LONDON and LOS ANGELES – Following the public release of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to crack down on internet porn, an international child-abuse watchdog has called for a more thoughtful approach to the problem of minors accessing adult entertainment online.

During a speech early this week, Cameron said the UK should take the lead among western nations in “mak[ing] the internet safer for children” by requiring all internet service providers and search engines operating in the UK to block all sexually explicit material. Only those end-users who verify their ages and specifically request access to adult materials would be granted unfettered entrée to the entire World Wide Web.

According to Cameron, two distinct and very different challenges could be surmounted with root-level ISP content blocks.

“The first challenge is criminal, and that is the proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the internet,” he said. “The second challenge is cultural: the fact that many children are viewing online pornography and other damaging material at a very young age and that the nature of that pornography is so extreme, it is distorting their view of sex and relationships.”

U.S.-based Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection objected to Cameron’s proposal as overreaching.

“[We have] addressed both of these valid concerns since the earliest days of adult-oriented websites being available on the internet and have developed solutions that are far less intrusive into the private lives of average consumers, while being more respectful of their rights, than is the means by which Cameron hopes to achieve his goals,” a prepared statement from the organization noted. “[Cameron’s proposed] measures will not only hurt legitimate internet content providers, but [also] place added strains on marriages and other relationships when the safe outlet of online sex is removed.”

ASACP put forth the proposal that better awareness of child sexual abuse reporting hotlines — including the one maintained by ASACP — and more widespread adoption of voluntary content-classification methods like the Restricted to Adults website metadata label represent more appropriate ways to prevent legitimate adult entertainment content from finding its way into households where it is not welcome.

“The UK government is now baring its teeth in the fight against what it sees as the corrosion of childhood and the ever-increasing sexualization of children,” ASACP Executive Director Tim Henning said. “It has also decided that the greater population must be protected from viewing what the government considers the most extreme forms of adult pornography.

“Extreme is a nebulous term, however, that calls to mind the old saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’” Henning continued. “The online adult entertainment industry must stand up and be proactive given this climate of control, since kids are a universally convenient excuse for the prohibition of porn.”

Vince Charlton, ASACP’s director of European outreach, has been monitoring Cameron’s evolving censorship plan.

“Whilst I can understand the reasoning behind wanting a clamp-down on the ease [with] which minors can access free hardcore pornography on the web, the way this mandatory filtering has been structured is fraught with problems,” Charlton said. “Any family who wants to watch 18-plus material will still opt in to do so, which will leave them in the same position as they are in now. They will have the option to install parental controls which have been on the market since the internet began.

“All the UK government seems to be achieving is shifting the responsibility away from parents,” Charlton continued. “So, in future when the issue of minors accessing porn still exists, they can hold their heads up high and say it was the parents’ active choice and the government of the day had fulfilled its responsibilities.”

Henning said he and his organization hope that as other stakeholders explore ways in which minors can be prevented from accessing age-inappropriate materials, existing solutions such as RTA will be considered instead of mandating protocols that harm rights and relationships without addressing the role of parents and technology in the process.