Who Should Be Responsible

[ristac]

Who should be responsible for ensuring minors cannot access porn on the Internet? Should it be the parents or should it be the webmaster?

[Guest]

I think it should be both. Parents should be monitoring what their children are doing online and use software to assist them in this if possible. On our side, we should put the necessary tags (such as ICRA tags) in place to enable that software to work.

[ristac]

I think it should be both. Parents should be monitoring what their children are doing online and use software to assist them in this if possible. On our side, we should put the necessary tags (such as ICRA tags) in place to enable that software to work. I asked because you see that the answer to stopping minors looking at adult mags is to place the adult mags on a top shelf. Lots of 14-15 year olds can reach that shelf with ease. They might place a wrapper around the magazine but again, easy to remove.

Every home has at least one certificate 18 film, it doesn't have to be porn, it could be a horror for example but how do you know that the child is not watching this when you are out. I think the responsibility should be much more towards the parents.

[Guest]

It all comes down to asking what is the best way to stop children looking at porn.

Sure, you can legislate to require explicit material to be restricted to a members-only area that can only be accessed to people with a credit card, but you can't enforce that globally. It wouldn't do anything at all to stop children accessing porn because most porn isn't published from the UK. There may also be legal issues around requiring a credit card given that millions of people don't have them.

The most efficient way of doing the job is to place the onus on the parents because only they are truly in a position to do the job effectively. They can quite literally pull the plug on their children's activities.

Whether or not the government sees it that way is doubtful though. For all the Labour rhetoric about rights and responsibilities all they seem to do is take away rights and take away the individual's responsiblity for their own actions and those of their children with incessant legislation and petty regulation.

[nekrom]

Parents. The internets not a babysitter.

-N

[nizla]

1) The parent might think its ok for their 16 year old to look at porn
2) The 16 year old can see 18 movies and internet porn at their mate's house

[ciggiez]

I think it's fair to ask adult webmasters that sites are registered with RSAC, SafeSurf and all of the other majors so that parents have the ability to restrict access.

After that though, it's up to the parents to watch over them.

[mOBSCENE]

None of my sites show with a Google strict search on. Every single page has enough "fucking, sucking, xxx sex, xxx porn" etc keywords for any decent filter on the planet to know its an adult page. So I think I'm doing my bit. I'm also implementing RTA (http://www.rtalabel.org/) across all my sites in January.

Parents need to be educated, not the net legislated. But I agree the responsibility should be shared.

Would parents let their 8 year old daughter go off to the fair 2 miles away on her own for a couple of hours?

Most wouldn't - but there are plenty who let kids of all ages sit and surf the internet alone for hours on end without much filtering set up.

[carol.prime]

actually for me, it should be the parents who are monitoring their children...
parents should be responsible enough in lecturing their sons/daughters to stop looking at porn...but anyways it always depends on the child itself, even though his/her parents were actually telling them or lecturing them to do the right things, to tell what is good or bad...but if the child still do the No No things like looking at his dad's porn magazines and watching his tape videos, or surfing the net secretly...you can do nothing...porn is everywhere...:angel: :angel: :angel:

[ristac]

actually for me, it should be the parents who are monitoring their children...
parents should be responsible enough in lecturing their sons/daughters to stop looking at porn... Personally I don't believe that teenagers as in 15+ should be prevented from seeing all porn. Softporn, two consenting adults having sex and that type of thing is fine in my opinion. I am not saying I would openly allow it but if I knew my children were taking a healthy interest I would not be mad.