Even though adult entertainment is by definition intended for adults only, many minors do access it. This is unsurprising, since today’s children become adept with and reliant upon the Internet and technology at ever younger ages. They can even become more adept than their parents over time. Sometimes, children view adult material accidentally. Other times they seek it out. Either way, short of denying them access to indispensable tools that have become integral to much of modern daily life, how can children be prevented from viewing age-inappropriate content online?

Attentive parents make rules about what media their children are permitted to consume. But parents can’t always physically be there to look over their kids’ shoulders, especially since children are able to access such content using an ever growing list of mobile devices that fit into their pockets.

It is true that parental controls are now offered by web browsers, internet service providers (ISPs), firewall proxy servers, search engines, and even computer operating systems. However, even conscientious parents equipped with an array of tools can’t do it alone. Content providers have a responsibility as well to make sure their sites and content are unambiguously recognizable by parental control systems as being inappropriate for consumption by minors.

That’s why, in 2006, ASACP launched the RTA (“Restricted To Adults”) website label. By providing a single, consistent, universally recognizable tag for adult material, RTA better enables parental filtering – and demonstrates the online adult industry’s commitment to helping parents prevent children from viewing age-inappropriate content.

Embedding the RTA label code in page header metadata tags enables filtering via the various parental control mechanisms that are widely available to parents. The RTA label is recognized by a majority of filtering products and services, and ASACP continues to pursue partnerships with more to ensure that RTA is recognized as widely as possible. Significantly, RTA is recognized by the parental controls in both Microsoft and Apple browsers, including browser use on mobile devices. The RTA label can even be used to tag individual social networking site user pages, blogs, and mobile apps that feature adult material.

The RTA label is completely free to use, voluntary, and universally available to any website that wishes to label itself clearly and effectively as being inappropriate for viewing by minors. Using RTA requires no online form to fill out, no registration, and no fee. RTA does not differentiate between the various types of age-inappropriate content available; all content considered unsuitable for minors is simply labeled “Restricted to Adults.”

Within a year of its release in 2006, more than 3 million web pages had been labeled using the RTA tag. Now the RTA label is in use on some 20 million web pages containing agerestricted content including the most highly trafficked adult entertainment websites in the world.

One of the stumbling blocks for previous U.S. government efforts to make website labeling mandatory is the international nature of the internet; thus, websites operated by companies outside of the United States could not be required to label. However, numerous international companies have and continue to adopt the voluntary RTA label, since RTA has become both the national and international industry standard for self-labeling by adult entertainment websites. With RTA now being used by adult entertainment companies worldwide including those based in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Romania, Czech Republic, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Portugal, Panama and Brazil, it is clear that responsible industry self-regulation is accomplishing what governments around the globe could not.

ASACP’s business is as much about protecting your business as it is about protecting children. Supported by sponsor and membership fees as well as by donations to its Foundation, ASACP is at the forefront of online child-protection on behalf of the online adult entertainment industry.

For more information on how you can help, please visit the ASACP website (www.asacp.org) or email tim@asacp.org — and thank you for your continued support!