The summit, which took place March 26-28 at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel in Los Angeles, brought a broad range of experts together to examine critical policy issues that impact technology innovation and adoption across the globe.
The three-day event featured speakers such as BusinessWeek Columnist Steve Wildstrom, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, Congressman Howard Berman, and Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Jon Dudas.
Joan Irvine, CEO of ASACP, sat on the “Protecting Kids in the Digital Age” panel, along with CBS News Analyst Larry Magid, MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam, Bebo Chief Security Officer Rachel O’Connell, and Progress and Freedom Foundation Senior Fellow Adam Thierer.
“It was truly an honor to be invited to speak on a panel with such illustrious company,” Irvine said. “We all agreed that it is the responsibility of the technology industry and parents to protect children on the Internet. Government policy is a last resort, especially considering the Internet is international: no one government regulation would be effective. This perspective is validated in The Byron Report and in Adam Thierer’s Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods.”
Irvine said that many attendees expressed support of the adult entertainment industry’s effort to label their sites with the “Restricted to Adults” (RTA) website label, and were impressed with the progress that RTA has made in the adult Internet market.
According to Irvine, there are currently 4 million pages linked in to RTALabel.org, and on a monthly basis, the site receives more than 11 million hits and 500,000 unique visits. Each day, web pages labeled with RTA receive a total of approximately 50 million hits, Irvine said.