THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411250232
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Internet Issues
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
A Virginia Beach company, started in an apartment nine years ago, has hit the big time in the red-light district of the on-line community.
The company is Pleasure Dome, an adult-oriented computer bulletin board system that earlier this month joined BBS Direct, a Bay City, Mich., outfit that puts together 30 of the country's best local bulletin boards.
Pleasure Dome is an electronic gathering place for homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals. Pretty much anyone who wants to talk, learn, advise or joke about sex. The computer service also has a couple of hundred pictures of naked people, or people engaging in sexual acts, that can be electronically retrieved from its database into a person's home computer.
Through its new national linkup, Pleasure Dome can now offer its adult messaging and nude photos throughout North America for $30 a month. Membership normally costs $40 a year, though it's free for women.
Pleasure Dome boasts customers in all 50 states and numerous foreign countries. David Taylor, one of Pleasure Dome's new owners, says that the company has 3,100 subscribers and that it recently logged its millionth caller.
Concentric Research Corp., the owner of BBS Direct, set up local-access phone numbers in the country's 100 largest cities so computer users don't have to dial long-distance to call their favorite bulletin board.
``There are lots of adult boards,'' says Concentric's Kristine Loosley, ``but they're one of the best, and also one of the largest, with lots of long-distance callers, which we were also looking for.''
The bulletin board's customer base grew through word-of-mouth. Now, Pleasure Dome's quiet operation will gain more exposure through BBS Direct. And in a community that successfully campaigned to have the Playboy Channel removed from cable television, publicity about adult-oriented offerings has a potential downside.
``Any adult board has the threat of Pat Robertson and his folks,'' Taylor says. ``Concerned? Yes, I'm concerned. But to gain access to any of these boards, you call me. I don't call you, so you wanted to be there.''
In Hampton Roads, more than three dozen computer bulletin board systems - known as BBSs in the on-line world - offer adult areas.
But it is Pleasure Dome that Boardwatch magazine, a periodical for BBS users, has listed as one of the country's top 15 bulletin boards during the past several years.
What makes Pleasure Dome special?
Probably the variety of adult forums it offers. Founder Tom McElvy assembled in Pleasure Dome a menu of many of the best-known adult BBSs in the country. There's ThrobNet, a Missouri-based BBS with forums titled TV Bad Girls, Rush Limbaugh, Bi-Sexual, Jokes, Sex Talk, Sex Survey, Sex Toys and Writings.
And SleazeNet, another local BBS, which offers message boards called Man to Man, Taboo, Nudism. There's also HotNet (Nudism, Lesbians, Fetishes, Adult Humor). And San Francisco's StudNet, which features forums called the HIV Date Line, Coming Out, Living with HIV.
``Because we were a one-stop shop, it caused a lot of people to come and check us out,'' McElvy said.
Pleasure Dome, like almost all of the thousands of computer bulletin boards in the country, started in someone's home. To set up a bulletin board system is inexpensive and not very difficult.
A person needs at least one phone line, a modem and a computer. That's how McElvy got started. Pleasure Dome cost him about $600 to set up.
By 1989, ``the word spread in the gay community'' about Pleasure Dome, and McElvy added two more phone lines. Two years later, Pleasure Dome was up to six phone lines. In August, McElvy sold Pleasure Dome to Joe Campbell, a Virginia Beach investor who runs Campco International Inc.
Taylor, who runs the system, says he has an arrangement to buy Pleasure Dome from Campbell in the future. Partly because of its recruitment by BBS Direct, Pleasure Dome has doubled its size during the past three months to 20 phone lines.
The system lately has been undergoing growing pains, and Taylor has spent several late nights in a small room, full of computers and phone lines, trouble-shooting.
But problems with the system crashing are nothing compared to the potential trouble a system operator like Taylor could land in with obscenity laws.
The thousands of computer bulletin board systems have had a free ride as far as regulators are concerned. Many of them offer explicit adult chat areas, pornographic images or both.
Others are more staid. Portsmouth resident Lana Dupree runs a BBS called Posters' Paradise, but she doesn't offer adult images because she doesn't want to get into policing the board for minors.
``They can get you into a lot of trouble,'' Dupree says. ``That's why I keep them off of mine.''
Machines that scan photos and pictures into computers have made it easy to transmit images - known as GIFs, or Graphical Interchange Format files - through the phone lines from one computer to another.
That computers are being used to view GIFs of nude people is nothing new to anyone familiar with the Internet. Thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of sexually explicit GIFs are posted on the Internet and are free to anyone who wants to download them.
The number of files available in Pleasure Dome is minuscule compared to those available on the Internet and on many other BBSs. Taylor, in fact, says the GIF files available on another BBS he runs make those on Pleasure Dome look like Norman Rockwell prints - well, not quite.
Most of the 200 to 300 picture files Pleasure Dome offers are amateur nude photos of the board's own customers. Some of the photos are of fully clothed people who want their picture available so people they are messaging can see what they look like. A few are pictures of fairly explicit sex.
Computer-to-computer communications are still a relatively new medium - at least for the general population. The courts have yet to clarify the legality of transmitting adult images through phone lines.
J. Jerry Freeman, director of the Norfolk office of the Federal Communications Commission, said local prosecutors will ultimately have the most influence in determining what is legal. But the BBS operator who offers adult images must restrict bulletin board access to adults.
Taylor makes new members of Pleasure Dome fill out a questionnaire electronically, then calls to voice-verify the member. He also requires the new member to fill out a form.
If the applicant sounds too young, Taylor makes him or her show up in person at his office with identification.
``There's been a couple that I've made bring it down here, and they have,'' Taylor says. ``They're 19 years old, and they sound like they're 16, but they understand the rule.''
When a user logs onto Pleasure Dome, several screens of warnings pop up. Warnings about underage users, and warnings about law enforcement officers who might be logging on to build a case against the board.
That's what happened to a Milpitas, Calif., couple running an adult BBS. A Tennessee postal inspector joined the BBS, run by Robert and Carleen Thomas, and downloaded some adult images.
An assistant U.S. attorney in Memphis held the Thomases up to Memphis community standards. They face a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison and $2.75 million in fines. The case is on appeal.
``How can you commit a crime when a BBS is running without your assistance and somebody chooses to download an adult image into a very conservative community?'' asks Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in Washington. (See essay, Page D1.)
Taylor said he is ``fairly certain'' that no minors are logging onto Pleasure Dome, but he admits it would be simple for a child to get in through a parent's account. He keeps a list of the states in which he has to restrict access up to the age of 18 or 21.
He says he has certain standards for the picture files he offers.
``I scan in files under the guidelines I've set,'' Taylor says. ``No kiddie porn, no bestiality, nothing that's too wild and outrageous.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Bill Tiernan, Staff
David Taylor...of Pleasure Dome...
KEYWORDS: INTERNET BULLETIN BOARD SERVICES by CNB