The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection on Thursday announced it will trademark and offer an “adults only” label. At press time, the ASACP had not yet worked out details on how its labeling system would work, but the coalition’s goal is to offer a “standard adult industry label” for better enabling parental filtering and to demonstrate the industry’s commitment to preventing children from viewing adult content.
ASACP recently activated an online Town Hall to open up the topic of self-labeling by adult sites for broad discussion, and to get feedback from all adult companies on the topic. The site will remain active until July 17.
According to ASACP Executive Director Joan Irvine, recent increased attention from and developments in Congress have forced the organization to accelerate its timetable.
“There are now at least three bills in Congress which attempt to make labeling mandatory,” says Irvine. “We have to move ahead now, since there will be a lot of work involved. ASACP will need to work with companies that provide filtering software, search engines and browsers to make sure that a standard label from the adult industry is recognized.”
Recently introduced Senate bills S3499, the Internet Safety Act, and S3432, the Project Safe Childhood Act, would require commercial websites to label all pages featuring adult content or face stiff prison terms and large fines.
“The increasing credibility ASACP has gained with government and mainstream companies, thanks to its child protection efforts on behalf of the adult entertainment industry, would carry over to an ASACP label as well,” says Irvine. “Plus, adult companies may be quicker to adopt the ASACP label, since it comes from an organization known to be supported by and friendly to the adult industry.”
The ASACP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet. ASACP battles child pornography through its CP reporting hot line, and by organizing the efforts of the online adult industry to combat the heinous crime of child sexual abuse.
This summer, the ASACP will host a “Last Chance, Label it or Lose it” panel on the subject of mandatory labeling at the XBiz Summer Forum and Internext Summer.
Among those scheduled to speak are industry lawyers Greg Piccionelli and Larry Walters, Free Speech Coalition Communications Director Tom Hymes, and ASACP technical consultant Brandon Shalton of Cydata Services.
