1. http://www.google.com/profiles/playboyp
Just the good stuff
It's been five years now since ICANN, the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, first proposed a .xxx top-level domain for sexually explicit sites and the BBC reports today that the battle has finally ended with the agency's approval.
The domain name has been rejected numerous times before, with lobbying from the American Family Association and the Family Research Council bringing pressure from the Bush administration, which said it feared creating a virtual red-light district for Internet pornography. Since then, however, ties between ICANN and the U.S. government have been loosened, giving the organization more independence.
As the BBC reports today, however, the .xxx domain can make it even easier to block adult content where it is not allowed or desired. The article quotes Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, as saying that this decision is "great news for those that wish to consume, or avoid, adult content." The creation of a .xxx domain makes it quite simple for places like public libraries and schools to enforce a blanket ban of the domain. To some degree, the opposition of conservative groups seems surprising, as the .xxx domain would also make it easier to block such content from reaching the family computer as well.
On the other end of the spectrum, even many members of the adult industry have been weary of the introduction of a porn-only domain, citing fears that it would be made mandatory. Sex educator and author Violet Blue called much of this "hysteria and hyperbole" suggesting that instead of getting all worked up over the new domain, "you'd think someone with a big porn business would start creating a set of best practices to allay fears and make guidelines that decision-makers could refer to."
Already, there are more than 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains and the first ones are scheduled to go live early in 2011.
AZURE at The Palazzo Las Vegas
Open: Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in pool season.
Topless: No.
Entrance fee: The usual charge is $20. As at many adult pools, the fee does not include use of lounge chairs.
Cool pool amenities: Nibbles by Wolfgang Puck, including $35 lobster salad and Sunday brunch; poolside massages by Canyon Ranch SpaClub.
Best for: Those seeking a sophisticated pool with more serenity than most. Its tagline: "Where the high high-profile keep a low profile."
Information: azurelasvegas.com
The skinny on dipping: It's small (around 400-500 guests max) and in a garden setting, with a rotunda overlooking the Strip, comfy terrycloth-covered lounge chairs, not known as a party pool. However, hunky actor Gilles Marini ofSex and the City, Brothers & Sisters and Dancing With the Stars fame did host a Memorial Day fete and visited again last weekend. Chace Crawford of Gossip Girl and E! network anchor Giuliana Rancic have been spotted.
Bare Pool Lounge at The Mirage
Open: Daily, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Topless: Yes.
Entrance fee: Women, free; men, $20 Monday-Thursday and $40 weekends. Local men free Mondays.
Cool pool amenities: Plunge pool for VIPs in an elevated cabana area overlooking the action; unlike many other adult pools, use of chaises is complimentary Monday through Thursday.
Best for: Oglers and socializers in mid-20s to mid-30s.
Information: barepool.com
The skinny on dipping: At this small pool, feasting eyes on exposed flesh — openly or discreetly — is a draw. It was built so everyone can see most everyone. There's not as much privacy for VIPs as at some other pools, but Britney Spears, Courtney Love, Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas and Orange County Desperate Housewife Gretchen Rossi have been spotted here.
Beach Club 25 at the Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel & Casino
Open: Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Topless: Yes.
Entrance fee: Women, free; men, $10.
Cool pool amenities: High up on the 25th floor; you don't have to pay for lounge chairs.
Best for: The value-minded who don't need all the "ultra-lounge" bells and whistles.
Information: stratospherehotel.com
The skinny on dipping: Don't expect to see celebs and Woodstock-style revelry. Enjoy the views over Vegas.
"Ditch Fridays" bashes at Palms Casino Resort
Open: Fridays from noon to 7 p.m. from May through Labor Day. The party is for those 21 and older, but younger hotel guests may enter but not drink. At other times, the pool welcomes kids.
Topless sunbathing: No.
Entrance fee: $25; local women and hotel guests are free.
Cool pool amenities: A VIP area with glass-bottom pool; in-pool loungers to dance on; poolside bungalows that rent by the night.
Best for: Young party animals in their 20s and 30s who don't mind being shoulder-to-shoulder and trying to carry on a coversation while music blasts.
Information: palms.com
The skinny on dipping: Started in 2006 to draw locals looking to get a head start on the weekend, it attracts a diverse crowd and has evolved into a tourist attraction, too, maybe because of The Palms' MTVReal World fame and the resort's cameo appearance in rapper Lil Wayne's hit Lollipop. Name entertainers such as rapper Sean Paul add to its allure.
Encore European Pool at Encore at Wynn Las Vegas
Open: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily for Encore guests 21 and older from April through September; more limited hours in fall and winter.
Topless sunbathing: Yes during the day; not on the Sunday nights through Labor Day when partiers at XS nightclub can take swims, too.
