LOS ANGELES -- As Hollywood tries to figure out how to resume production of movies and TV shows in the coronavirus era, one sector may be better prepared than others to deal with the challenges.
The porn industry in Los Angeles came up with its own testing system and database in the 1990s to protect actors during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Now it is using that system to develop protocols for making adult entertainment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"When we first starting talking about COVID, we felt very well prepared because we have a whole history of testing within the industry as well as contact tracing and production shut-downs," said Mike Stabile, spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the US adult entertainment industry.
"This is obviously a different type of virus, this is a different type of threat, but we understood in general how it would work and what we'd need to do in order to protect ourselves," he said.
The protocols were established in the late 1990s after a porn actor forged an HIV test and infected several others in the industry.
Porn star Sharon Mitchell, who is now a physician, created a system now known as PASS (Performer Availability Scheduling Services), in which porn actors are required to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases every 14 days. The results are entered into a database, which informs producers and directors who is clean and available for work.
"All it tells us is a binary. Are you clear to work or are you not clear to work?" Stabile said.
Stabile said the coronavirus, which is more easily transmitted, is a more complex problem but that the porn industry was open to working with mainstream Hollywood studios to share its expertise.
"The challenges for sports, for Hollywood and the porn industry are all different but in reality, we each have things we can learn from each other," Stabile said.
Hollywood movie studios, television networks and groups representing actors and directors have been brainstorming for weeks on how to restart production while protecting everyone from actors to make-up artists and camera crews.
Ideas include quarantining all cast and crew for the length of a shoot, medics on sets, temperature tests every 12 hours, and substituting extras and crowd scenes with computer generated imagery, according to leaked documents and industry sources.
Movie and TV production in Europe -- including Iceland, Denmark and the Czech Republic, where many Hollywood shows are filmed -- is expected to resume before the United States, according to the film commissions in those nations. But questions linger over insurance and how much actors and directors will want to travel when the outbreak has yet to be contained in many countries.
-reuters-
SAN FRANCISCO -- Videoconferencing platform Zoom is rolling out a number of measures meant to stem criticism over how it has handled security as users flock to the application during the coronavirus pandemic.
Zoom chief executive Eric Yuan laid out steps Wednesday that the company is taking against problems such as data hacking and harassment by individuals who crash sessions in what is referred to as "Zoombombing."
By week's end, paid account holders will be able to select which regions their data is routed through during their sessions in a move apparently aimed at concerns over information passing through China where it might be subject to snooping.
"As a reminder, meeting servers in China have always been geofenced with the goal of ensuring that meeting data of users outside of China stays outside of China," Zoom said in an online post.
The Silicon Valley startup also said that it was working with cyber-security firm Luta Security to overhaul processes and its "bug bounty" program that pays rewards to researchers who find security flaws in its operations.
Zoom also addressed a recent report that users' log-in information was being sold by criminals on the "dark web."
The credentials were likely stolen elsewhere on the internet, or by malicious code slipped into people's computers, according to Zoom advisor Alex Stamos, former chief of security at Facebook.
It is not uncommon for hackers to take passwords and account names pilfered in data breaches and then check whether people use them for other online services.
Zoom said it was building systems to "detect whether people are trying out username and password pairings and block them from trying again."
Improvements to Zoom security also include a toolbar to easily access features such as locking chats from strangers and making meeting password requirements a default setting.
"To successfully scale a video-heavy platform to such a size with no appreciable downtime and in the space of weeks is literally unprecedented in the history of the internet," Stamos said in a post.
"The related security challenges are fascinating."
India this week banned the use of Zoom for government remote meetings, saying it "is not a safe platform."
The New York school system has also banned the videoconferencing platform based on security concerns.
Prosecutors from several US states are meanwhile investigating the company's privacy and security practices, and the FBI has warned of Zoom sessions being hijacked.
According to Yuan, the number of people taking part in Zoom meetings daily eclipsed 200 million in March, up from just 10 million at the end of last year.
Agence France-Presse
SAN FRANCISCO - Tumblr on Monday said it is banning adult content from the Yahoo-owned blogging platform, which saw its app pulled from Apple's App Store last month over child pornography.
Tumblr will begin enforcing its new policy on December 17, giving users who host unwanted explicit content an opportunity to take their imagery elsewhere, according to chief executive Jeff D'Onofrio.
"There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content," D'Onofrio said in a blog post.
"We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community."
The decision to purge porn from Tumblr was made after "serious thought" regarding standards in the blogging community, according to the chief executive.
"Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we've updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change," D'Onofrio said.
He maintained that Tumblr will strive to balance allowing conversation about topics such as sex and relationships with banning porn, and noted there are likely to be stumbles.
Child porn was already against Tumblr guidelines.
"Posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community," D'Onofrio said.
"We've always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content."
Tumblr's applications for Apple devices were shut out of the App Store last month after child sexual abuse material was found on the platform.
Tumblr uses an industry database to filter content being uploaded, but child porn material that had not yet been added to the database made it onto the platform, the company said.
The offending content was removed as soon as it was discovered in a routine audit, according to Tumblr.
D'Onofrio took over as chief of Tumblr from founder David Karp late last year.
Karp's departure from the company came a few months after Verizon bought parent-company Yahoo in a $4.5 billion deal.
Karp founded Tumblr in New York in early 2007 as a platform where people could share writing and short-form media. Now, Tumblr hosts some 417 million different blogs.
Yahoo acquired Tumblr in May 2013 for $1.1 billion, as part of an effort to better connect with younger online users.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
