ASACP invited 20 industry leaders to the forum titled “Age Verification: Issues and Solutions,” including industry lawyers Greg Piccionelli and Lawrence Walters, as well as Aristotle, BirthDateVerifier.com, Charge Me Later, ElectraCash and Idology, to spend a day discussing the issue.
“No one wants their children or any child to unknowingly view adult content,” ASACP Executive Director Joan Irvine said. “That’s why the responsible adult sites only allow access to adult material after presenting a disclaimer page with no images.”
Irvine said she feels the government believes that the adult industry is not doing enough to prevent children from accessing adult content. Recently, the DOJ hired CRA International, a research firm, to investigate current age verification systems. Some think that it won’t be long before the government convinces Visa/MasterCard to require the merchants to use age verification when processing credit card transactions for age restricted products or services. If that comes to pass, Visa can use one of its existing terms of service to require the adult industry to incorporate age verification when paying on their sites.
Currently, the only other safe harbor for age verification is the use of credit cards, to which card issuers object. This leaves the industry in a quandary, which formed the basis for the discussions at the recent forum, Irvine said. Attorney Lawrence Walters, creator of the www.BirthDateVerifier.com, presented information to the group regarding the potential dangers of the adult industry’s failure to address the issue of age verification. He discussed common prosecutorial tactics wherein the government mixes the issue of protection of children with unrelated matters like obscenity prosecutions.
“The government always likes to mix the issue of child protection with adult entertainment. Otherwise, they’re forced to fight a pure Free Speech battle, which prosecutors prefer to avoid,” Walters said.
Forum attendees decided that the best way to proceed was to educate the industry about the importance of this topic and the various ways that the industry can protect children through articles in the industries publications and continue to research this topic. According to Irvine, attendees also agreed that every adult site should have a disclaimer page — preferably without any images.
Irvine said ASACP plans to host another IEF in six months; the topic is yet to be determined.
For more information, visit the ASACP website or contact Joan Irvine at joan@asacp.org.