Entrance fee: Guests only during the day, and it's free to them. Sunday nights, there's a nightclub cover charge of $20 for women and hotel guests, $30 for men, to swim. Locals get in free Sunday nights.
Cool pool amenity: An underwater ledge where poolgoers can sit and keep cool; gaming tables; and how many nightclubs let you take a dip?
Best for: Sophisticated adults during the day; upscale clubbers Sunday nights.
Information: encorelasvegas.com; xslasvegas.com
The skinny on dipping: This curved pool is larger than its counterpart at sister property Wynn Las Vegas.
Encore Beach Club at Encore Las Vegas
Open: Friday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday evening pool party starting at 10 p.m.
Topless sunbathing: No.
Entrance fee: Women, $30; men, $40. But prices may vary.
Cool pool amenities: Three linked pools, dancers on pool shower platforms, two-story VIP bungalows and a gaming pavilion.
Best for: Upscale fun-lovers.
Information: encorebeachclub.com
The skinny on dipping: New on Memorial Day Weekend, it is aiming for the hip, hedonistic vibe of Ibiza, Spain. Melded with the new Surrender nightclub and revamped SWITCH restaurant, it has a separate entrance on The Strip. Paris Hilton danced opening weekend; Sam Worthington of Avatar fame stopped by.
Fortuna and Venus at Caesars Palace
Open: The Fortuna gaming pool in Caesars' just-revamped Garden of the Gods (non-guests can come play) is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Venus Pool Club is open daily in season (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; 11 a.m to 6 p.m. Monday and Tuesday). Pool season at Caesars can run from March or April until September or October.
Topless sunbathing: At Venus Pool Club, except during special events such as the Memorial Day Weekend concert with Snoop Dogg.
Entrance fee: None at Fortuna; typically $10 for women and $30 for men at Venus. Free to locals on Monday and Tuesday. The price goes up for special events.
Cool pool amenities: Swim-up blackjack at Fortuna. Caesars has a Garden of the Gods room special from $110, including beach bag and $25 credit toward pool food or drinks.
Best for: Gamblers (Fortuna) and those who like the lush pool lounge life (Venus).
Information: harrahs.com/gog; venuspoolclub.com
The skinny on dipping: Venus, a spacious area separated from the rest of Caesars' redone, bigger Garden of the Gods pool complex, is hidden behind cyprus and olive trees and a wall. It attracts celebrities, including sports stars, Kardashians and Hiltons. Fortuna is not topless and is next to a family pool. It has five shaded swim-up blackjack tables and a semi-circular waterfall.
LIQUID Pool Lounge at ARIA Resort & Casino
Open: Daily, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Topless sunbathing: No.
Entrance fee: Women, $10; men, $20 most days. Women, $20; men, $40 on Saturdays. Locals free Thursdays.
Cool pool amenities: VIP cabanas with banquettes, TVs and plunge pools; Super Soaker squirt guns provided for VIP partiers.
Best for: Party people in their 20s and early 30s.
Information: liquidpoollv.com
The skinny on dipping: Opened in March, this CityCenter splashatorium has a state-of-the-art, nightclub-style sound system that projects sound horizontally to heighten the "ultra lounge" experience and limit annoyance to guests outside its walls. A Grand Cabana where stars hold court is within the sight of poolgoers.
Moorea Beach Club at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino
Open: Daily, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Topless sunbathing: Yes.
Entrance fee: $10 for women hotel guests Mondays through Thursdays; $20 on weekends. Male hotel guests $40 Monday-Thursday; $50 on weekends. Non-hotel guests are $125 daily. Holidays: women hotel guests, $30; men, $60; non-hotel guests, $150.
Cool pool amenities: Mandalay Bay guests can walk next door to the resort's sandy beach and swim there, too (not topless, of course). Moorea's star villa — musician John Mayer hung out here — has a stripper pole, mirrored ceiling and a round bed overlooking the Mandalay Bay beach. It can rent for $2,000 a day.
Best for: People not looking for a wild party scene. Moorea's friendly staff aims to keep the mood classy. Convention-goers love it, and it attracts a wide range of ages.
Information: mandalaybay.com
The skinny on dipping: Moorea, named after an island in French Polynesia, opened seven years ago. Expect to see convention-goers on break from Mandalay's big convention center discreetly eyeing mammaries. The atmosphere is intimate and upscale, with teak chaises topped with red cushions and servers in nautical-themed red-and-white two-piece suits.
"Rehab" party at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Open: Sundays from 9 a.m. until sunset from April through September.
Topless: No.
Entrance fee: Generally, $20 for women, $50 for men. Reduced rate for male locals. Local women and select guests are free. Entrance fees can vary; hotel guests bypass the line via a separate entrance.
