Apple yesterday officially rolled out iTunes in an additional 56 countries, including the 142 million people market of Russia. A report out this morning and numerous Twitter posts point to pornographic content somehow managing to find its way into the Movies section of the iTunes Store. Specifically, a section titled “more films in different languages” is promoting escort services.
It’s true, I ain’t making this up. Given Apple’s puritan approach to its content stores (“folks who want porn can buy an Android phone”, Steve Jobs famously said), it’s clearly a human error. It wouldn’t surprise me if somebody’s head already rolled over the scandal. Go past the fold for an NSFW screenshot…
According to the iPhones.ru blog, which correctly predicted the Russian iTunes Store, accessing the “more films in different languages” section produces adult content, with links leading to escort services and pornographic content on the web.
iPhones.ru speculates (machine-translated):
Most likely, the problem arises because of links: the people responsible for iTunes, put the “temporary” link type xx.xx.xx. That’s just such a site exists, and, as we have seen today, has nothing to do with the ideals of the company.
This is your NSFW screenshot.
Screenshot via @iphones_ru.
Apple could be already rolling out a fix because the App Store at the time of this writing was experiencing a mysterious outage.
Jordan Kahn of 9to5Mac points us to dozens of reports on Twitter indicating problems accessing both the iTunes Store and the App Store.
On my end, I can confirm that checking for app updates in desktop iTunes isn’t working, which may or may not be related to Apple removing adult content from the Russian iTunes Store.
What are you seeing?
Are Apple’s content store working for you?
