CYBERSPACE—Three cheers for BigStar! They slipped one past the Gipper. Steve Jobs, that is, the man who would be censor. In a display of app chutzpah that has brought them a much deserved round of publicity, the Coral Gables, Florida-based company got an app— BigStar Movies You Demand—approved for the App Store that serves mainstream movies mostly, but also porn.
But, wait, is it really porn? Some of the racy titles available include Bad Ass Bitches and Anna Nicole Smith Exposed. Do they count as porn? Do they cross the titillation acceptability line for the App Store? Time will tell about the latter, but in reaction to the coverage they’ve been getting, BigStar has found it necessary to weigh in on the great “Is It Porn” debate. It should be noted that the “porn” was never available on the app, but was, like all porn sites, available via the browser.
Still, the folks at BigStar saw a ripe opening to wax outraged.
“We suppose that ‘porn’ is in the eye of the beholder,” they wrote to VentureBeat.com, “but the definition so salaciously used in today’s VentureBeat article, ‘BigStar brings porn to the iPhone, but for how long?’ is so loose (any nudity, including flashes of a naked breast) that at least one-third of the current films in suburban multiplexes would have to be labeled porn. The MPAA is pretty clear that it considers porn NC-17. All of the films you mentioned in your article are rated R. Compare this to Netflix, which offers Teenage Catgirls in Heat (NR), Caligula (NR) and Last Tango in Paris (NC-17) or even to Hulu+, which offers the extremely bare-breasted Red Shoes Diaries and other late-night fare. While we appreciate the attention in BigStar’s offerings, we believe it’s not fair to call any of our offerings porn—unless you also classify the late-night fare of Netflix, Hulu, HBO/Cinemax and many other vendors as being in the same camp. As such, we are in full compliance with Apple’s terms of service.”
Why they dragged Netflix, Hulu and HBO/Cinemax into the debate is anyone’s guess, but they certainly have a point. In the AVN offices, we have a lot of porn, real porn, and never more than we do right now as the countdown to the 2011 AVN Awards continues. As experts in the designation of real porn, we figured it was an opportunity—indeed, our responsibility—to provide an authoritative appraisal of BigStar’s erotic content. After intense deliberation we reached a unanimous conclusion.
BigStar is right; it isn’t porn, even if Steve Jobs decides to pull the app.
If he does, though, please visit them here.