Cool pool amenities: An elevated VIP cabana area with great view of the pool that's dubbed "Rodeo Drive;" center island great for show-off dancing; "Rehab" shots of alcohol in a syringe.
Best for: Young, hard-core partiers or anyone who likes an outrageous bash.
Information: rehablv.com
The skinny on dipping: This is Vegas's monster pool party, which has been called "Spring Break on Steroids." Now in its seventh year, it attracts an average of 4,000 locals and tourists a week and is fodder for a reality show on the TruTV channel. Expect a 3-acre tropical pool complex, strippers shimmying on their day off, a whole lotta grinding and making out, outrageous tattoos, rowdy drunks and a rock-festival-happy mood.
Skybar at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Open: Noon to midnight Friday-Sunday. Noon until sunset Monday. Swimming not allowed after 8.
Topless: No.
Entrance fee: Free to hotel guests; $20 for nonguests. Locals who work in the hotel, casino and nightlife industries are free on "Relax Mondays."
Cool pool amenities: An infinity pool by the bar has "windows" on the bottom to reveal bathers to those in an HRH Beach Club below. The bar has Italian furniture and cool views of The Strip at night. Another pool is surrounded by cabanas.
Best for: Those looking for a quieter, more sophisticated atmosphere than that at Hard Rock's Rehab.
Information: hardrockhotel.com
The skinny on dipping: The third in a chain of cool lounges — it's sister to the first in L.A. and second in South Beach, Fla. The look is contemporary and chic.
TAO Beach at The Venetian
Open: Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in spring, summer and early fall. It's a swimming area by day; an extension of TAO nightclub Thursday through Saturday nights, with no swimming allowed at night.
Topless: Yes, Monday through Thursday only.
Entrance fee: $20 for non-local males Saturday and Sunday.
Cool pool amenities: There's a staffer who mists guests with cool water, and food from the TAO kitchen, including sushi, and $8 red mango frozen yogurt. You also can get a "sun recovery" massage for $85, and even get married.
Best for: A clubgoer crowd (no drinks allowed in the small pool). Celebs including Jamie Foxx and Reggie Bush have populated the cabanas. Pamela Anderson is scheduled to host a birthday party for herself July 10. No surprise, Paris Hilton has been there, too.
Information: taolasvegas.com
The skinny on dipping: An intimate extension of the popular TAO nightclub, the space is small but sophisicated, with Asian-inspired furnishings and décor and cabanas with Balinese daybeds.
Sunset Pool at Wynn Las Vegas
Open: Daily from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. April through September; more limited hours in the offseason.
Topless: Yes.
Entrance fee: None. It's for Wynn and Encore hotel guests 21 and over only.
Cool pool amenities: "Lilypad" round loungers surrounded by water that usually rent for $300 and up; gaming tables.
Best for: An upscale visitor who doesn't want rap music or crowds.
Information: wynnlasvegas.com
The skinny on dipping: Tucked away and surrounded by topiary, it attracts an upscale crowd who swim (there are lap lanes, rare for an adult Vegas pool), sun, listen to pop hits and gamble at tables by the popular sunset bar. Servers wear one-piece suits and can't have visible tattoos, signaling that this pool is more dignified than others.
WET REPUBLIC at MGM Grand
Open: Daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. from March to October.
Topless: No.
Entrance fee: Generally during the week, men pay $20, non-local women, $10. Local women free. Rates may rise on weekends and for special events.
Cool pool amenities: In-water loungers; VIP bungalows with daybeds and dipping pools overlooking the action.
Best for: Young and noisy partiers. A deejay is always on duty. Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and reality TV's the Kardashian sisters have been on display here; rapper Diddy has performed; weekly bikini contests on Fridays are currently popular.
Information: wetrepublic.com
The skinny on dipping: A WET REPUBLIC on a Vegas boulevard declares war on nightlife. The music is high, there are two saltwater pools, special events abound and the space gets packed. Spring for a cabana if you can. It can hold about 1,600 people, and food isn't exorbitant (four sliders with bacon and cheese are $16; Thai chicken salad, $17).
Surrounded by a SWAT team on a rocky cliff, a porn actor suspected of killing a colleague last week moved to the edge of the outcropping and fell some 40 feet to his death, ending a dramatic, daylong standoff with police outside Los Angeles.
Video of the apparent suicide captured by news cameras Saturday shows Stephen Clancy Hill in Chatsworth, talking to police negotiators. With a crowd of media and officers watching, Hill tumbled down the hillside after scooting to the ledge from a seated position.
Police said Hill had repeatedly threatened suicide in the hours leading up to the fall, which came a day after murder and attempted murder charges had been filed against the 34-year-old porn actor.
