- Danni Ashe is a somewhat incongruous figure at internet
conferences. It's not the coiffured blonde hair and cleavage- hugging suits
that raise eyebrows, as women are hardly rare in this business. What does
cause surprise is the subject of her speeches: how I made a fortune selling
nude photos of myself.
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- Ashe is something of a pioneer: a porn star who has crossed
the wire. Although known in internet circles for some time as that rare
breed - a profitable e-entrepreneur - other dot.com executives were initially
reluctant to welcome the porn model into the fold. But as other companies
struggle to emulate her success, Ashe has found herself in demand as a
technological consultant and keynote conference speaker.
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- She is not alone in using net porn as a springboard to
business success. Dario Betti, an analyst at e-commerce consultancy, Ovum
, says several adult websites in the US now offer consulting services.
Despite a few failures in the dot.com shakeout of the past year, it's an
unpalatable fact that porn is still the internet's big success story.
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- The Online Computer Library Centre's annual review found
74,000 adult websites last year, accounting for 2% of sites on the net,
and together they bring in profits of more than $1bn. Though many are small
scale, with half making $20,000 a year, even that figure is the envy of
many mainstream brands.
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- Betti says: "Adult sites made money with streaming
media after learning people did not want to sit and watch long two-hour
films on their computer but that short films worked well. They use lots
of teasers to make people want to see more and were the first to recognise
the need for tight security and to offer personalisation tools."
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- When Ashe is not posing naked on her site, Danni's Hard
Drive, she has a growing list of business engagements. Last year these
included speeches at the Streaming Media Asia seminar in Hong Kong and
the Internet World Conference in Sydney, and Ashe has twice testified before
US congressional committees on child protection and internet-related issues.
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- Among other sites queueing up for her advice are medical,
film and wine companies, as well as other porn sites. This work, hived
off through subsidiary company DHD Media, is expected to account for 50%
of Ashe's revenue within three years. Still smarting from Napster, the
music industry is also keen to replicate Ashe's subscription model.
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- Ashe has also developed her own streaming technology,
DanniVision, which eliminates the need for RealPlayer or any other plug-in.
Ashe said she started the business after teaching herself HTML and, after
six years, she expects to make $7m or $8m profit this year.
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- "There has been a shift in attitudes in the business
community and we are being recognised as a serious player," she says.
"Companies are still wary of overt links with porn sites and I couldn't
name any of the ones I have been a consultant for, but there are more and
more of them."
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- Of course porn is not quite the golden egg it once appeared
to be and sites have been subject to the downturn as much as other online
businesses, with some going to the wall. The problems have been exacerbated
by a glut of smut from enthusiastic amateurs keen to post porn for free,
to the chagrin of charging companies such as Playboy.com. Wired magazine
reports that Playboy has lost $50m in two years on its online operations,
and it has been aggressively asserting its market dominance.
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- Having bought up a number of smaller sites, it is now
looking for new material and formats. The company now plans to offer a
mobile phone picture service, Mobile Playmate of the Month, and hopes for
more than a million subscribers in the first year. That probably depends
on how many users upgrade to the new generation of 3G phones and video-enabled
terminals. Ovum believes mobile streaming could reach the mass market by
2005.
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- Consolidation across the internet means smaller players
are being squeezed and Wired magazine recently reported that anyone looking
to make a fast buck breaking into the online porn market is likely to be
disappointed. But, they add, that is not to say there is no money in it.
Porn is still the biggest earner on the net and several well-established
companies such as Cybererotica and Sex.com generate several million dollars
a month.
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- Arguments about whether porn should be banned from the
internet have been overshadowed by the figures which indicate a strong
demand. Now the question is how to contain it. An announcement by a relatively
obscure telephone watchdog that went largely unnoticed in the weeks before
Christmas, points to a growing acceptance that porn is too easily available
to push back into a ghetto. The Independent Committee for the Supervision
of Standards of Telephone Information Services (Icstis) announced it may
scrap its Top-Shelf Rule - restricting adverts for premium-rate sex lines
to adult magazines and newspapers - because internet porn is so widespread
it makes the rule obsolete. The rule was introduced in 1994 after a spate
of reports that children had run up huge bills calling the lines.
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- "Several companies asked us to look again at this
rule because times have changed," said Suhail Bhat, a policy adviser
at Icstis. "The internet has made pornography more easily available
and we can't regulate the whole net." The watchdog received more than
800 high bill complaints from consumers last year, with 50% of those resulting
from unauthorised use of adult internet services. If porn becomes available
on mobile phones - where 20% of new handsets are bought by children - the
problem could escalate dramatically. Icstis has appealed for suggestions
as to what can be put in its place to stop children having access to adult
services.
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- It is a major problem. A study by social psychologists
at the London School of Economics last year showed that nine out of 10
children, aged 11 to 16, had viewed pornography on the internet. Many had
stumbled across it after putting in search requests for pop groups such
as Boyzone. And a US government report said porn sites commonly use the
brand names Barbie and Disney in hidden code to ensure they crop up in
general searches. Last November, the EU's economic and social committee
called for legislation and vigorous action by governments, ISPs and Interpol
to define harmful material, require adult signatures for downloads to premium
lines and provide mechanisms for monitoring and dealing with suspicious
behaviour by children.
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- The German federal government has proposed a handful
of draconian measures including limiting the distribution of pornography
to a time slot between 11pm and 6am, making ISPs liable for internet content,
and forcing larger content providers to employ control officers to ensure
compliance with the law. But technology research company Forrester believes
the global web will defy enforcement and say regulators should focus on
educating parents and children and developing self- regulation bodies,
such as the UK's Internet Watch Foundation. While there is a clear consensus
that children should be barred and protected from porn, a British Social
Attitudes survey last year found that most adults were happy for over 18s
to access soft porn.
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- Comedian Jo Caulfield spends a lot of time looking at
porn on the internet as a writer for Graham Norton's successful Channel
4 TV show, which features a range of bizarre websites. She believes the
availability of porn has not made sex seem any less naughty or funny.
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- "It does fulfil a need even if it's just for people
to laugh at," she says. "There is no end to what people are into.
One man we featured got sexually excited by muddy shoes so he had lots
of pictures of women standing in puddles. It's a British tradition that
sex is funny, naughty and harmless."
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- There is a clear distinction between soft porn and hardcore
material which many people find offensive. But despite stories of individuals
setting up their own websites and chatrooms to make money for themselves,
the soft porn industry still has victims and exploitation. This, and the
fear of children stumbling across it, means there is a degree of hypocrisy
about mainstream business dealings with porn groups. Ashe readily admits
that companies are still wary of having overt link-ups with porn sites
and the experience of Yahoo! last year can hardly have helped.
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- A public outcry greeted its announcement last April that
it was to sell hardcore pornographic videos on its US site, and within
days the company had dropped the plan. Though, of course, porn can still
be accessed via its portal. Concerns about porn's pernicious influence
means Ashe and her innovations may be helpful to other net businesses,
but they present watchdogs with new worries too.
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- http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,659507,00.html
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