In conjunction with the group’s updated name, the organization also has relaunched its website, adding a bevy of new features, and expanded its mission to include reporting sites found to contain child pornography to Internet service providers, hosting and billing companies, and domain registrars.
“With the expansion that ASACP has experienced over the last few years, the old name did not really reflect our current mission, primarily because of what we’re doing, both in terms of the best practices and the monitoring of member sites, as well as the expanded reporting that we’re going to be doing on verified sites that host child pornography,” Irvine told XBiz. “The organization is just so different, so much larger than it was two to three years ago.”
In response to suggestions from the adult community and in an effort to be more proactive in its battle against child pornography, the group has also decided to begin sending copies of its red flag reports to domain registrars, as well as hosting and billing companies.
“We’ve been in talks with some of the companies and we’re going to continue those talks,” Irvine said. “The response has actually been very positive and people have actually been very surprised to learn what ASACP and the adult industry is doing to monitor itself.”
Currently, ASACP receives more than 5,000 reports of suspected child pornography per month. Each year, the group verifies the existence of child pornography on as many as 3,000 different sites, and then reports them to the FBI, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and state attorney general offices.
In addition, ASACP promotes adult industry self-regulation by spidering websites to make sure they comply with the group’s code of ethics and offering online verification for all of its approved members and sponsors.
“The expansion of the mission, the name change and the re-designed site would not have been possible without the generous financial contributions of the sponsors, approved members and the support of the industry for the ASACP mission,” Irvine said. “It’s been an intense few years of development, but we are finally positioned to maximize our years of experience and new technology.”
Now that the extensive development on systems that can spider for code of ethics violations and monitor member websites has been completed, the organization is ready to take the next step in its effort to stomp out child pornography websites, Irvine said.
“We had to be pretty under the radar until we had fully developed this system,” Irvine said. “And we’re at that point now. We will no longer be under the radar. We’re going to continue meeting with state attorney general offices and we’re going to continue to inform government agencies, but we’re going to be a lot more visible both inside and outside the industry.”
ASACP will also continue to provide a child pornography warning hotline for concerned individuals, as well as a code of ethics and standards of best practices for its more than 5,700 members.