INTERNET - MySpace could lift ban on commerce - Members can't peddle their wares on the social networking site. But that could change if it can profit from sales.

That may have something to do with the amount of skin they show on their MySpace pages. More obscured than their bawdy photo galleries, however, are their attempts to cash in on their online fame by using MySpace as a storefront to sell perfume, poker and soft-core porn.

The cyber pin-ups can't come right out and peddle their wares because MySpace officially bans most commerce. But any suitor would have little trouble finding online pathways to the three hotties by following "hints" they drop on their MySpace pages.

And these detours are the subject of intense debate at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch's prized Internet property.

MySpace bans commerce between its members because it doesn't want to jeopardize the corporate advertising that accounts for the vast majority of its profit. Allowing its members to promote their wares would only clutter up the place.

"We don't want users' pages to start looking like NASCAR," MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe said.

But behind the scenes, the issue is being hotly discussed as DeWolfe and his team of top executives at the biggest property within News Corp.'s Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media grapple with the imperative of squeezing more money out of MySpace. MySpace doesn't want to encourage the likes of Dolce, Billard and Tequila. But its ban on commerce is difficult to enforce. If the policing efforts fail, shouldn't it at least try to make money from the online sales it makes possible for others by taking some sort of a cut?

Murdoch, the News Corp. chairman who paid $580 million for MySpace's parent company in 2005, said this month that he wanted to drive up Fox Interactive profit by a factor of 20. Fox Interactive brought in $10 million in profit on sales of $550 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, but Murdoch said Aug. 8 that he would be surprised if that didn't jump to at least $200 million on sales of $1 billion in the year just begun.

While Murdoch is applying pressure from above, Facebook.com is rising up from below. Since the rival networking site dropped restrictions preventing anyone other than students from becoming a member, its registered-user rolls have soared far faster than those of MySpace. Facebook has fewer restrictions on advertising and person-to-person sales, forcing MySpace to reexamine its own practices. But MySpace can't afford a permissive policy for commerce if it comes at the expense of corporate advertising, its lifeblood.