Obscene Profits
The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age
By Frederick S. Lane III
Routledge
305 pg. US$17.95

Making money the old fashioned way

By Steven Martinovich
web posted November 12, 2001

That any available canvas has been used for the more libidinous
aspects of human life shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Early
man created highly sexualized figurines while homes in ancient
Rome featured lurid murals and phallic symbols. More recently
the daguerreotype ushered in the era of capturing our memories
in a more permanent form ... and the images of women willing to
disrobe for the primitive cameras. With humanity's long history of
using new mediums for the the gratification of its baser instincts,
no one should have been shocked to learn that one of the early
uses of the internet and the World Wide Web was the
transmission of pornography.

Frederick S. Lane III's Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of
Pornography in the Cyber Age, released in paperback in August,
focusses its attention on the men and women who have decided
to cash in society's ever-growing fascination with sex and the
medium that brings it to their homes anytime they want it. Where
only a few decades ago they would have faced criminal charges,
today's pornographers are covered dispassionately by
mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal and have
proved – Lane contends – that the World Wide Web is also a
commercially viable marketplace, as embodied by people like Seth
Warshavsky and Danni Ashe.

That Internet commerce and pornography should capture the
interest of the mainstream shouldn't be altogether surprising to
anyone. Sex and money have revolved around each other since
the dawn of trade and even the power of religion couldn't
suppress the exchange of one for the other. As societal mores
began to break down in the 1950s, thanks in part to Hugh
Hefner and Playboy, mainstream America began to open up to
pornography. That trend has continued to this day with the
Internet, and like every business, a need is filled by enterprising
people. Unfortunately, those looking for real insight into these
new entrepreneurs will be sadly disappointed by Lane's effort.

Billed as an inside look in the industry, Lane unfortunately spends
most of his time with a thorough retelling of the history of
pornography.  Just under two-thirds of the book details the
history and fight against of sexual material, leaving only a slender
final third to deal with the world since the introduction of the
Web. Admittedly, the history was engaging at times with
interesting tidbits: While the Gutenberg press is famous for its
first product, the Bible, it also prompted the Catholic Church to
create a list of printed salacious material that was banned for its
sinfulness. The history of sexually explicit literature in America
stretches back further than most people realize: the early 1800s.

That slender remaining third fails to deliver on Lane's implicit
promise of in-depth analysis of pornography today. Spending
most of his time profiling Ashe – owner of the popular Danni's
Hard Drive web site – and Warshavsky – the man responsible
for releasing to a wide audience the infamous videotape of
Pamela and Tommy Lee's honeymoon adventures – and their of-
told stories,  Lane fails to provide any real insight into the
industry as a whole. While he admittedly does a fair job
recounting the early years of online pornography, the rise from
stand alone bulletin boards to today's gargantuan web sites, Lane
drops the ball when it comes to the personalities behind the web
sites. The pasts of Ashe and Warshavsky are well known to
anyone who's opened a popular magazine or newspaper in the
past five years so his brief sketches add little in the way of insider
knowledge.

Lane also seems a little too willing to believe that the online
industry is as profitable as is claimed. Given that most of the self-
proclaimed successes own companies that aren't publicly traded,
it's impossible to know whether claims of millions of dollars a
month in profit are true. Similarly, it's a matter of faith that only
pornography is consistently making money on the Web but more
skeptical readers will wonder if the claims that the pot of gold
really was discovered at the end of the rainbow are true after all.
What's Lane's evidence that it was found? The same figures that
the mainstream press has bandied about for years. As Christians
might tell you, Lane's claims are the equivalent of a home being
built on sand instead of a rock.

Of course, few efforts are complete failures. While Obscene
Profits doesn't impart on the reader the secrets, assuming that's
their interest, of making money off pornography on the web – the
best Lane does is to repeatedly regurgitate the old capitalist rule
that an excess of product usually leads to a decrease in price – it
does provide enough information for the reader to be able to at
least understand the subject of online pornography better.
Obscene Profits also gives us a clue as to why there are
anywhere from 30 000 to 100 000 sexually oriented web sites
on the internet. It's the age old story repeated once again.
Technology is being used to gratify sexual desires and someone
is there willing to make money feeding those desires. In other
words, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer and the editor of Enter
Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com