Seattle Porn King Has Way To Filter It -- Create `.Adult' To Keep Kids Out

WASHINGTON - Seattle's king of Internet pornography came to Congress and brought with him a surprising message: Lawmakers are not doing enough to regulate sex in cyberspace.

Seth Warshavsky, the 24-year-old online porn maven who last week offered Monica Lewinsky $3 million to pose nude and talk about it live on the Internet, told a Senate committee yesterday that its efforts to control smut are too soft and will never work.

He also did the senators one better. As the president of a downtown Seattle company that last year sold $20 million worth of sex shows and live nude dancing across the Internet, Warshavsky said he felt uniquely qualified to propose cyberporn legislation of his own.

He outlined to dubious senators a plan to create an "adults-only" region of the Internet that would be labeled ".adult," similar to the current domains labeled ".gov" for government and ".com" for businesses.

People posting pornographic material on the World Wide Web would be required to use the special suffix, and all computers would have a V-chip installed that could block any ".adult" sites, he said.

"What we're proposing is much more far-reaching than what you're proposing," Warshavsky said, after one of the senators attacked him for contributing to the problem with the company's "ClubLove" Web site.

"The point should be to keep this stuff away from minors, and nothing they've proposed will do that," Warshavsky said after the hearing.

Murray's proposal criticized

Six measures have been introduced in Congress this year that seek in varying degrees to replace the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 computer pornography law that was declared unconstitutional last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Warshavsky said a proposal introduced yesterday by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is particularly toothless because it relies on the mandatory use of smut-blocking software that, he says, is not foolproof and creates as many problems as it solves.

Those programs, with names such as Net Nanny, Cyber Patrol and Surfwatch, detect certain words or phrases as a way to screen out material parents might find objectionable. Murray's legislation would require that schools and libraries receiving free Internet hookups from the government must first install some version of the blocking software.

Murray said the measure is not designed to solve the problem, just give teachers a tool to help keep smut away from classrooms full of computer-savvy children.

"This bill is relatively easy to understand and I believe difficult to argue with," she testified.

Before the day was out, however, the measure had been panned by Warshavsky for being too weak, by librarians and free-speech advocates for being too strong, and even by one maker of the filtering software for being too meddlesome.

"From a business standpoint, this would be a great law for us," said Gordon Ross, CEO and president of Net Nanny Ltd., now located in Bellevue. "Every school and library in the country would be required to buy our product. But I don't support any legislation that mandates the use of certain technology."

10 million hits a day

Warshavsky said the programs are blunt instruments that inadvertently block some sites, such as those dealing with breast cancer because of the word "breast."

"But type in `fiesta' and any kid can get sites that will send them into a sex party," he said.

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., accused Warshavsky of posting obscene images where children could see them, but Warshavsky disputed that. He said his company, Internet Entertainment Group, screens visitors' ages by forcing them to provide a credit-card number, and that "teasers" on the title Web page open to everyone may contain raw language but no nudity.

"You can't see any genitalia," he said. "We don't show any full frontal nudity without credit-card access."

Many Web sites do show nudity and pornography without charge or without requesting a credit-card number.

Warshavsky said the Internet is an "amazing medium." He said his Web pages get 10 million hits a day, and the company is projecting $40 million in revenues this year from customers who pay $2.95 to $39.95 to see everything from nude pictures to live nude dancing and to engage naked women in sex chats called "Flirtual Reality."

Last week, he and his business partner, Penthouse's Bob Guccione, offered Lewinsky $3 million to appear on the Internet service, but have not heard a response. President Clinton is alleged to have had an affair with the former White House intern.

The company also now is diversifying with Web pages that feature legal advice, golf tips, online psychics and an online magazine Warshavsky described as "Penthouse meets Hustler meets Details."

Adult content, kids' medium

Ross of Net Nanny shook his head in amazement that a fledgling Internet porn business could rake in $20 million or $40 million in its second full year. His company, formed in 1995 like Warshavsky's, had revenues last year of $1 million.

"Adult content drove the cable television and home-video market as well," he said. "The problem with adult content is nothing new. The only new problem here is that kids know more about the Internet than their parents."

Murray's legislation, co-sponsored by McCain and Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., who also sponsored the now-defunct Communications Decency Act, likely will pass out of committee and be voted on in the full Senate later this spring.

Danny Westneat's phone-message number is 206-464-2772. His e-mail address is: dwes-new@seatimes.com