German brothels are offering customers the chance to sleep with as many prostitutes as they like for a single fee, in recession-busting deals criticised as immoral by politicians.

The "flat-rate sex" promotions, which are based on all-you-can-eat restaurants, have been introduced by brothel owners in a bid to revive trade that has fallen around 30 per cent in the economic downturn.

Other imaginative offers include rebates for pensioners and people on benefits, 10 per cent discounts for men who arrive by bicycle or public transport, and free shoe-polishing for customers who stay overnight.

But it is the flat-rate deals – which are priced as low as £60 (€70) – that have attracted particular controversy in a country where prostitution is legal and generally well-tolerated.

The promotion is popular [with] brothel owners who have to pay their sex workers a fixed daily wage whether or not they have any clients...

The New York Times reports that Baghdad is now “secure enough to sin.”

“Vice is making a comeback,” says the article, in a city “once famous for 1,001 varieties of it.” Of course, the three primary forms of “vice” are sex, drinking, and gambling. The article reports a noticeable increase in all three.

Any sociologist would say this is a sign that locals are feeling safer, that there’s more money in circulation, and that people are trusting each other more. Given the city’s recent agonies, those are all good, regardless of how you feel about “vice.”

Sex has become more acceptable in Baghdad in two ways. Abu Nawas Park has been reestablished as a lover’s lane. No longer afraid of being blown up by suicide bombers, young people are now willing to be seen making out in public.

And there’s apparently an increase in prostitution. Nightclubs have reopened, hotels are busy, the streets are less scary. And so women are back to selling sex, men are buying, and life goes on...

If you want to watch Nick having sex with a prostitute, he's happy to let you.

The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet.

``Sex is no taboo,'' Nick says, though he asked that his last name not be used. ``You have to free your mind.''

Big Sister is marrying 21st-century technology with the world's oldest profession to profit from the public's appetite for ever-more graphic reality TV. Since 2005, more than 15,000 men have taken up the offer of free sex in return for 15 minutes, or less, of fame, according to the brothel.

These car parks have privacy screens - "a bit like stalls", says Ms Timmermans - between which prostitutes can conduct their business in their clients' cars.

Security cameras monitor the car parks and social services provide advice, medical information and condoms.

"You can talk to a social worker, you can get a shower, a cup of coffee, things like that," says the ICRSW's coordinator.

"I have never heard of anyone ever being hurt, or at least seriously hurt, in a zone."

According to the foreign ministry, "the introduction of these zones has significantly increased the safety of street walkers".

Government figures from 2004 showed that people driven into high-risk prostitution by drug addiction - a phenomenon common among EU prostitutes - made up only about 10% of all prostitutes in the Netherlands.

This is thanks to good drug outreach programmes, Ms Timmermans suggests.

And she adds that the attitude of the country's police - "they are great in general" - is also an important factor.

Unfortunately, suppressing human desires doesn't make them go away, it just makes them go underground. Much like prohibition in the Twenties, outlawing prostitution created a whole industry of vice, complete with disease, poverty and drugs. After two centuries of crackdowns, it's apparent that those laws aren't working. Because prostitutes still are.

For the first purpose-built brothel in Antwerp's new "tolerance zone" Franky De Coninck, Villa Tinto's owner, hired Quinze&Milan --a famous Belgian designer who has created furniture for Brad Pitt's LA mansion and for Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Library-- after reading in a newspaper that Arne Quinze had always dreamt of designing an upmarket bordello: "It's the biggest business in the world, it's always seen as not so beautiful. But if you show the beautiful part of it, I think you can build an erotic style."

Mr. Quinze set up a consultation committee of prostitutes. They asked him to install red and black neon lights that would illuminate the women inside the display windows but also hide blemishes. Tilted mirrors on the floors of their windows ensure that they can vet clients as they approach and decide whether to open their windows for business.

Like scientific laboratories and military facilities, biometric technology has been incorporated into the brothel's design. To prevent an approved prostitute from handing over her room to an illegal one, she has to press her finger on her room's sensor every hour, or the electricity and heating automatically shut down.

In case of trouble from clients, prostitutes can press a panic button next to their bed, which calls police (there's even a police station "on site") and triggers a red flashing light in the brothel's control room.

A German company is looking to cash in on an expected boom in the sex trade during next year's soccer World Cup with a 60-room brothel a walk away from Berlin's Olympic Stadium, German media reported on Friday.

Named after the virgin huntress of Greek mythology, the "Artemis" complex is due to open for business in September with whirlpool, sauna, cinema, buffet restaurant and a staff of 100 prostitutes, mass circulation daily Bild reported.

"This is no flash rip-off joint where clients are taken for a ride," a spokesman for the Artemis GmbH investment company behind the project, told the newspaper.

Prostitution is legal in Germany in designated areas. Dortmund, one of 11 other cities to host World Cup matches, has said it will install drive-in wooden "sex garages" in time for the tournament in a bid to keep the trade off the streets.

A German magazine sold out in a day after offering readers vouchers for a free sex session at a brothel in Austria.

Readers of the Freizeit Magazine said they were shocked when they opened the mag to find a full page advert for a brothel in Salzburg.

Prostitution is legal in both countries and the ad promised "half an hour free sex with a lady of your choice" for anyone who cut out the coupon and brought it with them on their next visit.

Increased competition amid the economic doldrums means the sex clubs are resorting to wilder antics, younger women and cheaper prices.

Phone up that call-girl flier in the mailbox, and you're likely to get a housewife working part-time for extra cash. An estimated 5 percent of Tokyo's middle-school and high-school girls have turned tricks in order to buy the designer handbags and latest fashions that are harder to afford but still viewed as trendy necessities.

