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Stalking

"If I wanted to stalk a pornstar," writes the Director on RAME, "it's ridiculously simple.

"(a) If she is on the road, go there. Wait for her in the parking lot of the club; watch her get into a car. Follow that car to the hotel or her apartment. Do whatever it is stalkers do.

"(b) There are only a few studios in LA where most of the porn is shot. Stake them out. If you're a stalker it doesn't matter how much time it takes, because you're obsessed and won't rest until you are no longer obsessed.

Eventually your star will how up. When she's done with work, follow her wherever she goes. Do whatever it is stalkers do.

"(c) Most stars will be at a convention or awards show. Join F.O.X.E. and go to their awards show -- and when everyone is done, follow whatever lovely home.

"(d) Buy tickets to the AVN Awards. During the big party, target the favorite pornstar, and follow her around. Eventually she'll go back to the room. And then she's like a bird in a cage.

"So in neither of these examples did I need to know anyone's real name; and each of them are very much within the realm of the realistic.

"Now God forbid anyone actually does this; and I am sure I'll end up catching some heat and contributing to the "Internet is Evil" conception; but this is meant to show mostly that the "stalker" argument is a bunch of shit. All

the real name does is saves someone time so they can go right to a street address; but for most stalkers, I was under the impression that the STALKING was the part that made them happy."

Several months later, when the Director's real name appeared in Playboy, he changed his tune. His in-laws found out about his widely published interest in porn and went nuts. He quickly pulled out of the rec.arts.movies.erotica newsgroup, and implored people not to use his real name in their posts.

Busmiller writes on RAME that porn resembles pro wrestling. "The performers usually have total disdain for their audience and are tolerant at best, with exceptions.

"They don't want you to know who they really are, whether they're married, how old they really are, ad nauseam.

"They have this right but they're grossly naive if they think this right will be granted by fans with no questions asked. In fact, it only makes their fan-base more curious. IMHO, this goes for the casual renters, the potential Mark David Chapmans and most in between."

Lthurston writes: "The whole idea is to make it as

difficult as possible for those who have a stalker mindset. Geez, don't give 'em a road map. After all Jeff, you don't want Max Volume showing up on these young women's doorsteps and telling them they have to get on the Stairmaster?"

Faceman911: "The point is that the entire "stalker" argument is a (somewhat) clever ruse porno people employ to dodge the issue of real names. It's clever because it forces the opponent to take an unfavorable position. No one is going to defend stalkers, so the conversation usually goes like this:

"Why don't you want people to know your real name?"

"Well, um, y'know there're all those stalkers out there, and, uh..."

"Say no more, I understand. Nobody likes stalkers, so I guess that explains it.

"And if God forbid someone tries to dig deeper, they get the ole, "I can't believe you want these poor girls to get stalked" argument. Makes you want to throw up your hands. BUT...

"Does anyone believe that a guy (and I'm assuming everyone's talking about guys here) who is so demented he'd be willing to risk criminal prosecution just so he can get off by following a porn star around would be deterred because he doesn't know the girl's full name? These girls are in the public eye constantly. Anyone who wanted to stalk them, would. No one sits at home saying to himself, "Well, y'know, I would've never done this otherwise, but right there on rame it says that Farrah Fuckme's real name is Jane Doe! I better go get my stalking shoes on..." C'mon.

"The reason porn people don't want there real names known is because for the most part they want to keep their "porn" lives seperate from their "real" lives. How many porn stars tell their parents that they get fucked for a living? That wouldn't go over too well in my house. I think that deep down, many of the girls are ashamed of what they do, or at least aren't proud of it, and they want to be spared the embarrassment of ten years down the road having their neighbors, or co-workers, find out who

they are and what they've done.

"I can even understand why they would want to shield their real identity. But you can't have it both ways. You can't be famous and anonymous. Now, I have zero interest in knowing porn stars' real names. What bothers me is the hypocrisy inherent in the adult industry. If you

want to cavort around and scoff at society's "puritanical" moral code, that's fine. But doesn't hiding behind fake names undercut your point? Sure, you could say that if society would change, you wouldn't have to hide. But why should society have to change to accommodate you? As much

as I like porn, I think there should be some stigma attached to it. If I ever went into porn, I would definitely use a dumb fake name, maybe 'Buck Naked' or something. But I wouldn't pretend that fear of stalkers

was motivating me to keep my real name secret. And I wouldn't criticize "society" for not being hip enough to deal with my choice of lifestyle. I'd admit that I didn't want people outside the porn world to know that I was doing porno movies. Why can't porn stars just admit the truth?" (RAME)

On 2-16-98, Asia posted to RAME: "When I filed for my legal D.B.A. ("Doing Business As") name of Asia Carrera, part of the legal requirement was making the details of the filing public, by submitting my records to the newspaper of my choice. I picked an obscure little paper to run the classified ad, knowing that my birth name would be printed alongside my D.B.A. name.

