PrivacyView is a software tool for anonymous web browsing that encrypts and conceals all traces of Internet activity, including temporary Internet files, cookies and browsing history. Users also can use the software to download content and store it in a secure location that cannot be accessed without a password.
According to PrivacyView founder Martin Greif, what started with a story in the St. Petersburg Times has blossomed into wider coverage, including an interview today with a local Fox News crew that could be carried nationally by the network.
While coverage of the story has largely surrounded the negative reaction by local politicians to the fact that PrivacyView has benefited from the taxpayer-funded incubator project, Greif told XBIZ that he sees a significant silver lining on the cloud of controversy.
“I don’t see this as a problem for us, but an opportunity,” Greif said. “The director of the media center [at the university] thinks this might go national.”
The incubator, which is located at USF’s Research Park, began accepting businesses as tenants in 2005. While the incubator’s primary source of funding is private grants and donations, it also has received $300,000 in subsidies from the city of Tampa and more than $1 million in funding from Hillsborough County since 2005, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
Greif told XBIZ that his company had benefited from subsidized rent and “access to university resources.” Greif said PrivacyView also has hired interns from the university.
Greif noted that while he doesn’t see the controversy surrounding his company’s participation in the incubator as a bad thing for PrivacyView, he is concerned about the potential impact on the USF technology incubator.
“The politicians certainly are having a field day with this,” Greif said. “It will be interesting to see if the county pulls their funding from the incubator over this.”
If the county does threaten to revoke its funding of the project, Greif said that his company will “gracefully step aside” and leave the project to end the controversy.
“If this is only going to affect PrivacyView, then I will stand my ground with full force,” Greif said. “But if this is going to affect other companies and start-ups, then we will leave the incubator because it is not fair to the other businesses to drag them into this.”
An employee of USF who declined to be identified told XBIZ that while the university supports the incubator project, “I’m going to understand why anybody has a problem with PrivacyView being part of [the incubator project].”
“We know that there is a difference between ‘naughty’ and ‘illegal,’ and what PrivacyView does is perfectly legal,” the university employee said. “That said — we can be as rational as we want to about this, but once the publicity has started, and once the university appears to be associated in any way with a company that proudly proclaims itself to be the No. 1 choice for secure and private porn surfing, that puts the university in an uncomfortable position. This is not the sort of attention we are happy to receive.”
The university employee also noted that PrivacyView has plenty of other potential uses — a fact that makes it much like other technologies used by consumers every day.
“The cable company that broadcasts into my house also offers adult movies on pay-per-view,” the university employee said. “So does DirectTV.”
Asked if he was concerned that the county might pull funding for the incubator project, the university employee said, “I haven’t heard any feedback of that kind, but the story just broke, so anything is possible.”
Commenting on the situation in the St. Petersburg Times, Rod Casto, director of the USF Research Foundation, was far less measured in his support for PrivacyView.
“I’m proud to have PrivacyView in my incubator,” Casto said. “I always remind people, commercial transactions on the Internet came out of a very undesirable sector. Way before eBay, people could look at porn on the Internet and pay for it. PrivacyView is a technology-based business, and that meets our criteria.”
As for Greif, the only thing that troubles him about the coverage of the story thus far is that mainstream news sources have raised the possibility of child pornographers, sexual predators and other criminals using PrivacyView to avoid detection by law enforcement.
“I was offended by that suggestion,” Greif said. “I’ve told every reporter I’ve talked to very clearly that if anybody is foolish enough to use the software to access [child pornography] sites, we will turn over our encryption keys to law enforcement so that person can be found and prosecuted.”
Greif said that he hopes all the controversy will result in the word getting out about PrivacyView, both to consumers and to potential affiliates, noting that the company’s affiliate program is alive and well, and poised to take advantage of all the attention the software is suddenly receiving.
“We’ve been sending out releases about it to people like the Daily Show and Howard Stern to see if they might be interested in talking to us about it,” Greif said. “To me, this whole thing is a positive.”
