Most of you know, last week Donny and myself were at Sex week at Yale. The debate will be on next Friday instead of last night. We got bumped for some pressing news I think revolving about Mr. McCain’s escapades. Anyways, While at Yale we met some people from Vivid. We did not get to catch Steve Hirsh’s talk but here are the highlights. – Craig

The founder of porn empire Vivid Entertainment has asked Google and Yahoo to ‘erect strong barriers to keep children away from accessing adult material’ – but is it being done under the guise of trying to clamp down on porn piracy?

Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman and co-founder of one of the Internet’s biggest porn companies, has issued a statement putting out a plea to Google and Yahoo make it much tougher for kids to access online pornography.

Although the statement is now public knowledge, he also made the plea in a lecture to graduate business students of the Ivy League University on their ‘Vivid Day’ (Sat Feb 16) during the third biennial Sex Week at Yale (SWAY), dedicated to discussions about “love, sex, intimacy, and relationships.”

Hirsch said: “Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material”.

Continuing, Hirsch noted that: “None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction. Vivid will work with any company that is ready to make it much more difficult for children to be exposed, even inadvertently, to material intended only for adults. This is not about First Amendment rights, it is about protecting children.”

Hirsch wants ISPs and search engines to “vigorously promote their filtering and age verification programs to their subscribers so that it will be much more difficult for minors to purchase adult content on the Internet”, and said: “The ISPs, as well as payment systems and adult producers, all need to be more responsible with regard to allowing X-rated material to be obtained by non-adults”.

Hirsch notes that running Vivid is like any other studio – they’re in it not only to make porn, but to make money – and he wants to more ‘creatively’ use the Internet. Please read onto page 2 for details.
irsch also said that: “In the end, running the world’s biggest adult film studio isn’t that much different than running any other studio except that our product is pretty much exclusively about sex. The truth is, Vivid Entertainment is a business like any other. And my job is concerned as much with cost of goods, margins and EBITDA as it is with trying to come up with the idea for the next Debbie Does Dallas…Again”.

Hirsch advised that he often tried to talk women out of becoming porn starts, saying that: “I do interview all of the Vivid Girls personally before we sign them to exclusive contracts. But, guess what? I spend more time trying to talk a new girl OUT of becoming a porn star as I do discussing the deal points of her contract once she’s convinced me that she really does want to go down that path.”

In a hint that Vivid also wants Google and Yahoo to help clamp down on porn piracy while making asking the search engines to make it harder for children to access content that is decidedly inappropriate for their age grou, Hirsch outlines Vivid’s future plans to more aggressively make clever use of the Internet.

His statement notes that: “The adult industry faces enormous challenges in the years ahead but Vivid’s plan is to continue to thrive and he described the company’s plans for the future”, with Hirsc adding that Vivid wish to pursue “strong cross-over marketing such as billboards in Times Square and other high-traffic areas, aggressive promotional programs, licensing deals that promote our name while also making us money, protecting our intellectual property and staying ahead of the pack by seizing new technologies,”.

A press release from the organizers of SWAY described the event by saying, “On Yale’s storied campus, populated by some of the brightest young men and women on the planet, many students still haven’t figured out how to ask someone on a date. Others might even believe that coitus interruptus is a form of safe sex. This February, however, Sex Week at Yale comes to the rescue!”

While the plea does sound like it is part of a noble cause to ‘protect the children’, it also sounds rather suspiciously like a ploy to get more traffic to Vivid’s online properties, something Vivid has most likely quite vividly experienced since the issuing of the statement last week.