China, most palpable response
incident's end is disappointment
In
to
by Michael A. Lev
Chicago Tribune
April 12, 2001
One of the first reactions in
China to the release of the 24
Americans was sarcastic: "Let's
become American citizens, then
we'll never be bullied," a dis
pleased Chinese observer wrote on
an Internet bulletin board run by
the Communist Party newspaper
People's Daily.
Through the evening, as people
in this city heard the news that
China's government had agreed to
free the crew of the American spy
plane, there was no sense of joy
that a crisis had been averted. In
stead, the most palpable emotion
was disappointment.
Particularly in the Internet dis
cussion forums, where the most
vocal supporters of Chinese na
tionalism are allowed to engage in
rollicking discussions about world
events, writers were shocked that
China's government would end the
11-day stand-off by accepting a letter
from the Bush administration that ex
pressed sentiments short of a full apol
ogy.
"I suggest we set today as National
Shame Day," one Internet writer
posted to the forum operated by
Sina.Com
From the moment China's govern
ment announced that the Americans
were being held in the aftermath of a
collision over the South China Sea,
Beijing set a tone of nationalistic fury
by demanding that the United States
accept full responsibility and apolo
gize for the collision of a U.S. mili
tary surveillance plane and a Chinese
fighter jet.
When the agreement to end the
stand-off included American expres
sions of regret and sorrow but not ca
pitulation, it elicited a negative reac-
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Crew members from the detained U.S. spy plane await final prepara
tions for departure on a commercially chartered aircraft. The aircraft
first stopped in Guam to give the crew a chance to contact families,
and then continued to Hawaii for military debriefing before final repa
triation with families and friends at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in
Washington.
The feeling was that after flying a
spy plane along China's coast, caus
ing, an accident that killed a Chinese
pilot and then landing the damaged
plane in Chinese territory, the U.S.
had gotten off too leniently.
"The American government
shouldn't believe they can do what
ever they want," said a 34-year-old
university professor named Zhu as he
left a restaurant Wednesday evening.
"It absolutely wasn"t right for
American to send a spy plane into
Chinese airspace, - said Sun Li, a 23-
year-old student. "We need a further
explanation.''
In Thursday's edition of People Is
Daily, China's government portrayed
the agreement to free the Americans
as an outright victory that taught the
Bush administration a lesson by forc
ing the president to say the United
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States was "very sorry."
The front page of Thursday's
Beijing Youth Daily featured a he
roic photograph of the Chinese pilot
posed by his plane and quoted Chi
nese President Jiang Zemin as say
ing the Americans were allowed to
go home as a "humanitarian" ges
ture.
He said the incident is not over yet
because there will be more negotia
tions over the fate of the impounded
airplane
But some Chinese seemed to think
the episode was over, and China
didn't get all that it should have.
"I'm heartbroken," wrote one con
tributor to Sina.Com.
Visit our
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Yahoo store gives pornography
new prominence on the web
by P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times
April 10, 2001
Yahoo Inc., struggling for profit amid
a shaky dot-corn marketplace, has be
come the first top-tier Internet company
to embrace the porn industry, opening
an online store stocked with thousands
of hard-core DVDs and video tapes.
The marriage between porn and tech
nology is one of the few profitable
online business models, but no Internet
titan has jumped into bed with the adult
entertainment industry.
Because of Yahoo's dominant online
presence, the company immediately
emerges as a behemoth in the online
pornography business, industry experts
say. An estimated 185 million people
worldwide access Yahoo each month.
"In the online sex market, size does
matter," said Dan Lavin, a principal
with the high-tech market analysis
firm International Venture Re-
search. "There's no one bigger
than Yahoo."
The push into porn is a depar
ture for Yahoo, which has long cul
tivated a Main Street reputation in
its bid to become the Web portal
for the world. Consumers have al-
ways been able to find racy mate
rial through the company's Web di
rectory, but Yahoo served as only
a pointer - not a promoter - of such
X-rated products.
Yahoo's decision to become porn's
online middleman reflects the despera
tion of Internet companies to find new
sources of revenue amid a slowing
economy.
Yahoo officials declined to discuss
the erotic-video outlet, or to say why
they are expanding its offerings. The
"adult and erotica" store, connected to
Yahoo's main shopping channel, was
quietly expanded and relaunched in re
cent weeks as part of a companywide
effort to offset a sharp drop in advertis
ing sales.
In a written statement issued late
Tuesday, company officials said that
"under stringent control, adult products
have been available through Yahoo
Shopping for more than two years."
Despite the potential lucre, other
leading online companies are squea
mish at the thought of embracing porn.
America Online does not allow sale
of adult material on its service and "that
is not going to change," a company of
ficial said. Amazon.com Inc. stocks
"some" adult-video titles, but shoppers
can locate them only by searching for
specific titles, officials said.
Microsoft Corp. allows outside mer
chants to sell "sensual" products such
as relationship books and massage oil
Private support could
boost space efforts
Advocates of private development of space vehicles note the
contrast to the early days of aviation, when hundreds of aircraft
and engine manufacturers helped drive the rapid development
of new equipment. Early advances in aviation were stimulated
by a series of prizes offered for milestones, such as the greatest
distance flown between sunrise and sunset or the first trans-At
lantic crossing.
In a throwback to those days, some companies and founda
tions are offering prizes for space-related achievements. Nevada
based Bigelow Aerospace
is offering a $lO,OOO prize
to be awarded each year
to "any domestic person,
organization or company
outside the satellite indus
try" that contributes the
most toward the promo
tion or use of space for
private enterprise. The X
Prize Foundation in St.
