Protect minors use the RTA and ICRA do your part !!!!

Thanks Lars for your initiative in supporting the labeling.

I hope that everyone cooperates as it is in their and all of our interests in the adult industry.

ASACP called on various legislators in Washington DC this year to inform them that there is no need for mandatory labeling because the industry is capable of self-regulation plus that the industry could do this on an international basis – something that no country can do.

We even met with staff at the Senate Commerce Committee. This is the committee that told Paul Cambria in January ’06, ‘either you label or we will do it for you!”

In addition, we have informed a few lobbying/advocacy groups that are against ‘mandatory” labeling about RTA – Restricted to Adults. They believe RTA will help with their efforts to prevent mandatory labeling.

We need to demonstrate that the industry is adopting RTA in order to prove to the government that the industry can self-regulate. We need companies to add the RTA meta-tag (<meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA">).

This is an example of one bill that is pending; note the ENFORCEMENT.

Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2007 (Introduced in Senate)

S 1086 IS

110th CONGRESS

1st Session

S. 1086

To provide stronger protections to parents regarding their children's access to sexually explicit material over the Internet.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

April 11, 2007
Mr. BAUCUS (for himself and Mr. PRYOR) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A BILL

To provide stronger protections to parents regarding their children's access to sexually explicit material over the Internet.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2007'.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON COMMERCIAL WEBSITES CONTAINING MATERIAL THAT IS HARMFUL TO MINORS.
(a) In General- No person who operates a website located on the Internet where such website is primarily operated for commercial purposes may knowingly, and with knowledge of the character of the material, place material that is harmful to minors on such website unless--

(1) the home page, or any other page or screen that is initially viewable by a visitor to such website, does not include any material that is harmful to minors;

(2) access to any such material is restricted to a specific set of individuals through an age verification requirement; and

(3) the source code of such website contains the content description tag assigned to such website by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

(b) NTIA Description Tag- Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration shall develop a common content description tag that--

(1) will provide consumers with advance warning and information about the content of any website that contains material that is harmful to minors;

(2) will allow consumers, based on such tag, to block or filter access to, and display of, any website that contains material that is harmful to minors; and

(3) is technologically capable of being embedded into the source code a website.

SEC. 3. REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS.
(a) In General- Any operator of a website who seeks to register such website, or who is required to re-register any existing website with ICANN, shall, at a minimum and in addition to any other information required by ICANN, provide to ICANN the following:

(1) The name of such operator.

(2) The Uniform Resource Locator or URL for such website.

(3) The Internet Protocol address for such website.

(4) The content description tag of such website under section 2(b).

(b) NTIA Action Required- Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Commerce, acting through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, shall--

(1) enter into any memorandums of understanding, agreements, and contracts with ICANN, as may be necessary to carry out the requirement under subsection (a); and

(2) make any amendments to any existing memorandums of understandings, agreements, and contracts with ICANN, as may be necessary to carry out the requirement under subsection (a).

SEC. 4. ENFORCEMENT.
(a) Violation- Any person who violates this Act shall be subject to such civil penalties as the Secretary of Commerce shall prescribe.

(b) Enforcement- The Secretary of Commerce shall have the power to enforce the provisions of this Act, including--

(1) any requirements or limitations applicable to a registrant under section 3; and

(2) the imposition and collection of civil penalties under subsection (a).

SEC. 5. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act, the following definitions shall apply:

(1) ICANN- The term `ICANN' means the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

(2) INTERNET- The term `Internet' means the combination of computer facilities and electromagnetic transmission media, and related equipment and software, comprising the interconnected worldwide network of computer networks that employ the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol or any successor protocol to transmit information.

(3) MATERIAL THAT IS HARMFUL TO MINORS- The term `material that is harmful to minors' means any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene, or that a reasonable person would find--

(A) taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest;

(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors--

(i) an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact;

(ii) an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act; or

(iii) a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and

(C) taking the material as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

(4) MINOR- The term `minor' means any person under 18 years of age.

(5) SOURCE CODE- The term `source code' means the combination of text and other characters comprising the content, both viewable and non-viewable, of a webpage, including any--

(A) website publishing language;

(B) programming language;

(C) protocol or functional content; and

(D) successor languages or protocols.

