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The Almighty Buck

Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn 264

Posted by timothy from the drugs-are-next-year dept.
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.
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Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn More

Yahoo! To Start Selling Porn

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  • So... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Its OK to make money by selling advertisements to porno sites, its OK to make money from other advertisers getting views from people searching for porn, but its not OK to sell porn directly? I realize noone is saying this directly but that is what is implied by the tenor of the articles, that direct porn sales are "bad". If I was a Yahoo investor I'd be thrilled that they are finally getting into the only business thats ever shown a profit on the internet.

  • Re:This is a moral outrage! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    who let the trolls out!

    woop, woop woop woop

    who let the trolls out!

  • NOTE: This is NOT a Troll. I am simply posting my experiences and views in the belief that it may provide some answers to those who seek. In the past I frequented these sites and news groups and if you are a believer or if you are looking for hope, I am hopeful that my story will be an inspiration for you to make positive changes in your life. I became addicted to pornography at a very early age. I had a neighborhood friend whose brother was in college. He stored his belongings at his parent's house. My friend found a very large box that contained nothing but porn magazines. He showed them to me and before long many of the boys in the neighborhood had their own stash. We visited them quite often and I had no idea that I was laying the groundwork that my adult life would be built upon. My mother found one when cleaning my room and my father told me that these magazines would warp my mind. I didn't know what that meant so I just made sure I wouldn't get caught again. At the age of 13, I accept Christ as my personal savior. I still did not know anything about sexual addictions but soon I realized that becoming a Christian didn't fix my problem. The desire to leave the porn behind was overcome by the desires for the sexual stimulation. I tried to leave it behind me but what started out as secret fun was now my master. When it called, I had to answer. It wasn't just a normal desire for a sexual relationship; it remained a serious problem even after I married and now I had to hide it from my wife. A normal sexual relationship is very healthy inside the limits that God has ordained. Sexuality is so much different than sexual addictions. The addiction robbed the normal sexual relationship that was part of my marriage. The two are completely separate and incompatible. It is like comparing an apple to a rotting apple. An apple is good and very healthy but the rotten apple is so perverted that it barely resembles the fruit it once was. And if we eat it, not only is it unsatisfying, but it doesn't leave us in a state where we can enjoy the real fruit. This perversion numbs the taste and sexual addictions are harder to satisfy the next time a fix is needed. What gratifies today will not gratify tomorrow. There were times when I could go a month or when I was really strong I could go almost 3 months but I was pulled back in and usually deeper than before. It would overtake my mind...like a possession. All rational thinking was lost in what seemed like a fog of obsessive desire. It was literally like my mind was sucked out. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing, when the pornography called me into the fog, I had to answer or plan a way to get away so I could answer. I can remember times when I was laying across my bed reading the Bible when porn would call. I could not resist and once again I was lost in the obsession to find a fix. I felt hopeless. If I was not safe during Bible study, I was not safe anytime or anywhere. I felt rejected by God. I was filled with guilt and I knew I wasn't worthy of a relationship with God. Perhaps you are in the same place I was. You are not alone. Since opening up and sharing my story, I have met many Christians that are going through what I went through. In this very news group there are many Christians. Ministers and clergy have expressed their struggles with this beast that dominates their minds. I also read in an article many years ago about a reporter who was present when Billy Graham checked out of a hotel. He was attending an anti-pornography conference. The clerk complimented Billy on his integrity. He went on to say that he sees what charges are on the hotel bill and that the majority of the pastors attending the anti-pornography conference were guilty of the very thing they claimed to oppose. Most had been viewing pay-per-view pornography in the hotel rooms during their stay and the clerk was impressed that Billy Graham was one of the few who did not. I often wondered about this and I thought how hypocritical these pastors were. In light of my own experience, I have changed my mind. I don't think their intent was hypocritical, but rather I believe that they are fighting the monster inside the only way they know how. They are addicted and the only defense they had was to attack the industry. A Christian involved with pornography will never experience intimacy with God and will never enjoy any area of his or her life the way God intended. An impure heart robs our spirit, destroys any hope of godliness, breeds guilt, stifles our ability to relate intimately to our mate. It robs every thing of value from our lives. But there is hope! I now live porn-free but it has not been an easy road. Sexual addictions are character flaws. This flaw will never go away, but it can be overcome. We all have character flaws. Some have flaws that everyone can see like dishonesty or alcoholism, some of us have flaws that can be kept in secret. Secret flaws are harder to overcome because we can put up a good front to the world while hiding sins that haunt us. We often fool ourselves by finding ways to justify our actions, but deep down we know we are sinning. Hidden deep inside the heart of everyone is knowledge of God and knowledge of right and wrong. We can push it way down where it we don't see it and we can bury it with distractions but it will always be there. Suppressing the truth only works while we are in control, but when something shakes our world, it always manages to surface again and we have to deal with it. We must either make changes in our lives, or bury it again. My sexual addiction produced guilt in my life. The guilt drove me away from God. I would go on my way without dealing with my guilt until something would stir my life and cause me to seek God again. After getting things right, it would not be long before the porn would retake control and I would wander away from God again. During the lowest time of my life, I did not attend church for almost 3 years. And when I did attend, I never heard anything convicting - only things that made me feel good and this would ease my pain but not address the problem. One day I reached what I felt like was the bottom. I felt lost and broken. I took a long walk alone in the woods and tried to pray. I did not know how to pray anymore and spent most of my time sorting through my thoughts. I asked God why I was not able to control any area of my life and why was I not able to have any consistency in my Christian walk? I left just as confused as when I got there. The next day I returned for another long walk. I prayed a little better, but still felt like God was a million miles away. The third day I returned again for another long walk. I was more able to pray this time. It is hard to put into words the experience I had with God that day. The only words I that come close is that I saw the cross. For the first time in my life, God showed me and I looked to the Cross of Jesus Christ. Suddenly I understood grace. Then it was as if the shackles that enslaved my mind fell and I was a free man. I pray frequently that God would help me to write a verbal road map that others who are willing can follow. I want to paint an accurate picture of Christ so others can know him as I do. If you have read this far, I hope you will continue on. Keep in mind that changes take commitment and determination. Don't give up because you are expecting God to hit you with his spiritual hammer and give you instant success. I am convinced that if you follow the same road, you will have the same results. A sexual addiction is a taboo. Christians don't talk about it or share with others. Most, who are addicted, fight this battle alone without any guidance. One person who contacted me said he went to his church for help and was 'disciplined'. People hide their problem and hide their shame. This should not be so. There are many 12 step programs but the success rate is very small or is short lived. I believe it this is because we do not have the power to change ourselves. If we don't allow God to transform us, we will stay on the same roller coaster for the rest of our lives. The only true change comes by the life changing power offered to us through Jesus Christ. I have now met many that are addicted to porn or other sexual addictions. One thing I have found is that those who can't walk away were exposed at a very early age. Someone who gets into porn at the age of 18 or 19 usually has a much easier time breaking away than someone like myself who was exposed at 9 or 10 years of age. I believe that is because a 9-year-old has a brain that is still developing. If my brain is being over stimulated in an area that I am not yet equipped to handle, there must be some compensation. There was a study published that showed that homosexuals brains have an enlarged brain in the area that scientist have identified as responsible for sexual stimulation. I believe this sheds light on sexual addictions, not just homosexuals. Early exposure to pornography could very well cause the response that a growing and developing brain reacts to by increasing the development of the area that is responsible for sexual responses beyond the norm. So what does all this mean? It means you have an uphill battle. It is not a valid excuse to justify a sinful lifestyle because you have a physical problem with your mental development. If that were a valid excuse, we would all be excused for all sins. After all, the bible clearly says that we are born with a sinful nature. We are commanded to overcome that nature. The addict just has another struggle to overcome. I went into the woods confused and broken and came out with a deep understanding that I never had before and a head full of ideas. I have recently started reaching out to those who are addicted and I am constantly updated my testimony. I am continually looking for better ways to explain the truth that I have learned. The one principle I have is that the Bible is the acid test and if something is not CLEARLY taught in the Bible then we know our beliefs did not come from God. From this point on, I want to explain how I overcame my sexual addiction and I firmly believe you can overcome also. It is important to note that we will not all have a dramatic touch of God's hand. Don't feel like the floodgates have to open or God is not working in your life. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong to those whose hearts are loyal to Him. 2 Chr 16:9 I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds. Jer 17:10. These two passages apply to those who truly repent and turn from our impure lifestyles. God sees. Lightening may not sound and the earth may not shake but God quietly calls your name. You will not hear unless you put everything aside and listen. He will search your heart and will know when you turn your heart to him. Then God will give you according to your deeds. In other words, once you get to the place where you are ready to seek him and you commit your efforts, God will enable you. You can't do it alone. But God will give you victory according to your work. If you play games, you will not succeed. God longs to show the plan He has designed for your life and God longs to have a close relationship with you. God cares more about your faithfulness than a dramatic testimony. We all have habitual sins and character flaws in our lives. The bible tells us that we have a sinful nature. What we fight against is our very nature. It is hard to overcome, but we must do it. In the book of Revelation we are told that the one who overcomes will eat of the tree of life, sit with Christ in his throne, inherit all things, rule over the nations, etc... The greatest promises are offered to him that overcomes. So what does it mean to overcome? Overcoming is to subdue our very sinful nature and become holy and righteous before God. The first step to accomplish this is to establish a solid foundation. If the foundation you build is unstable, so will your life. If the foundation is weak, nothing else matters. If the foundation is strong, a strong life can be built on it. Guilt is the first foe we must defeat. God has created us to have a personal fellowship with him. There is only one door that leads to God. In John 10:9 Jesus said, "I am the door. