Will .xxx HELP our industry?

[marcjacob]

Dont you think that webmasters should be responcible for who sees the material we publish?

I wonder how much free traffic and tgp traffic is actually under 18?

I have to say that a new breed of AVS where they actually verified the customers age, maybe by voter lists, would really help the industry's name and reputation.

I was 17 when i joined Badpuppy. All you need to get access to porn when your aged 15 - or any age, is to find one of the many tgps and free site link lists. There is no control over who access's these sites and a warning page does very little.

I agree 100% that parents should take more responcibilty for the kids in their care, but we as an Industry, for the main part, do very little other than put up a warning page or filter code.

[twinker400]

sure - if they find it ICANN isn't in charge of policing the web, and people will just move their porn from free host to domain to free host.

i'm sorry my English is not very good as i am foreign, can you please elaborate your answer ?

[basschick]

marcjacob - just HOW is this to be accomplished? it's nice to say we "should" do this but it's not really possible.

i know people who have warning pages with simple terms and a script that won't let you in unless you input your age. they add code so every and any filter can be used to keep kids from seeing their sites. some even have censored tours. but ultinately kids can steal their parents cards and join.

yet parents can certainly easily keep their pre-13 kids out of all that mess by using filters. sure, some 17 year olds may be smart enough to bypass those filters.

i believe kids should be kept away from porn, violence, hate and many other sites but in the u.s. we have not been given the means to really do so. so what is your solution if not making the parents responsible?

Dont you think that webmasters should be responcible for who sees the material we publish?

I wonder how much free traffic and tgp traffic is actually under 18?

I have to say that a new breed of AVS where they actually verified the customers age, maybe by voter lists, would really help the industry's name and reputation.

I was 17 when i joined Badpuppy. All you need to get access to porn when your aged 15 - or any age, is to find one of the many tgps and free site link lists. There is no control over who access's these sites and a warning page does very little.

I agree 100% that parents should take more responcibilty for the kids in their care, but we as an Industry, for the main part, do very little other than put up a warning page or filter code.

[basschick]

ICANN is the organization that is responsible for domains. they do not spend millions of hours annuallly looking for violations - that would be impossible. so the only way they know if a site is violating a rule is if that site is reported.

i know guys who have had fake info on their domains for over a year and neither ICANN nor their registrar has noticed. the same thing will apply to porn sites.

i'm sorry my English is not very good as i am foreign, can you please elaborate your answer ?

[marcjacob]

marcjacob - just HOW is this to be accomplished? it's nice to say we "should" do this but it's not really possible.

I guess what im really saying is that we need to show that were making more of an effort.

The fast food industry in the UK is under pressure right now because they havent ever made much of an effort to show whats really in their food. Now they are realising that if they dont introduce voluntary schemes, the government will legislate.

Thats where i feel we are.

We shouldnt have to control what kids look at but there are many more parent voters than adult webmaster voters. When it comes to the push, politicians will act against us if we dont show that we are trying to stop kids accessing porn.

We need to act as an industry. How about more debate about how change the industry and how to regulate ourselves? If we show we are capable of self regulation, the politicians may be less likely to legislate.

A classic example for me are the payment processor who process for programs like Bucks Factory - they are more interested in making money than protecting the industry, so they process for sites where the boys look 12. If that continues, of course the government will step in.

I have no magic answers, but saying "not my problem" doesnt help.

Im calling for more debate and consultation about to correct the industries ills.

[gaybucks_chip]

There are three existing initiatives/projects that I think will help if webmasters make use of them.

One is the new voluntary site labeling program ("Restricted To Adults") at RTALabel.org. That will work in any browser that has content filtering capabilities, and they are working on getting future versions of browsers to recognize the tag and refuse to display the content if the filtering options are turned on.

The second is Digimarc's adult content watermark, which does the same thing, the image itself won't display if the browser filter is turned on.

The third thing is an identity system project to actually identify the user sitting at the computer through a third-party system similar to DNS; the idea being you would, in order to join a site with ccbill or epoch (or any other site that wanted to use the identity verification), have to provide information that a third party would use to verify your actual age. The cool thing about it is that the site you're viewing wouldn't have to know who you are at all, and the identity verification service wouldn't know what site you're visiting, so anonymity would be preserved. (Of course, if you're paying with a card, the payment processor would know from your card info, just as it does now.)

So I think that all of the technology that we need to responsibly keep children away from our content is there and, for the most part, already implemented. All we need is for the industry to agree to use it. But of course, the problem is that until most everyone in the industry starts using it, no one will want to, because it will no doubt cut down on conversion and probably on sales as well.