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The Courts Apple Idle

Apple Sued For Man's Porn Addiction 509

coolnumbr12 writes "Chris Sevier, a 36-year-old man from Tennessee, got so addicted to porn videos that his wife took his children and left him. Now he has sued Apple saying the company failed to install any filter in its devices to prevent his addiction. In a 50-page complaint, Sevier calls Apple a 'silent poisoner' responsible for the proliferation of 'arousal addiction, sex trafficking, prostitution, and countless numbers of destroyed lives.' Sevier is seeking damages from Apple, but said he we will drop the lawsuit if Apple agrees to sell devices with a 'safe mode.'"
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Apple Sued For Man's Porn Addiction

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  • False Flag (Score:4, Interesting)

    by digitrev ( 989335 ) <digitrev@hotmail.com> on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:07PM (#44287685) Homepage
    Normally, I'm not this paranoid, but this reads like a false flag operation by some religious group looking to get filters installed by default. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they're helping fund this insane lawsuit.
    • by digitrev ( 989335 ) <digitrev@hotmail.com> on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:09PM (#44287719) Homepage
      And now having re-read the article, I realize that this man is patently insane. Primarily because he blames Apple for driving sex shops out of business.
      • Re:False Flag (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:17PM (#44287831)

        Just because he's insane doesn't mean there's no religious group behind the lawsuit.

        • by Reverand Dave ( 1959652 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:21PM (#44287877)
          Usually one follows the other.
          • by Golddess ( 1361003 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:46PM (#44288207)
            Hey now, I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of being insane without needing a religious group backing me up, thank you very much. :P
      • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Gription ( 1006467 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:17PM (#44287841)
        It is this sort of stupidity that I think the creationists could use as an effective argument against evolution.
        - The fact that SO MANY people have no ability to take any responsibility for their actions and the fact that people don't overwhelmingly blast them for their insane helplessness seems to be some level of proof that humans have no evolved traits for any self responsibility. I would expect that self responsibility would have to be part of any sort of evolved survival traits.

        (or maybe we need to release more tigers in our cities to get the old awareness going again...)
        • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:31PM (#44287997)

          Personal responsibility is an invented concept driven by societal needs. Fundamental evolution doesn't work well with the concept. In fact shuffling responsibility onto others and suckering them into dealing with it is a fantastic survival strategy we can see throughout the animal kingdom.

          • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

            by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <`gameboyrmh' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:35PM (#44288059) Journal

            Mod parent up, was just gonna say this.

            Evolution doesn't give a damn how much of an irresponsible moron you are, only how much you reproduce. And irresponsible morons are especially good at that.

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Damn, I wish I could remember the book I perused from a Toronto professor stating that rape was obviously an evolutionary trait to improve the species ... morality and evolution really don't get along when you think about it.

        • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Reverand Dave ( 1959652 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:33PM (#44288031)
          This is the exact opposite. Humans are selfish and self-serving like no other species can be. This is a direct result of natural selection. Your ancestors weren't the ones holding the door so people could get through, they were the ones trampling old women and children to get theirs first. More recently however, helplessness is a trait that is bred and perpetuated by a society that is ok with just accepting things as is without explanation.

          "How did the universe get here? I dunno, God did it." What is more lazy and helpless than that? It's pretty thematic through out the whole ID debate. Acceptance in spite of investigation and evidence to the contrary. That is the epitome of a lazy and entitled attitude IMHO.

          That being said, fuck yeah, bring on the tigers.
          • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

            by amRadioHed ( 463061 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:46PM (#44288201)

            Humans are selfish and self-serving like no other species can be.

            Sure... if by "like no other species can be" you mean "exactly like every other species is".

          • Re:False Flag (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Altrag ( 195300 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @04:36PM (#44288843)

            "How did the universe get here? I dunno, God did it." What is more lazy and helpless than that?

            I don't know about that. It takes a lot of dedicated effort to remain willfully ignorant in today's era of information overload.