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture". Jesus used this parable to make a word picture we can use to understand that he is the way. Only by him can we be saved. Romans 4:4 Now to him who works, his wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. We can't please God through our good works. We have a debt to sin that we cannot pay. Christ made it very clear that sin was not only the actions you take, but also the thoughts of your heart. He said that if you see a woman and lust after her, you have already committed adultery in your heart. If you are angry or hate your neighbor, you are a murderer, if you envy, you are a thief. We all sin, and some sins are very habitual. If we play the karma game, we will loose. We can never do enough good deeds to earn grace. Romans 4:4 makes that very clear. Picture the Grand Canyon. Sin separates us from God and creates a gulf that we can't cross. Good works are like tossing pebbles into the canyon in hopes that one day we will build a bridge that we can cross. But at the end of our lives we will see no evidence of our good works because they went to our canyon of debt and did not gain the grace of God. Now look at the next verse - Romans 4:5: But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. This verse is the foundation of a relationship to God. Jesus is the one who died to justify the ungodly (Romans 5:6). This is the verse that unlocked the chains of my addiction and offered me freedom. I realized that I had been stuck in the never-ending loop described in verse 4. I was trying to feel justified before God by my own efforts. But Romans 4:4 clearly tells me that the wages of my works only go toward my debt of sin. A debt I cannot pay. But verse 5 tells how I can be justified. Christ died to justify the ungodly. I am VERY ungodly by nature - in fact, what is more ungodly than a man obsessed with pornography? Lets look at the verses that support to this verse. For the sake of time I will only focus on what happened on the cross. Christ lived a perfect and sinless life. He was God incarnated (see John 1). The bible teaches that God consists of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is commonly referred to as the trinity. The trinity is one and has never been broken...until the cross that is. When Jesus was on the cross he cried "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" This used to disturb me. In Hebrews we are told that God will never leave or forsake us but here clearly Christ stated that he was forsaken. Christ was forsaken in your place. He was forsaken so you would not be. God is a Holy God and sin cannot abide in His presence. Colossians 2:14 says that Christ removed the debt against us by nailing it to his cross. The Bible also tells us that he (Christ) who knew no sin, became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). When your sins were laid on Christ, he became sin for you and because he was sin for you, he became separated and forsaken by God in your place. What literal transpired is that Christ took your sins upon himself and put his righteousness upon you. So now you can be as righteous before God as Christ himself. Not because of anything that you have done but because of what Christ has done for you. When this happens, God no longer sees the sex addict you once were but he sees the righteousness of Christ. But it is not automatic. If we look back to Romans 4:5 it says to him who BELIEVES on him who justifies the ungodly, his FAITH is accounted for righteousness. Grace is a free gift but must first be received. A gift is only an offering until it is received. The steps to receive grace are simple, but critical. To receive the grace of God we must humble ourselves, repent of our sins, believe on the provision that God offers through Jesus Christ and receive grace. Humble ourselves. The Bible says God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud. We must first realize that we can't do it alone or in our own strength. If we don't feel like we need God, then we need to re-examine our life. Repent. To repent means to make a 180-degree turn. Change direction. We are walking in our own way, now we need to stop, turn to Christ and walk toward him. Repentance, humility and forgiveness can't be separated. If we ask God's forgiveness with the intention to return to our sins, we will not be forgiven because we have not repented. If we sin with the attitude that we can get forgiveness, we have not repented. It takes repentance. Repentance is a commitment to a lifestyle change with Christ at the center as Lord and Savior. Faith. Faith must have an object. Faith is not a cosmic force that we tap into, as some confused doctrines believe. Faith is trusting in God. To receive grace, we must have faith that the provision God provided through Jesus Christ is enough to make us justified before Him. Jesus said, "it is finished" and then gave up the ghost. John 19:13. Do you believe it is finished or do you feel you need to add something to it? If you add to it you are still in Romans 4:4. If you have never received Christ as your personal savior and would like to, just pray this simple prayer from your heart: Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I humble myself and know that I can't do this on my own. I repent of my sins. I turn from my own way. Please forgive me of my sins. I open the door of my heart and invite you in. Please be my savior and Lord of my life. I commit myself to follow you and to become the person you want me to be. Thank you dying for my sins. Amen. If you are already a Christian and know that Christ is your personal savior, this same foundation applies to you. If you do not feel justified before God, look back to the cross. Romans 4:5 says Christ justifies the ungodly. It is an ever-present opportunity for repentance. When we sin, we repent and once again become pure and clean as God intended by giving our sins to Christ and receiving his righteousness. If you still feel guilty, examine your life. Commit to following Him and abandoning your sins. Guilt is caused by either living a lifestyle contrary to what we have been commanded either by our actions or refusal to act, or we can feel guilt because of our lack of faith in what Christ has done. Do not let guilt drive you away from God. Deal with it or it will drag you down. Now that we have covered the foundation, lets look at how I have learned to keep pornography out of my life. Discipline. Plain and simple, discipline. Job 31:1-4 says: For I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look upon a young woman. What is the portion of God from above? What is the allotment of the Almighty from on High? Is it not the destruction of the wicked? And disaster to the workers of iniquity? That is good advice. We have all heard it said "there is nothing wrong with looking." Well that is a half-truth. It is not a sin to look, but it is a sin to lust in your heart. Looking leads to lust. I know that I can't look at a beautiful woman without the temptation to take the next step. Lust is sinful thoughts, even if I don't physically act it out. If I let sin reign in my life, next time I will be tempted to take my lust farther until eventually there will be acting out. God gives us freedom but draws lines to show us where sin is. If we base all of our actions on the lines where sin begins, we will fall. If we put our toes on the line of sin and peek over, only a small stumble will push us over into sin. But if we follow the example Job set and set up for ourselves self-disciplines, we will not fall into sin. I equate discipline to drawing a line in the sand. Leading up to the gulf war, Desert Storm's plan was to draw a line in the sand. Iraq was told to get on its side of the line or it would be driven back. That is how we establish discipline. We commit to a stance and temptation must stay behind that line. If we cross we quickly get back on our side the instant we realize it. If temptation crosses, we drive it back. After I was freed from pornography, I decided to adopt Job's covenant. I committed not to look and any beautiful women. I work in a corporate environment. In the past, women dressed modestly. That is no longer the case. Now they dress very seductively. When I returned to work the day after I made my covenant, I began to realize how many sexual images bombard me each day. For my whole life, I allowed my eyes to roam unchecked and now I was trying to change all of that. Wow, this was not as easy as I thought. Everything with sex appeal drew my glances just as before, but now I was aware of it. Decades of bad habits won't die overnight. I had to replace the bad habits with good ones. I did this by catching myself looking. When I realized I was looking, I immediately turned my gaze away, reminded myself of my covenant and continued on my way. I had not sinned so I didn't allow guilt even if I failed 100 times. That just meant that 100 times a day I would step back on my side of the line, remind myself of the covenant and continue on. This will only work if we do two things, turn our hearts to God and commit to no compromise. Many months and even years can be lost to one compromise. One compromise is all it takes to start that slide toward sin. I'll give an example from my own life. I had not even considered any pornography for almost a year. I felt that I was cured. Since I hadn't felt tempted, I didn't put as much focus on my covenant. I allowed myself to look at a commercial that was seductive, then I watched TV programs that were clearly not related to pornography but did have a lot of attractive women. Then at work, I allowed my eyes to wander even when I realized I was looking. After all, "there is nothing wrong with just looking." Then one day when I was a little weak, I came across an Internet site that had "fashions". Suddenly I felt overwhelmingly tempted to get my hands on "soft porn". I almost crossed that line and the only reason I didn't is because I remembered the how it felt to be lost in that fog. I remembered how pornography controlled me and out of fear only, I backed down. Then I stepped back and assessed my situation. What lead me to this point? It was a simple compromise. I didn't set out to get into pornography but there I was, at the brink of inviting into my mind the very monster I begged God to rid me of. Never compromise. Never, never compromise, not even once. The battle of temptation is not lost at the point when we are tempted, it was lost long before. The battle is lost at the point of compromise. The bible tells us in 1 Peter 5:8, be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We avoid being devoured by being sober and vigilant. Being sober means to be clear minded. If our mind is in the clouds thinking about that beautiful woman we have been observing, we are not sober. As we get drawn in deeper, we become less sober and more drunken with desire. To be vigilant literally means to cautiously watch for signs of approaching danger. This is why I say zero compromise is so important. Satan does not attack when he does not have a chance to devour. You will find that his favorite tactic is the carrot on the string method. He tosses the carrot out to see if we bite. If we do, he pulls it a little farther. Now we have a taste and are not satisfied so we go get it. He lets us have a little taste and pulls it farther. We become less sober as we focus on getting another taste and less watchful as we focus on temptation. That first taste seemed fairly innocent but now we are racing toward his corner. That is when you will get the fatal blow. You are in his corner, distracted and unfocused. The devil will only attack those who are vulnerable. If you are not vulnerable, he will try to lure you out to where you are vulnerable. But if you are sober and carefully watch for signs, you will not fall. Having said that, if you do fall, don't stay down. Just as I constantly had to draw my eyes back away from sexual images, your struggle may be harder and you may have to keep recovering from falling into pornography. But never give up. The instant you realize that you are slipping or have slipped, IMMEDIATELY turn. Repent and take actions to prevent it from happening again. Out of habit, I kept looking at women and I broke my covenant with my eyes hundreds of times a day at first. But over time if you are diligent, you will start catching yourself a little sooner. Repent immediately after returning from the fog. You may become frustrated and ask God why you can't stop before you slip into sin. But if you are faithful, you will soon catch yourself in the act. If you respond, you will be strengthened. Then you will sometimes catch yourself before the act. And before you know it you will be resisting the temptation. I used to have a very explosive temper. It took months of grief and frustration to finally get to the point where I could stop myself before I exploded. That is the way habitual sins are in our lives. But you will overcome if you place yourself in the hands of God and keep pressing on. The only way you will overcome character flaws in your life is with hard work and commitment. If it were easy, the reward would not be great. Remember, God will not condemn you past. God said he would never remember your sins if you repent. He said it will be as far from his memory as the east is from the west. North and south will eventually meet, but east and west will never meet. If you drive east, you will go east forever. You will never get to the point where you will start heading west. God doesn't want us to wallow in the filth of our past but strive for the glory of our future in Him. Don't loose sight of repentance. The bible tells us that a wise man will fall and will always get up again. Will you be wise? Repentance is the key. If you repent with the intention of going back for a little peek, you haven't repented. If that new super model issue comes out and you say to yourself that you can look and ask forgiveness and get your life right afterwards, you are chaining the pornography shackles on your own legs. Repentance is a turning from your sinful lifestyle and turning to a spirit filled lifestyle with Christ at the center. There will always be one movie or one more magazine with someone you want to see. It will never end. Don't repent with the foreknowledge of sin and don't sin with the foreknowledge of repentance. Both are playing games with God and God is not the one being fooled - you are only deceiving yourself. God empowers those who are faithful. Be wise and commit to faithfulness. If you fall, get up again. Each time you respond to God, he will build your strength until you will one day look up and see His grace taking root in your life. But each time we willfully choose to play games with God, we weaken ourselves and give power to the pornography that has been master of your mind. When we sin, God does not abandon us. We have to turn our back on God and walk away from Him in order to sin. Sin can't abide in God's presence. God does not move, we must make the decision to move. Sin calls our name. We see the carrot and must respond to it or it is powerless. We have to step outside that relationship and protection to taste the carrot. Just as we have to choose to leave God, we have to choose to return. When we repent and head back home, that is when God moves. Read Luke 15:11-24. When the son departed, he left his father. The father stayed behind, watched, and hoped for his son to return. When the prodigal son returned, the father ran down the long road to embrace his son and walk back with him. That is the love and grace of God. When we repent, he warmly and joyfully welcomes us home. We may have a long way back and may suffer consequences, but he accompanies us on the way back. We leave alone, but we don't return alone. One last note. When you abandon pornography, you are leaving a huge void that was once filled with bad habits. That void will want to be filled and the desire for porn will be strong. Fill it with something good. Get some note cards and copy some meaningful scriptures to memorize. Carry them with you and fill your mind with God's word. It will do wonders for your life and will be invaluable in the battle to resist pornography. Living an empowered life is available to you. The question is not can you overcome, the real question is, do you have the desire to overcome? Are you willing to put your hands to the plow and not look back - even when your very nature demands you to turn back? Failure is not when we stumble. Failure is when we quit stretching ourselves and reaching for that goal of a godly life. Establish good habits and discipline yourself to be consistent. Pray every single day. Once a week set aside one hour to walk alone with God. I go to a quiet wooded park and take an hour or more walk. That quiet time is invaluable and it will change your life. Take quiet time for study everyday but one our a week for walking in quiet. One good habit is to read a small portion of scripture and journal what God shows you. It is better to take a very small passage at a time and get something out of it that it is to read a lot of chapters and not remember what you read. I like to read complete books by breaking them into short groups of verses and journaling what I get out of them. It is important not to separate a verse or group of verses during study because the context of the verses around them gives a clear understanding. Out of context it is easy to misinterpret scriptures. I hope what I have experienced will assist you in finding your way out of sinful addictions. I also have a prayer list of people who have contacted me. If you would like to be added, please email me and I will respond and I will add you to my list. I keep all names confidential. If you wish to respond or ask questions, email me at no_porn@mailcity.com or visit my website at http://members.tripod.com/livingfree

