here is some real good info on the Child Online Protection Act
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/laws/majorlaw/copa.htmI think there is no real way to know who is accessing a web site, any kid can slide the fathers CC out there wallet for a little while, and more kids can beat the best Anti-Porn parental controls, because they are not set up right and kids have access to change things.
I would think that making your
pics-label @
http://www.icra.org/ as restrictive as possible and make it like your site has every possible "bad content" imaginable and research every way to help make parental control programs identify your site as a site that kids don't need to be on, should then turn the blame on the parents for not setting up proper proxy gateways and Anti-Porn parental controls.
so even if you validate CC's and had age restrictions and had your icra rating max out to be a no-kids-hell-zone, how can a parent tried sue you when they allowed there kids on the net unsupervised (themselves or by means of software or hardware content blocking)?
but it's on you what content you provide and taking reasonable steps as far beyond reasonable as you can. with out being unreasonable to you, I mean if you have a free site with one banner ad and no other revenue for it other then out-of-pocket the it would be unreasonable for you to hire a service to validate credit cards, but if you charge access yeh you need to spend the money!
But I AINT not layer so use your best judgment!
I'm only contributing because I was tempted to set up a newbienudes dot com type site and have been thinking of these dilemmas!
Here is something else you could try one of the admin’s here has is on there site and one pagan site I frequent since the modern internet was born restricts access to the boards on there site to users that have been on a long time giving them a chance to see how users act because a kid will – given enough time show there age!
But automating this could make for problems if you forget a step in making (above) reasonable steps to protect children!