The news that Peter Townshend got listed as a sex offender for nothing worse than researching Internet child porn at its source has prompted Adult Sites Against Child Pornography to step up its reporting efforts and its counsel on safe surfing and avoiding child porn and its traps.
And their prime recommendations? According to a new round of safe-surfing guidelines they revealed May 7:
* View or join only professional adult sites with legal disclaimers saying the site is 2257 compliant or that all models are 18 or older at the time they were photographed or filmed.
* Do not view any adult site containing pictures of nude children or, for that matter, any children or models claiming to be over 18 but looking far younger.
Do not look at Websites or spam containing words that denote or imply children. These words include Adolescent, Child, Child porn, Child sex, Children, Kiddie, Kiddie porn, Kiddie sex, Lolitas, Minor, Minors, Pedoland, Pedophile, Pedophilia, Pre-teen, Pre-teen porn, Pre-teen sex, Teen13-17, Underaged.
* Look for ASACP's Approved Member logo on a site, stating that ASACP monitors the site consistently for child porn.
* If you suspect child porn, report it to groups like ASACP, the U.S. Customs Service by way of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the FBI (with whom ASACP has developed a working relationship), or local authorities.
* Do not search for child porn to report, or as part of a research project. As Peter Townshend learned the hard way, even searching for a research project is illegal, "and," ASACP emphasized, "you do not need to see the horrific pictures to know it is there. Once you see an image of a man penetrating a three-year-old baby, it never goes away."
"I never thought the ASACP mission would need to expand to provide advice on how to safely surf the Internet to the consumers of adult entertainment," said ASACP co-founder Alec Helmy in a statement. "However, this has changed with recent news about arrests for viewing child pornography and the announcement that Pete Townshend was placed in the Sex Offenders Register for just doing research for his campaign against child pornography. Not surprisingly, many are now fearful of viewing any adult sites."
Townshend, the longtime guitarist/composer for the Who and of his own solo music projects, came under fire earlier this year when it was learned he'd visited one child porn site with his own credit card in 1999, while researching child abuse on and offline for a book he was planning.
And ASACP, mindful enough of what happened just to Townshend, said that concerned people have asked the group whether they could be arrested just for seeing child porn by mistake, and how to avoid even an accidental viewing of child porn.
"Millions of Americans surf the Internet for adult entertainment," said ASACP executive director Joan Irvine. "It’s their constitutional right to enjoy this, just as it is the adult sites’ right to provide this content under freedom of speech rules. However, no one wants to end up in jail for a few minutes of fleeting pleasure in the privacy of their own home or office."
The child porners are getting even nastier about drawing the unsuspecting into their vortex. Late in April, a British man was acquitted of child porn after computer experts helped him convince the prosecution fourteen child porn images got onto his home computer not by his effort but by way of a Trojan horse program slipped into his system, most likely through a pop-up ad.
ASACP says it has received and reviewed over 70,000 reports of suspect child pornography, while reporting over 14,500 valid child porn sites to the FBI and U.S. Customs. Last month, ASACP received over 3,000 reports of suspect child porn, compared to 1,200 in April 2002.
For more information, contact [email protected].
