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Re-activateMicrosoft has posted a new version of a promotional video for their Kin phone, edited to remove the sequence that showed a young man shooting a photo of his chest at a party and e-mailing it to a woman.
The new version of the "Kin Spot" video shows the duo seemingly exchanging photos, but omits the shots in the original version of the man shooting under his shirt and sending the resulting image. Instead, around 35 seconds into the revised video, he's shown selecting a different image—one that appears to include a woman and another person; it's a bit indistinct—and sending it to his girl pal.
Microsoft said it was pulling the video after we raised questions about whether it might encourage sexting, the e-mailing of nude photos via cell-phone. While a few who commented on our blog said it did, comments ran about about two to one in favor of the video's inoffensiveness.
Some of the comments critical of us included suggestions that we stick to testing products and avoid dabbling in areas like advertising to young people. While independent product testing is indeed a hallmark of Consumer Reports, our mission extends beyond our work in our labs. In this particular case, since several states have current or pending legislation making sexting among minors a criminal activity, we thought the Kin video at least raised questions. Since no other media had yet raised those, we jumped in.
—Paul Reynolds
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