An excellent article in The Telegraph newspaper today highlights the extent of under-age access to adult material on the internet.
Surely the question should now be:
‘Why rely upon easily circumvented age check systems and inaccurate list based filtering when technology exists to warn parents that minors may be accessing inappropriate content?’
There is no need to impose draconian censorship when you are able to monitor and provide accurate information to parents and guardians who can then use parenting skills to discuss the issue.
In addition to sophisticated dynamic text analysis, technology exists to scan images and videos in real time and accurately identity pornographic content.
Pornography is and always has been a visual media so providing a solution based around visual analysis should be a priority.
It should be the responsibility of any government or authority to provide parents and guardians with the information they need to parent not censorship and this should be achieved by making available the best technology – currently this is not the case.
Many in the adult industry don’t want minors accessing their content but as Ben Yates, a UK based adult producer concludes in the article “This proposal, along with many other Government backed ideas on stopping children watching porn, simply fails before it begins.”