In 2002, DVD sales surpassed VHS as the predominant home video format. On the 10-year anniversary of that milestone, media companies are still having a hard time adjusting to the digital world.
Publishers are still having trouble finding the right business model to get people to pay for access to content - should it be subscription or micro-payments?
The record labels, game developers, and movie makers are failing to tackle piracy adequately - should all content be free? Or should we litigate aggressively?
Most media companies are finding it hard to compete with the new distribution eco-systems and licensing frameworks in the digital age.
Even the consumer-rich pornography industry, as evidenced by Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on the BBC recently “Twilight of the Porn Stars”, is changing beyond recognition.
The most harmful websites in terms of risk from malware infection aren’t, as you might imagine, pornography, but rather religious sites, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report.
The average number of threats found on religious sites was 115 (mostly fake antivirus software). By contrast, pornographic sites had less than a quarter, at around 25 threats per site. Of course, the number of pornographic sites is vastly greater than religious sites.
According to Greg Day, Symantec’s security CTO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while trojans may seem more serious, “if you have installed fake AV you may think you are protected, when in reality you are open to all sorts of attacks.”
Reports about malware infection produced by companies that sell anti-malware software are always going to have an inherent conflict of interest. That said, Symantec’s report, the 17th, has established itself as authoritative within the industry.
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Social media has become ubiquitous, with everyone from celebrities to businesses jumping on the chance to communicate with customers directly. It comes as no surprise that sex workers have equally utilized these mediums to market themselves. In the wake of issues like Porn Wikileaks, G+'s nym wars and Twitter's hashtag censorship, sex worker Kitty Stryker will speak on what are the benefits and hurdles of this growing trend in the world of professional sex.
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- Tech savvy sex workers say their business has increased since the police cannot track them and they do not need pimps anymore
- Experts say more and more people being lured into the skin trade because of increase in sexual exploitation, use of social media and telecommunication
LAHORE - Phones make me feel safe. The police can’t catch me and people don’t get to waste my time. I don’t have to wait for clients on the roads or pay chunks of my income to my pimp and nobody gets to find out what I do for a living, everyone wins,” Razia, a sex worker from Lahore, candidly talks to Pakistan Today about how her mobile phone has made her profession easier.
“I got a call on the Valentine’s Day, went to a rest house, did my job, took the money and left,” she says, “It is that simple.”
Dubbing it as ‘secure, lucrative and easy,’ the sex workers in the city have left the traditional path of hiring a pimp or waiting for their clients on the roads and are using modern tools like the social media and the internet to expand their business. International donor agencies working on sex trade in Lahore have pointed to the link between the increase in mobile phone and internet usage by the prostitutes and the expansion of their business. Other Non-Government Organisations engaged in the spread of HIV and AIDS in the prostitutes have registered an increase in prostitution also since the phones and the internet provide a good ‘cover up’ to the women.
Owners of brothels have also claimed that the use of technology has made their job easier since it gets harder for the police to track them and they are just ‘a few buttons away’ from their clients. Sources privy to Punjab AIDS Control Programme told Pakistan Today that another reason for the ‘increase’ in sex workers could be the fact that the international donor agencies compel the government to use the term ‘sex workers’ instead of prostitutes and no health or social organisation could claim to ‘help’ the illegal trade.
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