Vivid asks Google and Yahoo to help keep kids away from porn

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 17 February 2008 18:34

Your IT - Home IT

The founder of porn empire Vivid Entertainment has asked Google and Yahoo to ‘erect strong barriers to keep children away from accessing adult material’ – but is it being done under the guise of trying to clamp down on porn piracy?

Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman and co-founder of one of the Internet’s biggest porn companies, has issued a statement putting out a plea to Google and Yahoo make it much tougher for kids to access online pornography.

Although the statement is now public knowledge, he also made the plea in a lecture to graduate business students of the Ivy League University on their ‘Vivid Day’ (Sat Feb 16) during the third biennial Sex Week at Yale (SWAY), dedicated to discussions about "love, sex, intimacy, and relationships."

Hirsch said: "Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material”.

Continuing, Hirsch noted that: “None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction. Vivid will work with any company that is ready to make it much more difficult for children to be exposed, even inadvertently, to material intended only for adults. This is not about First Amendment rights, it is about protecting children."

Hirsch wants ISPs and search engines to “vigorously promote their filtering and age verification programs to their subscribers so that it will be much more difficult for minors to purchase adult content on the Internet”, and said: “The ISPs, as well as payment systems and adult producers, all need to be more responsible with regard to allowing X-rated material to be obtained by non-adults”.

Hirsch notes that running Vivid is like any other studio – they’re in it not only to make porn, but to make money – and he wants to more ‘creatively’ use the Internet. Please read onto page 2 for details.