"He was bent on taking his own life," Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said. "It's very unfortunate. We wanted this to end a different way."
Waiting paramedics rushed Hill to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead from injuries suffered in the fall.
Police say a "less than lethal munition" was used against Hill as they tried to apprehend him just before he apparently took his life.
It was unclear whether the projectile that officers fired had struck Hill or missed.
Albanese declined to discuss details of the weapon police used, citing an ongoing internal investigation that is launched after every serious use of force by officers.
SWAT officers had spent part of Saturday afternoon trying to talk Hill down from the hillside as he clutched a sword.
It was unknown whether the sword was the weapon in Tuesday's deadly attack at a DVD production center that also left two people injured.
Hill fled to the Chatsworth neighborhood hillside after leaving a house where he was barricaded for most of Saturday.
Charges in the attack had been filed against Hill Friday after Eric Jover, who runs the Ultima DVD production house, offered a $2,000 reward on the company's website for information leading to his arrest.
Authorities said Hill, whose professional name is Steve Driver, attacked a colleague with a sword that was used as a film prop. The rampage occurred during a social gathering at Ultima's studios about a week after being told he was being fired and that he would have to move out of the production facility, where he had been living, authorities said.
He then turned on two others who rushed to their co-worker's defense. One of those who attempted to help, Herbert Hin Wong, 30, was killed in the attack.
The Internet Adult Film Database lists 13 credits for Hill, including fetish films for Ultima and other companies.
By:Ryan Tate
I didn't plan to pick a fight with Steve Jobs last night. It just sort of happened: An iPad advertisement ticked me off; I sent the Apple CEO an angry email; he told me about "freedom from porn."
The electronic debate proceeded from there.
Of course, there was a bit more to it than that. There's the context: Jobs' legal fight with my employer Gawker Media, over the handling of an iPhone prototype; my long-simmering worries about Apple's growing power to limit self expression through its lockdown on iPad apps; and the fact that my wife, who might normally (and quite sensibly) veto the idea of spending Friday night sending email flames, was out of town.
So in retrospect I was primed to lash out. But there was some serendipity too: Watching a new episode of 30 Rock on my digital video recorder, I somehow failed to skip over an Apple ad I'd never seen before, one that billed the iPad as nothing less than "a revolution." You can see an excerpt of the ad at the bottom of this post.
With a Stinger cocktail at my side, I dashed off a short, pointed question to Jobs' well-known email address.
A few hours later—after midnight here in California—he got back to me. And I got back to him. And so on.
I didn't identify myself as a writer for Gawker in my initial email, sent from my ryantate.com email address. But, as you'll see in the exchange below, I eventually made my affiliation clear, and Jobs didn't seem bothered. Between that and the fact that Jobs regularly uses emails to disclose new information to the public, knowing full well recipients now regularly make the exchanges public, I feel fine reproducing the thread below.
It's a feisty discussion, as you'll see. And heated, especially on my part.
Rare is the CEO who will spar one-on-one with customers and bloggers like this. Jobs deserves big credit for breaking the mold of the typical American executive, and not just because his company makes such hugely superior products: Jobs not only built and then rebuilt his company around some very strong opinions about digital life, but he's willing to defend them in public. Vigorously. Bluntly. At two in the morning on a weekend.
As much as Jobs and his actions anger me, and as harsh as I was to him, I came away from the exchange impressed with his willingness to engage.
Some notes on the actual content follow after the emails. Click any message to enlarge:
A few notes on the emails:
And here is the end of the iPad commercial that set me off:
James Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, said, “Misuse of Craigslist for criminal purposes is utterly unacceptable.”
, one of the most popular Web sites in the United States, is on track to increase its revenue 22 percent this year, largely from its controversial sex advertisements. That financial success is reviving scrutiny from law-enforcement officials who say the ads are still being used for illegal ends.
The ads, many of which blatantly advertise prostitution, are expected to bring $36 million this year, according to a new projection of Craigslist’s income. That is three times the revenue in last year’s projection.
Law-enforcement officials have been fighting a mostly losing battle to get Craigslist to rein in the sex ads. At the same time, officials of organizations that oppose human trafficking say the site remains the biggest online hub for selling women against their will.
Last week, in the latest example, the arrested 14 members of the on charges of, among other things, selling the sexual services of girls ages 15 to 19 on Craigslist.
The company that provided the revenue projection, the Advanced Interactive Media Group, has been preparing such analyses since 2003. Followers of Craigslist consider AIM’s work to be the most comprehensive estimates of the fiercely private company’s finances. The estimate was calculated based on the number of sex ads counted on Craigslist over the month of February and the fees for posting such ads — $10 initially and $5 for repeat postings.
James Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive, said in an e-mail message that the site would not confirm the figures because it is private and does not discuss its finances. Of the sex ads, he wrote, “Of the thousands of U.S. venues that carry adult service ads, including venues operated by some of the largest and best known companies in the U.S., Craigslist has done the best and most responsible job of combating child exploitation and human trafficking.”
Mr. Buckmaster was referring to alternative newspapers, phone directories and sex Web sites that carry ads for prostitution, although authorities say that Craigslist is the largest place for such ads.
Craigslist, based in San Francisco, had seemed to put the conflict over its sex ads to rest. Attorneys general in 40 states, including New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut, investigated the company for facilitating criminal activity, after a wave of publicity about prostitution and violent crimes linked to the site.
Although Craigslist has continually argued that it is legally protected by the Communications Decency Act against liability for what its users post — an analysis that judges and legal experts generally agree with — it promised last May to begin manually monitoring these posts for illegal activity.
But it also decided to stop committing to donate the profits from sex ads to charity, saying it would make no further comment on how that money would be used.
In a private letter sent to Craigslist’s lawyer on Thursday, , attorney general of Connecticut, complained about the continued presence of prostitution ads on the site and asked what additional steps Craigslist was taking to keep such solicitations off the site.
He also asked the company to reveal precisely how much money those ads generate, and criticized the company’s announcement last May that it would no longer commit to donate those profits to charity.
“I believe Craigslist acted irresponsibly when it unilaterally decided to keep the profits from these posts,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
In the e-mail message, Mr. Buckmaster said, “Misuse of Craigslist for criminal purposes is utterly unacceptable, and Craigslist will continue to work with its partners in law enforcement and at nongovernmental organizations until it is eliminated.”
He declined to say whether the company was continuing to donate revenue from sex ads to charity, but he said the company was continuing to develop its charitable initiatives.
The company has two charitable organizations; one, the nine-year-old Craigslist Foundation, which received $648,000 in contributions in 2008, according to public documents, does not make any donations. It “connects people and organizations to the resources they need to strengthen communities,” according to its Web site.
There is also a newer organization, the Craigslist Charitable Fund, which was capitalized in 2008 with $2.7 million by Craigslist, according to public documents. But little else is known about it, and Mr. Buckmaster declined to comment further on the organization or say whether say whether that was the money from the sex ads.
Meanwhile, staff members for Illinois’s attorney general, , have counted more than 200,000 sex ads since late 2008 posted to Craigslist in Chicago alone — which they estimate have generated $1.7 million for the company. Officials in Illinois and Connecticut, as well as South Carolina, are leading the effort to get the site to improve its monitoring of sex ads.
Cara Smith, Ms. Madigan’s deputy chief of staff, said Craigslist’s manual review of the ads had had a minimal impact. “Certainly the manual monitoring has tempered the photos posted along with the ads, but I think there’s no question that the site continues to facilitate prostitution,” she said.
The AIM Group, which sells research on the advertising market to newspapers and Web sites, conducts its annual Craigslist study by tabulating all the posts to Craigslist in 39 major United States cities over a 30-day period, and then extrapolating to reach a final revenue figure.
This year, the study showed Craigslist on track to bring in $122 million in 2010, a 22 percent increase over its projected revenue last year. Though the site is largely free, it does charge people to post job listings in 19 major United States cities, and real estate listings in New York City, in addition to sex listings in all 438 markets in the United States. Revenue in those other categories remained largely unchanged since last year, according to AIM.
The increase in revenue from sex ads to $36.3 million for the year, according to AIM, was largely caused by Craigslist’s decision last May to double the rate for these ads in all of its American markets to $10.
The windfall from sex ads has touched a raw nerve with groups that oppose human trafficking, who are typically heated in their discussion of the company.
“Craigslist has not given any indication that they are outraged and disturbed that their site is the primary way children are bought in the country,” said Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which provides assistance to sexually exploited and trafficked women. “All they have done is made cosmetic changes.”
Craigslist’s reliance on the Communications Decency Act has also angered law-enforcement officials, who complain that the law could not have been drafted with this particular example in mind. But the company has repeatedly won rulings in cases brought against it, including one in 2008 over discriminatory housing ads. A federal appeals court said Craigslist was an online service provider, not a publisher, and so was protected by federal law.
Questions about where that revenue is going are sure to arise from this latest financial analysis of Craigslist. In an accompanying report, the AIM Group estimated Craigslist’s expenses at under $50 million, though it acknowledged that this particular calculation involved “educated guesses.” The analysis took into account estimates of salaries, server and bandwidth costs, and the lawyer fees associated with Craigslist’s continuing legal battle with a minority shareholder, .
