January 2007

* I’ll start with this verrrrry interesting non-sex item that I hope doesn’t stay low on the radar, Teen accuses record companies of collusion, snip:

“A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

In papers responding to the record companies’ lawsuit, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it’s impossible to prove that he did.

(…)

Robert Santangelo also claims that the record companies, which have filed more than 18,000 piracy lawsuits in federal courts, ‘have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States.’

The papers allege that the companies, ‘ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy’ by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency ‘to make extortionate threats … to force defendants to pay.’”

* ABC has a confusing article about porn and Blu-ray DVD, pondering whether or not porn will have anything to do with consumers’ choices around evolving home media choices and porn consumption. It’s little more than an old-fashioned application of “DVD vs. VHS” to a genre already hearing the death knell of DVD, but still, waste some time on Porn Factor: Why Erotic Movies Won’t Decide Next Gen DVD War. Oh, they just wanted to say “porn”.

* Why bother saying “porn” when you can be all like, OMG, DICK! I giggled like a schoolgirl when I imagined the schoolyard pride behind the Guardian piece, Schoolyard penis seen from space. (via Digg)

* As many of you can imagine, there’s an amazing amount of buzz here in San Francisco about Kink.com buying the historic Armory building for their new studio space. Even though Kink has the highest standards for what they do, detractors are jumping on the anti-porn, NIMBY bandwagon, including former SF Giants relief pitcher (and promoter of our ass + tit tastic yearly festival, Carnival) Roberto Hernandez. Mark Pritchard has a fantastic post about it on Metroblogging SF — Planning Commission to hold useless hearing on porn palace — and the comments (especially from “concerned citizens”) are seriously entertaining all on their own. Yup — we have conservative prudes here in SF; for further proof see Mark’s other stellar post Local far-right millionaire launches foamer website, about PayPal millionaire nutjob Rod Martin’s new right-wing website, thevanguard.org.

Image: adorable local porn star Satine Phoenix on the set for a Fucking Machines shoot at Kink.com (And hey — I recognize that porn set! That’s the spaceship set! I drank beer in there with prop builders before it was finished! Neat!)

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Oh, Engadget. My blog wants to do the same thing to you. Check out Robotic arm rides, 5 cents. One SRL member commented, “What fun, with such an expensive robot. It appears that the programmer didn’t fully calculate the floor clearance, but all’s well that ends well.” (Thanks Adam! Reference: Big Arm)

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Yesterday I snapped this adorable pic of the adorable Eon McKai when we had coffee for like four hours yesterday. The irony of this photo is that we were just talking about 2257 raids and the police when the cops walked in… There’s another hot one here, and I also snapped his ballpoint knuckle tats… Writeup coming soon. Eon is truly one of the reasons there’s hope for porn.

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My pal London Boy (who is actually Australian) just emailed me a link to preview trailers for the next film from the Shaun of the Dead crew — Hot Fuzz! Sadly it’s not a sequel, but it does have many of the same actors from both Spaced and SotD, in similar relationships, which is something I’m really starting to enjoy from this ensemble.

But don’t think they could make a movie without gratuitous blood and dark-humored demise; there’s a serial killer! Yay! Watch the trailers and you’ll be grinning like me. And check it out; they also have a Hot Fuzz vlog and podcast, well done. The Flash Hot Fuzz website leaves a bit to be desired, tho…

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I was scanning the news and saw this story, MySpace donates sex offender database to US center, and I thought, groggily over coffee, hm, that bugs me… why does that bug me… hmmm, sip… Snip:

“News Corp.’s popular Internet social network MySpace said on Monday it will donate a national computer database on U.S. sex offenders to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Sex offender data is collected by individual state authorities. MySpace and background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp. developed a technology that combines close to 50 U.S. state registries, aiming to help police keep track of an estimated 600,000 convicted sex offenders.” Link.

Oh, that’s right. These are state registries, and depending on the state you’re in, you’re a “sex offender” under Megan’s Law if you get caught urinating in public, mooning, skinny dipping, or if you get busted having consensual sex in public. Think of how lopsided these charges must be in homophobic states. Also, it’s a lesson in what sites like MySpace can and will do with personal information. I’m definitely an advocate for speeding up natural selection when it comes to rapists and pedophiles, but I worry about what could happen to individuals and personal privacy when a questionably informed company casts a wide net, and turns it over to anyone who asks.

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