(6) TAG- The term `tag' means a descriptive keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (such as a picture, article, or video clip), that--

(A) describes such information; and

(B) enables keyword-based classification and filtering of such information as required under this Act.

(7) WEBSITE- The term `website' means any collection of material placed in a computer server-based file archive so that it is publicly accessible over the Internet using hypertext transfer protocol, or any successor protocol.

Labeled

That age verification thing is bullshit, how can that stop a minor that wants to see porn? Hell, even I enter a bogus date on those forms to enter the site as quickly as possible.

Instead of a bill, 'let's make it easy!"

"(3) MATERIAL THAT IS HARMFUL TO MINORS- The term `material that is harmful to minors' means any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene, or that a reasonable person would find--"


So what they are saying is that if someone finds material entertaining... That person is UNREASONABLE???

WTF is this bullshit?

Where the fuck is our Freedom of Speech? Since WHEN did our Government become our children's parents?

"Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"

One of our liberties is "FREEDOM OF SPEECH". How can we secure something for our posterity if we take it away from them?

It is up to the parents to teach, shield and/or educate our children. As a society is it also our duty to do this WITH the parents. This is NOT a Government job! "We the People of the United States..." Not "We the Government of the United States...".

Wisen up people! This is a trojan horse!

Soon you will have to register yourself as a Sexual Predator because you push porn, and you will have to notify your neighbors whenever you move to a new area.

If this passes, it is yet another stab at our industry and our UNALIENABLE RIGHTS as U.S. Citizens!

Welcome to the Dictatorship people!

Where can I file a complaint against this act?

http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=22...rchstring=FOSI

ASACP, FOSI Respond to .XXX Decision

(note, ICRA is changing its name to Family Online Safety Institute)

LOS ANGELES ? ASACP Executive Director Joan Irvine has responded to a recent statement made by Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), regarding ICANN's decision not to establish a .XXX sTLD.

Balkam sent his statement via email to a long list of industry figures and nonprofit organizations.

Irvine said she is concerned that Balkam's statement might cause some to believe that the industry has made no effort to self-regulate, and was compelled to issue a response to clear up the matter.

Balkam told XBIZ that he had seen the proposed .XXX sTLD as a tremendous opportunity for the proliferation of online content labeling, and a way for the adult industry to get behind labeling in order to avoid further government interference.

Balkam wrote in his statement that ICANN denying a .XXX sTLD was a step in the wrong direction in the efforts to protect children from adult online material.

"We believe [ICANN] has missed a great opportunity to increase the use of content labels and thus make filtering and other child protection efforts more effective," Balkam said. "The proposal was actually an important self-regulatory effort in the field of online safety, and passing it up only hurts parents and children."

ASACP Executive Director Joan disagreed with Balkam's remarks.

"Mr. Balkam and FOSI are serious about protecting children, and we respect that," Irvine wrote. "However, ASACP does not agree that ICANN?s rejection of .XXX represents a failure to protect children online, because we do not believe that a .XXX sTLD would have further enhanced the online adult entertainment industry?s ongoing voluntary efforts to protect children."

Irvine assured readers that ASACP favors self-regulatory labeling of adult websites ? shown by the recent launch of its voluntary RTA (Restricted to Adults) labeling initiative ? but that the key word is "self-regulatory."

"The RTA label is voluntary, free to use and universally available to any website that wishes to clearly and effectively label itself as being inappropriate for viewing by minors," Irvine said. "Adult companies have begun adopting the RTA label."

Balkam said the RTA labels are a "good effort," but that they don't have the same amount of detail that his ICRA labels offer. He said RTA's potential weakness is that they generally aren't backed by the online industry, and not enough adult sites currently use it.

"Seventy percent of websites that use ICRA labels actually have no sexual content," Balkam said.

He said the ICRA labels are recognized by many Internet filters, whereas RTAs are not. However, Irvine pointed out that RTA was only recently launched, and has in fact been steadily gaining industry backing, while more and more sites continue to adopt it.

Balkam said FOSI has created a customized Google search engine that would recognize ICRA-labeled sites in its searches. This, Balkam said, could be used as a positive incentive to use the labeling system.

