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XXX Top Level Domain May Still See Use
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 07, 2007 08:05 PM
from the turnaround dept.
from the turnaround dept.
eldavojohn writes "The contract between ICANN & ICM Registry has just been revised for procedures on using the .XXX TLD. ICM is saying that the domain should be readily available for registration as early as this summer. This means that parents will most likely have an easier time protecting their children from these sites and these sites will be more tightly regulated and easier to scrutinize by authorities. ICM also mentioned the collaboration with International Foundation for Online Responsibility."
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Politics: Why the .XXX Domain is a Bad Idea That Won't Die 322 comments
Reader tqft tipped us to an opinion piece on the UK site The Guardian, which lays out the reasons why article writer Seth Finkelstein feels the .XXX domain is a terrible idea. You may recall that last year (being an election year and all), the concept of a triple-X ghetto was revived, considered, and then quashed all in the space of a few months. We also recently discussed the fact that the idea just won't die, as the company ICM Registry pushes ICANN to allow them to pass out the names by Summer. Finkelstein primarily argues that the new domain is a bad idea from a business point of view. Ignoring for a moment the issue that much of this content is already labeled, he sees this as primarily a means for ICM Registry to gain a monopoly on what is sure to be a hot-selling product. Speculators, pornographers, and above-board companies will all jump on the namespace in an effort to ensure that their domain is represented ... or not, as the case may be. Where do you fall on this issue? Would a .XXX domain be helpful for parents, or just a political salve/moneymaking scam?
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I call dibs on... (Score:5, Insightful)
playboy.xxx
penhouse.xxx
sex.xxx
movie.xxx
and of course
whitehouse.xxx
Seriously, talk about a gold rush. A legimate porn tld would have users practically driven to it. I wonder if what they are going to do about the 'land grab'. At $60 a pop for every word in the dictionary, they stand to make some serious money right off the bat.
They should base it on the .com's already sold. (Score:4, Interesting)
There, no "gold rush". Even though it probably means giving up some profit, it's the right thing to do.
There may be some cases where
But all of this is stupid anyway. The Internet is more international now. We should be dropping new 3 letter TLD names and sticking with
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Re:They should base it on the .com's already sold. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should anyone have a right to a new domain name just because they have some other domain name?
Just because you have "news.com" or "boobs.net" doesn't mean you own the words "news" or "boobs". If you're going to give favored access to existing domain holders, there's no public advantage whatsoever to adding new TLDs - it doesn't expand the name space, it just takes a bunch of cash from existing companies and gives it to the new registrar.
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Yes, it does. (Score:4, Insightful)
So that it won't turn into a "gold rush" with lots of "squatters" fighting over it. If someone has already gone to the effort to develop whitehouse.com as a porn site, then why not make it easier for everyone and give them first shot at whitehouse.xxx?
Adding a new TLD will also move "a bunch of cash" to the "new registrar". The only question is who will provide that cash.
And it does "expand the name space". It is a new TLD. Go ahead and register slashdot.xxx if you want to. But I'd still prefer to give CmdrTaco first shot at it.
What you probably meant is that it won't add any new porn sites. That is probably correct. But it really does not matter. Anyone who wants to set up a porn site right now can do so.
All this will do is allow the legitimate porn sites to redirect their sites to the
It won't solve the whole problem, but it will allow the legitimate porn sites to "protect the children" without subjecting them to squatters trying to drive up the price.
Although I still believe that this would be better served as *.xxx.us instead.
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Re:Yes, it does. (Score:4, Insightful)
As for using
I've always felt that tld's forced companies and individuals to buy as many tld's as possible. While
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Re:Yes, it does. (Score:5, Funny)
I wish you could have made your point with out mentioning slashdot.xxx I'm not even sure what the nightmares I'm going to have because of that entail.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I should have posted this AFTER registering com.xxx and net.xxx, really.
Nothing here except a monopoly trying to cash in. (Score:2)
Anyway, it's a dead asset, unless they can cash in on the monopoly money!
ICANN will do the right thing as they always have.
Creating a new TLD will do nothing except enrich the franchisee, and make a bunch of flat-earthers in Flyover Country yowl a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I call dibs on... (Score:5, Informative)
You missed:
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Re:I call dibs on... (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) The notion is that putting everything sexual into a slot where one simple action at law can force one simple action at the DNS that shuts it all down is the problem -- it has nothing to do with the name. What is depressing to me is that you can't see it coming.
