The Canadian magazine, The Beaver, is changing its name after 90 years because the title is too often censored by online porn filters, preventing it from reaching new online readers.

The Winnipeg-based magazine was launched in 1920 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade that led to the early exploration of Canada.

But in modern times, the term beaver has become slang for women's genitals.

Publisher Deborah Morrison told AFP: Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters at home or at work were blocking it. I've even had emails bounce back because I had inadvertently typed the term in the heading.

Nearly a century ago, it probably seemed the perfect name for a magazine about the fur trade and Canada's northwest frontier. There was only one interpretation for the word then.

The magazine that chronicles Canada's past will publish its last issue under the old banner in February/March. Thereafter, it will be known under the less evocative name of Canada's History.

The cause of the global rout of what are coyly called men's interest or adult magazines is obvious: printed porn cannot compete with the unlimited moving -- not to mention moaning -- pictures available gratis on the internet.

The Australian version of Playboy folded in 2000 after its sales sank to an average of about 25,000 copies per issue.

That left just three of the so-called P-mags still standing: Australian Penthouse, published by Gemkilt, and ACP Magazines' weeklies People and The Picture.

In the 1980s and 1990s these were among the most profitable magazines in the nation, with Penthouse and Playboy selling about 150,000 copies a month, The Picture up to 190,000 a week and People as many as 250,000 a week, according to people who worked for them.

In the latest audit, for the three months to September, the mags were anorexic shadows of their former full-figured selves, with The Picture averaging sales of about 63,000 copies an issue and People down to about 44,000.

Penthouse, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in Australia this year resigned from the audit in mid-2007 after its sales dived from 61,000 copies to 26,000 in just two years. Boxall, who is also a former Penthouse managing editor, predicts girlie mags may well disappear altogether within a decade.

Nutter MPs have demanded tighter rules on how so-called lads mags' are displayed in shops. The front pages of sexually explicit titles such as Loaded, Nuts and Zoo should be concealed by plastic bags and placed on the top shelf of newsagents, they said. They also suggested cinema-style age ratings should be put on the front cover.

The cross-party group of MPs called for urgent action to supposedly protect children and young people from the magazines and downmarket tabloids such as the Daily Sport. And they said if publishers and retailers failed to act, the Government should introduce tough laws.

The display of lads' mags is governed by a voluntary code of practice drawn up by the Home Office, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents and the Periodical Publishers Association. This recommends retailers display them well above children's eye level and away from children's titles or comics.

Labour MP Lindsay Roy and ten of his colleagues - including former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe and ex-not-so-Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell - believe the rules are being flouted.

Roy, who represents Glenrothes in Scotland, has tabled a Commons motion to put pressure on ministers to act. He said a review of the guidelines must consider the availability of sexually graphic publications to children and young people, the positioning of them on the shelves of retailers, the potential for concealing them in bags and consider the question of age-rating them. His motion said young people were not emotionally equipped to deal with seeing, and reading about, sexual images.

Sir Menzies said his natural inclination was against censorship...BUT...it is unacceptable such material could be displayed at the eye level of a six-year-old: The photographs and headlines on the front cover are pretty lurid. The present code does not seem to be working and so it needs to be tightened up considerably.