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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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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