Additionally, Balkam said FOSI currently is working with the World Wide Web Consortium to develop a new format and standard of content labeling. Dubbed "Powder," the format would provide search engines with richer site descriptions, and users can set its preferences to recognize and leave out certain content. Powder can essentially be used as an Internet filter.

Another issue Balkam brought up in his statement was the proposed funding of the International Foundation for Online Responsibility that would have come from .XXX registration fees.

Irvine responded by reminding readers that the work the foundation would have done is one of the goals ASACP and the Free Speech Coalition already strive to accomplish ? setting up best practices and child pornography reporting standards.

"ASACP will continue to work with the online adult entertainment industry to promote effective self-regulation that protects children," Irvine said. "We will also continue to work with organizations like FOSI that are dedicated to the same goals as ASACP."




Fight the copy/paste!

you see this part:

(iii) a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and


rest of the (i) , (ii), and first part of (iii) were already 2257 language.... this goes further...

guess pages that have this pic will need a label.. or is a statue considered simulated? LOL



Fight the bxxbies!

What id you popup your sites in spyware?

I am just trying not to giggle when the industry is getting moral guidance from Lars. Like asking Taggart about gays and druggies.

Way out of line, Alex. How you may feel about Lars or AFF is beside the point and a juvenile comment to make under the circumstances.

Seems to me that ICRA is a little concerned that RTA might become a more utilized solution and he's trying to protect his turf. Of course I skimmed so maybe I didn't get the gist of it.

In any case, taking a few minutes to put up one or both isn't a bad idea here.

Federal Judge Declares COPA Unconstitutional, Issues Permanent Injunction Against Enforcement (http://www.ynot.com/modules.php?op=m...icle&sid=26692)

From the actual document:
1. The General Availability of Age Verification Technologies
138. From the weight of the evidence, I find that there is no evidence of age
verification services or products available on the market to owners of Web sites that actually
reliably establish or verify the age of Internet users. Nor is there evidence of such services or
products that can effectively prevent access to Web pages by a minor.
(http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documen...s/07D0346P.pdf)

Labeling with RTA gives parents another tool to be parents; most parental control filtering software recognizes RTA. (http://rtalabel.org/partners.php)

Kimmy, considering where on the net I can find AFF ads, they have way bigger things to worry about than a tag on their sites. Helping to keep the biggest torrent sites online certainly doesn't do anything to limit the amount of free porn being consumed by children.

The tags are a good idea, bordering on great (especially because a single tag will effectively cover all sites, you don't have to re-register every domain in the world), and I am considering do this for all of my sites going forward.

This is a trojan horse people. Tagging your site will also make it easy for companies, and other network admins to filter out your "Adult Content". Don't think that it can only be used for filtering for Children.

If this gets passed as "Law", and we are forced to put tags on our sites. We all put up tags on our sites... Except for EVERYONE overseas, and the CP, Bestiality, Death sites, because we can't police the world, which means that children are still at risk, no matter what we do.

This "Law" does nothing to protect children. It is disguised that way for some other reason. Possibly more restrictions on our industry, more ripping away of our Freedom of Speech and other anti-constitutional acts that the Dictatorship of America wants to implement.

Who decides what is "obscene"??

Extremists might say that anything that isn't a married couple in missionary style sex is "Obscene".

Wake up!

Voodoo, actually, there is an interesting twist on this deal: ICANN being based in the US could be forced to comply with US law... which in turn could mean that all domains that are leased from ICANN could require tags as part of the contract of leasing.

Potentially the US may have found the way to wag the dog, so to speak.

as a former Director of IT for a corporation, that's exactly what i would use it for.. in addition to the various black/block lists out there, and hardware vendors who have their own lists for blocking.

its not conspiracy that ICRA or even RTA labelling can be used to filter-out.. that's the whole point.



its not the end of the world if there was such a mandatory law passed in the U.S.. and it would not mean an exodus overseas.

bandwidth and hosting is cheaper here, and businesses will just follow the law and do the labeling...



placing a label on your website does not limit YOUR freedom of speech.

placing a label allows an adult who DOESN"T WANT TO SEE porn, which is their freedom of choice, or to not allow their children to see such, the ABILITY to block.

you want to market to an adult surfer who doesn't want porn? its a waste of time anyways..

