Industry-led content regulation has been very effective at staving off legal regulation in the United States. The MPA rating system and ESRB are very imperfect but nonetheless are success stories.
Okay, I'll give you that. Let me rephrase: Industry-led regulation can work, in industries that won't kill anyone or even realistically lose anyone a bunch of money for non-compliance, if-and-only-if government regulation exists as a real and powerful enough alternative to make it stick.