Marc Estes

After seeing many comments on my two previous posts regarding Apple and the Porn industry statements and how many of you had a perspective on the technical issues at hand, I thought I would enlist one of my great friends, George Ross to speak a little more about the position of Apple and the intent of Steve’s public statements from a technical perspective.  With that… here is George:

“First off a little bit about who I am before I start talking tech.  For over a decade I have been a senior executive, CTO and consultant that has been helping some of the biggest brands define their web strategy and build their web sites.  Folks like MIT, Siemens, MTV and Harvard to name a few.  Marc simply calls me a ‘genetic freak’ (from him that is a title of honor).  Now the obligatory name dropping is out of the way we can move to the core topic here, Apple and Porn.

First off lets get something out of the way, if you want porn on your iPhone you can indeed get it through the browser (Safari).  Also if you want to argue about the grudge match that Adobe and Apple have had for years over being king of the hill for online media delivery and flash I am more than happy to talk about that as well.  With Apple being a technology company it is easy to make this issue about the technology.   But lets not miss the real point of all of this, and that is you can’t get porn through any content delivery channel Apple has control over. They made a choice.  Apple is not the only company that has made this decision.  There are also other stories out there that do not get as much attention.  Earlier this month there was a story about Sony turning down a porn company wanting to stream movies over the PS3.  That same company also approached Microsoft and the Xbox and met similar results.

Now many of you may argue that these heartless corporations do this solely out of a profit motive or some brilliantly conceived marketing ploy, but have you stopped to think that people make up these companies.  People who, odds are, have children and families that use the products they make.  People who want to have a sense of pride about what they do.  Who knows, maybe even people who might think that porn is wrong, perish the thought!

I am sure most of you watched Mister Rogers as a kid, so lets go to the land of make believe for a minute here.  In this land you are the head of Apple.  You know that your devices are in the hands of toddlers, teens, or your very own mother.  We all know what Jesus would do, but what would you do?  Would you allow porn because there was a quick buck to be made?  When you don’t have any accountability it is easy to have the academic debate about the technical points or to be flippant and say it is all about money, but if it was you in charge, your name, your products and fully knowing their reach across almost all demographics and having to stand accountable on judgement day, you most likely would have reached the same decision Steve Jobs did.”

To read the other two related articles click below:

Steve Jobs Takes a Stand

Is Steve Jobs claim on Pronography valid? You decide!

In one of my most recent posts, I chose to make a few comments about Steve Jobs and his decision to take a stand against Pornography. I had no idea just how big of an issue this truly is out in ‘blog land.’  I received almost 10,000 hits from 66 countries in a matter of hours, with dozens of people sharing their passionate responses on my blog. It would be worth your time to enjoy the opinion of my blog post, Steve Jobs Takes a Stand and see what people from all over the globe had to say.  Does Steve Jobs have the beef, or is his Apple missing it’s core? You decide!

Regardless of where you stand on his decision to make a public statement, regardless of whether he did this for money, regardless of the fact that you might be able to still find your way onto a pornographic site, regardless of whether you site his statement as a freedom of speech or freedom from speech issue, the real issue, in my personal opinion is, “Does Steve Jobs claim about Pornography being harmful hold any weight?” (See more on the tech issue - Steve Jobs, Apple, Porn and the Tech Truth).

Let me first give you a few statistics about how big pornography is in our world, before you here some thoughts about the effects of pornography:

• Every second, $3075 is spent on pornography.
• Every 39 minutes a new porn video is created.
• Pornography revenue worldwide is $97.06 billion dollars annually.
• Pornography revenue in the U.S is just over $25 billion dollars annually.
• Pornography brings in more revenue than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined.
• There is over $3 billion dollars generated annually on illegal child pornography alone.
• There are over 4.2 million pornographic sites on the Internet.
• 1.5 billion pornographic downloads take place monthly.
• Adult video rentals in U.S. alone are 1 billion rental annually.
• The average age of first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11 years old.
• Approximately 20% of all internet porn sites include explicit pictures of children.
• 33% of all pornographic users are now women.

Here are some stated facts regarding the effect that pornography has on the lives of people.

• Jay Rodgers, the Director for Forerunner states that defenders of pornography argue that it is not harmful, and thus should not be regulated or banned. Citing the 1970 Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, they conclude that there is no relationship between exposure to erotic material and subsequent behavior. But two subsequent decades of research based on the increased production of more explicit and violent forms of pornography has shown the profound effects pornography can have on human behavior.

 

• Psychologist Edward Donnerstein (University of Wisconsin) found that brief exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behavior. Male viewers tend to be more aggressive towards women, less responsive to pain and suffering of rape victims, and more willing to accept various myths about rape.1

 

• Dr. Dolf Zimmerman and Dr. Jennings Bryant showed that continued exposure to pornography had serious adverse effects on beliefs about sexuality in general and on attitudes toward women in particular. They also found that pornography desensitizes people to rape as a criminal offense.2
• These researchers also found that massive exposure to pornography encourages a desire for increasingly deviant materials which involve violence, like sadomasochism and rape.3

 

• Feminist author Diana Russell notes in her book Rape and Marriage the correlation between deviant behavior (including abuse) and pornography. She also found that pornography leads men and women to experience conflict, suffering, and sexual dissatisfaction.4

 

• Researcher Victor Cline (University of Utah) has documented in his research how men become addicted to pornographic materials, begin to desire more explicit or deviant material, and end up acting out what they have seen.5

 

• According to Charles Keating of Citizens for Decency Through Law, research reveals that 77 percent of child molesters of boys and 87 percent of child molesters of girls admitted imitating the sexual behavior they had seen modeled in pornography.