The tougher competition has upped the pressure on the staid world of Yoshiwara, where prices are buoyed by the overhead of equipping each room with a bed, bath, television, air conditioner and perhaps even a sauna or karaoke machine.

At the cramped pink salons jammed into back-street tenement buildings, customers are often separated by no more than a curtain....

Train stations are surrounded by "pink salons" promising sexual massage and "telephone clubs" where men line up liaisons with teenage girls.

Convenience stores stock brothel guides as thick as telephone books. Household mailboxes are stuffed with unsolicited "delivery health" ads emblazoned with color photos of lusty schoolgirls tearing off their plaid skirts....

Soaplands duck the law by billing themselves as assisted bath houses. The tacit understanding is whatever else happens inside is a matter between consenting adults.

"Today I've been doing 'tokkan koji' (urgent rush jobs) from morning to night. That's why my back's been killing me."

The above expression might be used in a conversation between women who work in soapland brothels in Tokyo's Yoshiwara district. To enlighten readers of Shukan Jitsuwa (6/30) to the latest on-the-job slang term, Nami, 23 met the magazine's reporter at an Ikebukuro coffee shop, where she divulged that "tokkan koji" meant climbing atop the customer and moving her hips in a frantically rapid motion to make customer ejaculate more quickly. These rush jobs are likely when the girl is not in the mood to dispense a "real fight," i.e., engaging in slow, sensual intercourse that resembles authentic tender, loving care.

Another term, used in high-class soaplands, is "soku-soku-soku," which means giving the customer immediate attention without any delays. First, as soon as he enters the private cubicle, comes oral sex (soku-shaku), followed by intercourse (soku-bed) and upon which she provides anilingus (soku-anaru).

The initials NS stand for "no skin," i.e., dispensing with a condom. Riding bareback is also be expressed as "Sapporo." Sapporo, you see, is a brand of beer. In Japanese "draft," as in "draft beer" is referred to as "nama," which also means "raw," i.e., without wearing protection.

Soapland hookers, by the way, are generally classified as "koibito-ha" (affectionate lover types) and "shigoto-ha" (technicians).

According to a "fashion health" masseuse named Saki, 24, when a customer is unable to achieve erection, girls in the sex trade refer to his flaccid reproductive member as "jaguchi" (faucet).

A man's foreskin is referred to as "tennen-gomu" (natural rubber). A penis that refuses to ejaculate no matter how much it is encouraged is called "kemuri" (smoke).

"That's because you yank on it so vigorously you'd expect it to catch fire," Saki giggles.

A customer who spills his seed with practically no encouragement, on the other hand, is called a "potto" (pot), a reference to the electric thermos pots used in homes that spout water merely by pressing the button lightly.

"It's impossible to talk about prostitution like it's a thing, an institution. It is in a sense, but it's a really a collection of human interactions. It's like marriage that way - an institution, but one made up of many, many sets of two people. I was married once, and you know what - it wasn't a good experience for me. Does that make the entire institution of marriage bad? I don't think so.

So I don't go along with the theory that since some women are victimized by being forced to be prostitutes - and yes, this does happen, I'm not denying it – that if a woman chooses to be a prostitute, she's supporting the victimization of those other women. That doesn't follow. I also believe in a woman's right to have an abortion. There are women who are forced to have abortions. Does that mean that we should ban all abortions, everywhere, because those women's rights were violated? No. It's free choice, or the lack therof, that makes something right or wrong.

I don't think anyone has a "right" to buy sex. So, if there were no one who was willing to sell it, well, would-be customers would just be out of luck. But there are women who are willing to sell it, and I do think women should have the right to sell sexual access to their bodies. It's a question of ownership. Do I own this body I'm in or not? I think I do. And I think that as the owner and operator, I should the right to do with as I see fit. This dovetails with my beliefs about abortion rights – it's my body, it's my choice. As one of my favorite authors Pat Califia once said, "What I choose to do with my freedom may appall you, but it is none of your business."

I chose sex work because I've always felt strongly connected to my own sexuality and I know that I have a gift for understanding and nurturing other people's as well. I think the US is a very sex-negative society. I don't like that. As long as people are taught to hate and fear their own sexuality, they will hate and fear the people who stir those feelings in them. Part of what I try to teach people is some greater acceptance of their own sexuality, and I think I've had good success with that. I think I'm lucky to be self-employed in a career where I can do something I'm good at, something I think is worthwhile, and be paid well for it. I have total control over how and when and where I work, and I like that."

SAN FRANCISCO - The 25 students in jeans and T-shirts could have been in any career that requires hustle. The classes, covering topics such as effective marketing, stress reduction and legal issues, could have been part of any professional development seminar.
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But this was "Whore College," and any illusion it was just another corporate how-to for young go-getters abruptly ended at the sex toy display and was stripped away for good during a graphic demonstration that put a whole new twist on the concept of hands-on training.

1. WebWhores defy stereotypes.
We are not just a bunch of dumb slutty moneygrubbing bitches. Most of us are not whoring ourselves out of desperation. We come in all different shapes and sizes and from different backgrounds. There is nothing you can assume about a WebWhore except that she has balls (figuratively speaking).

2. WebWhoring empowers women.
We can set our own hours, our own prices, and our own limits. We have the potential to make more money while we have more fun than we could in a "respectable" career field. We can turn off the computer if we feel violated or degraded or put-out by someone (which actually happens far less than in "respectable" career fields).
Those of us with families can take care of them without it interfering with our jobs. We can safely have fun playing dress up, good girl, bad girl, etc. and exploring who we are and what we like. We can have creative/financial/organization control over our own businesses.