Even if the numbers are slightly off, that leaves a lot of room for big profits. Mr. Buckmaster and Mr. Newmark own a majority of the company’s shares and by all accounts do not live flashy lifestyles.
A porn company's iPad announcement mirrors a history of adult companies being out in front on tech advances
It was just days after the release of the iPad -- Apple's slate computer heralded as a tool for gaming, book and magazine reading and Web consumption -- when the announcement arrived.
One of the world's biggest porn companies claimed it had created a way to stream its videos onto the device, skipping the Apple store and its restrictions on salacious content.
The announcement illustrates a widely acknowledged but seldom-spoken truth of the technology world: Whenever there's a new content platform, the adult-entertainment industry is one of the first to adopt it -- if they didn't help create it in the first place.
"It's not necessarily that the porn industry comes up with the ideas, but there's a huge difference in any technology between the idea and the successful application," said Jonathan Coopersmith, a professor at Texas A&M University who teaches the history of technology.
"They're kind of the shock troops, and one of the nice things for them is that they can claim, 'Hey, I'm advancing technology.' "
While the shadowy nature of the adult-entertainment industry makes exact figures hard to nail down, it's generally acknowledged that porn was the first product to make money on the Internet and still rakes in upward of $1 billion annually online.
[Although porn, like many industries, has felt the pinch of the last couple year's recession, leading Hustler's Larry Flynt and others to jokingly ask for a federal bailout].
From the printing press to instant cameras, from pay-per-view to VCRs, pornographers -- both professional and private -- have been among the quickest to jump on board with newly developed gadgets.
The first public screening of a movie was in 1895. Less than two years later, Coopersmith notes, the first "adult" film was released.
"The classic example is the VCR," said Oliver Marc Hartwich, an economist and senior fellow with Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative Australian think tank. "When it was introduced, Hollywood was nervous because the big studios feared piracy. They were even considering suing the VCR producers.
"Not so the adult industry. They saw it as a big new market and seized the opportunity."
On the internet, streaming video, credit-card verification sites, Web referral rings and video technology like Flash all can be traced back to innovations designed to share, and sell, adult content.
Experts attribute much of the success of AOL, the social networking forbearer of sites like Facebook and Twitter, to its private chat rooms -- and anyone who remembers scanning the user-created chats remembers the adults-only nature of many of them.
Websites that require memberships, encryption coding, speedier file-sharing technology -- all can trace their roots back to the adult industry.
These days, in addition to the race for the iPad screen, at least a couple of porn flicks are in production using burgeoning 3-D technology. While Hollywood has scored with a few blockbusters, 3-D tech for the television is still in its infancy -- and porn, as always, is right there to capitalize.
"Just imagine that you'll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed," Hong Kong-based producer Stephen Shiu Jr. said of his movie, "3D Zen and Sex," which is set to begin filming this month with a budget of nearly $4 million. "There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actresses are only a few centimeters from the audience."
For adult-entertainment companies, staying on the cutting edge of technology can be necessary to survive.
Ilan Bunimovitz is the CEO of Private Media Group, the company that announced the iPad porn offering, which uses cloud computing to store a customer's videos.
In effect, he's saying it's like an iTunes for porn -- an online service that lets users buy and access a personal collection of adult videos via their iPads. Of course, the slate computer's browser can already be used to surf the internet for adult content.
He said his company, with its 25-member technology department, began working on ways to take advantage of theiPad the day it was announced in January. By the time Apple released the device in early April, the system was ready, he said.
"Every step of the way, when there's a new technology, we explore it," said Bunimovitz. "In the adult business, many times the traditional venues are not available to us, so we have to be innovative to get our content to the consumer.
"With adult content, you need to create your own solutions."
Porn companies can capitalize on the latest technological advances because of their deep pockets and the relative certainty that their investments will be returned by customers willing to pony up for their product, experts say.
"People are willing to pay a premium for pornography," said Coopersmith, the Texas A&M professor. "You see this with movies, with VCRs -- which is when it first really became noticeable. DVDs, computer games, cable TV -- if you look at the price of those [adult] products, they're higher profit margins for the vendors."
That fact creates a conundrum for product developers. Often, any new product's pornographic potential remains a dirty little secret -- privately discussed by the manufacturer but left unspoken in public.
One of Coopersmith's favorite examples is the early days of instant cameras. Manufacturers were fully aware how many customers would use a camera that didn't require you to go to the local pharmacist to have your film developed, he said.
One of the earliest was Polaroid's provocatively named camera, "The Swinger" -- ostensibly so-called because of a strap that let it dangle from the user's wrist.
In a television ad, a young man uses it to photograph a bevy of gyrating, bikini-clad models before eventually picking one to walk off into the sunset -- with only the camera between them.
