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Porn Queen Danni fights to hold record breaker crown

Why she deserves world's 'Most Downloaded Woman' title

Interview A catscrap is raging in the US between two females claiming the title of the world's Most Downloaded Woman. Danni Ashe, famed owner of adult site Danni's Hard Drive and one of the blondes involved in the battle, gives The Register her side of the story as well as an insight into the lucrative world of cyberporn.

Danni Ashe netted the title of Most Downloadable Woman from The Guinness Book of World Records last month. But the nude model - whose porn sites are visited by around three million peekers every month - had to dethrone Cindy Margolis, former Playboy actress and supermodel, in order to grab to title.

Margolis, now a late-night TV show host, lost the title when experts at Guinness were presented with a "telephone directory-sized piece of evidence" by Ashe to show she should be queen.

But Margolis was not happy, and in the end Guinness made the mistake of trying to please both the women - never the easy option. Guinness opted to split the title in two - Ashe would be the most downloaded female on a subscription site, and Margolis on a free site.

"Obviously it's a little frustrating," Ashe told The Register. "Internet records is a new area for Guinness, and it's a little unsure about it."

And what does the soft porn queen think about having to hand over half her title? "I'm still fighting for both titles...The problem I have is that I have a free site and it still beats her [Margolis'] numbers."

Ashe says she has re-sent her evidence to Guinness. Her image was downloaded 120 million times in 1999 from the Hotbox subscription site, but she claims her free porn site gets her as many downloads again - around 121 million last year. This compares to 53 million for the cindymargolis.com free site.

Ashe's gratis cyberporn service, danni.com, gets an average of 13 million hits every day, and out of the three million visitors to her two sites, most opt for the freebie. "The vast majority of people surfing the Net don't get out their credit card," said Ashe.

Despite this, Ashe shuns online advertising, and has a solid base of 27,000 subscribers - at $19.95 per month each - keeping her in business. Last year the company saw sales of $5.2 million, and $1.5 million profit. This year sales are expected to reach $7 million - no forecasted profit figures were given, but profit is normally between 25 per cent to 35 per cent of revenue, according to Ashe. Subscribers are growing by around two million per year.

And after the cyberbabe battle is over, what next?

Ashe said the Southern California-company, which has 42 staff, may decide to sell the technology it has recently developed to tackle online credit card fraud. It is also getting into Web hosting.

Since she went online in 1995, Danni reckons her image has been downloaded more than 841 million times. ®

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