Seth Warshavsky

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 welcome to media attention made him the face of the online pornography industry to a public fascinated with what was then virtually 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 IEG's flagship website, Clublove.com. The business model was similar to that of a live 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. 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.

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)
• the Our First Time hoax.
• nude photographs of Dr. Laura Schlessinger in 1998
• Papalvisit.com, a website with information about the 1999 visit to the U.S. by Pope John Paul II that also featured salacious stories and links to pornographic websites
• the "sex.com" Domain

IEG collapse

At IEG's peak, Warshavsky claimed to have 100,000 subscribers and $50 million annual revenue, although subsequent events cast doubt on the veracity of this earnings claim.

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 in January 2001 to Bangkok, Thailand, leaving in his wake a number of unpaid creditors and former IEG employees.

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]
• "Dr. Laura, how could you?,"Salon.com, November 1998 [6]
• "Porn prince of ... Bangkok?," Seattle Weekly, June 30, 2002 [7]