Naked ambitions: Porn goes mobile

Hustler Mobile, a new unit of Giant Mobile, made quite an impression at a recent cell phone conference. Picture this: After flashing a reporter badge, I'm grabbed by the hand by a tall, thin brunette, who says "You have to see this." She pulls out a razor-thin phone and starts a game called Boob Swap. You select your favorite type of woman (blonde, redhead, or brunette) and connect pairs of corresponding breasts--essentially a dirty version of the match game. Unimpressed, the reporter asks her and another salesperson, a towering man standing nearby, what else they're offering.

"Not much in America, but we're all over Europe now," he says. "We've got wallpapers, video, and ringtones."

"You guys do ringtones?" the reporter asks.

"Yeah." He flashes a look toward the brunette. "They are moans." They both start laughing. Hard.

From VHS to the Internet, the porn industry has always been the Admiral Byrd of technology, staking its claim in new electronic arenas and pushing the limits of processing power. The recent news that porn is being offered on the Japanese PSP may be a shocker, but porn-related companies have been infiltrating the mobile space for years. They just haven't cracked America yet.

But within the past year, the under-mattress staple, Playboy, has aligned with Seattle-based mobile publisher Dwango, the aforementioned Hustler with Giant Mobile, and start-up Brickhouse Mobile has forged relationships with adult photographer Suze Randall, international distributor The Erotic Network, and porn's 900-pound gorilla, Wicked Pictures.

"For Wicked, we're offering wallpapers and videos since it is a very visual brand. We'll also have special ringtones featuring [entertainers] such as Stormy, Kailani, or Jessica Drake," says Brickhouse Mobile president L.R. Clinton Fayling. "Beyond individual products, we're almost done with the WAP site. It will probably be available later this summer."

Brickhouse Mobile is aggressively talking with other big-name brands, but right now it's keeping its nudie cards close to its chest, like Playboy and Hustler. No one is really sure how quickly American carriers and customers will support this new content, if ever. "[Right now] everyone needs to make sure they know what adult content is and make sure it is something they can control," Fayling says.

In April, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), announced it was establishing a wireless rating system that will apply to all kinds of mobile content. "It's as much about freeing up content that adult customers want to enjoy as it is about restricting children from accessing it," Cingular Wireless spokesperson Jim Ryan said in a recent statement. The move was prompted in part by the popularity of explicit ringtones from artists like 50 Cent, but the porn industry's recent mobile initiatives have made the rating system a priority.

These trends show that American phone technology is finally closing the gap on Europe and Asia. Screen resolutions are becoming bigger, sound more vibrant, and, most importantly for porn, video is slowly changing from slide show to the real deal. Attracting even a sliver of the multibillion-dollar adult business would give the US mobile industry a serious financial boost, just like its media brethren in cable and the Internet. But there are plenty of reasons to be cautious.

"[US] carriers are concerned about their reputation," notes Adam Zawel, Yankee Group director of wireless US research. "We're talking about an opportunity they think will be worth millions, tens of millions, maybe hundred of millions, but the risk to their reputations could be worth billions. There is much more fear than greed at this point."

"In Europe, we got an excellent response. In Germany, they're totally comfortable with our boob game. Porn is different over there," says Dr. David Bozward, chairman of the UK-based Blue Sphere Games. Aside from licensed titles like Mr. Bean and Dennis the Menace, his company offers Boob Machine, a Vegas-style slot game where matching articles of clothing on the wheel removes them from a digitally photographed model. Here in America, it's called Bikini Machine. "When it comes down to the United States, it's up to the people to decide what the market should offer."

Other companies such as The Erotic Network are making plenty of money overseas, especially in third-world countries that essentially missed the home computer/broadband revolution and went straight to cell phones. Other countries also have a much more liberal view of nudity compared to America. For instance, it isn't that outrageous to see a naked woman on regular European TV.

American Puritanism aside, our mobile services simply don't have the regulatory infrastructure to keep pornography out of underage hands. Schemes like Western Europe's divide content into two categories, universal and restricted. The restricted content is guarded and must be unlocked, ideally by a consenting adult. There's no age-check system here in America, and many experts are comparing cell phones today to the Internet 10 years ago--and we all know how well children have been protected there. "They're trying to organize right now," Zawel says. "The CTIA will probably leave age verification to the individual operators, as it could be expensive and have a major impact on customer care. They're not going to impose a technical solution for the entire industry."

Before the American mobile industry can shield adult content, though, the country actually has to legally define what constitutes pornography, and that's an issue even the Supreme Court is still arguing about. "Let's say you see an image of a woman cupping her breasts on the beach and it says 'Sports Illustrated' on the bottom. Then you see another that says 'Wicked Video.' One is adult, one is not," Fayfield says. "It takes many shapes and forms, and carriers are trying to find that line."

For now, Fayling says Brickhouse Mobile is happy to not push things too far. "Wicked Pictures is known for hardcore, but we know not every carrier in the world is ready for hardcore," he says. "We'll offer five levels: bikini, topless, nude, softcore and hardcore. With the US carriers now, it's strictly bikini. But if that line ever moves, we can move right along with it."