New ASACP Website Label Goes Live at RTAlabel.org

[Greenguy]

New ASACP Website Label Goes Live at RTAlabel.org

Los Angeles, CA (November 6, 2006) – The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has launched a free, voluntary website label for use by adult sites. Complete information about the new RTA (“Restricted To Adults”) label is available at a new website: RTAlabel.org.

The RTA label was developed by ASACP with input from adult companies, free speech attorneys and technical consultants. RTA is designed to better enable parental filtering, and to demonstrate the online adult industry’s commitment to helping parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate content.

The RTA label has already been endorsed by companies like Channel 1 Releasing, Company Number 4, Crave Media, Cybersocket, Falcon Studios, Hot Movies, Klixxx, Nasty Dollars, Top Bucks, WRAAC, XBiz and XFanz – as well as noted industry attorneys Lawrence G. Walters and Gregory Piccionelli, and the Free Speech Coalition.

According to FSC Executive Director Michelle Freridge, "The Free Speech Coalition supports the use of ASACP`s voluntary self-label as a strategy to empower consumers. It`s is a responsible best practice for the online industry!"

Last January, during a U.S. Senate hearing entitled “Protecting Children on the Internet,” attorney Paul Cambria of the Adult Freedom Foundation was advised to tell his clients that adult sites had better self-label soon – “Because we’ll mandate it, if you don’t.”

A few months later, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proposed the Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006, which included a requirement for adult webmasters to place meta tags in the headers of every page on every adult site... or face up to five years in prison.

Several bills now pending in Congress incorporate that provision, but ASACP’s Executive Director Joan Irvine hopes that united action by the adult entertainment industry will head off new regulations.

“Nobody knows how a government labeling system might work, or how it could affect your business,” cautioned Irvine. “And even if mandatory labeling doesn’t pass this time, they’re sure to keep tossing new rules against the wall until one finally sticks. But we can avoid this, by demonstrating that the industry is capable of self-regulation.”

Irvine will speak publicly about the RTA label for the first time later this week, at Webmaster Access West. On Friday, November 10, she will participate in a “State of the Industry” panel, where she will answer questions about the initiative.

Founded in 1996, the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet. ASACP also works to help parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate material online.

******

We've discussed this topic in numerous threads in the past....thought?

[Toby]

I sat in on a roundtable hosted by ASACP at Internext in August. This was the specific topic of discussion. In my opinion the biggest advantage that ASACP has is the potential to make inroads with the search engines. There have already been discussions. The idea being, if Google and the other SE's refuse to list non-labeled adult sites, this herd of cats called webmasters will have incentive to comply.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Toby

...The idea being, if Google and the other SE's refuse to list non-labeled adult sites, this herd of cats called webmasters will have incentive to comply.

That topic was brought up in one of the other threads (and I think Jim & I touched on it on one of the radio shows) To me, that makes sense & I think it's a great idea.

[emmanuelle]

What is the difference between this labeling system and others that are out there?

[Toby]

The difference between RTA and ICRA is in the complexity. ICRA requires a complex customized tag for each domain. RTA is a simple meta tag that is the same for every site you use it on, and you don't need to register or fill in any forms to use the tag.

<meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA">

Now, you could argue that the Rating Meta is already in place (content="restricted"), as defined by W3C years ago, but it's not consistantly implemented.

I plan to start adding the RTA meta to all of my pages, and the RTA logo to all of my warning pages. The existing rating meta and ICRA tags will remain in place as well.

[Jim]

I don't know, on one hand it seems as if they have reinvented the wheel. We have had and used these tags for some time. I understand that it is easy to use but is it going to be universally recognized?

A question for you Toby...
I was going to ask you if your were going to use only the new label or the others as well. But, I read your post again and see that you are going to use both or all. If this is "the" label to use, why use the others?

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Jim

I don't know, on one hand it seems as if they have reinvented the wheel. We have had and used these tags for some time. I understand that it is easy to use but is it going to be universally recognized?

Of course only time will tell, but I think that the initial contacts and inroads that ASACP has made with the SE's, filtering software makers, etc. will eventually make the RTA label more effective than the others. In my opinion the SE's are the key. Get them on board and the rests falls into place.

Originally Posted by Jim

A question for you Toby...
I was going to ask you if your were going to use only the new label or the others as well. But, I read your post again and see that you are going to use both or all. If this is "the" label to use, why use the others?

Until the RTA label becomes well established I think it's prudent to continue to use the others also. There is some filtering software in use that utilize the existence of either the ICRA or Content="restricted" metas.

[Jim]

I guess it can't hurt to use the new tag. But have you seen the members of icra? http://www.icra.org/members/
And, it also works with all the child protection software out there.

I think I am just having trouble understanding why anyone would spend any time coming up with a new tag with perfectly good tags already in place.

But as I said, I guess it can't hurt.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Jim

...I think I am just having trouble understanding why anyone would spend any time coming up with a new tag with perfectly good tags already in place.

Those tags have existed for some time, and the Government is still saying, "...we’ll mandate it, if you don’t." ICRA and W3C are not going to spend any time or effort trying to get the adult webmaster community to voluntarily self-label. When is the last time you saw any kind of press release from ICRA directed at webmasters?

