‘Melrose Place’ Star Hopes to Pull Plug on Sex Sites

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?”

Her mother, Lin Milano, has led something of a crusade against celebrity sex sites, and even started a small company called CyberTrackers that scans the Net on behalf of a handful of clients, looking for illicit images and firing off electronic warnings to offending sites.

Milano said she started the company a few years ago after her son, then a 12-year-old student at a private school in Minnesota, was exploring the Net and stumbled onto nude pictures of his famous sister.

“He was very upset,” Milano said. “Which made Alyssa and the rest of our family very upset.”

Some of the Milano images are taken from a film in which she appeared nude, Kamarck said, but others are fakes, and there is at least one picture of an unknown young girl who is identified as Milano during her “Who’s the Boss?” years.

Kamarck said Milano could have targeted any number of firms, but selected those named in her suits because they appear to have profited significantly from their activities, and have ignored repeated requests to remove pictures from their sites.

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.”