Senators threaten new Net porn crackdown
At an afternoon hearing convened here by the Senate Commerce Committee, Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, lashed out at an adult entertainment industry representative, saying that the industry needs to take swift moves to devise a rating system and to clearly mark all its material as “adult only.”
“I think any adult producer would agree,” said Paul Cambria, counsel to the Adult Freedom Foundation, which represents companies offering “lawful adult-oriented entertainment.” It would just be a matter of organizing the industry, he added.
“My advice is you tell your clients they better do it soon, because we’ll mandate it if they don’t,” Stevens said.
Though it wasn’t mentioned at the hearing, Web browsers have long supported the Internet standard called PICS, or Platform for Internet Content Selection. Internet Explorer, for instance, permits parents to disable access to Web sites rated as violent or sexually explicit.
Many adult Web sites have voluntarily labeled themselves as sexually explicit. Playboy.com and Penthouse.com, for instance, rate themselves using a variant of PICS created by the nonprofit Internet Content Rating Association.