WASHINGTON, DC – In a press release issued Tuesday, the Internet Content Ratings Association (ICRA) announced that ICRA will now be known as the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), a change driven by “the need to protect children from the worst while directing them to the best of the Web,” according to the release.“Every day, there’s a story about how people are finding new ways to access pornography and other inappropriate content on the internet,” said Stephen Balkam, CEO of FOSI.
“The Nintendo Wii had been out less than two months before someone found out how to use it to look at porn,” Balkam added. “In this always-on, digital world, we need new tools and methods to reach parents and children alike with a new safety awareness. The Institute will bring together the leading thinkers, innovative technologies, effective educators and enlightened legislators to make this a reality.”
The official launch of FOSI also occurred on Tuesday, at an invitation-only meeting in Washington D.C. According to information posted on the FOSI website, fosi.org, representatives from “the online industry, government, the NGO sector, academics and think tanks” joined FOSI for their invitation-only launch.
Although at least one other adult industry attorney received an invitation to the FOSI launch, attorney Larry Walters was the sole representative of the adult industry to attend the meeting in Washington, Walters told YNOT Thursday.
Walters noted that the people and organizations in attendance at the FOSI launch represented “heavy hitters” from all sectors of the discussion surrounding the protection of children online – from major internet firms like Yahoo and Google to representatives of relevant government agencies like the FTC and FCC.
Given the potentially high impact on the adult industry that an organization like FOSI could have, Walters said he was “shocked” to find himself as the “only one there to speak for the adult industry.”
While Walters did observe some of the sort of rhetorical lumping together of internet porn with child pornography and discussion of internet porn as “one big evil lurking out there, one big social ill,” Walters said that much of the discussion was “far more cooperative and useful” than he has heard at similar forums in the past.
“The government regulators that were there – the FTC, the FCC – made a real point of mentioning free speech issues and a desire not to tread all over the First Amendment,” Walters said.
Noting a string of courtroom losses in cases involving attempts to regulate online adult content, such as challenges to the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) and the Communications Decency Act (CDA), Walters suggested that the statements made at the FOSI meeting with regards to free speech may reflect some hard-earned respect for the reach and scope of First Amendment protections of sexually explicit content, as the First Amendment is interpreted by U.S. courts.
Another facet of the meeting that Walters found intriguing was recognition on the part of some participants that the challenge of protecting kids online is not just about limiting their access to online pornography.
“There was recognition of the fact that parents, educators and politicians who think this is just about keeping kids from looking at online porn are living in a past age,” Walters said, noting that modern technology, from laptops to cell phones, are now bundling technology that puts the ability to self-publish literally in the hands of any user.
Walters said that some at the meeting noted that “some of the child-created content can be more damaging than anything produced by the adult industry,” citing videos recent highly publicized incidents involving videos produced by minors that glorify violence perpetrated by kids against other kids, and incidents of self-produced child pornography as examples of such content.
Walters said that during the meeting, various speakers repeatedly noted that “the government cannot protect children,” especially given the ready availability of the technology used to produce the content that the government might want to protect children from.
“There was discussion of the real need to restructure education, and coming up with the tools… to help kids protect themselves,” Walters said.
Asked if anyone at the meeting suggested legislative efforts to regulate the adult industry through establishment of a mandatory .xxx domain for adult sites, Walters said that an ICRA representative mentioned that that the ratings provider had established a deal with ICM to provide ratings for the proposed .xxx TLD, and referred to .xxx as “part of the solution” for better protecting children online, but there was no discussion of government-mandated .xxx use for adult sites.
“Again, everybody appeared to recognize that government-imposed regulation is not the answer,” Walters said.
Although Walters said that there were some things discussed at the meeting that he found “disconcerting,” and portions of the discussion led him to conclude that “we need to do more as an industry to differentiate the legal from the illegal, and to inform people as to how the industry really works,” the overall tenor of the discussion was productive, and not focused solely on demonizing the adult industry.
Walters said that he plans to attend as many of the FOSI events as he can, and he encouraged others in the adult industry to get involved, as well.
“I think [FOSI] is a well-intentioned effort,” Walters said, “and the adult industry really needs to be involved in it.”
