Mandatory Age Verification On The Way?

LOS ANGELES - The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) in its effort to educate and inform the industry about protecting children, hosted its first Industry Executive Forum (IEF), which focused on Age Verification: Issues and Solutions.

The organization invited 20 industry leaders, including lawyers Greg Piccionelli and Lawrence Walters, and five companies with age verification solutions to spend a day discussing the issue. Companies included Aristotle, BirthDateVerifier.com, ChargeMeLater, ElectraCash and Idology.

“No one wants their children or any child to unknowingly view adult content. That’s why the responsible adult sites only allow access to adult material after presenting a disclaimer page with no images. It’s just the right thing to do,” says Joan Irvine, executive director of ASACP.

However, it seems that the government believes that the industry is not doing enough to prevent children from accessing adult content. Recently the DOJ hired CRA International, a research firm, to investigate the current age verification systems.

Some feel it won’t be long before the government convinces Visa/MasterCard to require the merchants to use age verification when processing credit card transactions for age restricted products or services. Visa can use one of its existing terms of service to require the industry to incorporate age verification. The only other current safe harbor for age verification is the use of credit cards, to which the card issuers object. This leaves the industry in a quandary, which formed the basis for the discussions at the forum.

Gill Sperlein and Keith Webb of Titan Media talked about how their company voluntarily protects children by employing the following technologies – C.O.P.S. (Child Online Protection Services from Aristotle), a highly-accurate age and identity verification service; Digimarc K.I.D. Safe Watermark, an embedded mark that blocks adult images; ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association) meta tags, a self-imposed rating code that flags Titan Media as an adult website for filtering software; Digital Rights Management (DRM), a Microsoft technology used by Titan Media to lock online files, preventing re-distribution and requiring age verification. In addition, before Titan Media ships any product, an adult Signature Statement is required. Although they turn away 60 percent of their traffic, Titan has consistently maintained a double-digit increase in sales, the company reported.

Lawrence Walters, Esq., creator of the BirthDateVerifier.com, also presented information to the group regarding the potential dangers of the industry’s failure to address age verification. He discussed common prosecutorial tactics wherein the government mixes the issue of protection of children with unrelated matters like obscenity prosecutions.

“The government always likes to mix the issue of child protection with adult entertainment. Otherwise, they’re forced to fight a pure Free Speech battle, which prosecutors prefer to avoid,” Walters said.

Walters’ presentation is available here.

California Assembly Member Paul Kortez discussed the importance of best practices and cited the fact that AIM had them, along with a procedure for HIV testing, as the main reason why proposed California legislation for mandatory condoms did not pass last year.

Some options discussed at the forum for age verification were disclaimer pages, birth date verifiers, soft tours and age verification software. Issues discussed included privacy, protection against criminal prosecution, public relations, reduced traffic, reduced revenue and increased cost.

The ASACP and forum attendees are now embarking on a campaign to educate the industry about age verification and encouraging adult sites to incorporate, at minimum, disclaimer pages.

AVN Online recently published the following age verification article and will hold the panel, Age Verification: Your Business and the Law at Internext on January 7.

ASACP plans to host another IEF in six months. The topic will be determined at a later date.

http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary...tent_ID=249863

Just curious about a couple of things.

1) Did anyone here know they were holding this meeting to 'educate the industry' if so, when did you get your invite to attend?

2) What is an organization who was built up by those in the industry wanting to report child porn, doing telling or educating webmasters about age verification systems?

I dont know it just seem to me like this is going to be used against the industry as a whole, a method to enforce mandatory age verification on our sites and, it looks like its going be done under the guise (yet again) of 'free speach'.

It also looks like the man focus of this 'age verification' is going to be those five companies that have a 'product' they need to market.

Anyone like to take a guess roughly how long its going to be before we're told that we need to start 'protecting our businesses' by adding age verification services on our sites?

Regards,

Lee

the government already put out their pick - i can't remember the name, but someone here will. they were a company with a pretty sketchy past, too.

i have not heard from anyone who was invited to attend.

and keep in mind that a lot of kids have visas now - with cosigning parents. that is why avs systems are now aens. they weren't actually doing anything to keep kids out once cards were questionable as a way to prove age.

i like lawrence walter's solution. it doesn't cost money to the users, and if a digital sig is binding - and it is - it seems like it should be pretty good to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

i like lawrence walter's solution. it doesn't cost money to the users, and if a digital sig is binding - and it is - it seems like it should be pretty good to me.

