Japanese porn appears on town-centre screen

STUNNED shoppers got a bit of an eyeful when pornographic images flashed up on a screen in a Welsh town centre.

The image of animated Japanese erotica was put on display on a 55in double-sided tourism kiosk screen on Alexandra Road in Aberystwyth on Sunday night.

The screen was one of three installed in the coastal town earlier this year to advertise local businesses and events by Advancing Aberystwyth Ar y Blaen, a business set up to manage the Business Improvement District.

But on Sunday night, a “faulty player” caused indecent images to flash up on one of the screens for a few minutes.

Shaun Jones, from Emerge Advertising, which runs the software and content of the machines, apologised for the incident.

He said it was due to “faulty players” from a third-party company which let other users control what was on the screen for “four or five minutes”.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” he said.

“All it was doing was kicking us out of the software. When the incident happened, we reported it the night it happened and checked it hourly. It was letting other people control the screen. It was four or five minutes before we were confident we had it down.”

Mr Jones said they changed the player immediately and said if anyone tried to do something similar now, they would be alerted.

“We can only apologise,” he added. “We take very seriously what goes on those screens. It was quite a childish thing to do.”

Dyfed-Powys Police said they are investigating the incident.

A spokeswoman for the force said: “Dyfed-Powys Police received a report that pornographic images were displaying on an interactive screen at Alexandra Road, Aberystwyth, at around 5.30pm on Sunday, November 4.

“Officers are investigating.”