If you want to have porn fed into your home, you’re going to have to work for it.
Those who run Internet sex sites are making money hand over fist, and may well be the only sites on the web to show a profit, but recent attempts to bring porn into the mainstream have failed.
First, Bell ExpressVu took its two channels, True Blue and Extasy, off the airwaves at the end of March when a television show ran an expose about how the blue movies weren’t being okayed by the Ontario Film Review Board – a requirement under provincial censorship laws.
Then people noticed that the Yahoo website had stealthily added adult content… and just as stealthily removed it. Family values complaints were at work.
First the adult videos and DVDs that were for sale disappeared, then Yahoo started removing links to the adult sections on its site. The clean-up included search engines, meaning that a search for “sex” would turn up nothing.
And that includes anyone looking for a soccer club is Essex.
Yahoo later made a u-turn and restored the search facilities.
“The action of Yahoo Groups is scandalous and tantamount to censorship,” says Krystyna Haywood, activist for the UK lobby group Press For Change.
Of course, there are still a billion or so other sex sites on the net, but Yahoo is a major portal.
However, it’s still fairly simple to find dirty pictures on Yahoo – but it requires a log-in and at least half a dozen clicks before you’ll get into Intaglove’s World Of Fetishes – that’s about four too many for the average porn surfer. Yahoo staff failed to return phone calls for comment.
When it comes to porn on cable TV, both gay men and straights are coming up empty handed. Just one channel offers regular blue programming, and that’s the Playboy Channel, available through Rogers, and then only if you rent a digital receiver.
City TV runs some steamy late-night movies, but the nudity ends at the waist.
The only way you’re going to get hardcore is through Pay Per View, whether you’re with Rogers, Look or Bell ExpressVu.
Although True Blue and Extasy were removed from the service, “We offer other adult programming which fully meets the regulatory requirements and the Ontario and Quebec film board standards,” says Rosemary MacGilchrist, a publicist for ExpressVu.
As for the other cable companies, Rogers and Look say they’ve had no
complaints about the service – there are a number of ways to block kids from ordering movies.
Why you can trust Xtra
