User:Andrewdrake333/sandbox

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1999/08/27/METRO7487.dtl

Andrew Drake (March 22, 1967) Was a Adult Entertainment (Pornography) Producer, Director and Pioneer of Adult Entertainments presence on the Internet. Infamously known for his Worldwide Media blitz due to his controversial site upskirt.com, a voyeuristic website which propelled Drake to make TV appearances on Date Line (ABC TV), Good Morning America (ABC TV), The Montel Williams Show, The Cristina Show (Univision Spanish) as well as front page news on national newspapers.

Is an American Italian/Mexican American

SACRAMENTO - The owners of an Internet site devoted to secret voyeuristic videotapes of women want to thank some people for a recent upsurge in business: the media, the Legislature and Gov. Davis.

Davis signed a bill Thursday outlawing clandestine videotapes taken up women's skirts and down their blouses. More than 100 Web sites are devoted to so-called

"upskirt" voyeurism, where men with tiny cameras hang out at shopping malls, amusement parks and beaches to secretly videotape women's underwear, lingerie, pantyhose or whatever.

Since the bill was introduced by an Orange County lawmaker, publicity surrounding such activities has doubled business on at least one Internet site run out of Southern California, according to an official there.

"This has created a whole new generation of people who probably weren't even aware they were voyeuristic," said Andrew Drake, marketing director at Pixis International, which runs the Upskirt.com Web site.

"All this bill is going to do is create an underground feel and probably make it appeal to a broader number of people. Prohibition. How did that work?"

Surprisingly, it's not illegal to point a video camera up someone's skirt. Current state law only prohibits looking "through a hole or opening into a bathroom, changing room or any other area where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Police in Southern California have been forced to release several men, including one who angled a concealed video camera under the skirts of women waiting in line at Disneyland.

Technological advances have allowed some cameras to be as small as a pager or disguised in a water bottle or boom box. Voyeurs can film someone as they go up an escalator, or place a bag with surveillance equipment under women's skirts while they're waiting in line somewhere.

Assemblyman Dick Ackerman, R-Fullerton, heard about such practices and wrote the new law, which makes secret videotaping a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. It goes into effect Jan. 1.

"It was time to put a stop to those who would victimize women by using the latest technology to invade their privacy and make a dirty profit," Ackerman said.

Michael Bustamante, Davis' spokesman, said, "This bill addresses the need to punish a despicable act of behavior."

But Drake said the new law most likely wouldn't hurt business because they don't have employees who videotape women, despite a Web site claim they have a special

"V-team" of video peeping Toms to "infiltrate by every means possible the places where women least expect to be seen."

All videos are sent to the company free of charge from peeping Toms around the world, Drake said, and posted on the $6.95-a-month Web site. The site does, however, give advice on "spy resources."

Drake said he isn't worried about his supply drying up because of the new law.

"This site is set up as an entertainment entity," Drake said, "and the users who come here are aware, or they should be aware, it's a pure fantasy site and that a good number of the images are staged by models mixed in with images sent in by video voyeurs across the world."

Federal law prohibits distribution of images of bestiality and child pornography, but the U.S. Supreme Court last year threw out the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which made it illegal to put sexual material where children could find it. The court said the law was too broad.

Ackerman's original bill made the offense a felony, but he amended it to reduce the penalty to a misdemeanor. The California Attorneys for Criminal Justice had complained in a letter to Ackerman that a felony conviction for video peeping might put someone in prison for life under California's three-strikes sentencing law.<