Dirty Downloads Ready to Go on IPods

Missy Suicide poses with an Apple iPod and her website SuicideGirls.com on a computer in the background in her office, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005, in Los Angeles. The women at SuicideGirls.com, an online social network of pinup girls, are expanding into 3-5 minute video clips, a new direction. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) (Mark J. Terrill - AP)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Purveyors of porn and entrepreneurs who spied a niche when Apple Computer Inc. unveiled its video-playing iPod are proving that sex even sells in tiny packages _ especially when it is portable.

One online social network of amateur pinup girls said it logged 500,000 downloads of the sexy "featurettes" _ three- to five-minute video clips _ in the first 24 hours targeting the new iPod-toting crowd.

It's a no-brainer: pornography to go.

The naughtiness is already finding its way into video handhelds through business models tried-and-true _ along with some new ones _ as the adult entertainment industry works to untether video content.

Soon enough, skin flicks whose viewing has been largely restricted to the privacy of homes and theaters could be on view in the open public of parks and mass transit, for all ages to see.

Porn is no doubt a big business on the Web.

Two in five Internet users visited an adult site in August, according to tracking by comScore Media Metrix. The company said 3 percent of all Web traffic and 2 percent of all surfing time involved an adult site.

The Internet accounted for $2.5 billion of the adult industry's $14 billion in U.S. revenues last year, about the same as revenues from cable and satellite pay-per-view showings, according to Adult Video News, a trade magazine.

Vivid Entertainment Group, a major adult video producer that already offers high-resolution still images, video clips and footage from "voyeur cams" through its Web site, now plans to shoot shorter films specifically for the iPod and other portables.

"It could be a huge percentage of our business," says the company's chief executive, Steven Hirsch. "People love watching adult movies and to be able to carry an adult movie in your pocket is a powerful tool."

Sin City, based in Chatsworth, Calif., already offers trailers of full-length adult films for the Sony PlayStation Portable, a handheld video game player. It now plans full-length adult films for the video iPod.

Apple wasn't first on the scene with a small digital device capable of playing good-quality video.