Louis is offering $lO mil
lion to the first private
team to fly a reusable,
three-person spacecraft to an altitude of 62 miles and repeat the
feat within two weeks. So far, 21 teams have signed up to com
pete for the prize, according to Gregg Maryniak, executive di
rector of the foundation.
"The fundamental difference between early aviation and early
spaceflight is that the public acquired the expectation that space
was the sole province of governments," said Maryniak, who pre
sented a paper at a recent conference on commercial space at the
libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. "Ironically, the same
Cold War competition that accelerated the early development of
spaceflight fostered this belief which now impedes sustainable
commercial space development. The belief that government
through its eShops on the Microsoft
Network. But X-rated DVDs are ver
boten because "we believe there's a dif
ference between healthy sensuality ...
and products that simply exploit sexu
ality," according to a company spokes
man.
Even Blockbuster Inc., the Dallas
based video retailer, doesn't sell porn.
"We have one of the top (corporate)
brands in the United States. You don't
mess with that," said Karen Raskopf,
senior vice president of corporate com
munications for Blockbuster. "This is
not a morality statement. We just don't
need to sell adult product to make
money."
Yahoo's rush for revenue is a gamble
and could easily backfire by alienating
advertisers, traditionally its main source
of revenue, analysts said.
"This is a company that has posted
losses because ad sales are down," said
"In the onl
there's no
Van Baker, vice president of the e-busi
ness group at research firm Dataquest.
"This won't hurt them with advertisers
in the young-male demographic. But to
everybody else - and certainly anyone's
who's advertising to the Christian or
kids market - this is going to be shock
ing."
As it does with its other online stores,
Yahoo will receive a percentage of each
sale made in its porn store, according
to merchants that are working with Ya
hoo.
Company officials decline to discuss
revenue and profit scenarios.
In addition to the video shop, Yahoo
also is building a series of customized
stores for adult-entertainment produc
tion companies that are planning to use
the sites to sell a variety of intimate
products.
Shoppers at Yahoo's new porn store
must register an e-mail address and en
ter a credit-card number, which is cross
checked with the issuer to verify the
cardholder's age.
Once cleared, shoppers can purchase
titles aimed at either straight and gay
audiences and from a variety of catego
ries: explicitly hard-core to animated
features or fetish titles.
After selecting a film, shoppers can
by Earl Lane
Newsday
April 10, 2001
Ihe belief that government should be the lead
player in space remains all-pervasive and contin
ues to frame the discussion of commercial space
even among space development advocates."
ine sex market, size does matter;
one bigger than Yahoo."
-Dan Lavin, a principal with the high-tech
market analysis firm International Venture
Research
should be the lead player in space remains all-pervasive and
continues to frame the discussion of commercial space even
among space development advocates."
There has been an almost self-fulfilling sense that space
flight belongs to the government. Unless there are ways found
to get ordinary people into space at reasonable cost, he said,
"we will perpetuate the myth that it is a government gig."
Still, many small companies have found it difficult to go it
alone, analysts say, and have sought government funds to help
get them started. Robert Walker, a former Republican member
of Congress and past chairman of the House Science Commit
tee, said space entrepreneurs must be wary, however, of chas
ing government contracts as an end in themselves. There were,
he said, "too many people
whose whole business plan
was to get a government
contract with NASA or the
military." That could hinder
their ability to pursue their
novel ideas without having
to meet government mile
stones and specifications, he
said.
-Gregg Maryniak, executive director
of the X-prize foundation.
of realism as well. "Single
stage-to-orbit is going to be very difficult to achieve without
the government stepping in in some way," Walker, now a lob
byist with the Wexler Group, told the Cato Institute meeting.
"Without some government money, even the big companies
are not willing to step in."
Going to space is not easy, and developing the technology to
make it affordable is a challenge that is properly shared by
industry and government, many analysts say. But some entre
preneurs chafe at what they consider NASA's emphasis on only
the most cutting-edge technologies and on spacecraft designs
that suit its mission, which for now means servicing the space
station.
FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2001
tap into Yahoo's comparison-shopping
program to find the cheapest price
being offered by various affiliated
porn merchants.
Yahoo's online store stocks films
from 36 adult-oriented studios. The se
lection ranges from smaller fringe
companies such as Androgeny Pro
ductions to mainstream outlets such
as Hustler and Playboy.
"I'm a bit surprised that Yahoo's do
ing this, to be honest," said Larry Lux,
president of Playboy.com, a unit of
Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises.
"Clearly, having a Yahoo in this space
furthers the trend of mainstream ac
ceptance of adult content."
Yahoo has long accepted banner ads
for adult-oriented Web sites, and the
company's prominence makes it an at
tractive target for adult-site operators
looking to place ads to draw traffic.
Ads alone, however, are not enough
to bolster the company's bottom line.
Around the beginning of the year, Ya
hoo began charging online commerce
sites a fee if they wanted to be listed
in its directory. Mainstream shops pay
$2OO. Adult-oriented sites fork out
$6OO.
Company officials insist their new
shop "is just like any other we have
on our site."
But critics note that Yahoo, which
is expected to report its second con
secutive quarterly loss Wednesday, has
not avidly promoted the porn venture.
"This is the opposite of what Ya
hoo is about, of chat and community
and all the news you can get," said
John H. Corcoran, executive director
for the Internet and new media group
at CIBC World Markets. "This is all
about dollars."
Nobody knows exactly how many
porn DVD or VHS titles were sold last
year, but industry watchers peg the
U.S. market at several billion dollars.
"Yahoo understands that these
slopes are slippery," said CIBC's
Corcoran. "They also know that sex,
sports and stocks are the power of
three that drove the Internet in the past.
...Yahoo can put a bit of a filter up,
put their hand out and take the money."
Still, when it comes to
radical advances in space
flight, Walker offers a dose