iPhone4: Pocket Porn Device?

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FaceTime, one of the iPhone4’s features is one of Apple’s most creative to date.  It allows users to call any other iPhone4 owner and video chat using the phone’s camera (pending a WiFi connection).  Don’t you think that sounds cool?  Well, so does the porn industry.

Now, the adult industry and its aptitude for acclimation is not news.  The industry has a long, long history of innovation in its ability to adapt (before any other field it would seem) to shifting technologies.  In the ’70s, the industry helped make VCRs a household presence, they were pioneers of online streaming video, and later online credit card payments.  To put it simply, whatever technology the marketplace has to offer, the porn industry will capitalize, and fast.

With that in mind, is it any wonder adult-entertainment companies have already begun hiring for their newest iPhone video-sex chat services – developments that put Apple in a rather awkward position, considering the lengths the company has gone to keep their apps squeaky clean.  (More at Techland: Steve Jobs vs. Porn)

But Apple, as Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society told the Associated Press, “can’t be seen as responsible any more than makers of routers or hardware are responsible for the content you are looking at.”

Sounds great doesn’t it?  Well not to child safety groups who argue the programs represent a potential connection between children and porn, or child predators.  Particularly when a child has greater access to an iPhone4 than a computer. (Read more about the issue)