"A week later, a man called me at home and tried to convince me to go out with him. He explained that he was a lawyer and a big fan of mine, and he had happened to see my D.B.A. posting. (He took it upon himself to hunt down my phone number.) I was spooked by that, but not NEARLY as spooked as I was when I found him sitting outside my apartment in his car a few days later, just watching me. I locked all the doors up and called Bud, and the guy drove off. Two days later I was laying out by the pool, when I saw the guy sitting in his car AGAIN, just watching me. I asked a stranger who was tanning near me if I could sit with him until this guy left, because I was afraid to go back to my place alone. The guy sat in his car for TWO HOURS, in the hot August sun, just watching me. A couple nights later, the guy was caught standing in my backyard by the nighttime security guards patrolling the complex. That was the last I heard of him. The whole experience was extremely unnerving, and I shudder to think that any other girl in our industry might be forced to suffer the same fate - or worse - simply because a journalist thought it would help his porno-fluff article look a little more professional.

"A pornstar's real name is at best a piece of useless trivia for her fans - hardly worth the price of sacrificing a girl's safety and peace of mind. Even if nothing ever happened to 99% of the starlets after the press ran their real names, would you feel any better knowing that just one pornstar died at the hands of a stalker so your idle curiosity could be satisfied?"

LA TIMES: Tuesday, April 28, 1998

By GREG MILLER, Times Staff Writer

Cast in roles they never envisioned, let alone approved, many of Hollywood's top celebrities are increasingly finding that they are the star attractions on thousands of Internet sex sites.

Hoping to bring the curtain down on such sites, "Melrose Place" star Alyssa Milano is expected to file two lawsuits today against several online firms accused of selling nude pictures of her and dozens of other stars over the Net.

The suits by the television actress would be the first of their kind in a simmering conflict between stars dismayed by their lack of control over their online images and legions of cyber-entrepreneurs who are raking in millions of dollars by selling digitized glimpses of celebrity skin, including many pictures that are fakes.

The pending lawsuits accuse companies in Los Angeles, Minnesota and Canada of copyright, privacy and other violations, and aim to force them to pull the plug on their various sites. Mitchell Kamarck, a Beverly Hills attorney who represents Milano, said he hopes the suits also ignite a broader attack by Hollywood against such sex sites. ''This is the tip of the iceberg,'' Kamarck said. ''Celebrities are realizing for the first time that the Net is a dangerous force if it's not corralled.''

But taming the Internet is always a thorny legal issue, as Congress learned last year when its attempt to outlaw indecency in cyberspace was overturned on 1st Amendment grounds.

It's also unclear that the Net can actually be corralled. After all, even if Milano prevails in her lawsuits and shutters a handful of sites, there are countless others that will go about their X-rated business as usual, with new online peep shows popping up every day.

So even if Hollywood has the law on its side, economics and the freewheeling nature of the Net itself-which enables images to be copied around the globe with the click of a mouse-are working against celebrities.

''I don't think you can stamp it out,'' said Anthony Lupo, a Washington, D.C., attorney and expert on Internet legal issues. ''The law may be in Hollywood's favor, but there's enormous demand for these pictures, and it's so easy to do.''

From Sophia Loren to Leonardo DiCaprio, few celebrities escape the illicit attention. Typing the name of almost any star into an Internet search engine yields numerous skin sites. Add the word ''nude'' to the query and the list of matches becomes an avalanche.

Some of the pictures are stills taken from movies in which the stars have appeared nude. Others are paparazzi shots of celebrities caught off-guard. But many of the pictures are outright fakes in which software has been used to paste a star's face on another's nude body, sometimes in sexually graphic positions.

To those who have followed this issue, it's no surprise that the first suits are being brought by Milano, a 25-year-old actress best known for her childhood role on the 1980s sitcom ''Who's the Boss?''

At least one defendant, John F. Lindgren, registered owner of nudecelebrity.com in Minnesota, acknowledged receiving complaints from Milano, but said he ignored them and was waiting for ''something really serious.''