  • Who Is Anne Marie? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm guessing the parent is either a troll or a joke, since I am fairly sure that Anne Marie was an escort who advertised on the internet [salon.com] for $12,000 "dates" (she's no longer operating [educatedescort.com]). I'm not sure how that is not considered exploitation of women (though certainly at a much more lucrative rate). Of course I could be totally off-base about who she is (in which case I apologize in advance), but I am pretty sure I have seen that info posted here in the past.

  • This is NOT News (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Um, this is not news at all. It's also wrong. Yahoo is not *starting* to sell porn. They've been selling porn for two years. It's just their Yahoo Stores program that resellers use that anyone can use to sell whatever they want. In this case it includes porn, and it has for two years - since they launched. What this is, is some stupid reporter didn't have time to check facts and thought he/she would write a story blowing nothing up into something.

  • Re:10 commandments (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:16AM (#298467)
    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.
  • Uhh, so Yahoo is selling porn. Big deal. It's not like no one has thought of sellig porn online [dmoz.org] before. Sheesh.

    Alex Bischoff
    ---
  • It honestly would not bother me.

    However disturbing the concept may to be to you, it is such only because you make it so.

  • Not if you clear your cookies first :) *doh*
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Most porn companies bill through holding companies with halfway respectable sounding names...

    iBill being the most popular choice, appears on your statement as the Internet Billing Company.

  • Wow, that's a lot of moderation points that went into that troll, a most admirable example for trolls far and wide to follow.

    Your argument, well, ok, 'argument', is rather flawed. You're either trolling, or arguing from emotion, trying to support your position with various opinions. This is obvious from the fact that throughout you equate pornography with holocaust and televised executions. These are not in the same class, not even in the same school. You're talking completely different things, and equating the production of pornography with events we now call the Holocaust, is an insult to anyone who still remembers and who survived, and is a mistake made by many in an effort to support their position. There is very little you can compare to how and what happened to people from all walks of life in concentration camps and not come out looking like an ignorant, insensitive, hypcritical idiot.

    Second, there is no 'thou shalt not rape' commandment. You may be able to derive that from other passages in the Bible which condemn rape and violence, but it's not in the commandments, you just can't read that into them, hmm, except maybe 'thou shalt not covet...' if you try really hard. Except, it has been shown time and time again, rape is rarely about sex, it's about power and domination, not about coveting someone's body.