"One of the silent slogans of the porn-tech world is 'Don't ask. Don't tell. Do sell," Coopersmith said. "You don't want to be public, but you've got your own private corporate plans."
"As for the future, Bunimovitz says he doesn't expect his industry to back away from the cutting edge of technology. He's currently intrigued with the potential of artificial intelligence, which he said one day might simulate a live porn star who could "interact" with the user.
"There's always something new," he said. "At any point in time, we'll be working on new initiatives. Some of them will flop and some of them will be big -- but there's always something in the works."
Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission were surfing Internet pornography when they should have been policing the financial system. A deeply disturbing SEC memo to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) exposing this problem was reported Thursday night by ABC News. Here are some highlights via the Associated Press:
_A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
_An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as "Sex" or "Pornography." Yet, he still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC's internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense and received a 14-day suspension.
_Seventeen of the employees were "at a senior level," earning salaries of up to $222,418.
_The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
On one hand, two cases in 2007 means that either it wasn't that widespread of a problem or it hadn't yet been detected. On the other hand, the fact that this behavior seems to have been so prevalent among senior level employees is particularly troubling. They're the ones who should have been closely watching the financial industry and leading the way to help prevent the system from collapsing.
A few things should be concluded from this revelation. First, government computers must need better firewalls to block out this content. Second, this is a pretty grim verdict on the effectiveness of regulators. When on the verge of the most major economic crisis in around 80 years, they were watching porn instead of the financial system.
This certainly isn't the kind of publicity the SEC needs as it begins to prosecute its high-profile case against Goldman Sachs. This memo damages the credibility of the regulator. Though, it does begin to explain why it took the SEC more than three years to bring the complaint against Goldman: its employees had other things on their minds.
While most of the reaction to an RNC-funded outing at a Los Angeles bondage-themed nightclub in February has been critical, it has won the GOP at least one supporter -- a porn star.
Stormy Daniels, an adult movie actor and potential candidate for U.S. Senate in Louisinia, has apparently decided -- perhaps satirically -- to renounce the Democratic Party and become a Republican.
In a press release on Tuesday, Daniels proudly embraced the Republican Party.
"While this decision has not been an easy one, recent events regarding Republican National Committee fundraising at Voyeur, an LA based lesbian bondage themed nightclub finally tipped the scales," Daniels said.
Daniels, who first floated the idea of running against Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) after news broke that he had been linked to the high-profile prostitution ring run by the "D.C. Madam," said she sees the RNC-funded nightclub outing as a sign that the GOP's values now best match her own.
"As I have said for well over a year, it is time that our government and our tax policy begin rewarding entrepreneurship and creativity again. It is time again to inspire positive risks and out-of-the-box thinking in the interest of growing a strong economy and a strong America," Daniels said. "For me, this spirit can be summed up in the RNC's investment of donor funds at Voyeur.
"I know from experience that a mere $1900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return," Daniels added.
Breaking news: Sex is popular online.
"Sex had played a major role in driving many technologies," says Jonathan Coopersmith, a technology historian at Texas A&M.
The example most people are familiar with, he says, is the VCR. Many early video cassettes were pornographic, and consumers' desire to view the material in their own homes fueled the early dissemination of the technology.
Think back to the early days of the Internet, Coopersmith says. "You had to have the hookup, you had to have the computer, you had to have the willingness to experiment a fair amount. And the people who do this tend to be young men, especially in their 20s and 30s, and this also happens to be a prime audience for pornography."
According to Nielsen net ratings, more than a quarter of Internet users accessed an adult Web site in January 2010. The Web research company Hitwise says adult sites accounted for about 6 percent of all U.S. Internet hits that month — putting the adult category in eighth place, with social networking sites in first.
But Hitwise general manager Bill Tancer says that in the not-too-distant past, adult sites used to get the most hits of anything on the Internet. "If I go back to when I started tracking this data in 2004, that was the highest of any category," he says.
Chatting Up Sex
Of course, that's only taking into account pornographic Web sites — the Internet has also provided a private venue for sexual discussion and education. Violet Blue is a sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, writes for several online publications, and blogs and hosts a popular podcast called "Open Source Sex."
"The Internet has been sexualized even before it was the Internet," she says. Back in the days of bulletin board systems, some people would exchange what was known as "ASCII porn."
"This was essentially people using characters by hand on their keyboard to create what look like explicit images, and then send them to each other through bulletin board systems," she says.
Coopersmith says America Online's popularity was driven by its private chat features.
"One of the nicknames for AOL in the industry was 'the house that sex chat built,' " he says.
And Violet Blue points out that before YouTube began better enforcing its community standards, "there was a lot of porn on there."
