Seems ASACP has a new agenda
 

Just noted in a little article that I must have missed earlier that there was a big reason for ASACP changing their name - they have swapped over to protecting children from adult sites - and recently hosted a forum on those issues. Interesting read as it seems they are advocating exactly what adult sites have fought against and won a few years back - the AVS system or other age verification system being mandatory.
http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary...tent_ID=249863

Im still letting this one sink in but my first gut reaction is I feel let down by one of the organzations out there that was doing some good - and has now decided that they want regulations placed on adult site operators instead of doing the good job they were doing chasing down the real problems we have with c p operators in the world.

Whats your take on this?

This explains why what was an anti-CP group felt the need to take a stand on .XXX.

It looks like the cat is out of the bag.

Alex

I don't see anything in that article about making it mandatory. And what's new about the ASACP protecting children and encouraging webmasters to take measures to prevent children from accessing porn on our websites?

I didnt say that this article said it was mandatory - I was referring to the CDA a few years ago (2000?) that was fought against by most adult web sites. It just seems we have now come full circle to where some people that (nope - gonna keep my mouth shut for now)

The part about protecting children is something that group has just gotten into -they were the clearing house for reporting c p for years and just changed their name recently to go with this new thrust of biz I guess. ASACP never had that as a goal when I joined years ago - that is a recent addition

Im sure Joan will have a 5 page statement to read soon.

So that you understand - since you obviously havent been around the industry for a while or you just missed this part of it - ASACP until a year ago stood for Adult Sites Against Child Pornography - I was a guardian member of that organization and fully supported what they were doing - and still do support that drive to rid the internet of people that are the purveyors of that material.
that said - the organization has for some reason in the last year decided to become a political action group sided with the FSC (as a matter of fact look at the ballot for FSC board members and you will find one of ASACP's long time people as a candidate) in worrying about the legal aspects of this industry instead of doing what we originally set out to do - and from what Im seeing, their lack of getting out the people against the C P and the lack of even pushing it on the boards like they used to, has led to a general apathy reflected in board posts and messages about the spam that comes through - its a real damn shame that they have chosen to go this other route and become what the radical right-wingers would approve of and given up on their very noble original crusade.

I thought it was my responsibility as a parent to monitor the activities of my kids when they are online.

It just amazes me that the same people (lawyers even) that fought against this type of stuff 5 years ago are now pushing this - what ever happened to their free speech mentality? I guess there's money to be made in those hills

Linkster, I think you are correct.

I am truly disappointed with the new direction of the ASACP. Their stand on this issue in particular seems to be diametrically opposed to the point of view of most webmasters, except for maybe a few of the richer people at the top. In a similar manner to the .XXX debate, it would seem that the solutions being pushed are those that would cut down the number of participants in the industry, and bring the power and traffic into the hands of a few of the very large companies and their friends.

I see one common person here, and I am starting to think that too much power is in one set of hands.

Alex

uh huh, right. :D

I've seen Joan at adult conventions for years and her agenda has always been the same, whether you knew it or not. I've been telling people for years that she only acts like our friend to further her agenda, just ask Steve Lightspeed. Assuming you've been in the business long enough to know him. ;)

This isn't a new direction, it's just the continuation of the orginal direction and the ultimate goal which is to eliminate porn, or at least free porn, on the net.

Off topic but, isn't a hammer a tool?

There are lots of definitions for the word 'hammer' and yes, a hammer can be a very useful tool. You on the other hand, are simply Useless.

I'm slapping my knee.

Adult Sites Against Child Pornography - that I can back whole heartedly.

Some organization that thinks they are the God of internet porn & they need to save the kids whose parents are too fucking stupid/ignorant/lazy to monitor their online activity? Fuck them.

More important - I dont want to see the gains that we made from 1997-2004 against CDA and COPA to be thrown out there as the adult sites concession - not after the hard work that everyone put into it getting the Supreme Court to agree that warning pages and credit card verification were against the 1st Amend. and we had certain free speech guarantees - why in the world someone claiming to represent the adult biz would ever conced any of these battles that we've already won is beyond me |banghead|

What, practically speaking, can be done to repudiate them and try to correct their behavior?

I've been annoyed at ASACP ever since I realized their meta tagging system was essentially useless for any professional adult site builder. Registering every site I build with their too-complicated tag system isn't practical.