    Third, pornography is not criminal. In the US it has been explicitely protected by the Supreme Court under free speech multiple times. It may be immoral in the sense that even men appearing in porn media are doing it for the money, sometimes from necessity, sometimes because that's where a lot of 'easy' money is (insert a quote by everyone's favourite porn star Asia Carrera), and, sadly, sometimes because they're forced to. But not illegal (except in the last case). In this light, pornography is about as immoral as McDondals jobs, where the vast majority of low level employees are there just for the money, because they have to, and are thus exploited for their labor. But again, not illegal.

    So as much as anyone may agree with your point, that pornography should be purged or even classified as rape, you can surely come up with much better arguments than this.

  • As the article says "for over two years" you could buy adult videos! If you don't like it, don't click on that link!
  • when its better free?
  • Of course we should! The Internet is to blame for EVERYTHING because it's new and scary and because they said so on the news and the news is always right!

  • Yahoo was already selling items that may as well have been pornographic through it's auction site. Now it's got a commercial category. Whee, big deal.

    If you can't tell the difference between pornography and rape, then you have some serious issues to contend with. And it seems to me that people like Jerri (tossed from Survivor 2 weeks ago) aren't going to be in "dire economic need" any time soon with all the endorsements she can pick up, yet she's still willing to do a Playboy stint. Perhaps you're thinking of Snuff, or child porn, or something else. But just because you wouldn't put yourself in the position to be the object of art-that-may-be-considered-porno doesn't mean there are many people who would.

    So you're also going to boycot every convenience store that sells Penthouse or Cherry or Big Breasts magazine, too? And which 10 commandments would those be, that's not in any bible I've ever seen.

    And, as many people have pointed out, what about all those women who buy Playgirl? It's not nearly as prolific, but there's plenty of male Porn out there as well.

    If you want to do something about it, do to your local women's shelter and help there, teach women who _do_ sell themselves to porn how to do better, make a tangible difference. Spouting your mouth off about what a bad moral state we live in won't do anything but get people to help you pack your bags so you can move to Antarctica.

  • I think I might be speaking for more than one or two slashdotters here, I might be wrong, but I for one have no desire to see Cowboy Neal naked.

  • not very free then, is it.


  • I'd thought that Yahoo learned their lesson with all those French and German lawsuits about Nazi memorabilia.

    Yes; they learned that in every country, there are idiots who are opposed to freedom, and who will use the courts to attempt to enforce their values upon everyone else.

    Pornography is indistinguishable from rape.

    If pornography is indistinguishable from rape for you, you have no concept of what either is. How can you sit there and trivialize the anguish and pain that women have had forced upon them by their attackers? What kind of unfeeling monster are you? Are you even a woman?

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

    Explain Terry Weigel, then.

    Hell, explain why multi-millionaires keep going back to Playboy to get more pictures taken.

    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.

    The free market cannot thrive unless prudes like you keep their goddamn nose out of other people's bedrooms.

    Even if those people choose to take a camera into their bedroom. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Nobody is forcing you to. (Another one of those pesky distinctions between porn and rape; bet you wish those would all go away, that'd sure help you make your stupid analogy.)

    Yahoo must not be allowed to perpetuate this abomination against humanity.

    In every country, there are idiots who are opposed to freedom, and who will use the courts to attempt to enforce their values upon everyone else. Yahoo already learned that lesson, remember?

    Although your post is an obvious troll, it really should be moderated down as redundant. Go away.

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

    BWAHAHAHAHAHA! This is funny! How many people watch a dirty movie that causes them to have the steering wheel melt out of their hands, and crash into a busload of nuns? At least the anti-drug nuts can show a possible avenue of harm to folks who have not chosen of their own free will to participate.

    You can't show anything but your own assertion that pornography harms anyone. Sorry, you'll need more than assertions to get action from anybody except a bunch of bitter, frigid prudes.

    Pornography, in contrast, is a public enterprise dealing in wares that are by definition non-consensual. No one can consent to participating in pornography, just as no one can consent to non-sexual slavery under the 13th amendment.

    Ah, yes; here we have the claim of self-evident, revealed knowledge. It had to be coming, you insane fanatics always come around to it sooner or later. In fact, it sounds remarkably like the reasons Nazis give for Aryan superiority.

    How about you provide some background for this belief, other than "Anne Marie says so".

    Draw the line at exploitation. Are women being exploited? Then it's pornography and should be banned. It's important to understand these issues by the power bases they draw from and the hegemonies they perpetuate.

    Congratulations, you have managed to come full circle; you *ARE* talking about banning sex scenes. And cheerleading. And surrogate mothers.

    Curiously, you seem to think it's physically impossible to exploit men, and that no man could ever possibly be forced to participate in pornography.

    Just because you don't like sex doesn't mean other women don't.

    Are you then prepared to boycott any each and every other business and orginization that sells pornography?

    Yes.

    Great; well, Slashdot has porn posted on it every day [goatse.cx]. Please start your boycott. Go away.

    -
  • I never did get this one. Sites asking for valid CC's as age verification. I thought it was mainly a scam up until this reputable company, Yahoo!, has started doing this.

    In my state you are of age to view/purchase porn at 18. I had gotten credit card application since I was 15 and in high school. How in any way does having a valid credit card verify my age?
  • They've been told by "moral" people like you that they're scum for a.) allowing themselves to be photographed nude, or b.) allowing themselves to be photographed while engaging in some sexual act.

    Riddle me this Ann Marie: What are the suicide rates of bonobo monkeys due to anthropoligists capturing their "penetrating and palipatating" on film? Since you say they're human [slashdot.org], is their sex ever "extinguished by the shame and horror of it?"

    Next question: Have you visited alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.ann-marie.die.die.di e [pictures.e...ibitionism]?
  • The Internet does not corrupt people, it only reveals the current level of bad spelling.
  • Damn wish someone would pay to see me naked. Sure as hell beats working at Burger King for a living. I honestly wonder why more women don't sell pictures of themselves online. It's an easy way to make money so they have the freedom to do whatever they want with their lives. Besides in my experience women look at porn almost as much as men so the whole argument that it's men using women is bullshit. Like all business it's people using people. The customer gets the desired product or service and the business gets some $$$. Of course if the women are getting screwed by selling their pictures for far less than they are worth they should wise up and open their own site. If they are somehoe being forced into selling pictures when they don't want to they should go to the cops and report it. Ever been to Miami Beach? People walk around naked all the time just for the fun of it -- in public. Is that 'rape' too? I will agree capitalism sucks but unless you have some magic way to make the world change we're all in the same trap. It sucks but that's life.
  • Yeah, the 'save the children' troll is pretty common now, making it easy to spot.

    I think if I were doing the trolling, I'd go for the "God" angle, as religion generally
    gets lots of bites and starts nice flame wars to boot.

    So, just remember, kids, pr0n goes against the LORD.

    C-X C-S

  • Yahoo Reports Itself... (Score:3)

    by Jethro73 ( 14686 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:50AM (#298488)
    Right Here [yahoo.com].

    Now that's funny...

    Jethro
  • committing rape is, by definition, committing adultry

    Even if neither you nor the woman is married?

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • ...but damn, I wish I had moderator points, and could blow them all modding up your comment.

    Oh, and hadn't already posted a comment to this very thread...

    Of course, I'd have already blown them all modding down Anne Marie's comment, so some sort of ability to foretell the future would be nice too, if anyone's handing out wishes... :-)

    Cheers,

    Tim

  • Correction: the Internet makes it easier for people to view, buy and trade porn stuff without being seen by others. But this alone does not corrupt people.

    (Some) people want to view and buy adult stuff (from erotica to hardcore porn, depending on who they are). The Internet makes it easier for them because they can do that confortably from home without being opressed by others. So what? The sex industry is one of the largest businesses in the USA. The Internet does not corrupt people, it only reveals the current level of hypocrisy.

  • Actually, according to the law in most states, you can't rape your wife. The criminal definition of rape explicitly says that forcing your wife to have sex with you is not rape.

  • Don't let the evil propaganda man get you down.

    A. Children are protected by the use of credit cards as verification measures. There is no reason to filter Yahoo!

    B. AOL, which the story notes "[has] stayed away from pornographic sales" (maintaining their "family values") owns CNN.

    C. This is not news. If pornographic materials have been available, under stringent controls, for over two years, why is it suddenly news today?


    ---sig---
  • There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need.
    Right on!!!

    But why stop there?

    I don't consent to working at my job, because the only reason I work there is because of dire economic need!

