Tampabay: Internet business joins sex hit list

The latest feud started this summer, when neighbors got suspicious about the anonymous run-down building on Kennedy Boulevard where the business has been operating quietly for three years. Tampa police and city zoning coordinator Gloria Moreda toured the offices, finding scattered computer equipment and four "studio rooms" equipped with computers, cameras, floodlights, mattresses and microphones.

Unlike the much-debated Voyeur Dorm, the Web site showing the daily activities of a group of women living in a Tampa dorm, women work in shifts for hourly wages at Executive Outcome Entertainment. According to city reports, they chat with Internet subscribers, strip on request, and go home after their shift ends.

In the city's avowed effort to thwart what it considers illicit fleshpots, out came its main weapon: the city code book.

Deeming it an adult business operating in an area zoned for general commercial use, the city charged Executive Outcome with a zoning violation. While the city's variance review board has rejected an appeal, company attorney Luke Lirot said he will take the case to the City Council in coming weeks.

Should that fail, Lirot said, he will take it to court, just as he has with other well-publicized clients accused of flouting the city code. Along with Voyeur Dorm, they include strip club kingpin Joe Redner, who has defied the city's ban on lap dancing, and John Melfi, who runs a swingers' club on Nebraska Avenue.

"I just don't think the First Amendment can really absorb this kind of violence," Lirot said. "The young ladies at Executive Outcome, this is a job to them. They show up, they communicate what their message is, and then they go home."

Considering the other cases he is handling, Lirot said, "as far as the danger this does to the First Amendment, I'd put this one at the very top." In addition to the models, Lirot said, the business operates other computer-related services such as Internet design and consulting.

City Attorney Jim Palermo said the city is merely enforcing its code, not making moral judgments. "They are not in one of the zoned areas that allows adult uses to operate," Palermo said. "Inside the office, we were calling it Voyeur Dorm II."

Jason Cronk, one of Executive Outcome's owners, said the company sells its Web sessions to Internet companies, which in turn sell the links to subscribers. "We're not like Voyeur Dorm," he said. "We want to stay low-profile. We don't want people knocking on our door, hassling us."

Cronk declined to discuss further details of the operation.

Lirot, the lawyer, said the city learned of the business from wildly erroneous reports by neighbors that bootleg porn films and snuff films were being made there. Lirot said Cronk is an entrepreneur working within the law.

"He's providing people with a living, and he's providing communication to people who obviously voluntarily want to receive that communication," Lirot said. "That doesn't make him any different from the New York Times, but for the content."

However, a recent ruling in federal court in the Voyeur Dorm case appears to bolster the city's case against Executive Outcome. The city ruled last year the dorm is an adult business that violates zoning laws by being in a residential neighborhood. Voyeur Dorm sued, alleging free speech and privacy violations. This month, U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew rejected the suit and ruled the dorm must move.

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