By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
A report by Morality in Media has found that the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) is espousing to protect children from potentially harmful online material even while secretly shielding hard core pornographers.
“The ‘Institute’ says it has two objectives,” writes Ed Hynes of Morality in Media. “Protecting children from potentially harmful material, and protecting free speech on the Internet. There’s the rub. ‘Protecting free speech on the Internet’ is Big Porn code for protecting itself from enforcement of federal and state laws that ban distribution of obscene materials on the Internet.”
FOSI is a non-profit membership organization that says it works to provide a safer on-line world for kids and families by identifying best practices in the field of on-line safety “that also respect free expression.” They promote these practices through the development of public policy, education, and technology.
As Hynes points out, FOSI’s website reveals a long list of well-known corporate members such as AOL, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and others.
But he also found a list of “Associate Members,” including 46 businesses that sell sex paraphernalia and pornography. Some of these members include Sex Toys Store, Telefetish Phone Sex, Bondage Gear, Film Porno and many other similar outfits.
”The FOSI web site not only listed the 46 Associate Members but linked to them, so anyone, child or adult, could go directly from the Family Online Safety Institute to hardcore pornography,” Hynes writes.
Then, a few weeks ago, the list of “Associate Members” and their links were suddenly removed from the web site.
Even though they removed the names and links, Hynes says, these sexually oriented businesses still have a presence on the Internet and are out there using a FOSI-designed logo to show their “support for FOSI’s self-regulatory effort to protect children and free speech.”
“Duplicity is too mild a word for this,” Hynes writes. “If FOSI really wanted a family-safe Internet, they would be supporting vigorous enforcement of the federal laws that ban the distribution of obscene hardcore pornography on the Internet. They don’t do that.”
If FOSI expects people to believe that websites with names like “Film Porno” and “Phone Sex with Brittany and girlfriends” are trying to protect children, “They must think we’re all idiots,” Hynes writes.
Morality in Media is suggesting that people write to FOSI’s corporate sponsors to ask how they can reconcile their membership in an organization that attempts to legitimize sexually oriented business under the guise of protecting children and families.
Corporate Sponsors include: Randy Falco, CEO, America Online, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003; Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google, Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043; Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corp., 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052; Ivan Seidenberg, CEO, Verizon Communications, 140 West Street, New York, NY 10007.
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