(b) It doesn't matter in the least if some people's idea is that pornography == sexuality. The important idea is that you don't get to tell me, and I don't get to tell you, what is interesting, stimulating, erotic or otherwise. Sexuality is personal. You concentrate on yours, everyone else will concentrate on theirs, and there won't be any reason for you to be depressed. As soon as you being to think that your (romantic, idealistic, whatever) idea of sexuality is "the thing for everyone", you've become the enemy of the people and then you have a reason to be depressed.
Comprende?
Because we're trying to use the new environment to move away from victorian (and worse) notions of self-appointed moral police proscribing everyone else's idea of what is OK, even if they're in the majority.
Let me fix that for you: ...create ghettos and put a lance right through the heart of equality.
And what do we do when the maniacs in congress legislate the ghetto out of existence? The political system is rigged; you know it and I know it; so if we let them back these people into this corner, what happens when they take that inevitable next step... "for the children"?
Yes, I would imagine the whole bloody bunch of you who have delegated the upbringing of your children in a padded world will be very pleased indeed. owning up to the responsibility of having children is so... tedious. Isn't it much nicer when the government does it for you?
First they came for the pornographers. But I was not a pornographer, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the others. But I was not them, either. I remained silent.
Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me.
With apologies to the WWII ear personage who penned the original.
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Re:I call dibs on... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Not at all. You missed the point entirely. Not being there to see that it doesn't happen, or arranging that specifically in your little world, it can't happen, is depending on someone else to do YOUR job, at the expense of everyone else's freedoms.
If, for whatever reason, you want your kid to be free to sit at the computer without encountering the real world, use a whitelist system to control browsing. No accidents will happen (unless YOU screw up the whitelist.) That's all you need to do. When your child is adult enough for you to accept the idea that they will not implode, become perverted, etc., upon encountering adult play, then you can open the whitelist. Or not; you are, after all, the responsible individual.
Take responsibility as a parent; you can have as much control as you like. Nothing is stopping you. However, if you decide that the government should control everything so that the world artificially looks the way you think it should for the benefit of your offspring, regardless of what anyone else thinks, then you've become the enemy of freedom. My kids don't need to have your ideals inflicted on them. If you try, I will oppose you.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No - it isn't. The easy way: buy a Mac. Set up accounts for your kid(s). Whitelist where you are willing to let them go. Sit with them as much as you can and expand the whitelist as appropriate. Whitelist their email contacts and their chat contacts. The result? There is no problem. They're as constrained as you want them to be, or not. Nothing horrifying can be accessed unless YOU say it can. This is ea
Re:I call dibs on... (Score:5, Insightful)
It works something like this:
Separation is the first step towards discrimination and censorship. After you've collected the "bad stuff" in one place under one convenient label, it's much easier to take action against it.
or just the idea that for many pornography=sexuality.
Pornography is obviously a subset of human sexuality. Whats one persons porn is another persons art anyway. (the courts in norway, for example, recently granted VAT-excemption for strip-shows for the reason that they're not principally different from other kinds of stage-performances.(and there's no VAT on culture in Norway))
Most would object to an adult bookstore moving in next door to their house so why should the internet be any different.
If *ANY* bookstore opens where the zoning-rules say "residential housing" people will protest. If the zoning-rules allow normal bookstores, they should certainly allow adult bookstores in the exact same location. Indeed that is the case where I live -- "adult" shops of all kinds are found exactly where other "non-adult" shops are. (The Mall, main shopping-streets in town, shopping-centres etc)
Besides, the argument is stupid. You run into your neighbours in RL. It's immediately obvious to everyone who visits you that there's a trash-incinerator next to your house. This has a real negative impact.
It doesn't have much of any impact to know that your domain coolstuff.com shares a TLD with trashincinerator.com or stripclub.com, the 3 names aren't "neighbours" in any reasonable sense of the word -- certainly the parallells to RL are absent.
In real life we create zoning laws to keep that stuff where its both easily accessed by those that want it and easily avoided by those who dont, on the internet we can do that with a top level domain if its done properly.
Where I live there *IS* no zone for "shops-but-no-adult-ones-please", nor should there be, and if there where I would indeed protest it loudly. (but it'd be unconstitutional anyway, so I doubt it'd happen)
Secondly, you make the elemental mistake of assuming there *exists* a simple clearly-delimiting line as to what is ".xxx" and what isn't. Who is to decide ?
Third, why the singling out of sexuality ? I object to this on principal grounds. Where is .violence ? How about .racism ? Are we gonna get a .religious or .republicans anytime soon ?
