Little Brother is watching you - the impact of the webcam upon the modeling industry

Some 13% of Americans with an Internet connection currently have webcams connected to their computers, and some estimates suggest that worldwide sales of webcams grew from 2.9 million in 1999 to 18 million in 2004, an average increase of 44% per year. The worldwide annual market for webcams in 2005 is projected to be a staggering $1.2 billion, not bad for a cheap and cheerful $30 piece of hardware. Roughly 98 million PC video cameras were estimated to be in consumer's hands at the beginning of 2003 (IDC figures). As some 124 million homes worldwide had broadband Internet access at the end of 2004 (an increase of 47% in one year), it is not difficult to predict that the market for this handy little device will continue to grow dramatically (www.itfacts.biz).

The smallest webcams are now less than a couple of centimeters in diameter with a 2mm pinhole lens, making them virtually undetectable. Such webcams might be readily concealed, connected by a wireless network to a palm top computer. Such devices are readily hidden within buttons (see image), jewelry, pens or handbags. The mobile phone webcam is no longer a vision, and, for those unable to wait for the technology to become faster and more affordable, is available today. The webcam will soon invade all aspects of our private and professional lives, shaping the media and modeling industries of tomorrow. Sophisticated webcam surveillance systems, once the exclusive domain of the intelligence agencies, are now cheap and freely available. We are entering an age where privacy is a privilege only of the anonymous, and live broadcasting, once the realm of moguls, will be available to all.

The impact of the webcam upon the modeling industry

Every industry will be influenced by widespread adoption of webcam technology, from child-care to the fashion hubs of Europe. Within the modeling industry hundreds of commercial initiatives have sprung from the flexibility and availability of webcam technology. In February 1999 Victoria's Secret attracted the largest audience ever assembled on the Internet by broadcasting a live lingerie fashion show using webcam technology. Some two million people tuned in for this fashion show, which caused their servers to become heavily overloaded and to crash. The answer? Higher bandwidth capacities, bigger, faster, better servers and more advanced webcam technology. Fewer and fewer people are betting against the soothsayers who claimed ten years ago that live Internet broadcasts will replace television as the most popular live mass broadcast medium.

In July 2002 top fashion designers, models, stylists, and notable media celebrities met at a West London studio to stage an unprecedented fashion web broadcast. Photographer Nick Knight and famous stylists invited a global audience to view a live webcam broadcast of both the preparation and execution of fashion model transformations on his SHOWstudio web site. Each styling transformation was monitored and broadcast simultaneously via three webcams. One monitored the studio, one the stage, and one documented the photographic development of each image which was captured. This ground-breaking project was remarkable as it allowed the various working processes of a contemporary fashion shoot to be viewed simultaneously for the first time. On-line viewers could synchronously observe the selected models arriving, the stylists working, and the invited celebrities socializing within the studio. Inspired by the technological developments within the adult industry, SHOWstudio presents live web casts of model fashion shows, as each model is slowly dressed and then undressed on a turntable, reminiscent of Paul Raymond’s early shows.

SHOWstudio, launched in November 2000, has become a pioneer of the on-line web cast, featuring live art, fashion and design shows on-line, and has developed into a high-profile fashion broadcasting hub with contributions from stars such as Kate Moss, Julie Verhoeven and Yohji Yamamoto. As these are broadcast live and free-of-charge to an expanding global market via the SHOWstudio web site, SHOWstudio have created an expanding advertising market with opportunities for product placement and related fashion sales.

The innovation and versatility of webcam technology is limited only by the imagination. EarthCam, a leading global provider of live webcam content, currently broadcasts the Hawaiian Tropic model pageants on mobile handsets. EarthCam's new Hawaiian Tropic Photo Shoot application allows customers to watch exclusive photo shoots of top bikini models and to vote for their favourites on-line or on their handsets. This portability and interactivity may provide web casts with yet another edge over conventional broadcasting networks, as the younger generation seem to crave convenience and versatility. Advances in technology mean that the gulf in image quality and resolution between TV camera broadcasting and live webcam broadcasting is rapidly diminishing, as is the cost of live broadcasting. EarthCam.com now provides the leading network of live webcams and the most comprehensive webcam related search engine. Providing a complete infrastructure service to manage, host and maintain live streaming video camera systems for its consumers and corporate clients, Earthcam’s clientele includes MSN, Yahoo, Sony Ericsson, Orange, Alcatel, Intel, ESPN, Panasonic, Ford, NASA, Kodak, and Discovery.com. EarthCam live web casts now include showpiece events such as the Daytona 500, Mardi Gras, concerts, New Year's Eve and the Super Bowl.