uh.. FCC... uh FTC... uh Attorney General.... Visa/MC could do it, search engines could do it.. ISP could do it... "They" could do it


and if they want to program their VCHIP to block shows, or they want to use filters to ensure no SEO/marketing trickery popups in their face.. that is their right.. they can live in their narrowly focused world, that is their choice.

technology is about enabling choices.. whether it is to see porn or to not see porn.

if webmasters want to wait for a mandatory law to be passed, then that is their choice.. but by labeling, it does give advocates alot more room to negotiate and lobby congress about not doing drastic measures and to not create more headaches like some of the details of 2257 regs...

congress looks at the labeling done with movies and with music and with TV, and say why not websites.


Fight the being part of the problem and not part of the solution!

Based on various discussions and recent events, we doubt that ICANN would go along with this.

As far as international sites, we are talking to our international members and they are starting to label with RTA which was the reason why ASACP attended AOE in Amsterdam. Also, Eros Association, the trade group in Australia is already supporting it.

We named the label "RTA - Restricted to Adults" for a few reasons. First, such a term needed to be trademarked/certification marked. ESRB (the gaming association) had already trademarked "Adults Only" as a certification mark. Second, we wanted a label that made 'no judgement" on the content except that the owner of that site does not want children to view their site. The use of RTA - Restricted to Adults does not have to be limited to use by the adult entertainment industry.

That's a great program.

Ya know, I initially found this thread to be a surprising yet welcome sign of personal and professional responsibility here at GFY.

Predictably, some posters to this thread have brought it back to typical GFY status.

I remember my pal Lensman addressing the group in Atlanta a few years back, where he cautioned that it wasn't the government, conservatives or religious zealots we needed to worry about, "it's the webmaster sitting in the seat next to you: he's pissing in the well we all drink from..."

Those webmasters aren't just next to you at shows; in fact, many well-pissers can't afford to go to the shows – but they all post on the boards, fucking things up for the industry at large and giving newbies the wrong message.

In fact, if my agenda was to harm Internet porn, I'd set up a few accounts on boards like GFY and tell all of you to fight for your "freedom of speech" and to not label, not use any warning pages or age verification, and to spam little kids so you can make more sales: Screw the government and what's right – do whatever you want!!! Idiots.

FWIW, thanks to those that are doing the right thing, supporting RTA and ASACP, and operating in a way that protects our future.

My sites use RTA. If that's not enough, fuck it, I don't care that much.

I was putting ICRA labels on my sites back in the 90's on the basis that even if most parents didn't bother to filter their childrens' surfing, at least I was giving them the means to do so. I also linked to their site, although I have been less inclined to do that since I noticed they added a popup.

I'm sure I must be missing something here, but what exactly is the point of another labelling body? Won't that make things more confusing both for labellers and parents, etc?

I must admit too that my scepticism radar went on high as soon as I saw so many webmasters gung-ho for something which on the face of it is ICRA with less precise definitions. It's not as if labelling is new or that what already exists is inadequate, so why the enthusiasm?

the responsible webmaster will take proactive steps to keep minors and others not wanting erotica off his sites.

have used icra.org for years.

you do lose a little business by labeling (some guys at work can't access your sites because of corporate filtering) but it is the right thing to do.

Support something that was created and supported by the industry, or use some external labeling system that has their own agenda... ICRA backed .XXX strongly and was looking to be more involved in IFFOR policies.


Fight the sidelines!

RTA - Restricted to Adults was introduced only after much discussion within the industry, tradeshows, press, etc - http://rtalabel.org/news.php.

The adult entertainment industry is a professional and legal industry. As our industry is becoming more mainstream, in order to be recognized as the professional and powerful industry as it is, it's important for it to take its place with other successful industries. One of the first steps is to do what other industries do: have their own Best Practices, labels, etc.

This is my understanding of the 2 tags; please correct me if I am wrong.

ICRA can easily be rolled out network wide, server to server, using Apache. Apache would also be able to include the ICRA file on all new pages pushed daily. It protects both HTML and non-HTML content.