---

Not sure where you are getting that info hon, right on the frontpage of http://www.birthdateverifier.com it says 'BUY YOUR LICENSE'.

Regards,

Lee

Funny, everyone wants to protect the children and yet somehow the people who bring these children into the world are not required to do diddly about what or where their kids go?

AOL is currently marketing its 'kids internet' and it was just a short time back when AOL & VISA teamed up for their KIDS VISA program to get kids 12 and older a VISA card... so yep, them big industry leaders sure are doing everything they can to protect the kid. BULL!

As for ASACP or whatever, when they pushed for the xxx TLD i lost total interest in anything they did. It is about money... pure and simple from the so called legal experts who are pushing their own versions of age verification to the CC companies who want more people using their cards, all at the expense of legit business concerns who simply are tarred with being irresponsible because they can. As for invites, hell only industry leaders were invited, so I guess that means unless you a hot shot legal asswipe then you just ain't worthy of their attention.

ASACP talks about setting standards. But only for those who will pay for it. Just doesn't make sense. If you want a standard, then reach out to every webmaster and make it voluntary at no cost. Let the fancy lawyers who are making millions off this industry pay for operating the so called service.

But forget the rant, instead here is my argument. Television is a choice, what you watch or don't is up to you. The government, thanks to the whining miscreants who can't control their own brats viewing habits, insisted that the industry stop showing such filth, and the result, stupid warning messages before the show starts up after commercial breaks. Course for me that's my signal to rush back in from the kitchen or where ever to watch the show but that was the solution for television. So damn, if that is good enough for television shows about butchering kids, rape, incest, murder, theft, and other assorted violence found not only the average prime time show but on the local news (which doesn't require the warnings), then it is all I am prepared to do for my website that has a damn site less objectionable shit than most prime time television shows.... pure and simple and like lets face it, just how many kids see the warning and run to turn off the boob tube? Any?

I will gladly place a warning page, but if I am required to babysit the little urchins, them mommy & daddy better damn well start paying me some money, like any other babysitter gets.

I remember when Mr Walters first came out with that. If you were a client or paid him a retainer, you got the program free... so like it really isnt about protecting anyone just lining the corporate profits.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

Not sure where you are getting that info hon, right on the frontpage of http://www.birthdateverifier.com it says 'BUY YOUR LICENSE'.

Regards,

Lee

---

"doesn't cost money to the users", she said.

Perhaps she meant the consumers, and thus was right about it not costing them anything.

of course i meant the consumers! jeez *LOL*

as long as my surfers don't need to pull out a credit card to see free tours and preview material, that's a good thing. i know a lot of people feel that when no one gets free porn, we all win but there will be some nightmarish changes in how we all do business. i mean, if you need verification for your tours, how will you get search engine hits?

Firstly, I don't think a forum is obligated to be open. It's not unheard of for an invited group of industry folk in any industry to gather together to discuss issues that affect all of them and the industry at large. So criticism over that is borne from unrealistic expectations. It says right in the first paragraph how many people were invited, and lists many of them.

I'm not sure about you guys, but I've seen this in every industry out there. A select group of people invited to share views and ideas, the minutes of which are then made available to everyone else or at which an agenda or collective action by the participants is adopted.

I mean really... to get all fired up over that is a waste of time, I feel. It's attempting to play victim or assign misconduct where there isn't any.

Secondly, any software solution to just about anything should cost money. That is what encourages the kind of enterprising thought and creativity that goes in to the creation of that software. Funds foster research and development. I don't think anyone out there has any obligation to provide everyone else with a free service that costs them time, effort and energy (and their own money) to create. So thinking in a vacuum and attempting to suggest anyone looking to charge money for software or a service they develop is the same kind of attitude that creates surfers who feel they can pirate any and everything they want.

I'm sorry, but when did I wake up in a world where anything was free?

Further, I'm perfectly fine with mandatory age verification so long as it's not a veiled attempt at censorship. Every supposed attempt in the past has been just that - a bullshit attempt to censor and control. But if it was possible for there to be a legitimate and well-meaning solution to assure children could not access adult content that wouldn't cause undue and unfair harm upon adult companies and doesn't assume it's solely the responsibility of adult companies to keep kids away (i.e. recognizes that parents are the main players here), I'm all for it. Getting such a solution is the tricky part, though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basschick

of course i meant the consumers! jeez *LOL*

as long as my surfers don't need to pull out a credit card to see free tours and preview material, that's a good thing. i know a lot of people feel that when no one gets free porn, we all win but there will be some nightmarish changes in how we all do business. i mean, if you need verification for your tours, how will you get search engine hits?