All we need is one universal tag that can tell ANY browser "This site is not for kids".

ASACP's inability to see the power of such a tag has always convinced me that they are a fraudulent organization, more interested in perpetuating their own existence than in solving the problem.

|thumb

I completely agree. It would be so much easier if it became a standard on the internet to merely add a general tag, or hey, even content specific tags such as "violence", "full nudity". "Hardcore sexual activity", etc.

It is really such a simple thing. Then let the common browsers implement this with a sort of password protection that the parent can enable. Problem solved - at least if the parent actually cared enough to learn to use the system - but chances are, if they did, they'd be sitting next to their child on the computer watching as it is wherever possible.

IF the government is going to make laws out of it, I personally would not mind it if they did make it mandatory that we used these tags. Jsut as long as they didn't require BS such as a centralized registry where we have to provide our names, addresses, etc or some sort of licensing/fee structure. Of course, I'm not really what you'd call an optimist already, and from my seven years in this business I'd be shocked if the government did something that actually made sense relating to the industry.

Think a while about this. TV's have the V-chip which effectively blocks programming that a parent would deem inappropriate for their children and it is totally ineffectual. Why, most parents don't want to go through the hassle of learning how to program the damn thing. Instead they would rather bitch that the government "needs" to do something. Every TV show is rated and rated for specific content.

Who is going to rate websites? Judging by what I read here....freesite builders who cant figure out which category to submit thier freesites to, certainly aren't to be counted on to rate their site for content. Do you really want to submit your sites to a rating group and wait months for them to tell you what your meta tag rating should be and then every time you update that site...go through the same process again....and again....and again.

Finally, child protection shouldn't be about a child running into an adult site once in a while. I'm old enough to remember running into my parents bedroom when no one was home so I could check out dad's stash of Playboys and ya my little winkie got hard and I'd pull it out and play with it too.

Child protection should be about getting rid of the vermin and predators out there who are looking to do actual, physical harm to them.

My solution for every convicted sexual deviant...nail their balls to a log, set the log a fire and hand them a butter knife.

As far as tags - there already is a free solution thats been around forever called ICRA - http://www.icra.org/webmasters/
and most of us use it on our sites (at least the ones Ive seen) - and its instant - you just fill in a quick form and they give you a meta to insert.
Im not sure why anyone would want to take on anything else as this system is already used by the major search engines and it works.

Whoops, my bad, I meant ICRA when i was talking about tags. I don't know why, I've always confused the two.

It's the ICRA tag that's useless.

ASACP doesn't have tags to put on sites.

Sorry about that.

Maybe they should remove the "Child" from their name.

I wondering how some of the major sponsors who are flying their banners are going to react.

I think that the world got the internet backwards. The internet is like normal every day life.

In the real world, parents are responsible (in theory) not to have their children out late, going to bars, strip clubs, and picking up hookers. The internet is no different. Attempting to apply a "broadcast regulation" to the internet is not going to work.

For my money, the assumption should be made that the internet as a whole is 18+ environment. ADULTS ONLY. Sites that want to be child safe can register, get checked, and become child safe.

Think about it. Every blog, every news site, every... well, almost whatever except disney MIGHT have material not suitable for minors of one sort or another. Attempting to register and block off 95% of the sites is a pointless exercise when the burden could be put on the few child safe sites to work out a way to make themselves flagged as "acceptable".

The internet would be a much better place if the collective governments would just leave us the fuck alone.

Alex

Amen!!!

Even Disney has things that are unsuitable for some kids. Captain Hook scared the shit out of me when I was little and the Wicked Witch in Snow White gave me nightmares.

I guess you are right. in Germany for example those systems are mandatory and they worked with a passport number in earlier days. Since 2004 there is a new law out which forces the webmaster to deliver some hardware to the user when he subscribes to a website.

He only gets access with this hardware and it has to be delivered by regular mail. of course there is money in it for those companies protecting website.

What's wrong with this for a start?



Rating description Equivalent
Safe For Kids G
General PG
14 Years PG-13
Mature R rated more or less
Restricted X rated

Examples:

There is nothing wrong with those tags - other than they already exist, but were kinda made obsolete when W3 went to the PICS label - which is why I stated earlier that the solution already exists - it just isnt used

Djilla, the problem stems from "label adult" as opposed to "label acceptable to children". The basic assumption is (incorrectly) that the WWW as a whole is safe for children, and only a few sites are "adult" in nature. In reality, most of the web in one form or another is not safe to be viewed by an 8 year old child.

