What was born as Adult Sites Against Child Pornography is now known as the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, and with the name change comes a revamped Website and what's hoped to be more effective interaction with government and mainstream groups in the battle to eradicate online child porn, executive director Joan Irvine announced formally March 2.
"Adult Sites Against Child Pornography represented where we came from," Irvine told AVNOnline.com, when asked why the group changed its name. "However, with all the improvements in the system, the expanded reporting, the importance for the industry to be able to inform government of what the industry is doing to self regulate and to protect the children, it was important that we be prepared to do that, especially with (new Attorney General Alberto) Gonzales (ramping up the obscenity fight). This way, we could say the industry is already doing this."
Irvine acknowledged there had been discomfort with the term "child pornography" being in the group's original name, but she said most of the people who didn't like that were adult Website operators.
"If you look at 'Adult Sites Against Child Pornography'," she continued, "a lot of times if they had our full name on their system, a lot of people would miss the 'against.' And sometimes it could be filtered, it could cause some filtering software to (block or question) them. And I think it will now be easier to make it to our goal of being effective in combatting child pornography on the Internet. We didn't want our name to interfere with that goal at all."
Founded in 1996, ASACP now receives over five thousand reports of suspected child porn per month and notifies federal law enforcement, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and state attorneys general's offices of over three thousand validated child porn sites each year. Irvine said the group would now be able to broaden the reach of those so-called Red Flag reports.
"Many people in the industry wanted (us) to be more proactive," Irvine said. "(We) will send Red Flag reports to hosting, billing, and domain registrar companies, since sites with such images do not comply with the terms of service agreements of those businesses. (We) felt it was a more expedient method of potentially shutting down questionable sites."
Most recently, ASACP implemented a compliance system to monitor approved members, including the familiar ASACP seal—part of the concern that provoked the group's name change—in a technique similar to such groups as the Better Business Bureau and Truste.org which apply comparable self-policing/self-regulating guidance and oversight.
The ASACP system offers online validation of approved members and sponsors, and verifies compliance with the ASACP Code of Ethics by spidering for unacceptable temrs which could be taken to denote child porn.
Irvine credited the group's sponsors and approved members for the expanded mission and goal, the name change, and the revamped Website. "It’s been an intense few years of development, but we are finally positioned to maximize our years of experience and new technology,” she said.
For more information, visit the new ASACP on the Web or contact [email protected].