---

I knew that. I was just trying to be polite and subtle in how I pointed it out to anyone else who might not have recognized that :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

Not sure where you are getting that info hon, right on the frontpage of http://www.birthdateverifier.com it says 'BUY YOUR LICENSE'.

Regards,

Lee

---

Check out the patented and copyrighted and available for $395.99 birthdate verifier. Then check out http://www.budweiser.com, where it was put in place long before the copyright was filed.

Then ask yourself, if you had an adult bookstore, would you sell to someone who "verified" their age by telling you their birthdate and typing in any name????? Or let a kid come into your bar and drink because he gave you a date of birth and swore under penalty of federal perjury he was telling the truth?
Seriously. It is a nice step up from "click here if you are over 18 and want to enter" but _VERIFIER_??????? It doesn't VERIFY anything.

The "under penalty of perjury" threat may be true on a law school exam, but in real life the US Attorney's office in any district in the country would laugh you out the door if you wanted them to convene a grand jury and indict a MINOR because he lied to take a peek at a set of titties on the internet. Not only is the offense far too insignifcant and silly, but federal prosecutors don't like to deal with minors unless there are large amounts of drugs or firearms involved. Technically there is a federal offense, but the reality is that federal prosecutors would "decline prosecution" every time, and if they choose not to prosecute, that is the final decision. Private parties can't bring criminal charges.

I would not advise any client of mine to spend money on that system.

I am also very concerned that the goal of that conference was to create exposure for commerically available "age verifiers" and not really address underage access.

I would have given it a lot more credibility if the attendees did not stand to cash in on monetary gain by attending and pushing their product, or if it had been attended by industry members without a product to sell. I am so sick of seeing advocacy groups try to scare webmasters into paying them big dollars for "protection" and attorneys that say you will go to jail if you don't buy their services. :uhoh:

i knew that, and i wasn't jeezing at you - i was jeezing at the others :D

i don't expect anything in the world to be free, but i DO want things i use to work. and not in theory but in practice. after all, the only reason to use these programs is if they actually keep out minors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CorbinFisher_BD

I knew that. I was just trying to be polite and subtle in how I pointed it out to anyone else who might not have recognized that :)

---

I don't know, somehow this pushed a button with me. I just don't seem to understand how any adult webmaster could be willing to accept isolation from a major traffic source simply to appease some puritan who is just basically wanting others to babysit their kids.

I grew up being taught that what I do is my responsibility and that those around me, my family, are my responsibility and not some nameless person. If I had kids, I'd want to know what they do, who they see, and not rely on some software program. I'd sit with them or at least keep an eye on what music they listen to, what shows they watch, not rely on them not buying the R rated CD from some rapper or watch the mindless killings, rape, torture that is on prime time television simply because the rating says not suitable.

Bar owners, sellers of cigarettes, all get visual proof not just of the ID but of the person. Until that can be digitally created, I don't see how age verification can be effective, and let's face it. The goal of protecting children is a smoke screen. Because if it truly was a serious goal, 2257 wouldn't exist, unmoderated chat rooms on Yahoo and MSN and AOL wouldn't exist.

Sorry, but I also object to being treated different than any other business. Television and the music industry simply put up warnings. The Cell Phone companies have evolved a plan of customers being able to opt in or out of what can or can't be seen on the phones. So why should we have anything different in our industry?

Perhaps I'm full of shit, but in addition to the arguments Chad makes (which make sense to me, and I'd be interested to hear Lawrence Walters response), I'm appalled that Walters is charging $400 for a CGI script so simple a 5th grader could write it and some boilerplate text.

I mean, I understand the idea of intellectual property and patents, but the birthdate verifier, in addition to being a misnomer, is a crock. There are many, many more inventions that are far more real and substantive that have been donated to the open source movement, and this seems like nothing more than greed. And if somebody can prove that the Budwiser thing was there before Walters filed his patent, then there's prior art, and his patent will be declined...

If he was charging $25 or even $100, I'd say that would be reasonable... but by charging $400, what he's succeeded in doing is ensuring that I'll never be a client of his. If it's $400 for that, I shudder to think what it costs for, say, a letter to a vendor that requires some actual thought and effort.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

I am also very concerned that the goal of that conference was to create exposure for commerically available "age verifiers" and not really address underage access.

