Porn: The Reason The Semantic Web Won’t Work?

Internet porn is big business. So too, are match-making, dating, personal ad, and “hook up” services—you know, those online environments created to connect like-minded adults to one another for whatever activities strike their fancy. Nowadays, adult entertainment companies are not just leaders in earning revenue from the Net, they’re also leaders in the technology arena. In many areas, they are the dominate force. The leaders, not the followers. And, they’re doing as much as possible to protect their turf. They file patents to protect their content matching algorithms and online content management and manipulation functionalities.

But, can online pornography actually derail the Semantic Web? Blogger Michael DuPont thinks so. On his GCC Hacker blog he wrote: “The reason why the semantic web cannot work is that it cannot be used to trick people into looking at pay porn sites.” In his post, No, Google I Don’t mean “Gay Films”!!!, DuPonts attempts to explain his assertion. He has some interesting thoughts about the subject.