every woman and man who participates in pornography is doing so against his or her own free will? Not only this is a blanket statement, but I don't feel it's true. Please elaborate.

That's false. Law is public morality. Law properly seeks to be moral. The fact that pornography is currently legal is not an argument for allowing to let it remain so, just as the existence of slavery didn't preclude the abolitionist movement.

Ahh, an excellent argument!! I cannot debate this. :)

So does organized crime, at the expense of our neighbors and loved-ones.

You obviously need to see the flip side of organized crime. John Gotti used to have an annual party for everyone in his old neighborhood, and they weren't happy to see him go. There's another side to everything.

Frankly, I understand your argument, however the foundation of that argument (that pornography is non-consentual and exploits women) in my opinion is flawed. Perhaps the law should be changed, but the law, which is "public morality" currently seems to disagree.

Ejaculations

I guess we know why the REALLY holler "Yahoo!" now...
--

Re:The internet corrupts people

If your kids are taking your credit card and buying porn online in the middle of the night, should you blame the internet?

Re:This is a moral outrage!

I have been trolled. I have lost. On the other hand, it's just such a fantastic troll, that I can't be rid of this compulsion to reply. So, a few quick points:

There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need.

Untrue. I would imagine that most people in the sex industry could make enough money in other pursuits to subsist, sex is simply much more profitable. There is also the issue of people making pornography for pleasure and not for profit. Suppose I were to write a pornographic short story, would I be doing it because of dire economic need? Would this be exploitation? What about a couple who videotapes themselves having sex? Is this exploitation? What if they do it to sell the tapes at a profit -- is this different than if they do it for fun?

In short, it's a complex issue, and one that's not improved by the sorts of in-good-faith fearmongering that goes along the same lines as this troll.

But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.

Your language is strongly gendered and is every bit as much a part of the cultural mandates that oppress women as porn. Why are you equating nakedness and/or sex with humiliation? Why do you label only men as craving pornography?

Lastly, some facts that deserve to be stated a few times to keep the truth-to-nonsense ratio up.

--None of ten commandments mention rape. (Another reason why they suck.)

--"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy.

--Generally speaking, people don't have souls.

--

Re:The internet corrupts people

Unfortunately the politically correct liberal mafia running our country won't allow this to be said, but the internet corrupts people.

It doesn't have anything to do with any 'liberal mafia', its the Illuminati that controls everything. Just mentioning this to you puts my life in danger.

Filtered internet access seems like the only option.

This is exactly what the illuminati wants you to think. It'll just grant them more power over the internet. Censorship, the DMCA, all of it... owned by the illuminati to dominate control.

FNORD!!!!

Porn is Big Business

Let's face it, porn has been THE consistent seller on the internet. Content creation is cheap, no warehousing or shipping costs, and the addicts will paypaypay to get their itch scratched. Why shouldn't Yahoo go for it? I suspect that Yahoo will clearly mark out it's adult directory structure for the censorware makers, so this will be a non-issue. On the other hand AOL may be able to make hay by claiming the moral/family 'high ground' and truly become the WalMart of the Internet.

Fits their strategy.

Well, it fits in with their strategy of moving away from advertising as their sole source of revenue. News doesn't seem to sell well, but auctions do, as does adult content. I can't see them being filtered as a domain by all the filtering services. Their business is precarious enough now, they can't go about filtering top 10 mainstream sites without a backlash.

Yahoo changes name to OhYeahBabyYeah!

After closing it's New England affiliate site, Yahey.com, [ridiculopathy.com] Yahoo is feeling pressure from investors to improve its bottom line.

Hey, wait. "Bottom line" sounds like a line out of a porno. He he he.

[That's right. You want some of that?]

Yahoo co-founder Jerry "Do I make you randy?" Yang is very excited about Yahoo's new sexing-up process. "I want us to be the Napster of porn," he allegedly said. "We're the Yahoo you don't take home to mother."

Co-founder David "Big Stick" Filo could not be reached for comment. His assistant said that he was in the storage room shooting a training film of some kind.

The new on-hold music is pretty cool, though. Lots of bass.

Bucka-bucka-bow! [ridiculopathy.com]

Re:This is a moral outrage!

Well, that's pretty vague. Plenty of Christians kill animals everyday. Heck, Christians even kill other people in some states (like Texas)with approval from the Government.

This is a moral outrage!

I'd thought that Yahoo learned their lesson with all those French and German lawsuits about Nazi memorabilia. Now they're selling pornography?

Pornography is indistinguishable from rape. It runs women through a blender, converting their bodies into liquified youth. There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need. But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.

How can Yahoo justify profiting from such exploitation? I understand Yahoo's stock prices are slipping and they're desperate to pump some new revenue sources, but pornography is unconscienable. Every dollar Yahoo makes is now tainted with the blood and tears of exploited women.

This calls for a boycott. This calls for a public outcry. There is no excuse for sitting by the sidelines and watching the world go by. Everyone who does not actively oppose this move is complicit in human suffering.

The Ten Commandments tell us, "Thou shalt not rape!" The Bible also tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yahoo fails.

If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions. If you thought it was bad that Dale Earnhardt's autopsy photos were almost published, imagine if you'd had to see photos of electricuted criminals in your Sunday newspaper.

The need to exploit others for profit is a pervasive one in our society, but it's not one that we can't arrest as we arrest other criminal passions. The free market cannot thrive unless we police it for criminal activity such as this, just as it cannot thrive unless we police the market square for pickpockets.

Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls. There is no victor here, except for the ugly head of capitalism. Yahoo must not be allowed to perpetuate this abomination against humanity.

Re:The internet corrupts people

why dont parents teach their kids about porn? easy, because they are uncomfortable with it, so what is easier. Have someone else filter it out. Next we'll start filtering books that deal with death and murder becuase its easier than talking to your kids about it. Hell why dont we just lock them up in a basement until they are 18 because its easier than discussing things with them.

Why have kids at all? Screw it.

Arathres


I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

I wish to register a complaint

Dear Mr. Coward, I wish to complain about the apalling lack of witin the title of the article. Why such a banal description when you could have used Yahoo Does Dallas Yes, yes, she said yahoo or literally thousands of others. You are clearly no relation to Noel.

Can't surf in office

/. is banned in my office because it has too many hyperlinks to http://goatse.cx/ *shrug*