 

• Sociologists Murray Straus and Larry Baron (University of New Hampshire) found that rape rates are highest in states which have high sales of sex magazines and lax enforcement of pornography laws.6

 

• Michigan state police detective Darrell Pope found that of the 38,000 sexual assault cases in Michigan (1956-1979), in 41 percent of the cases pornographic material was viewed just prior to or during the crime. This agrees with research done by psychotherapist David Scott who found that “half the rapists studied used pornography to arouse themselves immediately prior to seeking out a victim.”

 

• The Final Report of the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography lists a full chapter of testimony (197-223) from victims whose assailants had previously viewed pornographic materials. The adverse effects range from physical harm (rape, torture, murder, sexually transmitted disease) to psychological harm (suicidal thoughts, fear, shame, nightmares).

 

• A national survey stated that 47% of marriages in America have been negatively affected by pornography, causing marital struggles, lack of trust and loss of hope.

 

• 66% of all divorces state that pornography played a significant role in the decision to separate.

 

• 2 out of 5 abductions of teens between the ages of 15-17 are to to Internet contact by predators who have a pornographic addiction issue.

KEY FINDINGS ON THE EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY BY PATRICK FAGAN Phd., Family Research Council

Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual’s concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability.

Social scientists, clinical psychologists, and biologists have begun to clarify some of the social and psychological effects, and neurologists are beginning to delineate the biological mechanisms through which pornography produces its powerful negative effects.

THE FAMILY AND PORNOGRAPHY

• Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.
• Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.
• Among couples affected by one spouse’s addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse.
• Both spouses perceive pornography viewing as tantamount to infidelity.
• Pornography viewing leads to a loss of interest in good family relations.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND PORNOGRAPHY

• Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.
• Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornorgraphy they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography.
• Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity.
• Prolonged consumption of pornography by men produces stronger notions of women as commodities or as “sex objects.”
• Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities.
• Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution.

OTHER EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY

• Many adolescents who view pornography initially feel shame, diminished self-confidence, and sexual uncertainty, but these feelings quickly shift to unadulterated enjoyment with regular viewing.
• The presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values.
• The main defenses against pornography are close family life, a good marriage and good relations between parents and children, coupled with deliberate parental monitoring of Internet use. Traditionally, government has kept a tight lid on sexual traffic and businesses, but in matters of pornography that has waned almost completely, except where child pornography is concerned. Given the massive, deleterious individual, marital, family, and social effects of pornography, it is time for citizens, communities, and government to reconsider their laissez-faire approach.

With all that being said, lets go back and ask the question, “Is Steve Jobs claim about pornography valid? As the CEO of Apple, Inc. does he have the right to share his view on this heated subject?” I think the facts are in enough for me. I will choose to support Steve in his position and do hope that we can look beyond the Freedom of Speech issue and realize that although we might have the freedom to certain things, but the higher law should be that we are more concerned how our behaviors affect others, versus how we might fight to flaunt our own personal preferences. I think it is time that we face the real issue and focus more on the damaged lives, marriages and children that have suffered from the affects of pornography and look for ways in which to correct this hurtful situation. My decision is in… now its your turn; YOU DECIDE.

Related Posts

Steve Jobs Takes a Stand!

Steve Jobs, Apple, Porn and the Tech Truth

Every once in a while you come across a profound statement made by a prominent leader that makes you realize that there are still great people in the world today. Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple put his entire reputation on the line by taking a very bold stand regarding the issue of pornography and the decision to block all sites from any of his products. In a world filled with people who would criticize this move and label him a narrow-minded, free speech control freak, I would like to go on the record publicly as saying, “You have got my loyalty and respect!” Here are some thoughts taken from Breakpoint’s website:

Jobs has made it clear that he wants to keep pornography off Apple products as much as possible. Obviously Apple can’t control everything its users do, but it can make porn scarcer on its products, and it has done just that.

A British newspaper, The Guardian,reports, “So insistent is Apple [on this policy], many magazine publishers developing ‘apps’ for the new iPad . . . have had to self-censor.”

As you might expect, this has triggered a frenzy among some critics. Ryan Tate, a writer for the Gawker website, sniped at Jobs about suppressing his customers’ “freedom,” prompting Jobs to respond, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

When Tate replied that he didn’t want “freedom from porn,” Jobs answered, “You might care more about porn when you have kids.” In a correspondence with a consumer, Jobs went even further, speaking of his company’s “moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

How refreshing it is to see someone who actually gets it—that yes, there are those of us who prefer to be free from the storm of smut that assaults us from every television, computer, and phone screen. The supply of pornographic material is so overwhelming that access to it is certainly not an issue of “freedom” anymore, if it ever was.

Jobs has pointed out that people who want to see porn on their phones, and who want easier access to it on their computers, can easily get all they want if they buy other companies’ products. But as he said in a press conference, “That’s a place we don’t want to go—so we’re not going to go there.”

What Jobs seems to understand, and what his critics seem to be ignoring, is that there’s so much more to pornography than just issues of economics or free speech. It shouldn’t even need to be explained, but apparently for some people it does: Pornography is an ugly, poisonous, degrading business for everyone involved, whether they’re making it, using it, or selling it.

As my colleague Kim Moreland recently mentioned on our blog, The Point, new studies are demonstrating yet again just how dangerous and addictive it can be. It tears at the fabric of marriages and families and of society itself. Its use is connected from everything to higher divorce rates to human trafficking to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Aside from the occasional reference to protecting kids (which is enough), Steve Jobs didn’t go thoroughly into the reasons for his policy. But for whatever reason, he truly is demonstrating corporate responsibility, the kind that we desperately need more businesses to show in this sex-obsessed society.

May he continue to stand by his principles, and may his tribe increase.