Consumer Research: Making Money Internet

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a longtime advocate of Internet freedom, said she’s undaunted by the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to adopt net neutrality rules. Instead, she thinks the FCC’s action will be a catalyst for renewed commitment on the issue in the 112th Congress.

“What we will do is first use this as a way to show how we’re going to keep that Pledge to America,” she said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation. “We said in the Pledge that any rule or regulation that had more than $100 million impact on our nation’s economy would be subject to review. … This is an area where we can keep that Pledge. We can go ahead and start congressional review and move forward on getting this off the books.”

Blackburn was speaking at The Bloggers Briefing as the FCC debated the net neutrality rules. When the 112th Congress convenes on Jan. 5, Blackburn said she will reintroduce her bill to block the FCC from implementing the regulations and force the issue back to Congress.

“We’ve had bipartisan agreement on this, that the FCC should not take this action, that we, as members of Congress, should be the ones that are there to take that action or any action that should be done,” she said.

Of course, in this case, that “action” might be no action at all. After all, discontent with Internet service providers has not exactly been widespread. On the contrary, Blackburn said: Most people have been pleased with the access they’ve received from providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

“Our action is to make sure that the Internet remains unencumbered and does not have the FCC with a chokehold on it,” she said. “We are moving from an industrial, manufacturing, technology-based economy to a creative economy … and the creative economy depends on an unencumbered Internet.”

FCC intrusion would mean just the opposite — an Internet of interference and obstacles.

“What the FCC would do today is to implement the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet and force people to come to them,” Blackburn said. “They would have the determination of what could be innovated. They would have the determination of what should be the priority and value assigned to all the content that is traveling. So, we’re watching it very closely. We’re going to continue to do so as they go through the rule-making process and, then, come Jan. 5, you’re going to see us vigorously opposing this.”

That vigorous opposition will include a lack of funding if necessary, Blackburn said.

“That goes without saying,” she said. “We’re going to have numerous amendments to defund plenty of things in the House to keep money from going where they would like for money to be going, whether it is health care, whether it is the FCC, whether it is the EPA implementing cap-and-trade under the Clean Air Act. You’re going to see a series of amendments that would defund those activities that we view as being harmful to free enterprise and the American people.”

The last time she hooked up, she said, it was because “his personality put me at ease. He was straight to the point. He asked me the same questions I was asking him.” Plus, she liked that his real name matched his email address. From there, she was able to find his Facebook page, with numerous photographs. When Ashley (not her real name) finally had her rendezvous, she took down his license plate number and texted it to herself on a second cellphone, which she’d left on her kitchen table along with a note for friends and family, just in case she didn’t return. And then she collected her $500 an hour.

Welcome to prostitution in the Internet era.

Fifteen years ago, it was hard to find hookers on the Web. Now they are all over the place. The Internet has given rise to a new generation of sex workers who have more autonomy than ever before, and by and large enjoy a level of safety not shared by their street-walking sisters. Nonetheless, Internet prostitution is a risky business, and those hazards were underscored this month when the bodies of four women were found decomposing on the side of the road near Jones Beach on Long Island. Attention quickly turned to two missing call girls who’d been using Craigslist as their primary means of making connections. It turned out that neither woman was among the victims, but the grisly discovery put an unwanted spotlight back on Craigslist, which in September took down its U.S. erotic-services directory under pressure from law enforcement and human-rights groups. Last week, it pulled its worldwide adult-services ads. (Though Craigslist has managed to get most sex solicitation off its site, it hasn’t completely succeeded, as Ashley can tell you.)

David Henry Sterry has numerous stories about how the lives of prostitutes have changed in the past decade. Last year, he edited Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitutes Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money, an anthology that received a stamp of approval from The New York Times. He’s also a former sex worker himself, a rare example of a man who earned his living pleasing older women. (The only common thread connecting his clients, he said, was that they all had money and “most felt powerless because they were housewives, bored, and rich.”)

One of the women who appeared in his book called herself Kat, worked on Craigslist, and had an elaborate screening process in which she would force potential johns to drive up to the location of the assignations, get out of their cars, and stand there while she examined them from a nearby window with a pair of binoculars. Kat refused to talk to anyone with a blocked number. She also chose not to text. If you sent her a photo of your genitalia, a common mistake among potential johns, you were out of contention. “She had developed what she called a ‘hooker’s radar,’” Sterry said. “The tone of the guy’s voice, his walk, she had learned how to instantly size someone up. And if the guy looked sketchy or too much like a toad, she would stop returning his phone calls.”

“People who think they’re going to eliminate prostitution or violence in prostitution by shutting down Craigslist are wildly deluded,” said David Henry Sterry.

Another Internet-era phenomenon that’s friendly to business and helps boost security for prostitutes and johns alike is “the mixer.” This is a cocktail party-like event at which “hobbyists”—the current euphemism of choice for high-spending porn aficionados obsessed with bonking their favorite screen stars—get to meet potential dates. No sex typically takes place on site, explained Daily Beast contributor Richard Abowitz, a chronicler of life in Las Vegas, where the parties frequently occur. “It’s more like a job fair,” he said.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Making Money Internet

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