I’m not an attorney. I played one in a bedroom once, but that’s the closest I’ve come to that particular role. So, please don’t consider the following to be a reliable substitute for professional legal advice. Do talk to someone who’s actually argued with an un-imaginary judge, in an actual courtroom.
During a U.S. Senate hearing about Internet pornography earlier this year it became clear that protecting children from inappropriate online material is of importance to the U.S. government.
The message handed down to us from on high was: "Prevent children from accessing explicit content online, or suffer the consequences."This was followed by something along the lines of: "We’re coming to get you."
Given the inherent complications of obscenity prosecutions, prosecuting obscene websites for torturing innocent children (as opposed to consenting adults) should be a far simpler endeavor for prosecutors, so my hat’s off to them for coming up with this; that was very clever. What that means for online adult websites, however, is you have to show due diligence in blocking your content from kids. Sure, those tricky little toddlers will probably tunnel their way in if they try hard enough, but making an effort to prevent them from doing so will earn you greater legal protection than doing nothing at all.
Two ways of protecting children from online adult content are Labeling and Age Verification.
Labeling your website involves adding a tag to your site code which labels the website or images as adult and allows filtering software and browsers to block user access. This empowers parents to determine what their children can and cannot access online according to their own principles.
The most popular means of labeling a website lies with an association called the Internet Content Rating Association. ICRA is an international, nonprofit organization which supports self-regulation of the Internet. ICRA provides ratings tags for websites and images which are generated by a free label generator.
The ICRA label generator allows one to specify that a website features nudity, sexual material, violence, profanity, potentially harmful activities such as gambling, drug use, the use of weapons, incitement of discrimination or harm against any individual or group based on sexual orientation, content that creates fear… and much more. Registering with ICRA (ICRA.org), creating ratings labels and adding them to your website’s code is easy, costs nothing, and exhibits a level of responsibility that may keep you out of serious trouble in the future.
Age Verification is complicated. You see, as things stand right now, nobody actually knows what this involves. Obviously it means you need to verify the age of a user before giving them access to adult content, but doing so effectively in the virtual world is virtually impossible.
The first step to take here is to make sure an underage surfer does not access explicit content accidentally. When someone goes to the first page of a website it’s in the best interests of that site operator to not throw an anal adventure in their face before first verifying the visitor’s age. At the very least put an Adult Content warning page as the doorway to your site (TheBestPorn.com is an example) and then research your additional options.
Numerous services and software companies have stepped into the marketplace with age verification solutions that weave with uncertainty from one extreme to another. How do you verify the age of someone who isn’t really there, especiallywhen there doesn’t really exist? Many previously used the Age Verification System (AVS), as some still do, to great effect. The general idea was; you’d grant free membership to a network of sites but required a credit card for age verification purposes (then you’d up-sell the hell out of them once they got inside.)
The credit card companies, however, are no longer supportive of being a means of age verification; they want to give credit cards to children.
So, with credit cards out of the running as a viable solution, we’re flooded with everything from the best warning page text to cross-referencing against international voter lists. As we all know, when it comes to horny men, you’re lucky if you get their real name at the best of times.
It’s fair to assume then that the more extreme your methods of age verification are, the more dedicated a visitor must be in order to continue your relationship. There’s a balance between risk and reward in all of this and nobody’s absolutely certain where to place the weight. The best you can do is discuss it with a real-life attorney and show due diligence in preventing kids from accessing your content. These days you’d be foolish not to.
Aly Drummond, a prominent and candid online adult industry veteran, is head of Webmaster Relations at online consumer guide, TheBestPorn.com. She can be reached at [email protected].
