A Chat With Jason Tucker
2003-02-12 19:05:12
In my Negril Gossip item, I included this:
"Gail
Harris [Falconofoto.net] is dating Jason Tucker from www.playasolutions.com.
They got a fluff
job in the latest issue of AVN Online. Jason used to run sex.tv
with Finton O'Rourke, a British con man. Jason and Sventon convinced
everybody, including your friends at AVN, that sex.tv was the
next big wave. Sex.tv broadcast the AVN Awards last year live.
Then the whole thing went down and imploded with lawsuits.
"Tucker has now partnered up with Gail Harris. Tucker is about
five feet [and four inches] tall. All Gail Harris dates is short
Jewish men."
About an hour after my item went up, Jason emailed me a couple
of corrections, and then we spoke on the phone as rain came down
in Los Angeles.
Jason: "This was my first day back at work."
Luke: "How did you hear the item?"
Jason: "Through ICQ, how all good word travels. He said, 'Take
a look at this.' Then I got another one from Michael at SexEntertainment.
Are you really five foot tall? What's new?"
Luke: "I'm just trying to cook up a column every day and I'm grasping
at straws. How long have you been in adult?"
Jason: "Three years. I had a tech consulting firm before I took
on sex.tv, which turned out to be a big piece of nothing. Then
I launched the consulting company again, Playasolutions.com, and
focused on traffic.
"It was originally designed as a thinktank. My partner is Oystein
Wright. And I started running Falconfoto a couple of months ago.
"I was involved with Gail
Harris on a client-business relationship before we started
dating and it grew from there. We've been dating since the Florida
show [in August 2002]. We've had a business relationship for a
year.
"We've been restructuring Falcon for the past nine months and
we're about to release the new content site and all the new products.
"Gail has a publicist now. The Associated Press is about to do
a story on her and a lot of business stories are about to come
out on her. We did Wired and we were in Newsweek before that.
"She's a good story. This woman comes over from England as a model,
finds some photos and starts selling them and turns them into
the world's largest niche library. In the process, she creates
three of the best selling magazines of all time - Barely Legal,
Hometown Girls and Virgin. The three best selling magazines at
LFP next to Hustler."
Luke: "I met her and interviewed her in May 1999 at the Montreal
Internext convention."
Jason: "I'm happy. Business and personal, I'm happier than I've
ever been. She's a great girl."
Luke: "I can't tell you how many guys I've met in the industry
who'd love to date her."
Jason: "I get phone calls every other day. 'How are things? Things
good? Sorry to hear that. I'll talk to you later.' She's fantastic."
Luke: "She's beautiful, smart and charming."
Jason: "She's got the right ingredients. I told her that the only
way you are getting rid of me is to throw me out. She said the
same thing. We're even."
Luke: "Did you go to Internext in Las Vegas in January?"
Jason: "Yes. I was on a couple of panels (peer to peer, digital
rights). It was the best show I've been to in a while. It was
no nonsense. People were showing up to do business and to enjoy
themselves. The previous show there was strain on some people.
There were changes and buzz about people moving and switching
and consolidating. The year before, I was involved in sex.tv and
that was a nightmare."
Luke: "What happened to your old partner Finton O'Rourke?"
Jason: "I don't know but I'd love to find him. I've got attorneys
that would love to find him.
"The sex.tv story has never come out. When that thing was set
up originally, they represented that they owned the name and the
copyright. Our attorney Charles Carreon drew up the agreement.
The first two lines of my contract read: 'Finton O'Rourke owns
the name sex.tv.. Finton O'Rourke owns the trademark sex.tv.'
"It turns out that both claims were bulls---. The dot TV corporation
owned the name. He failed to pay them. He bounced checks to them.
He never filed for a copyright.
"The dot tv corporation seized the DNS records and the domain
name. We all got on the phone and claimed the dot TV corporation
screwed us over. We hired Charles again and now Finton O'Rourke
owes us a ton of money for all the fraudulent legal bills we ran
up. It was one lie after another. And then there's me left holding
the bag.
"I'd done deals with my friends and run an alarm bell within the
entire industry based on bulls---. A lot of good people stuck
their necks out and did us a lot of favors no questions asked.
I went back to all those guys and explained what happened. I said
I was taking everything on and any traffic deals I could take
on, I took on and repaid everybody.
"I went to an attorney and showed him all the documents. The attorney
said I'd gotten involved in a smart con. So what do we do? The
man lives in the UK and he owns nothing. We've got nothing to
collect.
"The sad thing is, right after we did the [2002] AVN Awards, we
had a bunch of press and smoking traffic. Then the dot TV people
took it all away. It was rightfully theirs.
"So I ate a tremendous amount of money and took a baseball bat
to the head.
"I went underground. I realized I didn't want to run a paysite
for a while. I partnered up with friends of mine and formed Playa
Solutions."
Luke: "Were people in the industry willing to forgive and forget?"
Jason: "Oh yeah. I always say the same thing - I feel so lucky
and so blessed to be able to say that I work in this business.
They're good people. They're honest people. They're there for
you.
"This business works on performance. If you are performing, people
want to do business with you.
"There's nobody who can say they got f---ed by me.
"Fifty percent of the photos in the [sex] magazines all over the
world are supplied by Falcon. Fifty percent of the photos in Club,
Leg, High Society come from Falcon. This is a huge library that
has never really been online before. There are a million photos
in the library. Fewer than 25% of them have been seen on line.
"If less than 15% of the world's population is online, and we've
been able to realize the numbers we've been able to realize, it's
only going to get bigger.
"We're forming alliances to do more. Cross-sells are a great example.
If the mainstream took what we did on a daily basis and applied
it, they'd be a lot more effective."
I keep hearing porners say this but I never see any porners accomplish
this.
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