Experts: Bush administration will be unfriendly to sex industry

Monday, Jan. 8, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.

A panel of legal experts concluded that while the incoming Bush administration may be more aggressive in its prosecution of the adult entertainment industry for distributing sexually oriented material, liberalized community standards will make it harder for the government to win convictions.

Three attorneys whose practices defend adult businesses against obscenity charges in different parts of the country said in a panel discussion Saturday that most Americans are no longer shocked by scenes in movies and on television that may have made them squeamish a decade ago.

"People in America are exposed to much more now and are more accepting of it," said Florida attorney Paul Cambria in the closing panel of Internext 2001, a trade show in Las Vegas showcasing technology for the adult entertainment industry that coincided with the opening of the much larger Consumer Electronics Show.

Cambria said President-elect George W. Bush's father and his predecessor, President Reagan, were extremely aggressive in prosecuting adult businesses. But when President Clinton took the helm for eight years, top law enforcement officials focused most of their attention on child pornography cases and not on obscenity issues.

"There was an explosion in adult material produced in that eight years," Cambria said. "I believe that will be different in the Bush years."

Cambria said "the entourage they bring with them, funded by the religious right -- I can see people mouthing the word 'Ashcroft' " -- will likely step up prosecution efforts.

Adult entertainment proprieters concur that John Ashcroft, Bush's attorney general designate, will be far less friendly than Attorney General Janet Reno, who many adult business people consider to be one of the best defenders of the First Amendment to have held the office.

Seattle attorney Lawrence Setchell concurred that while Bush's appointees won't create any long-term problems for the industry, his officers could create some legal headaches for business people.

Setchell predicts that government regulators will selectively step up enforcement of Federal Trade Commission complaints against adult businesses or that some companies will be harrassed with tax audits.

For that reason, the attorneys recommended that business people be extra vigilant in keeping documents required by the FTC current. That includes model release forms for entertainers that appear in adult content appearing on videos and on Internet sites.

The numbers of those types of sites have been growing incrementally as the Internet has become more popular.

A Las Vegas company that exhibited at the three-day Internext show, which ended Saturday at the Sands Expo Center, is one such company that broadcasts live pictures of models over the Internet.

Lars Mapstead, owner of Stream Ray, a company that operates three different Internet sites, said he has about 350 entertainers under contract, mostly women, and they communicate with customers through streaming video technology. For $3 a minute, a customer can ask a performer to strip in front of a camera that broadcasts the image to the customer's computer.

Mapstead said the entertainers, who make up to $15,000 a month, chat with customers for free before a credit-card transaction occurs for more explicit interaction.

Mapstead doesn't expect the change in administration to have much of an impact on his business because he conforms to existing laws and he doesn't expect lawyers hired during the Bush administration will be any more aggressive than those hired when Clinton was in office.

Stream Ray, which offers CamgirlsLive.com and CowboysLive.com -- a gay adult site -- was among 170 companies that exhibited at Internext. Most of them focus on Internet content, such as Entertainment Network Inc.'s VoyeurDorm.com. The Tampa, Fla.-based site, which receives nearly 1 million "hits" a day, features women who, in exchange for college tuition and stipends, live their lives in front of Web cameras 24 hours a day.

Some of the companies exhibiting at Internext don't provide adult content -- but they monitor it closely and profit from it.

Flying Crocodile, a Seattle-based company, operates SexTracker, which uses proprietary software to distinguish the tastes of the estimated 55 million daily adult website visitors and provide their addresses to companies whose sites cater to those tastes.

Andrew Edmond, owner and chief executive officer of Flying Crocodile, said the business works because the adult industry has no qualms about providing lists of potential customers to other adult businesses.

Another company profiting from the adult entertainment industry without involving itself in content is San Diego-based YNOT Network Inc.

Bill Johnson of YNOT said the site is a free-access resource for the adult entertainment community, offering references, legal help and data on a number of topics important to the industry.

Johnson said the company's Internet site is a popular gathering place for webmasters who design sites for adult entertainment content companies.

YNOT's money stream is from banner advertising.