Is Apple's porn ban damaging the future of media?

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs has banned porn and any sexual content from the iPad but is this a wise move? I just started reading Nick Bilton's book "I live in the future & here's how it works" and the first chapter is about his investigation of the porn industry to see if there are any lessons to be applied to the media industry.

By Tom Foremski: In Silicon Valley

20 Sep 2010

I've long been an admirer of the porn industry's innovative business models as applied to technology and media. And Bilton does a great job in expanding on that theme.

Every time a new technology has been introduced, way back to the printing press, sexual content has helped drive that technology and develop thriving business models that others have been able to adopt and prosper with.

He quotes an essay from the mid-'90s by Peter Johnson, a prominent lawyer: Pornography Drives Technology: Why Not to Censor the Internet, which states that:

"Throughout the history of new media, from vernacular speech to movable type, to photography, to paperback books, to videotape, to cable and pay-TV, to "900? phone lines, to the French Minitel, to the Internet, to CD-ROMs and laser discs, pornography has shown technology the way.

Read the full article on www.memeburn.com.

About the author

Tom Foremski is a former Financial Times journalist and the founder and publisher of Silicon Valley watcher, which is an online news site reporting on the business of Silicon Valley and the culture of disruption. Foremski is a contributor on [[www.memeburn.com]].