Cardinal warns about media devices
Washington, Nov. 15 - A leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography.
Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.
"Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography," Keeler told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday. [Source]
Well that is not quite technically accurate. There is currently no way that iPods and probably PDA's could receive unwanted media of any sort. In the case of iPods they would first have to put it into iTunes before they could upload it to a video iPod or graphics to a photo iPod. Plus these devices can not send media that is not already on the user's computer. PDAs also sync to a computer to get any media delivered to them. I haven't heard that unsolicited porn was being sent to cell phones either. Though parents should always be quite aware of the potential of any devices and how they can be abused, though in this case it would be willed abuse and nothing accidental.
"The technology itself is not dangerous, in fact technology in itself is good," Keeler said. "The danger lies in the fact that there are not safeguards or regulations in place to protect children or teens from being exposed to unwanted pornography."
Keeler spoke the same day that The Washington Post reported that users had downloaded 1 million images of naked models from one pornographic Web site within a week. The Post also reported that a wireless industry trade group is exploring rating standards to help prevent underage access to pornography.
Of course underage age access should be considered as anybody younger than say Methuselah.
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I haven't heard that unsolicited porn was being sent to cell phones either.
I seem to recall reading about it (a while ago from a source other than the Cardinal), but I couldn't swear to it.
And why do they call these sites "adult oriented"? They're not safe for any age.
My husband has a web accessable phone and if you call those 1800 get a joke a day type #s and put in that you have a camera phone they will sell it to others and those others are the porn industry. He knows, being a programmer, not to request stuff like that or the free "pop up blockers" because they are the opposite of what they say. And whats really bad is if people haven't got a really good photo upload plan you wind up paying out the backside because they will send you tons of crap. And being charged perphoto could get into the 100s of dollars. And yes lots of parents do get thier kids photo & internet ready phones. The Ipod comes into play when you are downloading stuff through anothers Ipod. My hubby does it at work with his friends. If you down load the full content of the persons Ipod and they have porn filed on there you will get those too.
I hate it when they rate stuff with porn in it "Mature". Mature? for what? Only the obnoxious IMmature watch that garbage (I mean, just ask any wrong minded high school teenage boy).