I would have given it a lot more credibility if the attendees did not stand to cash in on monetary gain by attending and pushing their product, or if it had been attended by industry members without a product to sell. I am so sick of seeing advocacy groups try to scare webmasters into paying them big dollars for "protection" and attorneys that say you will go to jail if you don't buy their services. :uhoh:

---

Or if it hadnt been funded by 'donations' to ASACP.

Those donations should be used towards fighting or reporting child porn, NOT a group of vendors getting together to try and figure out how to fleece webmasters out of their hard earned money.

This is just the first part of this whole debacle im sure, they have a seminar lined up for Internext, im pretty sure this is going to be part of the pre-marketing campaign for these 'products' to verify a surfers age.

'Protect yourself now before its to late'

'Better safe than sorry'

I have a feeling we'll be saying many variations of those sayings over the coming months, relating to surfers age verification.

Another thing that im also more than a little concerned with is this...

We know that at least 2 or 3 of the persons who attended this meeting have a close contact with the DOJ, wasnt there some kind of 'agreement' made with them in respect of this 2257 fuss?

The reason i bring this up is this part of the article..

Quote:

---

However, it seems that the government believes that the industry is not doing enough to prevent children from accessing adult content. Recently the DOJ hired CRA International, a research firm, to investigate the current age verification systems.

---

I dont know why but, that paragaph just doesnt sit right with me.

Its almost as if the companies above who are trying to 'educate' the industry about age verification, know something more than they are letting on.

What do you think? 6-9 months before we hear about new 'age verification' regulations going through Congress?

Regards,

Lee

Here in Germany we do have Face2Face as age verification.

I talked to dzinerbear about that a while ago and he was very stunned that if he wanted he could not get into member areas under .de domains where the owner is german since he could not pass the F2F-verification at a local post office or via SCHUFA (company that holds bank account data, personal credit data and such).

They say that it cut revenue by 70 to 90% in Germany.

DEV.

I was invited to attend the forum and speak to the group regarding what we at Titan do in terms of trying to keep our content out of the hands of kids.

The goal of the forum was to give several of the companies that offer age verification services the opportunity to present their systems to a group of industry professionals. The majority of the people in attendance were from major studios, third party processors, and affiliate programs...not from age verifications companies.

We listened to the various presentations, I talked about our experiance with the system we use (Aristotle), and then the group discusssed various issues.

Thats all! There were no hard sell or scare tactics employed by anyone. Larry Walters and Greg Picconelli were there to represent the legal end of the industry, not trying to sell anything.

Larry was not pushing his system down anyones throat. His business is the adult industry and everyone should be thankful that there are attorneys like him and Greg that work as hard for us all!

In fact, Larry will give anyone the system if they just ask...he does not make any money off of it. He developed it at the request of his large retainer clients, and then is making it available to others as well. We personally do not think his system is adequete for our needs and have chosen another age verification system to use.

Why does everyone seem to think that all he cares about is making money?? The guy does a whole hell of alot for the industry! I respect alot of what he and Greg do for everyone.

Now, lets get to the basic issue....Why should the online world be any different then brick and mortor adult stores? We don't allow children into adult stores, we don't put hardcore pictures in the "front window" and we don't give "free samples" of hardcore films without making sure the person is old enough to watch them....why should it be any different online?

Just because people have been able to get away with it for the past years does not make it right. The government is finally catching up to us, and people in government are realizing that many of us in the online world have pushed it way to far.

I guarantee you that once the government can figure out a way to legally implement some form of age verification requirement they will. Would you rather try to do this ourselves and be responsable or do you want the government to step in and do it for us?

We spend thousands of dollars a month on our age verification system and we lose 60% of our online traffic at the age verification page....that's just the price we pay for running our business. We have voluntarily chosen to do this because we think it's the right thing to do.

Even with all of these "barriers" to our business we have had double digits sales increases every year we have been in business. We are finding that by weeding out the people that do not want to authenticate their age, we are weeding out the people that are just looking for free stuff. Our theory, and it seems to be holding true for us, is that if someone won't age authenticate they probably won't give you their credit card number.

One last bit of info...we know from various sources within the DOJ that going forward they are going to target their obscenity prosecutions on companies that do not put up adequete protection for children. It will be an easier sell to a jury when they hold up images and say "They made these available to children, they did not protect our children against their obscene materials.". Companies that do not make at least an attempt to keep content away from kids are more ripe for prosecution.

This is all about choice and what risks each company is willing to take. I am not trying to put anyone down for the choices they are making or are going to make. Each company and person needs to make these decisions themselves.