Sure ASACP could have just used the existing W3C rating meta label, but a new specific label of their own lets them create a Terms and Conditions of Use.

If ASACP can get the SE's involved, then it levels the playing field by providing incentive for ALL webmasters to self-label, not just those of us in the good ol' U.S.A.

[Toby]

If ASACP can get the SE's involved, then it levels the playing field by providing incentive for ALL webmasters to self-label...

Along that same line of thought, getting the major Link Lists and TGPs to require labeling in order to get submissions approved would also go along way towards the same end.

[Jim]

I think you probably swayed me Toby

[emmanuelle]

Originally Posted by Toby

Along that same line of thought, getting the major Link Lists and TGPs to require labeling in order to get submissions approved would also go along way towards the same end.

Admittedly I have not paid much attention to the whole thing, but I still don't understand why this one should be supported rather than the others.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by emmanuelle

Admittedly I have not paid much attention to the whole thing, but I still don't understand why this one should be supported rather than the others.

Because ASACP is actively trying to get the search engines involved. Without that, any kind of voluntary self-labelling has little chance of being used in a high enough percentage to keep the gov't from taking things into their own hands and mandating labelling that most likely will not be industry friendly nor very effective.

[Fonz]

So are you guys using this meta tag already and do you put it on every page you create?

[virgohippy]

It'd be nice if the SE bots are intuitive enough to search for the tag on the root - they already munch on my robots.txt everytime they hit a page of mine anyway.

But, personally, I think I'll just add it to new pages, in my existing "add to everything I build" collection of header tags. And I'll probably add it to my traffic pages too, because I have so few of them anyway.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by emmanuelle

Admittedly I have not paid much attention to the whole thing, but I still don't understand why this one should be supported rather than the others.

When was the last time you heard of any of the other ones working with us? Attending shows? Giving seminars? Requesting feedback?

ASACP is basically one of us & after the seminars I've attended & articles/threads I've read, this seems like the best & easiest solution.

[bluemoney]

Based on what I’ve read here by people with far more time in the business than myself, I’m going to add the label to my pages.

[emmanuelle]

Originally Posted by Greenie

When was the last time you heard of any of the other ones working with us? Attending shows? Giving seminars? Requesting feedback?

ASACP is basically one of us & after the seminars I've attended & articles/threads I've read, this seems like the best & easiest solution.

Some pretty good reasons

[Ms Naughty]

Labelling with ICRA is a pain in the arse. If it's as simple as adding that meta tag to every page, I'm all for it.

[juggernaut]

I don’t have any problem with either of these labels. To be honest if it took me a whole day in order to get them to work I would still do it. But one question I have is how is this going to be any different then what IRCA is doing? I understand about the SE and how it will or might be involved but once again we come back to the source. If the parent does not enable the features then how will this stop a youngling from viewing? Too much time is spent working with government and other organizations to implement requirements for WM when that time would be better spent going to the source of the software and having them enable the features out of the box. Why don’t I hear about meetings with MS or Apple to turn on these features directly during the OS and software install? It's all very frustrating cause I feel next year will be another restriction placed on WM and the year after that and so on. When all the while it's the parents who we all know need to be the first fight in this.

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by Toby

Along that same line of thought, getting the major Link Lists and TGPs to require labeling in order to get submissions approved would also go along way towards the same end.

I've been thinking about this all day and I have to agree with you. I like the idea of a simple meta tag that is universally accepted that all of us can use. There is no reason not to use it.

We do not need a bunch of lawmakers that have no idea how this industry works making laws telling us how to do it. If we can get this in place before push comes to shove I think we will have a better end result.

Link list and tgp owners what do you think? Start requiring the label? Or at least start encouraging it's use?

[ecchi]

Only just glanced at the site, but it seems to me a good idea for one big reason. Many of my sites are not the standard 'throw up twenty pics and leave it alone' sites, but sites that are occasionally updated (sort of like an adult blog, but not quite the same). What is on the site changes, and the ICRA tag either has to be changed regularly or becomes incorrect. So in the past I have not bothered with it (and not being a US citizen I do not have to worry about this law). But I do at least have the decency to feel guilty about this. With the RTA tag I do not have this problem, so I have no excuse not to add the tags.

[Altheon]

I never liked how ICRA made you use their script to generate the code. I saw that as a centralized list of adult sites. And for that reason I stopped tagging my sites. If ASACP has a tag that I can just plug in to my pages all the better. No centralized registration, no cumbersome forms.

What would be really cool would be something we could put in our .htaccess so everything governed by that .htaccess file would be labeled as adult.

-A

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by Altheon

What would be really cool would be something we could put in our .htaccess so everything governed by that .htaccess file would be labeled as adult.

I second that.

[RedCherry]

I've started using it, and I have a question on free sites. If I put a link to this page: http://www.rtalabel.org/parents.php with the link "Parents, learn how to block minors from accessing adult content at the RTA website", in small text with my copyright/2257 text on my index page is that ok? Don't want it to count as one of my index page links. I want to see more parents learning how to filter sites, I told a lot of people on my recent trip how much I feel that parents need to take responsibility for what their children have access to on the internet.