Falling under the spell of web casting

Some web sites which have until recently preferred "streaming" video content are now moving away from the “content on-demand” model, which enables consumers to replay a pre-recorded video at any time, and are now broadcasting scheduled live web casts. This means that the Internet is now encroaching upon traditional TV territory, and the web casting medium appears particularly appealing to advertisers, especially those targeting younger audiences.

One such site, “The Knot”, features live stream shows about wedding planning, mainly showcasing bridal fashions. Live images may be viewed in a separate window or alongside a live message board where future brides can discuss their wedding plans. The Knot's full range of content includes fashion, travel, beauty, and decorating shows. However the broadcasters found that if too much pre-recorded choice of show options is afforded to the viewer, then new ideas and options are overlooked and mainstream preferences dominate. By streaming live ‘linear’ broadcasts, viewers are open to new experiences and this in turn increases advertising revenues, as well as ensuring a more interactive experience for users. The big players are now entering the market. Yahoo acquired Broadcast.com in 1999, and has started live TV shows in partnership with Showtime to expand its viewing audience and potential subscriber base. For now web casters are mixing interactivity, live broadcasts and “on-demand” viewing of pre-recorded materials, but one thing is certain – the functional distinction between your home computer and your television set is starting to blur.

The rise of the Camgirl

The webcam has granted international access to the once private domains of the bedchamber, office and shower cubicle of almost every man and woman on the planet. In the mid-1990s Jennifer Ringley had the simple but contagious idea of setting up a camera in her college dormitory room. Known as “Jennicam”, which she referred to as a live broadcast of her life, this video diary of a lonely soul launched a thousand personal Webcams. She was closely followed by more explicit commercial sites which introduced paid subscriptions and merchandised personal items over the Internet.

Many of these personal webcams have become little more than an extension of the windows of the red light district of Amsterdam, although the voyeur is separated from his or her object of fascination by far more than a pane of glass. As webcams and networks have become ever more powerful and inexpensive, there has been an explosion in their use by teenagers setting up their own sites. A simple Google search under “teen webcam” reveals 1,650,000 hits (May 2005), and whilst the webcam may serve teenagers as a genuine means of self-expression, live communication and development of identity within their formative adult years, the obvious commercial bonanza and the opportunities for young girls to solicit gifts, money and intimate meetings behind the gaze of parental care is self-evident.

What the webcam has created, is the finite possibility that the smallest of people can in theory be viewed at any time, at will, anywhere on the planet. Privacy and anonymity are in theory abolished with the click of a mouse, although in this rapidly expanding market a webcam is often little more a distant voice in chanting crowd. Amongst those webcam exhibitionists who crave the promise of attention, money and popularity, this had led to an explosive competition to become ever more extreme and sexually outlandish to capture a market share of attention. Within our visual media culture, the image has become the all pervasive and all important currency of this medium, and in a human society dominated by the instinctive drive towards sex and reproduction, the sexual icon is queen of all such images. This contention is supported by the fact that the majority of personal webcam broadcasters are girls and young women. Modern sexual icons like Jenna Jameson and Britney Spears preach a message of pay-per-view sexual power. Indeed, Britney Spears and Natalie Portman became multimedia teenage sexual icons before they even reached the age of consent.

Within the new culture of "girl empowerment" fame and celebrity which are the ultimate manifestations of "sexual" influence and power. The lure of celebrity seduces teenage girls into trading their image and the most intimate details of their personal lives in the hope of recognition and stardom. Whilst the absolute reality is that voyeurs are peeping unknown and unseen into young girls' bedrooms, moralising over such issues is complicated by the fact that it is the girls themselves who are setting up webcams, often assumed by parents or guardians to set up to communicate with their school friends. There are now a multitude of dating and sexual liaison sites which use this expanding networking power of webcam technology. This now means that on-line dating sites are no longer a source of great uncertainty, as potential partners, friends and sexual liaisons may now be interviewed raw, live and interactive.

