Two of the major attractions of the Internet are supermodels and naked women.
They're not the only draw, obviously, though some members of Congress would have you think so. But we have to admit finding photographs of good-looking women is fueling part of the surge in interest in the Internet.Of course, many people are finding other things to do on the Internet. In fact, the amount of information available is so vast, and new sites are popping up so fast, it's impossible to keep up.
But Penthouse Magazine started a World Wide Web site two months ago, with no advertising or promotion. Have any idea how many "hits" or accesses its Web page has in a day?
Try 2 million . . . per day . . . 60 million a month . . . and growing.
Keith Ferrell, editor of online services for Penthouse parent General Media, said the site was overwhelmed by traffic in late April. "We have been widening our telephone line bandwidth and processing capacity almost daily to handle the rapidly increasing number of callers," he says.
Internet sites that offer photos are so popular some arrive, get overwhelmed by traffic and go under, often within days or weeks.
Agents for Cover Girl model Krissy Taylor's recently put up the first "authorized" home page. It receives tens of thousands of hits and generates more than 1,000 fan mail messages each day.
It features a few photos and information about the 17-year-old Florida model. Though her page is PG-rated at worst, parents and teachers are less than pleased with other content out there.
A Los Altos, Calif., firm this week announced "SurfWatch Software," which for $49.95 bars connections to more than 1,000 sexually explicit World Wide Web pages, FTP and Gopher sites, chat areas and newsgroups.
For a monthly fee of $5.95, the database will be updated from a list provided by college students paid to search for sex sites.
Netscape, which makes the most popular Web browser, also released a "proxy server" so administrators can block access to some Internet sites. That's going to be popular with schools and libraries.
All of this comes as Congress prepares to debate the Communications Decency Act of 1995, which would impose a fine of up to $100,000 on anyone who transmits any "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent" material over the Internet.
The bill is a lame attempt to deal with the issue, but one could see it coming.