            "God did it" made reasonably sense when the state of human knowledge was such that we couldn't have known better. And "God did it" is still a reasonable (if unlikely) reason for the Big Bang happening in the first place. People who want to want to reconcile science and religion are welcome to do so on levels like that if it makes them happy.

            But trying to claim that the world started 6000 years ago when we can date things back millions or billions of years with proven methods are just out to lunch. The absolutely best they can claim is that the devil (or maybe God himself, to "test" us -- ie: make sure we don't try to use the big old brains He gave us) purposely laced our planet with particular datable isotopes and geographic strata and whatever else the smart people use to (reasonably) accurately date things (accuracy within 1% is a reasonable accuracy in many cases, even if it means a potential real error of a million years, for example.)

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by Anonymous Coward

              But trying to claim that the world started 6000 years ago when we can date things back millions or billions of years with proven methods are just out to lunch.

              Exactly! Everyone knows the world started on January 1, 1970. It's only those DOS or Apple heretics that think it started in 1980 or 2001. Silly people!

            • Not all "creationists" are young earthers. In fact doubt in that particular interpretation dates back to Augustine.

        • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:36PM (#44288073) Homepage

          Which type of people do you think procreate the most; people with or without a sense of responsibility?
          There are whole MTV shows dedicated to demonstrating this principle of evolution.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Re:False Flag (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Altrag ( 195300 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @05:07PM (#44289177)

            I have to fully disagree with this argument.

            Humanity has NEVER had a high percentage of smart, responsible people. And we're still trending towards a smarter populace (more people with at least a BA and such metrics.) Also being a more responsible populace is questionable but that's digressing a bit.

            Humanity's cogs have always been the grunts -- they're plentiful and replaceable. But our leaps and bounds have come from the very very few superstars -- the Newtons and Einsteins and Teslas of the world are the ones who progress us.

            The rest of us mass of grunts get to benefit from the achievements of the few visionaries and progress marches on. But there's never been a time when more than a fraction of a percent of humanity has been "smart" in the world-moving (even a small corner of the world) sense. There has of course been times when certain factions have tried to suppress the few visionaries that do pop up during their rule.

            Overall my point is that visionary intelligence is more likely the genetic mistake among a (comparatively) stupid population rather than some goal we're supposed to be moving towards -- as others have pointed out, evolution favors your reproduction far far more than it favors your contributions to other peoples' lives.

      • by pspahn ( 1175617 )

        I would suggest he is primarily insane because he has been a serial stalker.

        • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          yeah, from a quick glance his wife left him because he was looking for fuck dates on the internets.

          he could also try suing lenovo, dell and microsoft on the same grounds and while at it google, firefox and his isp.
          fucking douche. or apparently not a fucking douche since he is complaining.

      • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Informative)

        by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:44PM (#44288169)

        I'm wondering if this particular Sevier lives in Sevierville. Seveirville is named after John Sevier, a pioneer settler to the region. That part of the state has literally thousands of people with some variant on Sevier as their last name; Mostly Seviers, but with Siviers, Seebers, Seibers, Severs, and even a few Xaviers. I know of only one sex shop in the Sevierville area, but I don't think it's out of business. (It calls itself "Sexy Stuf", and the ex and I don't patronize places that can't spell, but it looked open when we stopped at the Smoky Mountain Knife Museum (It's like a four story mall full of knife dealers, with taxidermied animals and indoor waterfalls, and I'd bet Mr. Sevier would love it if he can stop focusing on sex so much).
                Knoxville, 30 miles away or so, has lots of sex stores still open last I checked - Adult Superstore, Fantasy World, Intimate Treasures, Romantic Escapades, and others. Town and Country seems to be fading fast, but they're kinda disquieting (as in labeling the plus-size video's "fattyporn", and clerks who seem oddly judgemental), so I really doubt it's apple putting them out of business.

    • Who cares, let them do whatever they want. They can file as many suits as they want and, each time, a jury will be able to decide if Apple is the group that is ultimately responsible for some guy who got himself addicted to porn. While he's at it, he can sue Ford for allowing him to drive to the convenience store to buy beer and fuel his alcohol addiction, because that is obviously Ford's fault since they don't ship their cars with a mode that makes the car unable to drive to the convenience store to buy

      • Re:False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:23PM (#44287903)

        If I am on a jury, and I hear "Addicted to porn", I'm going to have a really hard time remaining objective about the person speaking.

