ipod...XXX

So I was scanning the recent torrents on The Pirate Bay and I came across something that makes absolutely no sense to me: clips from porn movies in mp4 format so that you can play them in your ipod. It should be said, for the sake of memory, that it was only a week or so ago that I heard about the possibility of playing movie files on an iPod. This is not to say that it wasn't already possible or people weren't already doing it--it I wasn't feeling lazy, I'd go figure out when this reached its tipping point.

But now it has definitely tumbled over. On the site I find files for TDS, they used to feature some smaller versions encoded in .ogm. As of two or three days ago, they dropped that format and have started using the mp4, specifically noting that it is now possible to play video in the iPod. I am very pleased to hear this, of course, and am even more excited about the possibility of owning one of these fantastic machines. Still it is amazing how fast something like this catches on. I don't think that everyone can play video files in the iPod--unless they have one of the newer ones--so it really isn't a matter of people rising to meet demand. It is, most likely, an edgy hacker thing: they now know what is cool and it doesn't matter if anyone is actually using the product as advertised. It is the kind of mutually consecrating act of social legitimacy: it makes the programmers look edgy while legitimating the use of this new file type. In the past, people would have been opposed to using it on some level; they would have talked about reduced quality or some such thing. But the iPod has now knighted the mp4: to argue with it would make you look like a luddite.

I would argue that this is why people are now offering porn for your iPod--or at least in a format you could play in an iPod if you owned one. I mean why one earth would anyone walk around watching porn? The file type switch doesn't offer any reason; it doesn't say "now you can spank it anywhere you want!" it just assumes that it makes sense. Well, I don't think it does.