World Sex Sells News

Thanks to a repressive new law, supposedly to protect tax revenues, every business now has to give customers service receipts - and that includes the sex clubs too.

But the question of how to declare services provided to customers has led to some confusion among sex club bosses and some interesting receipts being issued.

One boss has asked how they are expected to register services like a two hour 'chat' between an employee and a client. As a tip?, suggests Peter Laskaris, boss of the Laufhaus club in Vienna.

The new tax law introduced in recent weeks requires many businesses to install a new till system and issue a receipt to customers for every transaction so the tax can be recorded.

Meanwhile the manager of Maxim club in Vienna has also questioned whether they will need 20 different tills, each for a different woman who offers her services on a freelance basis.

Maxim boss Josef Stern was also concerned about the security of his employees: Putting the actual names and addresses of the girls on the receipt absolutely won't work for security reasons.

One receipt obtained by newspaper Heute carrying out investigative research in Maxim included 250 euros on a special sex act.

 

Saudi Arabia's Communications and Information Technology Commission has blocked 600,000 websites over 2 years that contained pornographic and other prohibited materials.

Those who have published and promoted pornographic content will face extreme punishments of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of 3 million Saudi riyals (about $800,000).

The InterContinental Hotels Group has decided to remove on-demand pornography from every location in its international chain.

Dawn Hawkins of Morality in Media, now known as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation crowed about the decision:

We are grateful to Intercontinental Hotels Group for the priority the company placed on working with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in order to ensure that none of its hotels profit from sexual exploitation. InterContinental Hotels Group has committed to rigorously enforce a brand standard prohibiting the distribution of pornography across all of its brands, such as Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza.

Free streaming pornography has largely made in-room, on-demand pornographic services unprofitable. Robert Habeeb, president and CEO of First Hospitality Group, estimated that a 200-room hotel could make just $2,000 a month from the rental of pornography.

About 17 years after it opened for business on Dublin's O'Connell Street, Ann Summers is to open a new shop on the much-busier Henry Street.

It will open at the former Pamela Scott store at No 3 Henry Street, which has been vacant for several weeks.

In spite of the slippage in business on O'Connell Street in recent years, Ann Summers dodged the worst of the retail downturn with customers choosing to spend more on their sex life amid the economic gloom. The Dublin shop is among the three best performing of the company's 140 outlets.

A spokesperson for Ann Summers confirmed that the O'Connell Street store would continue to trade after the second store opens for business, probably before the end of March.

Melbourne's longest-running porn cinema is set to close, its owner has flagged.

Crazy Horse has been screening hardcore pornography, sometimes continuously for 24 hours a day, from the basement of a sex shop on Elizabeth Street for almost 50 years. But as demand for porn increasingly moves online, the cinema's future is under a cloud.

David Ross, spokesman for Melbourne-based porn empire HGC, said:

It's keeping its head above water but it's certainly not one of our remarkable profit centres. People are going to the internet so it's not something that is long for this world, one would imagine.

Ross suggested the cinema could be converted into a mainstream theatre. He said the HGC Group, which owns the Club X chain of adult shops and the Sexpo brand, had a five year lease on the adult complex but was open to vacating the site early to make way for a new operator.