        As such I'd probably get thrown off the jury and people who actually BELIEVE THIS SHIT will take my place.

        • "Addicted to porn" is not an issue I think would stand up in court. It may be a deep penetrating issue, but all it does is allow us to watch a bunch of people get screwed. Watching evidence I'd have a really hard time too. In the end he'll probably get off.

    • But... there already ARE filters on by default. The app store doesn't seem have anything that would rate higher than a PG-13. Safari's default search engine was at least google, maybe they've changed it, but google has safesearch on by default. It's not like you say "Siri, I like dogs" and it goes right to a gallery of people having doggystyle sex.

      ...

      I guess I'm assuming that religious groups would think about it first. You may be right.
    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      That would be less a 'false flag' and more a test case or a poster child.
  • by instagib ( 879544 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:08PM (#44287697)

    pr0n looks for YOU!

  • safe mode (Score:5, Funny)

    by RichMan ( 8097 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:08PM (#44287705)

    Remove the battery. Your device is now configured in safe mode. Unless you are disturbed by a black screen the device is now configured not to present offensive material.

    Any material is possible to be a problem to someone. As "safe mode" cannot be sufficiently defined yet leave the device with any function at all "safe mode" is impossible".

  • by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:09PM (#44287717) Homepage

    What was he supposed to do? It's not his fault Apple makes such sexy hardware.

  • by Sparticus789 ( 2625955 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:11PM (#44287745) Journal

    If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer. It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot, now electronic devices need to have a disclaimer about the internet having pornography? This guy is literally, blaming the messenger (company that makes the device), for this his own actions and lack of self-control. Plenty of people can use the internet and even peruse sexual content without having their lives destroyed.

    Maybe he should have tried getting a life and setting his priorities, instead of watching the Farrah Abraham video.

    • by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:26PM (#44287947)

      If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer.

      I believe Apple already serves this with every iTunes update.

      Case dismissed!

    • by bonehead ( 6382 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:28PM (#44287969)

      I remember a time when people were expected to take responsibility for their own actions. The world was a much better place then.

      Now everyone who engages in anti-social / psychopathic behavior is a "victim". We blame government. We blame society. And best of all, we blame inanimate objects. But under no circumstances can we point out that the guy actually chose to behave in the way he did, and that he is entirely, 100% to blame for the situation he finds himself in.

      (I'm not saying that viewing pornography is "in general" anti-social behavior, however, within the context of the boundaries of his marriage, it apparently qualified.)

  • by nitehawk214 ( 222219 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:13PM (#44287775)

    For years and years of not getting my work done.

  • by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:14PM (#44287781) Homepage Journal
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:19PM (#44287857)

    For several years, pornography ruled my life. I lost my family over it. I lost my self respect over it. It was causing such deep depression that I nearly lost my life over it. Being in IT, I could get around any filters. If I wanted porn online, I found porn online. Simple as that. I finally broke my addiction to it and got my life back together. So, I feel the pain of the person who TFA speaks of.

    That all being said...

    This. Is. Stupid. Why not just sue The Internetz and your ISP and your carrier and every person who's ever produced pornography, and Samsung for making iPhone screens and... you get the point.

    Stopping the addiction does not rely on Apple blocking porn on your iPhone. It involves taking responsibility, getting help, and STOPPING.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:35PM (#44288053)

      This.

      I too am a recovering porn addict. 15 months 'sober.' There is much that could be discussed about the causes of, and methods of overcoming, a porn addiction, but blaming the manufacturers of devices is ludicrous. My last look at porn was on an iPad - which I no longer have.

