Russian Version of iTunes Overrun With Porn

For years Apple has really gone out of their way to try to prevent porn from tainting their products, so it’s almost karmic that the launch of iTunes in Russia has been plagued with links to pornography and escort services. It’s very unlikely that Apple has somehow relaxed their policy on adult content to this extent, and the mistake has already been explained by a bug. Sorry, Russia. You’ll just have to get porn on almost every single other site on the Internet, just like the rest of the world.

The problem seems to stem from Apple’s use of “xx.xx.xx” as a placeholder in the “more films in different languages” section of the Russian version of the iTunes store. That’s normally not a page that exists, which is why programmers use it as a placeholder, but with the advent of .xxx domains a simple placeholder can evidently cause major issues. It seems instead of “xx.xx.xx” somewhere along the way someone tried to use “xxx.xxx” which isn’t a meaningless placeholder. It’s a porn site. We won’t link it. You’ll have to believe us.

There have been reports of problems with iTunes and the App Store around the world today, but it’s uncertain if the two situations are related.

(via 9to5Mac, image via ed_needs_a_bicycle)

Relevant to your interests

• Universal is having its own porn problems
• Porn pirate was fined $1.5 million
• 88% of sexual content posted my young people online is stolen by porn sites