Would You Support Government Based Enforcement In The Adult Industry?

If the government was to say tommorrow that they were going to give every adult webmaster a set of guidelines that we had to adhere to would you be in support of that or not?

The way i see it, within the next 2-3 years unless 'we' as an industry start to police ourselves this is going to happen anyway whether we like it or not.

IMHO it is TO easy for someone to say one day 'I think ill work in porn'.

So how would you feel about the government enforcing what we can and more importantly, cant do in the industry in all honesty i think i would be a supporter of such a move, as an industry right now we dont seem to be able to control anything and well, pehaps if we did have a strict code of conduct or 'rule book' to refer to things may start getting better for the inustry overall.

Your thoughts on this?

Regards,

Lee

there is no way to make most webmasters follow that rule book. many of them don't know other webmasters or go to boards - they wouldn't even know the rules existed.

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Originally posted by basschick
there is no way to make most webmasters follow that rule book. many of them don't know other webmasters or go to boards - they wouldn't even know the rules existed.

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This is true however, would you not say that if the government did become involved with the policing of the industry that this would change?

Regards,

Lee

not really. there are many thousands of webmasters. the responsible ones, like us, don't break laws and use real whois info.

the ones that are really a problem - the ones that they like to pretend represent our industry - will pop up on free hosts, on non u.s. hosts, and do bullshit things, while being anonymous. it will take massive resources to even find them.

it would be so much better if they would hold parents responsible for their kids - use something that blocks all porn related words... and search engines will have to work differently so that adult results don't show up when you are looking for mothers day cards.

HELL NO! Besides, what would stop foreign webmasters from breaking all of the rules?

I could have sworn that I read something in the news about the gov wanting to make intel and other chip makers place backdoors in their products to allow the CIA/FBI/HACKERS access into machines to see what these companies are doing? Maybe it was just for China.

I wouldn't suport it. What's to stop them from 2 weeks later just saying well your going to jail because we don't like that?

Very true, it would not be to hard for me to switch things over to a Euro company. Since we already have offices there. I bet it would close down a lot of the bull out there. Please it would most likely put a lot of webmasters that handle free sites out of work.

So if they cracked down on us, we would have to figure out what is still doable for people that prmote our sites and what is not.

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Originally posted by Xstr8guy
HELL NO! Besides, what would stop foreign webmasters from breaking all of the rules?

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Originally posted by Xstr8guy
HELL NO! Besides, what would stop foreign webmasters from breaking all of the rules?

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The same thing that stops them now? ;)

Actually i gotta step in and say most of the 'cheaters' and 'low lifes' in the industry who have been caught scamming webmasters in the past live in the US.

Of course thats not to negate that there is a slightly higher chance of international webmasters cheating too.

Regards,

Lee

Well I'll take a slightly different tack here in that for starters, the Interent is just that, Global and not confined to the United States.

So rules that apply to the USA can be in honest conflict with other countries such as for example VISA. VISA USA is in conflict with its own company, VISA INTERNATIONAL so any government interference really would need to be on an international level.

Secondly I'd much rather see a industry wide set of standards but that is like getting two gays to agree on what colour to use for the bathroom... impossible to get.

Given that stringent laws now in place governing such distasteful things like child porn, and how ineffective the government is in attacking it, I'd say no way for more of their interference. Look at how they have laid open most adult models by the 2257 rules alone?

I'd say the answer lies in perhaps software that blocks words and is not easily disabled. Lets face it, a lot of the stuff exists right now but the kids are smarter than the parents when it comes to computers.


Until something universal comes along that can verify age this is going to be an on going war with the lazy porn haters and the cheating webmaster who do anything for a buck, with the honest surfers and webmaster caught in the middle.

I think it would be good to have a standard set of rules but I also know that they would be ignored by most people.

Having a gov't enforcement agency would only force us legit webmasters to spend more on compliance or move our entire business offshore. Not to mention that as an Australian citizen I am rather tired of the US unilaterally ruling the internet.


cheers,
Luke

I have to say I really do agree with Luke's point - I'm an Australian wasn born and Australian and will remain an Australian. I operate an Australian business on the internet yet I still feel compelled to comply with both US and Australian Law because I don't want trouble.

I would much prefer and Industry Wide Code of Practice - self regulation has worked well in most industries and whilst I understand the lack of cooperation of the limited few may be a deterrent, would it not be great to, as an industry be able to say to the greater community that we police our sites and comply with a code of practice.

I for one would be all for a system that involves voluntary compliance.

Cheers,

Allan

EVERY page on every site should be labeled with the ICRA ratings tag. IMO this issue is not open for debate by anyone. There simply is no valid argument to not have it. They are what makes the web filtering programs work 100% of the time, and you truly are putting it back into the hands of parents by doing this. Nobody can say you didn't offer a very legit safeguard, and then parents CAN be blamed.

So why don't hardly any sites use the ratings?.....

I hate to put it this way, but most adult webmasters would rather have children surfing their sites than block out a few potential sales from men surfing at work.

How many of you have internet ratings in your meta tags? If you don't, why not?

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Originally posted by Matt 26z
How many of you have internet ratings in your meta tags?

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They're on all my sites ;)

Keep the kiddies at bay I say!

On all of mine.

I also have the safesurf ones as well.

I think industry self-policing is better. But in order to have that you need a governing body that everyone respects and will listen to.

Right now we have too many sponsors saying, "It's none of my business" in favour of the dollar.

This is the kind of stuff that I was talking about in: What is it about this business?

Right now we have webmasters and sponsors running around and pretty much doing whatever they want. If you're getting screwed your only recourse is to take them on by yourself and perhaps trying to enlist the help of your friends.

We can't hope to police our own business under this model.

I think we'd need some kind of an organization, and then, we'd need some brave sponsors to step in and say they'd only accept webmasters who were a part of that association. I think such a group would also give us more credibility and it would give us more bargaining power with entities like VISA , MasterCard, and the various governments.

Cheers
Dzinerbear

i have to admit, i've been lazy with ICRA codes. i will stop that from here on out. the problem is that i know a bunch of parents with teenage kids, and not one uses any kind of filtering software - not one!

so unless the u.s. government makes filtering software the law for parents, i guess i felt like all it did was show we meant well.

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Originally posted by Lee
The same thing that stops them now? ;)

Actually i gotta step in and say most of the 'cheaters' and 'low lifes' in the industry who have been caught scamming webmasters in the past live in the US.

Of course thats not to negate that there is a slightly higher chance of international webmasters cheating too.

Regards,

Lee

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I have no statistics on the matter, but i would think the reason why they got caught is that they live in the US. Most foriegn cheaters can't be caught. You identify them by a domain or an ip, and two days later they're up to their same tricks.

there was a letter in this weeks IT section of The Australian by a guy who thought, just for a fleeting moment, that he finally defeated spam when he saw two weekends ago that his spam email was minimal, but then he got a flood of it the next day which was July 6th (which is the 5th in the USA).

He concluded the reason for his light spam day was the July 4th weekend where all the US spammers took a holiday weekend. No its not conclusive but its interesting, cuz I found the exact same thing!

cheers,
Luke