    That's right! I'm a slave!

    Employment is indistinguishable from slavery! It's time that we outlaw employment once and for all!

  • I think Annie Sprinkle and Carol queen would take issue with that.

    Really, though, I must commend you -- brilliant research with COINTELPRO. The best way to destroy feminism is to call yourself a feminist, then act like a fucking moron. Brilliant job so far...

    -grendel drago
  • That's sort of what I thought. Especially since I've been at the 50 pt karma cap for a while, so karma whoring does no good.

  • Re:I KNEW This was coming! (Score:4)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:08AM (#298512) Journal
    Please. Porn involving CowboyNeal? I just ate lunch!

  • AN OUTRAGE, I TELL YOU! AN OUTRAGE! (Score:4)

    by goliard ( 46585 ) on Thursday April 12, 2001 @11:44AM (#298514)


    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!

  • Look what I found on the Internet! ;)

    II Kings 6:28,29 "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son."

    Luke 14:26 (Jesus speaking) "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

    Matthew 10:34-36 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."

    Judges 19:24-29 "Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel."

    Genesis 38:8-10 "And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also."

    Numbers 31:18 (Moses to his soldiers) "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

    Solomon's Song 5:4 "My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer."



    - - - - -

  • Re:This is a moral outrage! (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:16AM (#298517)
    > [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! ;-)

  • I don't usually defend myself, but... mathematically speaking, what this tells us is that some rapists read pr0no AND the bible. And I never said anything about them not having a changed perception of females; wouldn't they have to have in order to rape in the first place?

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

  • cause/effect (Score:5)

    by The Queen ( 56621 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @10:22AM (#298520) Homepage
    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

  • Analysts told the Times that the sale of porn may alienate companies that advertise with the company. Yahoo! is expected to report its second consecutive quarterly loss today.

    Other major Internet companies, including America Online (AOL) and the Microsoft Network, have stayed away from pornography sales. (AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.)

    And so it begins. AOL/TW slowly seeds the battlefield of 'they are bad, we are good'.
    It's fun to watch a monopoly grow from the bottom up...
  • I just went to the site, fed in my cc#, and looked around. Some initial thoughts.

    Yahoo! appears to assign an "i can view porn" cookie. Seems a little troubling from a privacy standpoint. It may be just a separate cookie for their video story, but I definitely have a new Yahoo! cookie with the text "video" and a bunch of other data in it.

    It does appear to be secure, in that I have to be signed in to Yahoo! and have produced a CC# before I can view the story. If I sign out, I can't get to the story without signing back in. So, as long as you sign out properly, your kids won't be browsing the store.

    It's pretty explicit. There are large front and back pics of many dvd's, and they aren't censored.

    The selection is pretty slim. If you go to "leather & latex" for example, there are only a few selections. The webmonkeys doing the categorization appear to have had a lot of fun. For example, the movie "recipe for sex" is under the category "Adult&Erotica/Hardcore/Plot-based/Really cooking". 8-)

    There appears to be no additional guarantee of privacy in the adult section. This is horrible to Yahoo!'s potential business, in my opinion. I assume that Yahoo! sells my purchase patterns, click patterns, etc... to all takers, and I would NEVER buy porn from Yahoo!, Amazon, or any on-line store that didn't guarantee privacy. I rather go to Fry's and pay cash, thank you.

    I wonder if there is a market for a totally private e-commerce site.... www.privateshopping.com or something. Allow you to buy "questionable" items of all sorts with a guarantee that they will store none of your personal info. Could be an interesting business model.

    But for Yahoo!, I can't imagine what they were thinking. I understand from a recent business week article that their new focus is on the corporate enterprise. I can't imagine that the CIO will be impressed by the feature of "access to Yahoo! Porn" when Yahoo! is making a sales pitch. The loss in corporate customers and advertising would have to outweigh the revenue from porn, unless yahoo is going exclusively porn. 8-)

    - Twid
  • Oh no! Not Pornography!

    I would be concerned if Yahoo! started selling weapons or suicide instructions online, pr0n is everywhere, and it's not evil.

    ...Next...

    -----

  • Re:The internet corrupts people (Score:4)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:23AM (#298530)
    "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?

    -----

  • Good ole porn. Yahoo's stock is sure to rise to the occassion now.
  • I had my first credit card when I was 17 or so. Porn on!

    -Puk

    p.s. No, it's not that hard to get pr0n when you're underage, even without Yahoo.
  • I'd thought that Yahoo learned their lesson with all those French and German lawsuits about Nazi memorabilia. Now they're selling pornography?

    <FLAME>
    I thought they'd learned their lesson with that whole freedom thing! Now they're allowing some other thing on the net which doesn't fit in with my own personal morals and political agenda? How dare anyone not agree with me and choose to live their life in some other fashion?!
    </FLAME>

    This type of "what works in business and what people want is wrong, and freedom is good as long as it doesn't allow people to follow principles other than my own" attitue genuinely scares me.

    -Puk

  • I KNEW This was coming! (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:54AM (#298539) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • I'm pretty sure that smut accounts for a huge percentage of Kozmo.com's revenue.

    But then, their target market is composed almost entirely of stoners.

    -carl
  • Kozmo just went broke

    Yeah, and Yahoo! just laid off a chunk of their staff.

    Nice trend, yeah?

    -carl

  • Moderation Totals:Flamebait=1, Troll=14, Insightful=4, Interesting=7, Funny=8, Overrated=1, Total=35.

    What's the record?

  • Re:This is a moral outrage! (Score:5)

    by SamBeckett ( 96685 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:01AM (#298546)
    do u have any nudes

  • Re:The internet corrupts people (Score:4)

    by ASaidi ( 105261 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:22AM (#298556)
    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?

  • American society is roughly the least progressive and most backwards in the Western world when it comes to sexuality. I think the Islamic theocracies are the only nations with a less healthy and progressive sexual outlook.

    And yes, it is unhealthy and backwards. It's not meant as a value judgement, but as an objective fact, given that the more progressive and sexually enlightened nations in Europe and in Japan and even in some South American countries have far lower rates of teenage pregnancy, sex crimes, divorce, and other such related problems. Just think about it; America still clings to this Puritanical system of sexual mores whose ultimate embodiment is "no sex until marriage." Not that very many people actually practise this, but it's ludicrous to think that it's a healthy idea in the first place. Sex is a very important part of life, and to make a lifelong committment to someone without even having shared that experience with them is just asking for trouble, sexual dysfunction and divorce, or a joyless marriage.

    And yet, this is what we teach our teenagers in the U.S. We teach them that they should be asexual during some of the most sexually exciting and powerful years of their lives, rather than teaching them how to enjoy their natural sexuality in safe and healthy ways, as a learning process. America had a real sexual revolution, just like the rest of the Western world, and at just about the same time in the late sixties through the seventies. The problem is that we had a fairly successful sexual counterrevolution in the 80s, when the Meese Commission wrongly accused pornography of causing sex crimes (funny how in many countries porn is shown on TV, and yet they have fewer sex crimes) and when fear of AIDS was used as a means to sexually repress young people by instilling irrational fear which far outweighs the true risks (look at the real NIH statistics; most HIV is passed through anal intercourse, since the walls of the anus are likely to be abraded and bleed--so avoiding anal intercourse and partners who engage in it means your chances of getting it are slim to none). Almost all men who get HIV get it from other men, and almost all women who get HIV get it from men who have gotten it from men. This isn't to say that homosexuality is the problem, I'll admit I experimented a bit in college myself. It's just to say that unprotected anal sex (including accidental condom breakage) and sex with someone who has had unprotected anal sex are the only significant risk factors for HIV, excepting IV drug use. So, AIDS is not the huge problem people are made to believe it is in this country. But fear of AIDS has been used to repress sexuality further, particularly among teenagers.

