Accuser Says Stickam Web Site Has X-Rated Link
The New York Times. By Brad Stone. July 11, 2007.
Parents and child safety experts concerned about the online activities of teenagers have been particularly nervous about a Web site called Stickam, which allows its 600,000 registered users, age 14 and older, to participate in unfiltered live video chats using their Web cameras.
But those Internet safety advocates might be even more anxious if they knew of Stickam's close ties to a large online pornography business.
On its Web site and in press reports, Stickam says that it is owned by Advanced Video Communications, or AVC, a three-year-old Los Angeles company that sells video conferencing and e-commerce services to businesses in Japan and other Asian countries.
The sites, with names like DxLive, EXshot and JgirlParadise, use the same video technology as Stickam to link paying users with performers in one-on-one video chat sessions.
The workers at Mr. Takahashi's companies "only know how to conduct an adult Web site," Mr. Becker said. "They don't get it that there are predators on the Internet."
Stickam has attracted a few big-name partners. Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Records and the Los Angeles Film Festival have all used Stickam for promotional purposes. Representative Ron Paul, a Republican of Texas and a candidate for president, answered questions from Stickam users last month.
Yet Stickam, a free site, does not have advertising, and does not appear to have earned any recurring revenue in its two-year existence. It has courted media companies to use its site for promotions.
Mr. Becker said Stickam shares the 68th floor with DxLive, one of the sex sites. He said a running tally on a whiteboard there indicated that DxLive was bringing in around $220,000 a day.
Mr. Becker alleges that he saw DxLive on-camera performers being trained on the building's 61st floor in matters like how to respond to special customer requests. Mr. Flacks of Stickam flatly disputed this, but he acknowledged that DxLive does have "some" office space in the U.S. Bank Tower.
Mr. Becker said he first learned of the extent of the pornography business last April, when Mr. Takahashi, who employees refer to as Mr. T, took him to dinner at a downtown sushi restaurant. Through translators he described some of his companies' assets, which include at least 49 pornography sites, a pornographic film production company, nine restaurants in Japan and private planes, Mr. Becker said.
"I don't think I discovered everything, but I learned more than enough to be able to say with certainty that they are not leaders in the video-conferencing business," Mr. Becker said. "They are leaders in pushing porn via a Flash player and streaming porn from the United States to Japan."
Mr. Becker said Mr. Takahashi told him that he had based his sites in the United States because of Japan's restrictions on explicit nudity.
Public information about Mr. Takahashi, who declined interview requests, is hard to come by. A March issue of a local newspaper had a page with photos from a "Birthday Celebration in Honor of Billionaire Businessman Wataru Takahashi."
Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough, an Internet safety organization, said that considering Stickam's ties to pornography, children and their parents should exercise caution when using the site."
This is just another adult operator looking for a back door to the youth market," she said. "For youth without parental understanding and controls in place, this can be dangerous."