SEATTLE, February 14: Pornography has earned him millions before his 25th birthday. Internet entrepreneur Seth Warshavsky, who started his career in the phone-sex business, is one of the few financial success stories of cyberspace.Earlier this month, he even offered Monica Lewinsky, whose alleged affair with US President Bill Clinton has made her an instant sensation, $ 3 million for appearing in the nude on the internet.His Seattle-based Internet Entertainment Group (IEG) runs more than 30 suggestively named pay sites like his popular Club Love.Two hundred thousand customer accounts brought in $ 20 million in revenue last year for the 24-year-old Warshavsky, who wants to ensure that he can stay in this lucrative business. Recently, the man who looks younger than a college student appeared before a US Senate Committee and begged for stricter rules to control internet-smut.Despite his offer, Warshavsky told the Senate panel nude performances should, of course, be viewed only by adults. The SenateCommittee is considering two Bills meant to restrict children's access to online pornography.Warshavsky outlined an imaginative plan to create an `Adults Only' internet area. It would be appropriately labelled .Adult, to distinguish it from commercial sites that now can be reached under the domain name .Com or academic sites reachable under .Edu.If all internet-pornographers were to use the .Adult suffix and if all computers used a special V-chip allowing their owners to block access to those sites minors could be kept away from sex sites, Warshavsky argued. Whether the sex purveyor's suggestions ever will be implemented, they certainly are more far-reaching and less cumbersome than ideas floated by politicians.Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Warshavsky's home state of Washington, proposed the mandatory use of smut-blocking software. Yet such programmes, known as `net nanny' or `cyber patrol', work only by detecting objectionable words or phrases.These security measures can easily becircumvented by savvy web-surfers. And if the crude filtering software focuses on a word like breast, it also blocks access to non-offensive sites with breast cancer information.Warshavsky's appearance on the national stage has one goal, to make his business more lucrative. The IEG registers ten million hits a day by customers who pay to see nude pictures or chat online with dirty language.The company's biggest single source of revenue is located in a warehouse in downtown Seattle, where nude dancers move in front of video cameras. These images are broadcast on the internet to thousands of computer users who can log into IEG sites.To stem the growing tide of what Warshavsky has denounced as plain theft of service, providers of adult content have threatened lawsuits and demanded stricter laws protecting their property. In this fight it helps if the porn king himself goes to Washington and sides with US lawmakers by demonstrating his commitment to make the internet a cleaner place - at least for minors.
