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Georgetown Holiday Inn
My website, Danni's Hard Drive, has seen more than 100 million visitors in the past five years and I currently hold a Guinness World Record for being the 'Most Downloaded Woman on the Internet.' Over the years, we've unfortunately found it very difficult to determine the real age of all those viewers with any real certainty. Obviously such a tool could make the task of screening out underage viewers very easy and hopefully, in the future, something like this could be developed. Given the absence of this information, I've taken a number of alternative steps to reduce the risk of harm. First, I offer a shield page and content warning at the entrance to my site. Should a minor fail to heed the warnings and click ahead they will only find imagery comparable to that which can be easily found by European children in mainstream European magazines or television. Access to explicit nudity and sexuality requires a credit card subscription. I also offer an extensive privacy policy and links for parents in need of filtering resources but there are other ways the community could help me do a better job than I am today. Educate Parents - Currently, the best way to protect a child online is with an educated parent. The Internet is as vast and complex as the world itself which means parents need to have the same understanding of the dangers and be prepared to take the same precautions when their kids go online as they do when their kids walk out the door. Clearly a responsible parent would not send their child out to play on the freeway and the same common sense must be implemented when children venture out on the Internet. Improve Systems of Commerce - Internet commerce as a whole faces many problems in the areas of SPAM, copyright infringement and inadequate payment systems. In the adult sector, these problems can be compounded when they result in explicit materials being openly distributed without regard to whom they are sent. Regulate Unsolicited Email - Because email is pushed by its sender and passively received by it's recipient, SPAM should be considered one of the most, if not the most, important problem to be faced. While someone must actively make choices and take deliberate steps in order to visit websites or newsgroups, that same person has essentially no choice about receiving unsolicited email. Additionally, email protocol makes masking a sender's location and routing information very easy - making SPAM virtually impossible to trace or block and getting removed from lists nearly impossible. Once one considers the consequences of email abuse, which can include fraud, stalking and children receiving inappropriate materials, I think we need to consider weighing the value of an email sender's right to anonymity against the rights of injured recipients. Prevent Theft - Theft and copyright infringement on the Internet are rampant and while, in the case of Napster, people may want to debate the value of copyrights online, we have one more element to consider. Responsible adult merchants, making an effort to shield children from their products are left powerless to do so once their materials are stolen. Many of us are working feverishly to try and find ways to better protect our content from theft but we need stronger copyright laws and more cooperation from ISP's and law enforcement agencies to keep this theft under control. Improve Payment Systems - Credit card fraud is also rampant and as an industry we're finding the credit card companies more interested in punishing merchants with high fines than working with us to correct the holes in their systems. As a result, many webmasters are forced to use more unstable payment systems, which makes them even more susceptible theft. The more theft we incur, the more our materials end up out on the net for free and available to anyone, including minors. We need cooperation from the credit card companies to help ensure that a credit card authorization always means we're dealing with the authorized cardholder and that that person is an adult. Create Kid Friendly Areas - Everything I've suggested up to this point will help in shielding children from sexually explicit materials but it won't change the nature of the Internet as a whole or mean that kids will ever be able to roam freely online. At this point, making the entire Internet "kid friendly" is a physical impossibility and any attempt to do so will only serve to curb the liberty and speech of millions while still failing to achieve its goal. In my opinion, the only viable solution available is to create protected areas that are suitable for children in the same way we build schools or playgrounds in our cities. I advocate working within ICANN to obtain international support for a child-safe area on the Internet, which could be defined by a new top-level domain such as dot Kid or dot Kids. With International support, a set of standards could be written to restrict content within this domain, to that which is universally considered safe for children. A system could then be created to shut down any website within the dot Kids domain found to be in violation of those standards. This approach is appealing because it represents the carrot rather than the stick. No one will be stigmatized by being forced into a specified domain against his or her will. Instead, persons or companies seeking to provide content for children would want to participate in this new dot Kids domain because it guarantees their audience. This approach could assist those companies currently developing tools to protect children. Browsers and email systems that only allow access to the dot Kids domain could be easily developed. These products could also allow parents, if they choose, to specify and approve individual websites or e-mail from outside the dot Kids top-level domain allowing it to pass the browser or e-mail barrier. The greatest strength of this approach is that it avoids thorny free speech issues raised by trying to label and filter adult material. There are millions of people online and each and every one of us has a slightly different definition of pornography, a different sense of morality and different ideas about what may be harmful to children. The diversity of our opinions makes the task of identifying what's to be considered "adult" difficult and compelling those who've been labeled to comply nearly impossible. As we all know, every attempt thus far to define and regulate "adult" material online has met with vigorous litigation and ended up stalled in the courts. There may be other methods of protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Internet but the solution I have described appears to be the most realistic means of achieving that goal today. I'm certain most parents would like to see this situation rectified before their children become adults. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share both my knowledge of the online adult industry and, more importantly, my opinions on how best to protect children online. I hope you find value in my presentation and that it helps you reach your goal.
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