As the camgirl is both the initiator and the regulator of all on-line interactions, she is, and doubtless feels, empowered. The camgirl decides where and when the camera and computer are switched on, what is to be seen, and what requests will or will not be granted. The camgirl is in effect the director, distributor and star of her own virtual live show from the comfort of her own bedroom. Lonely voyeurs are often persuaded to lavish gifts and donations upon the camgirls in return for attention and consensual acts before camera. The essential transformation within this new media is that it is the girl who is in control, and her access to her audience is limited only by the skill of her marketing and her own physical beauty, not by a Hollywood mogul’s casting couch, thus clouding traditional social ideologies of "moral guilt" and "sexual exploitation". These young webcam girls are in actual fact new age media entrepreneurs in a pay-for-view economy, merchandising, trade-marking and branding their own sexual image.

Web casting and the Adult Industry

For a modest fee and a credit card number, sexual instinct drives virtual voyeurs en masse to watch stripteases or explicit sex acts on the Internet within the privacy of their own homes. Although the twin Internet technologies of on-line credit card payment and tracking software mean that such on-line sexual activities are anything but private, the on-line adult consumer is usually now comfortable in the belief that his or her public reputation is safe from the scrutiny of neighbours.

Adult performers now routinely broadcast live 24-7 live webcam feeds from their homes without scriptwriters, directors, film or lighting crews. Cameras pervade every daily activity, from the living room and office, to the bathroom and bedroom. On-line feeds are supported by on-line diaries, galleries, chat rooms and merchandise pages. Each adult webcam actress has her own virtual community of fans who pay monthly subscriptions and buy products from personal effects to autographed posters. The leading producers of adult material were of course not slow to capitalise on this new technology, and market leaders such as Vivid and Danni’s Hard Drive feature live webcam broadcasts of leading adult film stars.

A drive to satisfy sexual appetite and curiosity has existed since the dawn of civilisation. In Ancient Rome men flocked to streets inhabited by prostitutes to engage in or to watch sexual acts. French lithographs, Renaissance paintings and Victorian peepshows are just a few of the countless ways in which the appetite for titillation has been whetted through the ages. In 1986 the US Attorney General's Commission on Pornography reported that peep shows were the biggest moneymaking sector of the adult industry, with estimated profits in excess of $2 billion. However advances in webcam technology and streaming media have now largely consigned the Victorian peepshow to history. Whilst some webcam girls satisfy the loneliness of an intimate fan base from their suburban condos, other adult webcam girls are far more than exhibitionists - they're interactive pornographic film stars.

An ever-growing appetite for live sexual entertainment has been fuelled by the spawning of adult pay-for-view TV channels on satellite and cable TV, of which there are more than thirty in the UK alone. These cater for almost every niche market, excepting the more extreme material which is broadcast by Scandinavian and Eastern European networks. This rapidly growing market is now being invaded by unencrypted free live webcam broadcasts on satellite TV. Programming begins in the late evening on half-a-dozen clone channels, with three or four scantily clad models performing live on a bed or sofa before a set of webcams, the team of girls receiving a deluge of lucrative premium rate phone calls and text messages. The original station BabeCast is now carving a generous slice from the income stream of established and highly regulated adult channels such as Playboy TV, Private, and Television X.

This rapid advance in low cost broadcasting is being accompanied by a sea change in social attitudes towards pornography, at a time when the regulation of the UK adult sector is being relaxed. Consumers may now buy previously prohibited adult material from mainstream video retailers, and rules governing TV transmission may similarly be relaxed. Hardcore adult material presently available in Hungary may be available late at night in the UK on encrypted channels, leading mainstream producers like Playboy to harden their repertoire in order to maintain their market share.

Pornography has graduated from the once seedy Times Square to Wall Street, and from the backstreets of North Hollywood to Silicon Valley. High technology and high investment are giving the adult industry more respectability and legitimacy. Blue-chip companies are now intimately involved with the adult business, supplying mainstream broadcasting networks which are ripe for the expansion of web casting into the $100 billion global pornographic industry. Adult Internet companies are currently employing elite graduate programmers who are engaged in pioneering new web casting technologies. Internet-distributed adult programming generated close to $1 billion as long ago as 1999 when the market was still in its infancy. Of course the Internet has fundamental advantages. It traverses international boundaries, is nearly impossible to censor, and cost-effectively provides access to previously inaccessible markets, including the Middle East and Far Eastern markets such as China. There is no secret that it is a small step from free on-line adult Internet imagery to the purchase of recorded adult media.

