As puritanical as America may seem when it comes to censorship legislation, it’s surprisingly lenient. The movie and music industries have avoided government intervention towards content since their respective inceptions. How have they managed to avoid the long arm of federal censorship? Self-regulation.
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"The adult Internet community knows better than anyone who the criminals are, where they're located and what to do to bring them down." |
Back in the twenties the government threatened to take action against films containing offensive material. In response, studio executives turned to the Hays Office -who set decency standards until the social upheaval of the sixties. In 1968, the MPAA enacted the rating system as a way to ward off impending government intervention. In the mid-eighties moralists set upon the music industry. So in 1986 the RIAA self-opted to label certain single and album releases with PARENTAL ADVISORY warnings. Both industries have been criticized about their private solutions to social responsibility. Yet both have managed to keep their prospective arts out of the reach of state-sanctioned morality.
The adult Internet community is not unaware of the idea of self-regulation. Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (ASACP) was begun in 1996 as an organization dedicated to finding and reporting CP webpages directly to the FBI.
Practically all adult sponsor programs, TGPs and top lists link to rules, which forbid inclusion/association with illegal content. Some adult company's go as far as to refuse business from particular countries known to have an abounding disdain for legality. Various bureaucratic authorities across the world are beginning to pass and enforce laws that protect children from exposure to adult material on the net.
The US Truth In Domains Names Act (that little addition to the Amber Alert Bill) outlaws "misleading" common domain names. The somewhat new Child Online Protection Act has never been enforced because it’s too vague to be determined constitutionally sound. That’s because the law was created by people who have no clue how the adult Internet works.
The movie and music industries knew they could police themselves better than a bunch of old men with bad hair. The adult Internet community knows better than anyone who the criminals are, where they’re located and what to do to bring them down.
This last week, two of adult online’s biggest players took another step on the path toward an industry-wide method for self-regulation.
Steve Lightspeed of Lightspeed Media announced on the GFY message board that Lightspeed will now ban referring URLs that contain the words, lolita, child, preteen, pre-teen, pedo, underage, beast, rape, kinder, incest or kiddie. A PHP script would block any site with those words as part of their domain name.
Said Steve:
"I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. It’s not a perfect solution, but when you see some of the domain names that get blocked, it’s easy to cut off the traffic and their income.
.I'm not trying to be a censor of the web or of free speech, but as a photographer that shoots girls that look innocent; I don't want any confusion created that we are doing anything illegal. 18 and over consenting adults are legal. Anything under 18 should be stopped, and we're doing our best to set an example."
His announcement was met with some confusion between body text and domain names. But the board’s owner Lensman of Adult.com praised Lightspeed for his site blocking idea. Within twenty-four hours Lensman announced on GFY that:
"we have banned the words password, warez, celeb, lolita, and preteen in referring URLs for Adult.com programs. And we are logging it."
When I emailed him for a statement about the action he replied:
"We have not allowed these types of sites in our programs in the past. This just makes enforcement of those rules significantly easier. Some webmasters have stated that they have these terms in their domains even though they have no such content. Our position is that even if you don't have that content, you are still promoting that activity and therefore get lumped into the same group. The only exception would be the word 'password', because some sites have the word password in their domains even though they don't promote or exploit illegal password trading. But they are the minority and this is the most effective method to stop illegal password sites from promoting our programs."
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I asked Joan Irvine of ASACP to comment on the move by Lightspeed and Adult.com. Here’s her answer:
"ASACP has always had a list of unacceptable words that denote child pornography on its site. However, it was only in English. Sex.com has this list in approximately 20 languages and is writing a program that will allow people to link from the ASACP site to view these words.
Many of the special cases that ASACP works on with the F.B.I. are because of affiliates that use such words or images to direct traffic. Last month I learned about how some companies are redirecting the URL of offending sites and avoiding reselling this traffic. That's why at the recent ASACP Advisory Council meeting, it was agreed that this practice needed to be included in the ASACP Code of Ethics along with the program; we are working on the final wording of the Code of Ethics and a Sponsor will give the code to ASACP to include on its site.
It's important that people don't profit from child pornography in any manner. Therefore, whatever companies can share with each other that will further limit the financial incentives for people who peddle child pornography will help reduce the harm these horrific criminals do to children AND to the reputation of the professional adult site industry.
Since the end of March, the ASACP marketing material states:
It's about the future of the industry.
It's about protecting your business.
It's about doing the right thing.
I've been with ASACP for less than a year, but in this time, I have seen an obvious increase in public vigilance among Webmasters against child pornography. I personally want to thank everyone for this effort and ask him/her to continue to do so."
Vigilance. Self-regulation. It's the right thing to do. It appears to me that the time is right. Adult webmasters and industry professionals are willing to police their field from within. Those who are legal would like to remain legal. We don't need criminals fucking up our good thing.