      With statistics showing that 50% or more of men now look at porn regularly, porn addiction is a pretty big deal. And no - it's not just a religious sort of thing. It's a ruining marriage, losing job, lost productivity, wasted time and money and quality of life sort of thing.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:56PM (#44288313)

        Thanks to both of you for sharing this - I think it's an important point of view not often heard. A porn addiction can cause as much trouble as addiction to alcohol or controlled substances, and it is even more ubiquitous - you can always find it for free, and without ever being seen in public.

        But this guy's case is without merit. It's like suing a grocery store for selling liquor to an alcoholic. I'm sorry, but personal responsibility here is the answer.

      • How do you not temp yourself.
        I know alcoholics just (according to movies) never touch alcohol again.
        But it would be pretty hard to never see a video with erotic content ever again. Hell, you cannot even watch Disney without seeing erotic content.

      • by AvderTheTerrible ( 1960234 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:32PM (#44289947)

        One could also argue that the near ubiquitous availability of porn is simply allowing men to get what they want without a lot of hassle. Namely dating, courtship, and maintenance of a girlfriend/wife who, while attractive, good company, and (hopefully) a very good friend, simply does not live up to the task of keeping the mans sexual drive satisfied.

        Porn addiction should be looked at in a couple different directions.The first is the direction that is being talked about so far in this discussion, namely of men who can't control themselves and spiral out of control with an addiction.

        Another direction to look is what kind of family life does he have? Does his gf/wife make sure to tend to his needs? Does she care enough about him to get interested in things that he enjoys, sex among them? If there is sex, is it kept interesting? Or has it gotten incredibly stale and any attempts to make it interesting have been failures, either because they just didn't work, or worse, because the woman had no interest in exploring those options and simply expected the man to be satisfied with what he had? Or is this man in a worst case scenario where he has tried his best to find companionship, only to be left out in the cold and judged as not worth anyone's time in a relationship?

        What a lot of people need to come to terms with is simply that people have sexual urges. For extensive periods of time our societies have placed a great amount of weight on suppressing those urges and judging them to be "unclean", meaning that only the boldest or most well connected had access to avenues of sexual experimentation. Now with porn literally everywhere, everyone can experience, at least at a distance, almost anything sexually imaginable. The game has changed, quite literally.

        With sexual freedom comes a lot of people discovering urges they may never have been able to realize they had. And to be honest up to this point the majority of those people discovering themselves sexually have been men. Women are getting there, but it is taking them longer because of natures built in sexual imbalances. And this is one of the main parts of the problem.

        Men have discovered that they want more than to just take a girl out to dinner and a movie on a regular basis, and if they are lucky, they get to have sex on rare occasion. Men have discovered that they want to have sex a lot more often than in the past and women are taking a long time to adapt to these new sexual demands.

        Women hold the keys to the sexual kingdom quite closely and refuse to open the gates unless great sacrifice is made in order to get there. Men have simply started to decide that the price of admission is too high, and they are choosing substitutions that are more easily accessible.

        As misogynistic as it sounds, the porn problem is caused in part by women making themselves unrealistically unavailable when demand has never been higher. The same thing happens in any high demand, low supply market. High demand and unavailability of any alternatives means everyone competes tooth and nail to pay top dollar for one unit of the coveted item. Then something else that works to satisfy the same demand comes along and suddenly everyone starts to wonder why they're paying out the ass for the cow when the imitation milk is damn near free.

        It's simple economics only with sex as the currency. Men want sex but are tired of having to pay for the hassle of dates that may not be enjoyable, relationships that become stale after so long, and escalating costs for lower and lower returns. Until women start to become sexually open as well, porn will continue to be a huge problem for society because men gotta have it, and now they don't need women to get it anymore.

        Porn addiction is the end result of mens biological imperative being artificially suppressed for thousands of years by societies that looked down on it and left most men with little to no way of actually expressing it, and suddenly removing that suppression by way of all manner of se

    • by bonehead ( 6382 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:46PM (#44288193)

      It involves taking responsibility,

      Unfortunately, this is now seen as an archaic notion, which has no place in our "modern" and "enlightened" society.

      We must blame all problems on inanimate objects, or else we run the risk of someone feeling bad.