The adult industry is driving technological advances in Video-on-demand digital boxes, higher bandwidth connections and servers, Internet security and pay-for-view services, including live web casting. Webcams are fast becoming one of the favorite technologies employed on adult web sites for live broadcasting. This new “streaming” media industry generated an estimated $1.5 billion in revenue in 2003. A case in point is VoyeurDorm, based in Tampa, Florida. Some 80,000 members pay $34.95 a month ($3 million) to view a dozen naked young women who occupy a sorority “dorm” community equipped with more than fifty continuously broadcasting web cameras. They live there with only three house rules - no penetration, no drugs, and no turning off the cameras. The public is invited to watch streaming webcam video of the six permanent residents and their guests socializing, showering, sleeping, tanning, and engaging in lewd group activities. For an additional $16 per month members can chat with the girls, and if they're lucky they can attend "member parties" in which they can pay to meet their feminine sexual icons face-to-face. The lucky stars get $400 to $600 per week, perks and personal trainers. VoyeurDorm now plans to feature both live and recorded content on a regular basis, and is to all intents and purposes one of the world’s first 24/7 adult streaming Internet television stations.

The subscription list of another adult industry pioneer, Adult Internet TV, is also rapidly expanding as they are offering their site as a free plug-in to adult webmasters who want to vary their content. Adult Internet.TV content is paid for entirely by advertisers, and uses cutting edge Abacast technology whose use of “Distributed Streaming Network Technology”. This makes it possible to stream high quality media to huge audiences with a highly efficient management of spare bandwidth by using one viewer’s computer to redirect idle upstream bandwidth to the next downstream user. Whatever next…?

The mobile webcam?

It seems that it was only yesterday that digital cameras took photos, and mobile phones made calls. Today’s cameras can play MP3 files, send e-mails, record sound, store other data files, record movies, or download video streams from the Internet. Shortly, they will be able to do almost anything. But besides digital cameras, which may have a variety of functions, some other devices can now take snapshots. Mobile phones are fast becoming a serious threat to digital cameras as their memory capacity and image quality increase, and their prices fall. This combined with their capacity to send images quickly and conveniently to any Internet or telecommunications network, and the digital camera’s market share is under imminent threat.

During 2004, 150 million mobile phones with an integrated digital camera function were sold, around a quarter of all mobile phone sales. As mobile phones are now being sold with 4 or 7 megapixel cameras, their versatility, portability and interactivity will win the war of the spare pocket. With standardisation and an estimated global market of 650 million phones by 2008, is there any volume broadcaster who can afford not to take this market seriously?

EarthCam Mobile was launched in 2004 to allow consumers to watch live webcams, and at the same time be able to broadcast their own personal webcam live via their mobile phones. VTX Inc., a Las Vegas company specializing in providing adult content for mobile phones, has even launched a live broadcast adult service XTCMobile. Although the images will only be broadcast at 6-7 frames per second, well below the 25 or more frames a second of TV, the advent of higher speed technologies is unlikely to be very far away.

However the real business value of mobile pornography might be as a prime advertising medium for the multi-billion dollar adult market, promoting movies, adult services, sex toys, and even camgirls. Given the financial success of ring-tones and mobile screen savers, it is difficult to dismiss such speculation. However, even if the mobile pornography industry could grow into a billion-a-year market by 2008, that would still be a small slice of the estimated $70 billion global pornography market.

Following the advent of mobile video technology, Sprint has became the first U.S. company to offer TV broadcasts through MobiTV, the service currently offering a dozen general-interest channels ranging from ABC News to the Discovery Channel with technology which should allow transmission at 15 frames per second.

Customers of French operator Orange can now view video clips on their cell phones from the company's wireless portal that features naked girls showering or playing on the beach. Orange claim that as much as a quarter of all mobile phone videos accessed from its portal are erotic in nature, currently the equivalent of some 138 days of viewing a month. The Vivid Entertainment Group Inc. plans a service which will allow subscribers have live sex chats with women they can view on mobile phone. Playboy, which currently licenses pictures and videos of naked women to European mobile phone users, plans only PG-rated images of bikini-clad women for U.S. cell phone users.

The number of mobile phones with video downloading capabilities has already increased to 21 million in Western Europe, 19 million in Asia and 14 million in North America, a figure expected to increase four-fold by the end of 2006 (Strategy Analytics). Whilst adult feeds to cell phones are illegal in the huge markets of China and the Middle East, where even the possession of soft-core pornography is a criminal offence, attempts at enforcement in China have met with little success and such services may also find a ready market in the Middle East.