Porn Paved The Way
Adult sites also paved the way for the mainstream to adopt several technologies.
They were among the first to integrate e-commerce systems to process credit card transactions. "The first part of the Web to make money was pornography," Coopersmith says.
Right now, the adult industry is hurting — due to the same piracy other online content providers face — but in the early days, "you have a lot of some of the tactics, concepts and business strategies pioneered by the cybersex world that then flowed into the regular online world," Coopersmith says. "For instance, creating these Web sites where you join for a fee and you have different levels of membership."
More obnoxious practices were also readily embraced by some in the adult world, as many people's junk e-mail folders can easily demonstrate.
Video technology is a place where adult sites have been especially innovative, integrating live video streams into browser windows with early "jpeg push" video. They continue to be on the cutting edge; Peter Acworth, who founded the very NSFW site kink.com, remembers a few years ago when customers were demanding live HD streams, but he couldn't find an acceptable off-the-shelf solution.
"So we put together our own technology to be able to do so," Acworth says. "You know, you go to CNN or anywhere else on the Web, the video you see is going to be significantly lower bandwidth."
A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers.
Parents would be able to use the system to help block access to porn sites, though because its use would be voluntary, the ".xxx" suffix wouldn't keep such content entirely away from minors. Religious and other anti-porn groups worry that ".xxx" would legitimize porn sites, and the proposal has already been rejected three times since 2000.
But the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the allocation of Internet addresses globally, may revive ICM Registry's bid yet again as ICANN meets this week in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
Last month, responding to complaints from ICM, an outside panel questioned ICANN's grounds for the latest rejection in 2007. As a result, board members have been weighing the matter ahead of formal consideration of the ".xxx" bid on Friday, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said in an interview.
Beckstrom said he was not able to give details of those discussions for legal reasons, and he could not say when ICANN may reach a decision.
Stuart Lawley, ICM's chief executive, said he has been the victim of a process that he considered far from open and nondiscriminatory.
ICM, which planned to charge $60 for a site to register a ".xxx" name, first proposed ".xxx" in 2000 as a way to help the online porn industry clean up its act. Those using the domain would have to abide by yet-to-be-written rules designed to bar such trickery as spamming and malicious scripts.
And parents could set up Internet software to automatically block any site ending in ".xxx," reducing the chances that minors and other Internet users would accidentally stumble on pornography online.
Given its voluntary nature, however, ".xxx" would unlikely have much effect on parents' ability to block porn sites. And because a domain name serves merely as an easy-to-remember moniker for a site's actual numeric Internet address, even if its use is required, a child could simply punch in the numeric address of any blocked ".xxx" name.
Anti-porn activists, meanwhile, worry that the creation of a virtual red-light district would serve as an endorsement of the adult-entertainment industry, as ".xxx" would be sitting alongside other suffixes such as ".com" for commercial sites and ".edu" for schools.
Skeptics note that porn sites would likely keep their existing ".com" storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new ".xxx" domain name, thereby expanding the number of porn sites on the Internet.
When ICANN last considered ".xxx," board members also expressed worries that the suffix would leave the agency in the business of regulating content, or the type of material that would find itself there.
The board also questioned whether ".xxx" had the support of the adult-entertainment industry, as many operators of porn sites were concerned that governments would later make the voluntary red-light district mandatory.
ICANN still wasn't swayed after ICM said that the content-regulation role would have been left solely with the company and that ICM would fend off efforts to mandate its use.
Lawley challenged ICANN's rejection before an independent review panel appointed by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution. That panel largely sided with him and concluded that ICANN's decision was "not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy."
The panel said that after ICANN gave the bid preliminary approval in 2005, it shouldn't have revisited some of the key issues already reviewed. Board members had used the new evaluations in deciding to reject the bid two years later, in 2007.
Although the panel's findings are nonbinding, ICANN's board was scheduled to discuss them Friday. It was not clear whether the board would vote on the matter or defer a decision for more discussion.
Lawley said the review panel was supposed to be ICANN's mechanism for accountability, and how the organization responds to the panel's findings "will provide great insight into the true accountability of this vital organization."
He said the process has so far cost his company about $8.5 million.
ICANN tabled and effectively rejected a similar proposal in 2000 out of fear the ".xxx" domain would force the body into content regulation.
ICM resubmitted its proposal in 2004, this time structuring it with a policy-setting organization to free ICANN of that task. But many board members worried that the language of a proposed contract was vague and could kick the task back to ICANN. The board rejected the 2004 proposal in 2006.
ICANN revived the proposal months later after ICM agreed to hire independent organizations to monitor porn sites' compliance with the new rules. But ICANN ultimately rejected that bid in what was to be its final consideration.
1. http://www.google.com/profiles/playboyp
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