      • by jandrese ( 485 )
        Eh, before blaming society for enabling this guy's lack of personal responsibility, lets wait and see if his case gets laughed out of court.
  • I like it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wjcofkc ( 964165 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:24PM (#44287913)
    While I think he's completely crazy to blame his addiction on Apple, the 'Safe-Mode' is not an altogether bad idea. Wouldn't it be nice to know your kids new MacBook had sex simply turned off?

    It would take them days, perhaps even weeks to find a way to circumnavigate the measure. Just think how much our kids could learn about BSD! The really aspirational ones might even learn to cover their tracks with a terminal and Vim!
  • Assuming that Safe Mode is a mode that the owner can turn off and on, isn't that just the same as just not going to the porn sites? At least if you are the owner and an adult and not playing the "think of the children" game?

    His offer sounds like he either wants to impose his values on others, or he knows that such "safe surfing" isn't really technically feasible so he can make to offer to sound like he's a decent guy rather than a pervert trying to profit big.

  • From TFA

    started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.”

    and

    adding that until he got the MacBook, he had never seen porn of any kind or been to a strip club or sex shop.

  • by lexx21 ( 1274802 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:24PM (#44287921)
    "We at Apple make the most spank-o-licious computer on the market"
  • by ScottCooperDotNet ( 929575 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:24PM (#44287923)

    Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility and requires a child-like understanding of one's own self-control. I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements for some sort of restricted mode, because he can't control himself, so everyone else should have to bear a burden of increased cost. A potential legal requirement would be easily met by Apple, but FOSS could be further limited by such laws, as not meeting requirements for schools, etc.

    This is different from accessibility requirements, since the folks who need those cannot simply choose to see/hear. All this guy had to do was put the infernal device down.

  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:24PM (#44287931)

    What's with the redundancy in the headline?

  • I'm going to sue Adobe for making Photoshop, the best image-editing software ever created, available for Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X.

  • Parental controls (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quila ( 201335 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:31PM (#44288005)

    It's been built-in for years. The problem is that a person with a problem isn't going to use them to restrict himself.

  • by CanHasDIY ( 1672858 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:34PM (#44288043) Homepage Journal

    WTF is going on with people these days? It seems over the last decade or so, our actual civil liberties - you know, the right to free expression, bearing arms, freedom from search/seizure without warrant - seem to be slowly fading out, while a brand new set of perceived rights is taking their place. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?

    FWIW, there is no such thing as:

    the Right to Not be Offended
    the Right to Determine What Rights Other People Have
    the Right to Feel Safe

  • by Grashnak ( 1003791 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:38PM (#44288097)

    Sevier claims that his addiction started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.” Sevier said this F***book site “appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male,” and he started to prefer the images on the screen to his own wife.

    Man, that happens to me all the time. One time, I reached for the skim milk and accidentally drank a 40oz bottle of vodka.

    Another time, I was making a peanut butter sandwich and accidentally injected heroin into an artery.

    Someone should pay!

  • by FuzzNugget ( 2840687 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @03:40PM (#44288117)
    According to this comment [arstechnica.com] in the ArsTechnica discussion of their report on this story [arstechnica.com], the plantiff is actually a suspended lawyer who was formerly deployed and is now dealing with mental illness.

    Maybe the commenter is taking the piss, but really ... that's the only explanation that makes any sense.
  • by nbritton ( 823086 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @04:56PM (#44289051)

    I wonder how far that strategy will work with a speeding ticket, lets just call it entrapment that they designed a car that knowning violates the law when a simple technical solution could be implemented to make the car never exceed the posted limit.

    In all seriousness though, I'd pay $2k to $3k extra for a button in a car that you could push to make it cruise exactly at the posted limit, as well as never exceed the limit going down hills, and it logs sensor data that can be used in court. It won't happen however, these fine only violations are what law enforcement calls their bread and butter.

  • by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @05:05PM (#44289159)
    What a wanker.
  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @07:07PM (#44290215)

    Apple can't be to blame because if they were culpable, all that pr0n out there would be in glorious Quicktime instead of crappy Flash or WMV format. Not that I would know this.

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