The dangers of mobile adult content

Rating: DON’T WRITE ABOUT THIS WITHOUT MY EXPRESS PERMISSION
By Tony Dennis

There’s few real taboos within the cellular industry but adult
content is one of them. I once wrote an expose of an incident where a
nine year old girl received adult content in the form of Page Three of
the Sun style girls accompanied by some pretty risqué captions as MMS
messages.
On investigation this content hadn’t been supplied by some
scurrilous back street outfit. It had come from her own network
operator. The scandal blew over simply because nobody within the
industry was brave enough to print the actual topless photos.

The whole thing had been a simply mistake – she’d sent a text with
the word ‘Babes’ and thought she was joining an information service for ‘Babies’
– a popular term for little girls’ dolls these days, apparently. But
the incident illustrated just how nervous the mobile industry is about
supplying content for the over 18s. Which includes gambling, of course.
In
the UK, if you’d wanted a flutter on the England versus South Africa
rugby game or Lewis Hamilton’s chances of securing the F1 Grand Prix
championship, then you’d have had to ensure that your mobile phone had
been deliberately been enabled for Over-18 content.
In Vodafone’s
case, the only way to do it is to possess a credit card. Not a Debit
card, mind you – it has to be a credit card. Which is all well and good
but forms of gambling are going to prove extremely important in
encouraging the use of the mobile phone to receive all kinds of premium content.
And
those journos advocating such a move are bound to be flamed. Yours
truly received the following flame last time I dared to mention that
you could get a mobile app that put a genuine one-armed bandit on your
mobile phone.
"WHEN YOU DO A STORY ABOUT GAMBLING
TALK TO ME," the email read. I’m assuming that capitals were used
because he was shouting at me for being so obviously stupid. Turned out
that he was a certified compulsive gambling counsellor (CCGC). Plus he ran seminars on the dangers of Compulsive Gambling Addiction.
The thought of a clinic offering mobile phone gambling detox doesn’t bare imagination. Does it?

Related News:

1. Nokia Ad Inventory to exclude adult
2. Adult Content at World Telemedia
3. Adultmoda claims to be only adult mobile ad network
4. BKI Media: Mobile Adult Content Filtering Report
5. Softbank introduces Yahoo Kids content filter