Stronger barriers to protect children from viewing porn required

Feb 15, 2008 23:56 GMT  ·  By

Vivid Entertainment's co-founder Steven Hirsch, in a lecture to be given at Yale's School of Management on the 16th of February as a part of the Ivy League university's "Sex Week," plans to tackle the thorny problem of children being able to access pornography online with great ease.

He blames Yahoo! and Google in particular for not doing anything to prevent that from happening. "This is not about First Amendment rights, it is about protecting children. None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction," Hirsch said in a written release. Furthermore, he offered his company's help to any other Internet company that would have as goal to make it tougher for children to be exposed to adult material online, APF reported.

"We have made it a company priority to protect children online by creating tools for users to safeguard themselves and by supporting efforts to educate children, parents, and communities about safe online experiences. We have focused on protecting children from online pornography through our safe search feature, filters for offensive language, privacy preferences and parental controls," Yahoo told the cited source.

Google, in turn, has numbered the nonprofit groups it is working with in order to address the issue, Common Sense Media, Family Online Safety Institute and i-Safe, and has pointed out the safety features it has implemented, such as the safe search option and the flagging of videos on YouTube. "When it comes to child safety, we aim to empower parents with tools to make their own choices about what content they want their children to see and educate children on how to stay safe online."

China chose to ban pornography sites to prevent children from being exposed to possible life-scarring images, while other companies and countries deal with the problem in their own way.