For Regulators
Rated at the Source
The Adult Content Advisory Standard gives regulators a ready-made, neutral vocabulary for describing adult video — maintained by the industry that understands the material best, and built so that you keep every policy decision that matters.
A Subject-Matter Problem
Accurate classification depends on understanding what is actually on screen — the distinctions between acts, intensities, and framings that are easy to miss from the outside. The producers and distributors who handle this material at scale are the subject-matter experts best positioned to mark it correctly, title by title, at the point of origin. A standard applied at the source, by the people closest to the content, yields more accurate and more consistent ratings than after-the-fact review by parties seeing the material cold.
It also resolves the parts of a rating that turn on intent. A title's Class records its intended register, and several descriptors describe a scenario's theme or framing rather than a single literal act — judgments that hinge on what the work is meant to portray. An outside reviewer can only infer that intent, and may read it wrong; the producer knows it. For anything intent-dependent, the author is the one party who can classify it without ambiguity.
This is not a novel arrangement. Film and video games are governed largely through industry classification that regulators recognize and rely on. The same model fits adult video — and this Standard is the shared vocabulary that makes it work.
You Set the Rules
This is the part worth dwelling on. The Standard is deliberately descriptive, not normative — it records what a title depicts and makes no judgment about whether that content is acceptable. Acceptability is expressed entirely through gating: the thresholds a limit-setter places over those descriptions.
Adopting the Standard therefore hands no policy authority to the industry. It gives you a precise, shared description layer and leaves the entire decision — what is permitted, restricted, or prohibited in your jurisdiction — with you. Industry describes; the regulator governs. The line between the two is clean by design.
Adopting the Standard hands no policy authority to the industry. It gives you a precise, shared description layer and leaves the entire decision with you.
Adopt, Don't Rebuild
One vocabulary, many catalogs. A rule written against the Standard maps cleanly across every operator that uses it, instead of each interpreting its own bespoke definitions.
No taxonomy to build or maintain. The descriptor vocabulary, its codes, and its definitions already exist and evolve under disciplined versioning. You inherit that work rather than reproducing it.
Stable references. Descriptor codes are permanent — a regulation that cites a descriptor by its code stays valid as the vocabulary grows, with no need to rewrite the rule.
Avoids divergence. Parallel official definitions that differ slightly from the industry's create gaps, conflicts, and loopholes. A single common reference closes them before they open.
Built for Enforcement
Every rated title carries a consistent record that can be checked against the content. The compact glance summary plus the full descriptor record make both spot-auditing and bulk review straightforward, and because the codes are stable and the vocabulary closed, a requirement can be specified without ambiguity — a named descriptor at a named intensity, the same way every time.
Work With Us
We welcome engagement from regulators and standards bodies. The most useful thing a regulator can do is lean on the current Standard, reference it directly, and tell us where it needs to go — rather than start a separate definition that the industry must then reconcile against. The vocabulary is open to refinement; the goal is one shared description everyone can rely on.