Battling child porn isn’t the only way the adult entertainment industry needs to protect children, according to the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP). The group is pushing the child protective side of its code of ethics, arguing that adult websites need to be more vigilant in helping to keep children from seeing adult entertainment.
“[We review] all the sites that apply to become ASACP Approved Members,” said executive director Joan Irvine April 13. “[Our] membership coordinator has noticed that a number of sites do not have a warning page that includes all necessary disclaimers, age verification, et cetera, and excludes images to prevent children from unknowingly viewing adult material including any access pages as recommended in [our] Best Practices. So we felt it important to remind the industry of the importance of this practice, especially in today’s political climate.”
Irvine emphasized that ASACP’s Best Practices code of ethics are only recommendations and not legal counsel, but she stressed that the stronger the guidance websites take from the code, the better chance websites have of proving their own self-regulatory ability to skeptical outsiders.
Intellectual property attorney Greg Piccionelli agreed, warning this month’s Phoenix Forum gathering that keeping children away from adult material is crucial. “Protection of the children is the one thing that people from both sides of the aisle agree on,” he told the gathering, referring to Congress and by extension state legislatures.
Piccionelli also recommended that hardcore and explicit imagery be kept strictly in the membership areas of adult sites, which typically require at least a credit card for access, a stance with which Irvine agrees.
ASACP is also recommending that adult sites consider, among other age-verification tools, BirthDateVerifier.com, the brainchild of First Amendment attorney Lawrence G. Walters, which helps a site block entry to the entire site until a user submits what Walters calls an electronic “affidavit” affirming the user’s birth date and is signed electronically.
“Step up in due vigilance,” Irvine told AVNOnline.com. “The reality is that this is where parents will be getting upset if their children view it. They’re going to call their minister, they’re going to call their Congressperson if their children unknowingly view it: ‘My kids got an email and the email had adult content in it—why are they sending this to my children?’ Parents are concerned, and the way that the industry can show their vigilance and that we are by and for adults is to be putting in some of these methods.”
ore information, visit ASACP on the Web, call (323) 965-1400, or email [email protected].