    So, what does this have to do with Yahoo! selling porn? Well, the sexual rvolutions in all Western countries, including the U.S., were fueled by the decriminalization of pornography. Easy availability of sexually explicit material made people more comfortable in exploring their sexuality and trying new things, and made it okay to talk about sex publicly. Two of the overlooked historical events in this country were the release of the movie *Deep Throat* and the later release of *Behind the Green Door*. The former was a very stupid movie, but was the first porn film to seep into the mainstream--couples, and husbands and wives actually went to see that movie together, and the mainstream media even took notice of its popularity. It spawned countless discussions aboutsomething that was still considered a no-no in many circles--oral sex. The latter gained notoriety because its star happened to be the Ivory Soap girl, so the nation and the press took notice and it was shown in theaters to average people in almost every major city. Porn was a symbol of sexual freedom in many countries during the 70s, including the U.S. There was a period of time in the late 70s when certain high-quality porn films were reviewed in mainstream magazines, and by about 1980 many people thought that porn and mainstream movies were beginning to merge a bit--it was not uncommon for a "crossover" porn film to be shot on 35mm film and have a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars back then. But then, as I mentioned, the 80s brought a counterrevolution against pornography, which was blamed by Ed Meese's hand-picked commission for just about all of society's ills, even though rates of sex crimes actually declined once porn became decriminalized and gained acceptance. It's a release valve for sexual tensions. So, porn was pushed back into the background, as was sexuality in general. Even though porn generates more revenue than mainstream movies, it's still considered something shady in this country, though in much of Europe porn is given a far more legitimate status, at the front of the bus instead of the back.

    This is why porn needs to be moved more into the mainstream again in this country. If Yahoo! carries porn, that gives it added legitimacy and status. Porn was an integral part of sexual liberation and the sexual revolution, though today that fact is overlooked by many American scholars, particularly in light of extreme feminist objections to porn by the likes of Catherine McKinnon. Legitimizing it more adds more to the idea that sex is good, normal, healthy, and people should enjoy it openly and not hide their sexuality but revel in it.

  • > I would like to know how you explain much of the sex displayed in XXX videos as being perfectly natural.

    Looks perfectly natural to me. Girl meets boy, girl does boy, five guys walk by and girl manages to cram two of them "between her cheeks," one of them underneath, two of them between her other cheeks, and one of them between her toes. German Shepherd walks by, and well... See, just like a normal day in the college dorms. :-)

  • > Actually, the single biggest cause of failed marriages is money.

    No, the biggest cause of failed marriages is the fact that people don't take marriage seriously anymore. It is no longer a necessity, it's a luxury in this fast-paced go-go-faster success-driven cesspool of a country. People put more effort into work than into marriage, so naturally marriages fail.

    > Also, divorce rates are higher among people who live together before they marry. What does this mean?

    It means exactly what I said. Marriage is not taken seriously by the young'uns these days. Marriages are as disposable as everything else in this country. People don't want permanent relationships, they want disposable ones that fit neatly between their work schedules. This has absolutely nothing to do with sex before marriage. It has to do with the disposable culture that the rest of the world rightly associates with--and blames on--America. Naturally, divorce rates will be higher among those who live together before they marry, because those people are the least likely to consider marriage very important in the first place. That's why they didn't bother to get married before moving in together. Duh. Tell me how that has anything to do with not having sex before marriage supposedly being such a wonderful thing? Plenty of people have sex before marriage, whether they live together or not. Maybe they marry, maybe they don't. They still enjoy a healthy and wonderful sex life. Likewise, plenty of people don't have sex before marriage. Maybe they marry, maybe they don't. They lack a healthy and wonderful sex life, and miss out on some of the most amazing sex of their lives, which they're supposed to be enjoying in their teens and early twenties. Because, I tell you, having sex at 16 or 18 has so many fun dimensions to it that are lacking when you're older, plus the stamina of an 18 year old male has no equal. Good luck trying to have sex that amazing when you're 26 or 30 or whatever. Man was made to mate starting in his teens. It is a biological fact, and hormone concentrations prove that it's even a biological imperative. Why fight nature? Why not enjoy sex when you're young, and then enjoy marriage when you're older? For everything there is a season.

    It's annoying how religious and/or conservative zealots constantly confuse the issues. The devaluation of marriage is a function of disposable society, and too much focus on work rather than family, and has absolutely nothing to do with sex and sexual freedom. There is one and only one reason that people who abstain from sex before marriage have lower divorce rates: the only people who abstain from sex before marriage are very religiously conservative people who place a strong religious and moral valuation on the institution of marriage, and thus consider it a permanent bond. Sex or not before marriage has zero to do with it; it's the religious convictions pertaining to marriage which do. So, all this emphasis on abstinence in the U.S. is useless. In fact, all it does is deny teens knowledge about how to enjoy their bodies and sexuality naturally and safely and productively. It doesn't bolster marriage, because only a strong belief in the institution and its import does that. Denying yourself sex doesn't. Teach how important marriage is, and what it does for society, and how a good marriage is better than just a good job. Don't try to hold out sex as a carrot in some backwards attempt to promote marriage in an outdated manner which harms sexual health more than it could possibly help marriage.

  • > Oh, I see. It's all Burger King's fault.

    No, it's McDonalds' fault. Ever since they switched to soy milkshakes instead of the real thing, the world has gone steadily downhill. :-) But seriously, we live in a society which values material things over relationships. When your job is more important than your husband or wife, don't expect your marriage to last long. The fact that almost all contemporary married couples both work means that they spend very little time with each other, much less the children. To almost everyone these days, job and money come before all else, all in the name of having a bigger TV or a newer car or going on vacations further away from home. Or, worse, all in the name of a promotion and "status."

    None of which has to do with sex in any way whatsoever. Sex is a non-issue here. Whether married, divorced, single, a teenager, or elderly, sex is and always has been available. No more people are having sex today, whether inside or outside marriage, than had sex fifty years ago. How can we know? Well, for one thing, teenage pregnancy rates were astronomical in the 1950s. The big difference between then and now is that back then anyone who even vaguely looked pregnant prior to marriage was immediately sent out of town and hidden away until the baby was born and then they were almost always coerced and forced into giving it up. Today, sex is slightly more public, and the teen pregnancy rate is down thanks to better education and improved sexual health. Teens are still having sex, they just know more about how to be careful about it. You may want to believe that more teens are engaging in abstinence, and that's why teen pregnancy is down, but studies do not support that conclusion. In addition, many people who speak out and profess abstinence are just putting on a facade--do you remember the abstinence campaigns of the 80s, with Brooke Shields doing public sevice announcements about how she's not going to have sex until marriage? Funny thing is, she'd already been having sex, as she later confessed as an adult. Why pressure kids into hiding their sex lives and making it into something below-the-board that they have to sneak around about, instead of recognizing that most of them are going to choose to enjoy sex and supporting that natural and healthy decision? Well, because people like you are hell-bent on trying to instill their own religious views into everyone else, which is why "sex education" in this country is a joke. The healthiest, happiest people in the world, with lower divorce rates than ours, come from countries such as France and the Netherlands and Japan, where sex is viewed as natural and healthy and to be enjoyed at all ages from adolescence on up. Americans have a lot of *things*, but that doesn't make quality of life; studies show that most Europeans are more content with their lives.

    > Let's say a 16-year-old male decides to have an active sex life. Let's say he experiments, and has all kinds of
    > fun with different partners.

    Good for him. I didn't get started til I was 18, and when I did years of stress and sexual frustration just melted away into contentment. Actually, to be honest I did have one experience with a neighbor girl when I was about 11, but that hardly counts. But, I digress. Shower me with your wisdom.

    > What do you suppose his experiences teach him about loving relationships? That they're supposed to last?

    No, it'll teach him--once he finds a girl he loves, not just fucks, and he will sooner or later--that love feels more wonderful than any of the other gifts God has given us, and that there's very little which feels worse than losing someone you love in that way. He'll learn what the best and worse life has to offer is. And even the pain of losing a first love will be good for him--it's an exquisite pain, and very instructive too. You can never realize how good love is until you lose it at least once. I learned more about humanity and feelings and love and life in my first relationship than I'd learned in the 18 years which came before. And to think, that relationship lasted a matter of months rather than years... So, it will teach him a lot about loving relationships, like how important they really are and how he never wants to lose one again once he finds another.

    > (And don't try to tell me sex isn't about love. Don't separate the two.)

    But they *are* separate. They certainly overlap, but you can surly have one without the other. For example, did you love your wife before you married her, even though you say you waited for marriage before having sex? You can definitely have love without sex, although sexual passion is definitely a part of it even if no sex is ocurring. Likewise, you can have sex with someone you don't love. Why else would the "world's oldest profession" be so successful? Prostitution is the epitome of sex without love, and as someone who lives near Washington, D.C. and has a friend who is an "escort," I can tell you that it's a very lucrative business engaged in by people of all walks of life, ages, levels of wealth and status, etc. So, there is a great demand for sex without love. But we don't have to be so extreme and literal to get that point: what do you think clubs and pick-up bars are for? To find soulmates and life-partners? Nope, they're there because people like to hook up for a good thorough fuck, with love not a part of the equation. In the process of said fucking you'll eventually find someone you do love. Now, that's not to say that sx without love is as good as sex in a loving relationship. Of course it isn't, because love is so much better than plain old sex. But that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't enjoy some good old fashioned sex while waiting for someone to love to come along.

