LOS ANGELES — The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection participated in the second annual Tech Policy Summit in Los Angeles last week.
Joan Irvine, CEO of the ASACP, was a part of the "Protecting Kids in the Digital Age" roundtable, along with CBS News Analyst Larry Magid, MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam, Bebo Chief Security Officer Rachel O'Connell, and Progress and Freedom Foundation Senior Fellow Adam Thierer.
"It was truly an honor to be invited to speak on a panel with such illustrious company," Irvine said. "We all agreed that it is the responsibility of the technology industry and parents to protect children on the Internet. Government policy is a last resort, especially considering the Internet is international. No one government regulation would be effective. This perspective is validated in the Byron report and in Adam Thierer's "Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods."
The Tech Policy Summit brings together an exclusive group of industry insiders, government officials, nonprofit leaders and academic experts to examine critical policy issues impacting technology innovation and adoption.
The summit took place March 26-28 at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel in Los Angeles. The event featured speakers such as BusinessWeek columnist Steve Wildstrom, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, Congressman Howard Berman and Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Jon Dudas.
Many in the audience expressed support of the adult entertainment industry's effort to mark its sites with the "Restricted to Adults" label. Attendees were impressed by the website label's progress, including the fact there are 4 million page link-ins to RTALabel.org, more than 500,000 unique visitors to the site each month, and about 50 million daily hits to pages bearing the website label.
Founded in 1996, the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection is a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet, helping combat the sexual abuse of children and helping parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate material online.
For more information, visit ASACP.org.