The end of the age of privacy

Voyeurism feeds upon a desire for intrusion, and its latest manifestation has come via the camera phone. The mobile camera phone provides instantaneous opportunities for an international invasion of privacy, with all of the associated legal complications of image ownership that it brings. In India five star hotels, dance bars, schools and even some designer stores have been amongst the first to ban camera phones for fear of illicit images being taken of guests, design concepts or security. In the US supermodel Naomi Campbell recently successfully sued after being photographed while leaving a de-addiction centre, claiming her right to privacy had been lost.

There is now a veritable explosion of digicams, multimedia mobiles, camcorders and spy-cams offering the potential for low cost intrusion anytime, anywhere. Tehelka in India used clips to expose the government and teenagers trying to earn quick money through pornography. A recent public scandal about the commercial sale of camera phone recordings of teenage girls performing oral sex at a Delhi Public School caused widespread outrage.

A Spanish computer science student recently received a €4,000 fine after an admission that he used spy ware to view a young woman via her webcam. The young offender used the so-called “Subseven Trojan” virus to view his “victim” without her consent. His cyber crime only became evident after he inadvertently emailed the girl’s captured images to the victim herself, instead of one of his friends as he had intended. In a similar vein a 45-year-old computer technician from Cyprus was arrested on suspicion of using an infected Email to plant a Trojan virus into the computer of a teenage girl so that he could use her webcam to collect illicit images of her. The man from Nicosia was accused of taking compromising pictures of the teenager while she was alone in her bedroom, and then of using them in an attempt to blackmail her into indecency.

In another incident, Madrid police arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of using an unnamed Trojan horse to steal confidential banking information from Internet users and to spy on them via their webcams on-line. Anti-virus firms have reported a marked proliferation of such Trojan horse viruses which allow hackers to spy on victims and their information. The Subseven Trojan used for the webcam offences may have been the first of a class of virus which enables the sender to take over a victim's webcam, but now there are numerous variants. The Rbot Internet worm has now incorporated the capacity to take photos and movies of computer users via their webcam for any one of a variety of purposes.

It is not only the bedroom which has been invaded by the webcam. A large number of restaurants and public houses have installed webcams to monitor customers and to relay their images live on the Internet. Countless restaurants in the US are reported to broadcast live webcam images of their unwitting patrons via their web sites. Any curious investigator with access to a Google search engine may discover that thousands of establishments have followed suit, with one site acting as a directory of live restaurant webcam feeds. The same is true for hotels and public houses. Google searches allow rapid access to well over a thousand totally unguarded surveillance cam feeds from around the world, often without the owners' knowledge. A knowledge of search strings will allow an intruder to access over a thousand installed network cameras made by Axis Communications, and another reveals hundred of feeds from cameras sold by Panasonic. Whilst such companies argue that access to such webcam feeds may be password-protected and often to a restricted set of IP addresses, these are not enabled automatically, and one such Company’s webcam disclaimer reads: "No specific claims are made pertaining to specific levels of security the camera offers," that is to say that many are not resistant to hackers, and some apparently not even to Google searches.

Telcos new software allows people to view video footage from public webcams or cameras broadcast from within their homes or businesses. Enabled cell phones can capture and zoom in on images obtained from webcams remotely, or even instruct their home or office PC to store images. Many thousands of consumers have bought the system for a range of domestic and security roles. Indeed it is quite possible that your boss may be sitting in a bar watching both you and the contents of your computer screen on his mobile phone at this very moment...

Meanwhile the Voyeurdorm webcam bonanza has reported problems with an over-zealous fan club. One admirer from afar appeared at the house of one girl’s mother with flowers and gifts and stayed over an hour. So popular are the camgirls with their fan base, that security guards are maintained at the Tampa premises at all times to stop fans from becoming “hands-on” consumers. If a webcam is attached to a PC, it has an IP address, and if the PC was bought with a credit card it’s owner has a postal address...camgirls beware...

What vision does the webcam hold for our future?

So what more lies on the horizon for the future of webcams? The new technology of teledonics is further blurring distinctions between real and virtual sex. Webcam users wearing special suits can hook up via computer and stimulate one another’s erogenous zones remotely using a mouse and a computer.

The cost of wireless computers and cameras is falling rapidly, just as the speed and resolution of the technology is increasing exponentially. Webcams are getting smaller and sharper in resolution. High resolution 7 Mega-pixel cameras the size of button holes will soon be driven by wireless technology from palm-top computers than can store and transmit an image stream live via a remote server. You may safely assume that you are being watched...