LOS ANGELES - The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has declared June 4, "Label With RTA" Day.
"We'll be having a two-hour segment on the GFY webmasters board this Monday from noon to 2 p.m. P.S.T., which will include Brandon Shalton, our [chief technology officer], and Tim Henning, who is our compliance director, and the two of them will be fielding questions about the RTA Label during a mini-forum," said Joan Irvine, executive director at ASACP. "We'll then send out as press release with all of the information that will be learned during that discussion to all of all our sponsors and in turn ask them to send all of this information to their affiliates about the RTA Label and ask them to adopt it. It's a real community effort to get websites to adopt this very important label."
ASACP urges all adult sites that have not yet adopted its "Restricted to Adults" website label to do so. The organization also asks supporters to help spread the word to other companies and webmasters. Adult pay sites can contact their affiliates and encourage them to use the tag, while companies that provide billing, hosting, design, and other services can make the same pitch to their clients. ASACP even can provide a sample email for sending to affiliates.
There is already legislation pending in Congress that requires mandatory labeling by adult websites, but publicly demonstrating that the adult industry is capable of self-regulation can head that off, the organization believes. The RTA Label offers a chance for adult sites to pre-empt federal control. Plus, while a new law would only affect companies in the U.S., the RTA Label already is being adopted internationally.
ASACP has let Washington officials know there is no need for mandatory labeling of adult websites, Irvine said. "We've actually been in Washington and we have talked to Congress and the Senate to let them know what the adult community is doing regarding labeling and have explained that there is no need for mandatory labeling, because we as an industry can self regulate," Irvine explained. "And, we can do what no one country can do — and that's doing it on an international basis."
Henning explained there currently are many adult companies endorsing the RTA Label, including AVN Media Network, AdultFriendFinder, HotMovies, Crave Media, the Free Speech Coalition, Falcon Studios, EuroRevenue, NakedSword, NastyDollars, TopBucks, Cybersocket, TrafficDude, Paradise Media, Wicked Pictures, Rack, XBiz, XFanz, AEBN, LiveSex, TheBestPorn, Adult Industry News, ARS, Channel 1 Releasing, Badpuppy, and industry lawyers Lawrence Walters and Gregory A. Piccionelli.
Numerous parental filtering products and services also have incorporated the tag. These include CleanInternet, ContentProtect, CSWeb, Cyber Sentinel, FamiLink, FilterGate, iShield, Kidsnet (and all of BluePrint Data's other Internet Filtering products), Net Nanny, NetSweeper, ParentalControl Bar, ScreenShield, and SurfSafely.
The process of adopting an RTA Label is simple, Henning said. "We of course support labeling with ICRA, as well, and we think it's great even if you chose to adopt both," Henning commented. "ICRA requires you to label a specific type of content, and that can be even multiple types of content within one site, and the process is somewhat complicated and cumbersome. So, some webmasters were concerned with censorship and the labeling system with ICRA. One of the reasons we came up with RTA Label is that it is very simple to deploy on your website. It's just a small metatag that you have to add, and we're adding instructions on how to do that if your running UNIX. The RTA Label also only requires you to label your site as 'adult,' which will also alleviate some of the censorship for the webmasters."
In order to see how effective the ASACP RTA Label Day will be, the organization has adopted a monitoring system. "There are approximately 2,600 domains that RTA members have provided to us, so we spider those sites to see if there is an RTA Label, which allows us to track the adoption process," said Shalton. "One of the outcomes of the June 4 RTA Label Day, besides all of the promotion and awareness, is to see if the members put the RTA labeling on their site. "And whether they do or don't, our system will allow us to monitor our success rate."
Irvine explained that the ASACP is doing everything in its power in order for all adult websites to adopt the RTA Label. "We're approaching this process through all angles: We send out emails to all of our members and sponsors, we make phone calls, and we will continue to do so in order to get out our message and make this RTA Label a huge success."
Founded in 1996, ASACP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet. ASACP also works to help parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate material online.
