Seth Warshavsky
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Seth Warshavsky (born 1973) was a pioneer in the internet pornography industry and the founder of Internet Entertainment Group (IEG). During the dot-com boom years of the late 1990s, Warshavsky's openness to media attention made him the face of the online pornography industry to a public fascinated with what was believed to be the only segment of the dot-com industry to be operating at a profit.
Beginning in 1996 with the profits from a phone-sex operation he started in college, the fresh-faced Warshavsky converted a warehouse in Seattle into the studios of Internet Entertainment Group's flagship website, Clublove.com. The business model was similar to that of a peep show: for a monthly membership fee plus an hourly charge, you could watch post card sized, low resolution images of women strip and touch themselves in real time on your computer screen; for more money, you could talk to the women over the phone and direct them. If you liked the show, you could even tip them.
[edit] Early Internet pornography scandals
Warshavsky was involved in many of the early Internet's porn-related media controversies, including:
- the distribution of a homemade pornographic video starring Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee (without their consent),
- a 1998 lawsuit over a sex video of Pamela Anderson and Bret Michaels (never aired by IEG)
- a 1998 lawsuit by actor Kelsey Grammer over another sex video (also never aired)
- 1998's Our First Time hoax.
- publishing nude photographs of Dr. Laura Schlessinger in 1998
- Gary Kremen's legal battle to regain the domain "sex.com"
- Papalvisit.com, a website with information about the pope's 1999 visit as well as off-color stories and links to adult websites
- the creation of an adult Top-level domain name
[edit] IEG collapse
At IEG's peak, Warshavsky claimed to have 100,000 subscribers and $50 million annual revenue, although this may have been overstated to gain media and investor attention.
Anderson and Lee filed a $90 million copyright-infringement suit against IEG in 1998 to claim a share of the profits of the video of them. A U.S. district court judge dismissed the case, ruling that the duo gave up their rights when they agreed to let IEG webcast the footage. Following appeals, Anderson and Lee were awarded a $1.5 million judgment plus court costs and attorney fees in December 2002.
Warshavksy fled the country to Thailand in 2002, leaving in his wake a number of unpaid creditors and former IEG employees.
[edit] References
- Time Digital 50 entry on Warshavsky (1999) [1]
- Testimony before the United States Senate Committee On Commerce, Science And Transportation in February 1998, [2]
- Summary of papalvisit.com case [3]
- "Sex Sells," Wired Magazine, 1997 [4]
- "Sex sells, doesn't it?," Salon.com, December 1999 [5]
- "Porn prince of ... Bangkok?," Seattle Weekly, June 30, 2002 [6]