Remember, adult doesn't mean porn, think of things like beer, wine, news, movies, chat rooms, discussions, blogs, video games... I could go on and on. Very very little of the internet is 100% safe for children. It should be for those people who want to make child safe content to register it as such and for browser manufactures to restrict access to those sites that permit children.

Forcing only adult sex sites to label and not requiring 100% of sites to label makes it a pointless exercise.

Alex

LOL
I'll never forget taking my 3 yr old to disney world back in 92 on a trip down here to Fl.
Some of the attractions were off limit cause of her age and height of course, but as Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs was one of her favorite Disney movies she just had to see that attraction. Seemed like an enjoyable ride for a lil one.

Well turns out the Seven Dwarfs ride was through their mine, dark and gloomy with the Wicked Witch cackling in the shadows then popping up everywheres causing cave ins on us and flames flaring up around us...timbers creaking, walls shifting...hell that ride even scared me a lil ;)

Well Little Jackie spent 90% of the ride on the cowering floor of the car between my feet. Hell when we got back up to Ma she made me throw out the Snow White video in the trash and as far as I know she has never watched anything to do with Snow White or the 7 Dwarves again...lol

We also still have a pic of our lil munchkin next to a Captain Hook 4 times her height with a terrified look of apprehension on her face.

Naw... I knew that I was just using the old metatag standard sort of as tongue in cheek. Meaning simple solution that could be implemented almost overnight if any of the big 3 SE's declared they wouldn't index any page without a rating and exclude altogether sites that abused the rating system. Who gets to decide question? My take has always been simple... rating for under seventeen over seventeen, over 21. Under seventeen No violence Period including cartoon shit, no sex Period! Over seventeen nothing graphic re: above, over 21 anything goes!

As usual RA I totally agree with you. I don't have kids, but if I did internet access would be almost unavailable as would the TV. I have lots of friends who monitor TV access quite easily and successfully. As is said in many other places Parents HAVE to be responsible.

Its in this note that the whole .kid domain thread is so relevant
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=26857
because it would be nice to be able to easily filter access, especially to a buffet of reliable, informative, educational stuff for kids.

I think it would be really great if younger ones should be able to be guaranteed internet access without bullshit assaulting them including commerrcial stuff which in a lot of ways is just as offensive. Another note to a potential FSC offensive campaign... turn attention to outlawing marketing directly to minors on TV. |santa|

I concur.

I am with you Alex. If the parents want a safe place to let their kids loose on the net then they should make it. Make themselves a browser for kids. Make themselves a gateway and check and monitor all sites in there. There would be absolutely NO reason for anyone to put porn in their gateway unless they are completely stupid or evil as the assumption is that children do not have credit cards.

Preditors would have a reason to find their way in though and I am sure anyone that has proposed such a place knows that it is impossible to keep preditors out. The liability is what keeps anyone from making such a place. How cool would it be if it could be done?

Maybe another idea is to make a browser that facilitates a parents ability to make a kind of accepted sites list for their kids. So kid site webmasters can list themselves with this system. The parents can review the site and approve the site for their kids viewing. Maintenance by the parents (adding new sites all the time) would ensure a great experience for their kids. If a parent wants the net experience to be wide and vast they will put lots of time into their adding of sites. I find it impossible to find educational sites when my young teen kids come asking me to help them find something for their special projects at school. If I could narrow my search to trusted sites I have already included based on their merrit, it would be so much easier.

Infact you could sell "packs" of preapproved sites "educational" "for ages 8 and under" what ever. Little spin off cottage industry ha ha ha

Someone just has to do it. Build it and they will come.

Have you watched Shrek 2 ?? I was astonished at the inuendo and blatant mention of sexual topics. My daughter was 10 at the time and I had to constantly talk to her about the things mentioned because she WAS old enough to understand what they were talking about. Most everyone says "yeah but kids dont understand what that means" I think that isnt true. They understand the intent of teasing someone and that it was about something "naughty" and if they dont understand now they are getting close by movies pretending to be for kids clueing them in.