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, aged 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 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.
But according to Alex Becker, a former vice president at Stickam, and internal company documents, Advanced Video Communications is managed and owned by Wataru Takahashi, a Japanese businessman who also owns and operates DTI Services, a vast network of Web sites that offer live sex shows over Web cameras. Becker alleges that Stickam shares office space, employees and computer systems with the pornographic Web sites. Today in Business Dollar hits record low against euro Schneider wins damages for EU veto of Legrand deal 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.
Becker recently left Stickam after four months there and said he was speaking out because the company was not doing enough to protect young users of its service. He also alleges that he witnessed Stickam employees deleting thousands of e-mail messages sent to the company s addresses for customer service and abuse complaints, without reading or responding to them. Becker criticized what he said was the practice of sharing employees between Stickam and the pornographic sites.
The workers at Takahashi s companies "only know how to conduct an adult Web site," he said. "They don t get it that there are predators on the Internet." Asked about Becker s allegations, Scott Flacks, Stickam s vice president for marketing, denied that the site was negligent about protecting its users, or that unread e-mail messages from users had been deleted.
"We take security issues very seriously and have a dedicated team to monitor and eliminate improper material," he said. "Security and Stickam go hand in hand." Flacks also said Becker had plans to create a site that would compete with Stickam and was being "retaliatory" because he was unable to reach agreement on a contract with the company.
(Becker acknowledged that he never signed a contract because of a dispute over intellectual property.) Flacks said Advanced Video Communications was one of four "separate divisions" managed and owned by Takahashi, one of which includes DTI Services and the pornography companies. But Flacks said AVC operated independently of the pornography sites, and compared it to Disney s ownership of Touchstone Pictures, which produces R-rated films.
"I expect some Touchstone executives have been on the Disney lot, but that doesn t mean Disney is a content producer of adult entertainment," he said. Though Stickam remains relatively small compared to Web giants like MySpace and YouTube, several thousand of its mostly teenaged members log onto the site each night to broadcast their own lives, often from their bedrooms. They put on makeshift talk shows, flirt with other members in video chat rooms, and often, if they are female, field repeated requests to take off their clothes.
Anyone can tune into a user s video feed, unless the user restricts it to friends only. Members must be 14 or older to sign up, but the site does not attempt to verify ages. 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 of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, answered questions from Stickam users last month. But none of them appear to know Stickam s true parentage.
At first, neither did Becker, 40, who joined the company in March after a friend introduced him to Flacks, a former executive at Fox Interactive. Becker said he was enthralled by the potential to bring live video to mobile phones, and was impressed by the company s offices atop the tallest building in Los Angeles, the U.S.
Becker said he soon learned that Takahashi s companies leased premium office space in several downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers, including Macy s Plaza, Sanwa Bank Plaza and One Wilshire, which houses the largest telecommunications hub in the Pacific Rim. 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.
Becker said Stickam shares the 68th floor with DxLive, one of the porn sites. Back to top 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, aged 14 and older, to participate in unfiltered live video chats using their Web cameras.
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