RTA only protects HTML content. And requires one of these 3 implementation scenarios:

1) Rewrite every HTML and PHP file, inserting an include reference to a shared file which contains the meta tags. We would only run this once, but to rewrite every file will take a while. And testing will have to be intensive to make sure we don?t screw up files. Any new files will have to be written to use the new include file, or else those pages won?t be tagged.

2) Instruct Apache to send all requests for HTML and PHP files through PHP (or some other engine), which will then dynamically insert the meta tags, ?on the fly.? This will add extra processing time to every page request, potentially causing the servers to work harder.

3) Rewrite all HTML by hand.

Are there other better options for implementing RTA? And when do they propose to protect images and other non-HTML content?

Yes. Well while you are cheering for things "organized and supported by the industry", I seem to recall .XXX having still undeclared sources of support from within the industry.

You did bring up an angle I hadn't thought about. But that said, when bodies purporting to represent the industry come into being after they have been sold to the industry (a term which in my book includes nobodies like me), then I might well support them. Until then, they are just more vested interests with their own agendas, no more likely to have priorities which coincide with mine, than any other organization.

They need to be worrying about the torrent sites. That is where kids go these days to get free porn, and they are all hip to this. Its where they steal their music, games and... PORN. Just ask any male teen with a computer and he will tell you this.

I will not label my sites with RTA or ICRA unless forced by law to do so. I don't feel this will solve anything and could in fact backfire.

using the same mod_rewrite methods as ICRA described is same as you could do with RTA.. both are embeded in the HEAD portion of the html document, so they are the same in implementation

HTML documents is what web browsers come across. ICRA doesn't work with other medias either.


whatever method you would have done to implement ICRA labeling, you would do with RTA.. whether you did a header include, used a program to create static pages, etc..... use sed/awk, etc

whether for icra/rta or not, using a script to create static pages is less taxing on CPU..

i have my script create static pages for 5000 websites and load them up on virtual hosts, etc.. i can make a change in the header, or a banner slot or an affiliate link and just recompile everything.. making static pages to less overhead on a server.


that's just painful, no matter what the edits are if you are doing alot of domains.


what kind of "protection" are you looking to do for images or non-html content?



Fight the comparisons!

the idea of protecting "kids" from adult material.. is really aimed at the younger ages.. less than 12..

"teens" are smart to remove blocks, installed software, etc, and are also more able to handle the images then a child.


Fight the prepubescent!

I remember when ICRA had a neat little script you could download and fill in all the pertinent info and it would spit out your code. Now they want me to register and send "Personal Info".

Figure the odds of them not folding under the weight of the DOJ for this info. This is taken from their TOS:

Fight the Exactly!

Label people , its the right thing to do.

Moral guidance from Lars He doesn't have any morals

Yes True, and we all know who pays those sites bills

What are your thoughts on Torrent sites, and advertisers who earn money from pirated / stolen content?

giving parents a false sense of security is silly..

Do you have children ? would you let your kid surf the net unmonitored with filters turned on ?

no responsible parent would....

so in essense , rating your site is 100% useless. other than to give yourself and others a false sense of security

rating childrens sites as childrens sites , NOW THAT MAKES SENESE

If you want to sleep sound at night stop advertising on torrent sites that trade child porn.

Self-regulation has it's benefits, but it's simply not realistic to think that either of these labels will have a significant impact. A nice gesture to the community, sure... but real results?

Even if this plan was law, you're still leaving out a potentially infinite number of outlets. Websites hosted in nations that don't comply (where other decency laws might not be as strict (so, in actuality, you'd be indirectly promoting that kind of content to the desktops of the underage - as I think was already pointed out)), Torrent Sites, old-school BBS'es (and other file-sharing mediums), etc.

You can't regulate the world. If a kid wants it, he's going to get it.

I'm with Voodoo, Smokey, et al on this one.

Label "kid-friendly" sites... and allow people to exclude browsers/computers from surfing outside that network of sites.

Doing it the way this thread suggests - while maybe dripping with good intentions - is backwards, IMHO.

The only "benefit" it gives (besides maybe the slight benefit we'd derive by appearing as we're 'trying') is the delivery our industry into the hands of those that may wish to undo us.

It'd have no impact on any underage kid that has even half of the computer knowledge most of us did at their age.

Yep! Fight the Idiocity.

Children should be filtered. Adult Sites should not.