WASHINGTON, DC – A new bill that targets online adult entertainment is making its way into Congress, YNOT has learned. The Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005, expected to be introduced by Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) sometime in the coming days, would tax adult websites at a whopping 25% while placing new requirements for age verification on “regulated” websites and billing companies. The Act appears to have been spurred by a July report from an organization called Third Way. The Third Way report, which has not yet been released, argues that adult websites do not do enough to keep children away from adult content, and that many adult webmasters specifically target children in their marketing.In a discussion draft of the Act obtained by YNOT, which may see alterations before the final bill is introduced, the Bill uses the child protection angle to justify the new restrictions and the new tax. The draft claims that the bill is intended “to protect children from Internet pornography and support law enforcement and other efforts to combat Internet and pornography-related crimes against children.”
A spokesperson for Senator Lincoln’s office declined to comment specifically about the Act itself, since it had not yet been intorduced, but told YNOT that the Senator’s motivations for supporting such measures would not be political but rather solely in the interest of child protection.
“When she does introduce this legislation, it’s not going to revolve around political reasons,” he said, adding that Senator Lincoln was a concerned parent herself.
The Act would have to clear Congress and be signed by President Bush before it could become law. Legal challenges to the Act, if it were passed, are also possible.
The Act begins by placing new age verification requirements on “regulated pornographic” websites. These requirements include using Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved age verification software packages that check the age of visitors before they are shown adult content. The Act specifically requires that this age verification process take place prior to the visitor being shown any “pornographic material,” including materials in free areas of the website.
There would also be new restrictions placed on payment processors and IPSPs. Under the Act, companies that process payments for adult sites “shall only process age-verified” transactions. The restrictions would apply to any “bank, credit card company, third-party merchant, Internet Payment Service Provider, or business that performs financial transactions for a regulated pornographic Web site…”
Enforcement of the Act would be handled by the FTC.
The Act’s definition of a “regulated pornographic website,” however, is interesting in that it relies completely on 18 U.S.C. § 2257. The Act would define a “regulated pornographic website” as “a person required to maintain documents verifying the age of persons engaged in sexually explicit conduct pursuant to section 2257(a) of title 18, United States Code.”
Who actually falls under 2257 requirements is currently being disputed in federal court. The Free Speech Coalition has challenged 2257 and its requirements.
In addition to enacting age verification requirements, the Act also calls for a staggering 25% tax on all sales made by sites that fall under the Act. The funds collected from this tax would then be used to fund various law enforcement initiatives, mostly aimed at protecting children from harmful online activities.
Senator Lincoln, the expected lead sponsor of the Act, is an Honorary Senate Chair for “Third Way,” an organization that, according to its website, “develops policy and communications products to help senators and other progressive leaders better advance their values in red states and counties where progressive ideas have lost resonance.”
Third Way this month produced a “report” on internet pornography. The report, obtained by YNOT, was titled “The Porn Standard: Children and Pornography on the Internet,” and it claims that some adult website operators purposefully market to children, and that the industry has failed to make use of existing age verification software solutions to screen out minors.
“Parents have a responsibility to supervise their kids,” report author Shawn Barney of Third Way told YNOT, but added “[the internet] is a particularly challenging medium for parents.”
The report’s claim that some adult sites specifically market to children seems to be based on the long-defunct per-click affiliate program model, which when used would pay affiliates based solely on the volume of traffic sent rather than sales. The Third Way report does not seem to recognize that few if any adult affiliate programs currently use a per-click payout model, and that the model was largely abandoned by the adult industry years ago.
The professional adult internet industry has long argued to lawmakers that it does not want children visiting its websites, and that it does not profit from sales of pornography to children. Sales on adult websites rely on credit cards or other online payments, which children know are easily discovered by parents. The per-click affiliate model was not profitable for professional adult website operators largely due to fraud, and was replaced by more progressive programs that would not reward marketers for sending children to adult sites.
Asked if the report’s claims of adult content being marketed to children were based on anything other than the per-click or per-impression affiliate model, Barney told YNOT that it also relied on “common sense online, most people’s experience online.”
The language of the Third Way report at times paints a fairly sinister picture of adult website operators preying on children.
“Internet pornography has become a large and lucrative online industry, and one that is successfully reaching a child audience,” the report claims.
“Tragically, the exploitation of children by internet pornographers in search of quick profits extends beyond just the sale of their product to minors,” the report continues. “This report details the extent to which a large and powerful internet pornography industry is influencing the lives of children today … It also reveals some of the strategies that certain internet pornographers are using to specifically target children, as well as the disturbing prevalence with which sex crimes are committed against children in the scramble to profit from the sale of pornography images on the internet.”
YNOT asked Barney if Third Way had made any efforts to contact representatives from the adult industry while researching its report, and Barney told YNOT that it had not.
Barney also admitted that existing age verification software solutions were not perfect options for keeping kids away from porn and could be tricked by a determined child, but added that if they were used the adult industry “could say that they didn’t have a better option.”