We have made the decision that we are not going to take any unnecessary risks and we are going to do all we can to keep our content out of the hands of chilrdren. We believe that this is not only a good ethical decision, but also a good business decision.

Hope this helps clear up some of the mis-conceptions regarding the forum.

Titanmen - two things.

first, how does aristotle keep out minors?

second, i talked to mr. walters about his system a few months ago and it did cost money. just wanted to clear that up. i have no issues with paying for something of value myself.

btw, can we have a link to aristotle? thanks, and thanks for your post.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Titanmen

and everyone should be thankful that there are attorneys like him and Greg that work as hard for us all!
....

Why does everyone seem to think that all he cares about is making money?? The guy does a whole hell of alot for the industry! I respect alot of what he and Greg do for everyone.

---

I have a lot of respect for the work that both men do, but all of the attorneys in the industry, me included, would not be working for the adult industry if we weren't getting paid. I do give a lot of free legal advice to newbies but I certainly don't expect to get any acclaims for doing work and getting paid for it.

What is wrong with the status quo?

I was over at my roomie's mom's recently, and she mentioned that she had "porn site blocking" turned on with Earthlink. Well as a test, we tried to go to my website from her shiny, new iMac. Sure enough, no dice.

How difficult is that? She's even going to get an official note from her ISP reporting the attempt.

Friends of mine who work at Dell and Intel sure can't get on my site or other adult sites. And they aren't waiting for me to install these suggested adult verification systems. They know it's adult, and they prevent it. No big deal.

I wondered the same thing during the Senate hearings. Why is Senator Ted Stevens so worked up over racy content on television, when he himself voted the V-Chip into reality to address this very same problem a decade ago?

Anti-porn advocates are going to relentlessly beat the drum for government action. I'd rather see an active counter to their ideas, which can effectively be countered by PR.

Steve

Basschick- The site is www.KidSheriff.com for more information. I need to say that this system is not for everyone. As producers of content we are more vulnerable to prosecution then someone who is re-selling content. As such we have to be more cautious then many others.

Is this system perfect, No! Am I comfortable with all the possible privacy implications, no! But after reviewing all the available options and spending thousands of dollars to have lawyers review and advise us, this is the best option for us at this time. If something better, easier and less intrusive comes along down the line would we switch...hell yes! But for now this is the best option for us.

Chad- We are ALL in this for the money in one way or another, this is a business afterall. ;-) I have a lot of respect for ANY attorney that is willing to work with the adult industry. I have personally seen how our in-house counsel is treated by others in the legal profession. He is branded the "Porn Lawyer" and is often treated very poorly by both the court system and other in the legal field.

Both Larry and Greg volunteer and donate many legal hours to ASACP, FSC, and many other adult industry assocaitions. I am comfortable that they give back as much as they take. And I thank-you for having the guts to work with the adult industry. I'm sure you could make a lot more money working as an associate in a big legal firm! ;-)

Desslock- Unfortunately it will be me going to jail , not mommy and daddy, when little Johnny gets ahold of one of my fisting videos. I absolutley agree that parents need to bare the bulk of the burden in protecting their children, but they are not doing so. This still does not let us off the hook to be able to do whatever we want.

There are still some basic "best practices" that we all should follow online to try and curb the amount of hardcore porn easily available to kids. If you were to put free samples of beer outside the frontdoor of your bar who do you think is going to get in trouble when some kid drinks the beer?

We sell adult products and along with that comes some basic responsability to ensure it does not get into the hands of children.

Again, I am not trying to attack your beliefs or arguements. I need to do what I think is right for the longterm protection and vialbility of my business. Each of us have different business needs and priorities. It's up to each of us to access how we run our business and make hard choices that we are comfortable with.

Oh and I certainly appreciate your position. For myself, the situation is entirely different. I have no investors or employees, so the risk is just mine.

One thing though, it is important to recognize that the Internet is different from your typical physical neighborhood in that it is completely unzoned. There is not one demarked area for beautiful parks, another area for the shanties and another for single family homes.

You cannot draw a similarity with what physical bars or adult bookstores do. Bookstores only have one or two doors. Our websites have jillions.

Interestingly, the Supreme Court recognized this important distinction about the Internet in Ashcroft v. ACLU two years ago. This is why COPA was declared unconstitutional. I think that really limited what the US Congress can direct in this matter, and it's refreshing to see how the Supremes are really "with it" regarding new technology such as this.

Therefore, it's the time to praise the efficiencies and wisdom of the status quo.

Steve

PS: This is yet another reason we do not want "control of the Internet" to leave the US.