File photo of Mexican singer and actress Pilar Montenegro posing during a press conference at which she presented her Playboy cover in Mexico City. EFE/File

Playboy magazine says it will stop publishing pictures of completely nude women next spring.

Scott Flanders, the magazine's CEO, told The New York Times of the pending change in policy, justifying it by saying that "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture."

According to the Times, in September, one of the magazine's editors, Cory Jones, visited the founder of the decades-old magazine - 89-year-old Hugh Hefner - at the Playboy Mansion, where he lives and from where he still manages the magazine.

Jones, who was reportedly very nervous during the meeting, suggested to Hefner a radical change in the magazine's format: dropping the publishing of pictures of completely nude women, although they would still be featured in "provocative poses."

Hefner, who founded the magazine in 1953, agreed to the move and the format change will take effect next March.

The monthly magazine's top corporate officials acknowledge that profound shifts have occurred in their market and sexual images are now quite accessible via the Internet. As a result, pornographic magazines, including those that contain a significant amount of non-pornographic content, such as Playboy, have lost much of their impact and cultural relevance, they said.

Playboy's publication figures have plunged from 5.6 million issues per month in 1975 to 800,000 at present, according to figures from the Alliance for Audited Media cited by the New York daily, and efforts over the past three years to relaunch the publication have not had the hoped-for results.