    > No, they'll likely imbue in him the idea that relationships are disposable.

    Umm, no, because like I said sex doesn't feel as good as love. Even an idiot can feel the difference once love comes along. So, why shouldn't sex be enjoyed in the meantime? Teenagers have "disposable relationships" all the time, whether sex is involved or not. You don't advocate that teenagers shouldn't date until marriage, do you? Dating relationships are important and intimate relationships whether sex occurs or not. So your statement about sex teaching him that relationships are disposable just falls apart.

    > Let's say he ends up getting married. How faithful is this man to his wife?

    Just as good as anyone else's, if not better. After all, if you've already taken a bite out of every kind of fish in the se, and found the one you like above all others, and know that if you stop to grab another fish the one you like most will leave and never come back, well, you're not likely to get curious enough to do that. But if you've never had any other fish...well, you're going to be a lot more curious.

    > He's had no practice at self-control in at least this one area, and his chances are very diminished.

    Bollocks. His chances are increased, because he needn't be curious about sex with diffeent partners. He already knows what it's like. He's also probably lost a love when he was a teenager if he's gotten around so much, so he'll know better than to ruin real love for a momentary piece of patch. Compare that to some sissy little inexperienced sexually repressed guy who's far more likely to let curiosity get the best of him if some attractive woman makes an overture, since he'll be wondering what it's like whereas the experienced gentleman already knows.

    > Since I was young, I was taught about the sanctity of marriage and its contract between the couple, the community, and God.

    Good for you. This is what needs to be taught. But it has nothing to do with sex, because sex and marriage are not synonymous. Heck, read your Bible--people had sex outside of marriage all the time back then, too; here's a trivia question: name the woman who dressed as a prostitute to seduce her father-in-law, and was praised by the elders for it. Funny how he was never chastised for visiting someone whom he thought was a street prostitute. Sex can be enjoyed before marriage, with no diminishing to the institution of marriage itself. Again, sex and marriage are not synonyms, and even in the Bible people could have sex outside of marriage and not be condemned for it.

    You confuse the issues rather than reasoning carefully. All religious conservatives such as yourself do. Personally, I'm going to teach my son that marriage is the most important thing he can ever do, and that once he does he's made an obligation to stay with and be faithful to his family no matter what. And I'll also teach him that, until he finds that spcial person he loves darly, he should enjoy the body God gave him and have sex as long as he's responsible and careful and always mindful of the girl's feelings. Teenagers are biologically meant to have sex, and to use sex play as part of emotional growth and maturation. The day my son turns 13 is the dy he gets a subscription to Playboy, as a symbol that he on't have to hide his sexuality like so many of us did. What he does in his bedroom is his business, not mine.

  • If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions.

    Isn't this the same argument the War on Drugs uses?

    This calls for a boycott.

    Are you then prepared to boycott any each and every other business and orginization that sells pornography? Where is the line drawn? Do movies with sex scenes count as "pornography" and should be banned? Take Eyes Wide Shut for example.

    The free market cannot thrive unless we police it for criminal activity such as this..

    Morality and the law are two completely and totally separate subjects. The current law states pronography is legal, thus it is not criminal activity. Also, if you would look at the numbers the free market DOES thrive because of things such as this. Right, wrong on indifferent, these are the facts.

  • Re:No (Score:5)

    by n3rd ( 111397 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @11:59AM (#298567)
    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 (Score:3)

    by andy@petdance.com ( 114827 ) <andy@petdance.com> on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:50AM (#298572) Homepage
    I guess we know why the REALLY holler "Yahoo!" now...
    --

  • Re:The internet corrupts people (Score:4)

    by e-Motion ( 126926 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:03AM (#298581)

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

  • Well, that's the last time I ever use Yahoo. No matter.. Google is far superior anyways. What a dumb decision on their part, though. Nothing like totally shattering a company's public image just to make a few bucks.. I wonder how many users in the 'moral minority' they just lost today?

  • Re:This is a moral outrage! (Score:4)

    by ruin ( 141833 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:31AM (#298596) Homepage
    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.


    --

  • This is almost as good as yesterday's "bomb china" [slashdot.org] bit. Lest there's any doubt that this is a troll, of course, there's Anne Marie's other recent post about how bonobos are chimps that are persecuted like homosexuals [slashdot.org]. But the debate over whether or not this post is "real" isn't the point-- we all know it's not. It's just funny, like it was when "bomb china" got modded up as Insightful.
  • But now when you buy porn, your credit card statement says

    Yahoo.com $20.00

    instead of the incriminating

    hotteensluts.com $20.00

    Your nosy other half no longer knows your buying porn unless she discovers the stash under the desk at the office.
  • Why? There are so many freebies out there on the Internet. Why can't they just look around more (namely the alt.binaries.{pictures,multimedia}.erotic* newsgroups) so they won't have to pay and risk exposing important credit card and other identifying information to unscrupulous merchants and hackers for spank fuel?

    Because the push technology of USENET doesn't account for an individual fetish. The proliferation of animal sex and SM sites and whatnot points to a desired specialization. Oh sure, you might find a picture of a St. Bernard porking a cute co-ed on alt.binaries.pictures.of.animals.porking.cute.coed s, but you're more likely to find a bunch of links to pr0n websites, anyway.

    Or, put another way, if all you want is some really bitchin' sausage, you go to the meat market, you don't go to Safeway. (Those of you further East, substitute Randall's. It's about the same class of grocery store. In other countries, you'll just have to make something up.) And if what you want is, say, fat naked grandmothers defecating on black men with tiny penises, you don't just wander around the 'net. You go to some adult search engine, punch in your criteria, and find the exact site you're looking for.

    All of this is pure speculation though, because I would never pay for a pr0n membership. Instead, I just leech passwords and download the whole thing with Offline Explorer. Too bad wget ain't multithreaded, or I'd use that.


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • Pray tell, if the internet "is nothing but a corrupter of public morals" (assuming I got your antecedents correct), why are you using a browser at all? Do you want to be corrupted? Or are you so enlightened as to be above corruption?

    Do you feel that your average person is incapable of filtering the amount of smut they can tolerate and blindly click away at what search engines give them?

    Are you concerned that Cinemax has been doing the same thing for around 20 years.. ie distributing smut to your house without checking ages of the viewers?

    Are you concerned that most any teenager can get in to see a rated 'R' flick? Need I remind you of the nudity and sex in Titanic, the so called teen-girl Star Wars?

    If a child sees something they shouldn't, whose fault is it--the purveyors or the people who let the child run free on the internet (read parents)?

    Whenver I read/hear/consume opinions like this, I am wondering if the holder of the opinion thinks that their enlightened state is not only superior but the only one of its kind as to point out that this is horrible. Face it, you are in the minority--otherwise internet filth would not be a multi-billion dollar industry.

    <sarcasm>
    Hey, I got a good idea, let's regulate marijuana, ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, heroin, cigarettes, alcohol, murder, theft, prostitution, teenage sex, arson, guns, people-trafficking, nuclear bombs, and fanatic cults hell-bent on destroying the world! That'll stop them, won't it? I mean regulation will fix it right? That ought to stop all the troubles right?

    I trust the regulators. They know what to do. They are stopping it right? Tell me I will wake up in a world that all these nasty things are regulated and there will be peace and prosperity.
    </sarcasm>

    Or did I wake up this morning in that world? Don't we already regulate these things? Has it brought a stop to the corruption of morals? Are there still drive-by shoootings with guns illegal to possess? Do high-schoolers sit in vans and pull tubes during lunch? What about the Montana Freemen and Bin-Laden guy, we got him right? Are there still crack-whores walking the urban streets? What about the human slave trade? Isn't all this regulated?

  • Hook, line, and sinker...

    You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can only have one of two things:
    1.) A free country, and free economy where you, as a person, get to choose what you and your family does.
    2.) You live in a dictatorship where the person(s) in control choose what is good for you.

    It appears that you prefer the latter. Move to Cuba. I just don't want to hear you whine about it when it isn't free enough.
    Point being, if you don't like it, don't watch it. But don't try and get everyone on /. to boycott something for your own little revolution.

  • Re:The internet corrupts people (Score:3)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:04AM (#298618) Homepage Journal
    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!!!!
  • Funny. I've seen pornographic videos, looked at a hustler or two, taken a gander at alt.binaries.erotica.*. I haven't killed/raped/maimed anyone. Hmm... maybe the major "fuel" for Bundy's bloodlust was because HE WAS A NUT CASE.