Asked how he would respond to a suit, Lindgren, 21, said he would simply take down the Milano pictures but seek to keep running a business that he claims is bringing in more than $10,000 a month.

Other defendants-including Paul Anand of British Columbia and Alexander Poparic of Los Angeles-could not be reached for comment. The pending suits are expected to seek unspecified damages.

Celebrity skin sites occupy a small but growing corner of the vast online adult industry, which Forrester Research expects to surpass $185 million this year.

''Everybody wants to see the stars,'' said Joseph Parris, 26, an Oklahoma aircraft electrician who launched a celebrity sex site two months ago. ''My first site didn't have anything to do with celebrities, but my second site does and it's already generating 10 times the traffic.''

Few Internet businesses are so lucrative, or so easy to start. Galleries of celebrity photos can be purchased online for under $100, or downloaded for free from newsgroups such as alt.binaries .pictures.nude.celebrities. Web site designs and payment mechanisms come pre-assembled.

Most sites function like virtual strip joints, charging entrance fees to see the main attractions. Others, including one targeted in Milano's suit, sell CD-ROM collections of thousands of celebrity nude photos.

Established venues can make up to $80,000 a month, according to executives at Cybernet Ventures,a Van Nuys company that handles credit card transactions and age verification for thousands of adult sites.

Some sex-site operators argue that it's hypocritical for celebrities to bemoan a kind of attention they often seem to seek by appearing nude in films, getting caught frolicking nude on beaches, and having plastic surgery to enhance the very attributes that skin sites put on display.

But the problem also confronts celebrities who have never appeared nude and have spent their careers cultivating a wholesome image, including Dawn Wells, who played the squeaky-clean Mary Ann character on the ''Gilligan's Island'' TV series.

Wells said one of the first things she encountered after buying a computer last year was an Internet chat room in which there were more than 200 postings by individuals describing their fantasies of spanking Mary Ann.

Last month, she learned of another site that was posting a picture of the ''Gilligan's Island'' cast in which the images of Mary Ann and Ginger were digitally undressed. Wells' attorney sent an angry letter and got the picture removed, but she said she hardly feels victorious.

''I think it's alarming,'' Wells said. ''It just violates my rights, my privacy. The most frightening thing about it is that I don't think you can control it.''

Sex sites may have some legal footing for what they do based on a doctrine known as ''fair use'' that allows the publication of copyrighted images-including nude pictures of celebrities-as long as the images are presented in the context of news or commentary.

This is the same constitutional protection that enables magazines such as Playboy or Playgirl to devote entire issues to celebrity pictures they neither took nor paid for.

''We're a reporting service like those magazines,'' insists Vince Francis, operator of an adult site based in Greenberg, Pa. ''We're reporting on celebrities via imagery.''

That's an awfully thin argument, especially since most sites make no attempt to put their photos in a news context. Legal experts said the vast majority of images, especially the fakes, are flagrant violations of copyright, false light and right of publicity statutes, among others.

But the problem is trying to enforce these laws, especially considering that the offending images might be stored anywhere on the Net, even overseas.

Jay Lavely, an attorney who represents Brad Pitt and DiCaprio, recently filed separate suits on behalf of both actors to keep nude photos of them from appearing in Playgirl magazine.

The same pictures have been posted on the Net, but Lavely has done nothing about it because, he said, they are already in such wide circulation that it would be almost impossible to track them down.

''The question is not whether rights have been violated on the Net,'' Lavely said. ''The question is whether you can stop it.''

With that in mind, many celebrities have decided it's not worth the expense of hiring an attorney, and try to ignore the attention. Few believe it is hurting their careers.

''It causes embarrassment and frustration,'' said Elizabeth Much, publicist for Alicia Silverstone and a number of other stars. ''But is somebody not going to hire them because there are nude pictures on the Internet? I don't think so.''

Even so, there may be more serious consequences. Many attorneys and agents say they fear that the Net might be a breeding ground for stalkers, a concern that experts say is reasonable.

''For certain maladjusted individuals, seeing their celebrity in a nude photograph just enhances their sexual interest,'' said John Lane, former head of the Los Angeles Police Department's threat management unit.

In addition, Lane said, resourceful stalkers can get other information about their celebrity targets over the Net, sometimes even addresses, phone numbers and appearance schedules.

Now a private security expert, Lane said one of his celebrity clients recently received mail from a stalker who sent seven pictures of the actress he printed off the Net.

''It's kind of ironic that celebrities, especially early in their careers, will do just about anything to be recognized,'' Lane said. ''Later, they realize there's a downside to that.''