    Nah, can't be. Personal responsibility is so "yesterday." Proof by anecdote, so it must be right. Let's just ignore that every study, from those under Nixon to those under Regan have shown NO connection between porn and violence.

    If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.

  • First of all, statistics DO NOT prove casuality. Hence the water, bible, and porn analagy are all off base (which, I believe, is the point The Queen was trying to make).

    Second, it can be argued that EVERY stimulus changes a person's perception of ANYTHING. The question is as long as I don't harm you or your property what right do you have to tell me what to "sense," be it porn, the bible, water, bad boy bands, televison, etc?

    You may not *like* what I choose to do with my life, but (pardon my french) that's your fucking problem.

    If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.

  • YAHOOO!!!!!

    I digress...
  • What morally clean internet?
    Never was, never will be.

    My first use of e-mail - exchanging porn
    My first use of usenet - grabbing porn
    My first use of the web - searching for porn (there wasn't as much back then as it wasn't commercial)

    Amount of porn on my 20G disk? About 1G, because it's get's so _damn_ _boring_ after a while.

    Having said that - pr0nomatic is excellent. Link anyone?

    FP.
    --
  • From the article...
    Amazon.com Inc. stocks some adult video titles, but shoppers can locate them only by searching for specific titles, officials said.

    "Specific titles"? Whatever, Amazon! I just went there and naively typed in "adult vhs" (not a specific title) from their homepage. I got some featured hits, like "Penthouse Pet of The Year Playoff", "Asian Babes 1 & 2" and "Nude Bowling Party", and a nice fat hyperlink to "See all 179 results [amazon.com]".

    Yeah, I really had to know specific titles to browse your entire stock of adult titles!

    I don't disagree with their approach, but why lie about making it difficult to access pr0n (soft as it may be) when it's really quite easy and intuitive?
  • Most porn companies bill through holding companies with halfway respectable sounding names, both offline and on. I have never been sure if this was because this helped them cook their books or because they honestly cared about how it looked on card statements. What I will say is that only the most brain-dead SO at this point (given all the free advertising, er, coverage Yahoo! has been getting on this) would NOT think of a $20 charge from Yahoo! as probably a smut purchase. I mean, other than dirty movies, I can't think of anything else they actually sell.

  • Porn is Big Business (Score:5)

    by Mittermeyer ( 195358 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:54AM (#298636) Homepage
    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.
  • I agree, except in that "thou shalt not rape!" is not one of the ten commandments. It's wrong just the same. Ted Bundy said in an interview before he was executed that the major fuel for his blood lust was pr0n. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing pr0n totally banned.

  • Fits their strategy. (Score:3)

    by shumacher ( 199043 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:53AM (#298640)
    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.
  • Of the fact dotcoms are realizing that they cannot survive by banners alone. Porn is more permanent than death OR taxes, and I believe we'll see similar sites taking increasingly desperate measures to become profitable (although probably not porn).
  • Check out http://www.zolatimes.com/V5.13/ugly_feminism.html which mentions the 'All porn is rape' league's ideas on gay porn.
  • Really?

    I know what I'm doing when I get home from work tonight.

    "Headache my ass! Roll over!"

  • If anyone honestly doesn't believe this is an out-and-out troll, please read one of the other comments from "Anne Marie," where he* asks, "Can we hope to live in a world free from sexual oppression?" (Obviously, banning porn is sexual oppression, even our troll here can't argue that.)

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/04/10/15182 23&cid=48 [slashdot.org]

    *Yes I said "he." How many women do you know that would troll on slashdot?
  • New marketing slogan: Get some Yahoo in your hoo-ha!

    Based on our conversation of yesterday.

    Here's the full story [ridiculopathy.com].

  • Yahoo changes name to OhYeahBabyYeah! (Score:5)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:31AM (#298656) Homepage
    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]

  • It is interesting how hysterical Americans get as soon as the word porn appears somewhere. Violence on the other hand seems to be perfectly o.k. For example, Yahoo is selling "From Dusk Till Dawn", no problem it seems.

    Naked skin (which is part of everybody's live) vs. slaughtering humans...

    Very interesting this understanding of moral.

  • Re:This is a moral outrage! (Score:3)

    by jasonhee ( 237770 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @02:27PM (#298666)
    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.
  • I don't think Heffner is in dire economic need.

    Of course he isn't, because he's grown fat off the suffering of the women he exploits.

    You must think you're smart because you caught me in a semantic slip. I wasn't speaking of everyone involved in pornography's financing and production. I was talking about the people sweating under the camera's gaze, penetrating and palpitating each other's bodies until they are extinguished by the shame and the horror of it.

    Go read up on the statistics for suicides by former porn "actresses" (really "slaves"). They're illuminating. It's a testament to women's fortitude that more don't slit their wrists or gas themselves because of what men put them through.

  • This is a moral outrage! (Score:5)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:59AM (#298670)
    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.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:The internet corrupts people (Score:4)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:09AM (#298680) Homepage
    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 (Score:4)

    by blamanj ( 253811 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @09:01AM (#298685)
    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 (Score:4)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2001 @08:57AM (#298686) Homepage Journal

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

  • Bad move, Yahoo.

    Why is this a bad move? Think of how many grade school students use Yahoo. Now think of how most elementary schools and some parents use "Internet filtering software" to block "offensive content." Yahoo uses banner ads to collect revenue as well, obviously. They may lose more money than they make. The press has hyped this way up, too, so a few misinformed parents might forbid their kids from using Yahoo anyway. And a few, in reality, is quite a lot when you look at the population of the Internet that visits Yahoo.

    Another thing: How about these "kids credit cards" that are going around lately, where the parents put money in them and they work just like a regular Visa/MasterCard/etc.? Is Yahoo's credit card authentication system going to be able to tell these "underage" cards from normal credit cards? And since there'll be no log for the parents since there wasn't a transaction...

    Bad Yahoo, bad!

  • This seems bogus. only 57% admitted to reading porn? I'm asking this because, everyone I know has at some point (guys, anyway) seen or read porn. I can understand the 95% Bible thing because most everyone has read the Bible at least once in their life.

    So, this statistic seems very neato and scandalous, but it seems very manufactured and you haven't cited your source. Why is this modded 5?

    So here's my stat, so you can mod me at 5, too:

    55% of all rapists use computers, and 98% of them were Windows users.



    --
  • "I wonder how many users in the 'moral minority' they just lost today?" Both of them?
  • Good riddance. Sex is perfectly natural, and it seems to me that the Christian religion has a dangerous obsession with opressing a very natural, very healthful act.

    Also, is it just me, or does anyone else mentally substitute moron for wherever they see moral?

  • IKIHBT, but...

    You did know that there is a HUGE number of women who pay for college through starring in pornographic movies, exotic dancing, etc, right? Using their bodies, as you like to put it, allows them to make a decent paycheck for a few hours of work. These women aren't particularly ashamed of what they do, they're just more concerned about what the moron majority will do if they find out that they have decided to take their clothes off for a little extra money.

    Also, you've obviously never seen the "Faces of Death" series. They have items in there much more disturbing than pornography, but it is legal.

  • I don't think I'm smart because I caught you in a semantic slip.
    I think I'm smart because I caught you in one semantic slip, one generalization, and one lie.
    You're getting hammered enough from your posts, by people with other points better than mine.
    I'm not here to hammer you. I happen to agree that porn is bad. I just wished you would have taken more care in the language and facts you used in your post. It's hard to give any credibility to someone who blatantly misquotes the Bible.
    The Ten Commandments tell us, "Thou shalt not misquote the Bible."
    Frankly, it sounds like you have some deep seated and mildly irrational views on pornography. Your unsubstantiated opinons seemed weak to you, so you tried to add weight by making stuff up.
    I would consider getting in contact with the people that participate in porn and interviewing them on their thoughts on feelings before you speak of them as humiliated and raped and having dead souls.
  • It's not for no reason that prostitution is called "the world's oldest profession." And porno is simply the extension of sex trade to the net. It was the first and best way to make money on the internet (and still is).

    If you feel strongly about it, let Yahoo know. This is a lot like Wal-Mart choosing to sell porno tapes. Personally, I'd rather porno was something that you have to decide you want to find -- like video stores that have a curtained-off "adult section", rather than between the comedies and dramas. Think of it as opt-in. Having it on Yahoo is more like opt-out.
  • When will American society come to the realization that sex is a commodity?

    It'll make things so much easier.

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