I fail to see what is bad about it. If your internet provider is planning to block content at the ISP level and you dont want them to...switch providers. Frankly the idea of not having to worry that mispelling a url is going to end up with something on the screen that neither I nor my kids need to see is appealing. I would imagine many parents as well as those whose sexuality has expanded beyond jerking off to the playboy channel would agree.
I don't see how it's relevant, but I am indeed a parent (3 kids, actually). I would *NOT* feel "comfortable" knowing that some US-based (lets be frank here!) likely religious-dominated "focus-group" decides what is and what isn't "agreeable". I'll like it even less once schools, libraries etc start filtering (
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Re:I call dibs on... (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, this requires a watchdog with teeth
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Clarification (Score:5, Insightful)
ICM created IFFOR with the sole intention of having the regulation of porn sites run by a community rather than a company. The name is impressive but the goals of it seem rather specific. You can look at this two ways, ICM really wants porn regulated and easily blocked because they're thinking of the children. The other angle is that ICM wants domain registration moneys. Both can be correct and most likely are.
Re: (Score:2)
Second, being that others think that TLDs are interesting or at least profitable. Why isn't there a XXX TLD?
If there are rediculusly stupid ones like
Re:Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Now, they've made one in order to allow some organization to get some easy cash, while screwing us all with all this "think of the children" stuff. Gee, thanks a lot for listening to what the technical community has to say.
(At least read the title of the document linked, it says a lot)
BTW, I agree with you on TLDs, only country codes should be allowed as TLDs.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bonjour/Zeroconf/mDNS already provides this, [apple.com] albeit with .local rather than .here
It's too late to make a difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Enforcement is gonna be fun, I can already see the violations of free speech and censorship happening already.
Re:It's too late to make a difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
They wouldn't have to.
If they set up a permanent redirect, they can keep their
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Yet another brick. (Score:3, Insightful)
Authorities and officials requiring all "questionable"
material be required to don the XXX TLD? again at brief
glance it looks like a good idea, but in the long run it
could be hazardous for free speech in a whole..
Reading material:
http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/BriefHistoryof
Re:Yet another brick. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A very good priciple, IMHO.
GP wrote:Anyone else worried about this?
Authorities and officials requiring all "questionable"
material be required to don the XXX TLD? again at brief
glance it looks like a good idea, but in the long run it
could be hazardous for free speech in a whole..
It looks like an attempt to cordon off the virtual areas in which free speech is permitted, similar to the real-world designated protest areas that one
Re: (Score:2)
But I have to say, between the GP's nick of "BlahSnarto" and your "Harmonious Botch" I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face.
Re: (Score:2)
Filtering porn (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Not gonna work (Score:2)
All the porn sites are going to do is redirect the
Re: (Score:2)
It's pretty easy actually. All they have to do is make it against the terms of service for the .com registration and the next time registration comes around make everyone put up a $500 deposit on their .com domain registration as a bounty. If anyone reports a legitimate occurrence of pornography on that web site, they get the $500 bounty and your domain gets put into on-hold status until you've cleared away the offending content to the satisfaction
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It seems like a good idea, but I think it would be ultimately unworkable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm gonna take a wild guess at something for this. However, it would require blocking software.
No sane operator of a porn site is not going to register their
pointless (Score:2)
Ummm...Are we going to restrict other channels from carrying pornographic content?
No. It's technically difficult and would be expensive and violate the first amendment.
Doesn't this just give the porn companies more porn channels while doing nothing to censor kids (which is unethical anyways)?
Underlying Problem (Score:2)
The question not getting much discussion is... (Score:4, Insightful)
protecting the children (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bullshit. How does creating a NEW domain for porn protect anyone? Only if at the same time porn is made illegal everywhere else, something that is not publicly advocated by the sponsors of .xxx. Though it's suspected that's an objective. However, no one has been able to clean porn out of any TLD and this remains impossible to do except as a symbolic and empty "We're protecting children from porn" statement. The only benefit of this new domain is the registrars who will collect $60 per year for all those existing porn sites who will be blackmailed into buying a corresponding .xxx domain to protect their brand from typosquatters. No one will set up a site solely on .xxx, a formula to be blocked by default from many users; they'll all just redirect to .coms or CC TLDs. No one will be "protected" from porn at all.
NO IT DOESN'T! Or, Article Is A Troll (Score:4, Informative)
NO IT DOESN'T. Please at least pretend you've read RFC 3675 [ietf.org].
Re:NO IT DOESN'T! Or, Article Is A Troll (Score:4, Funny)
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How about this for an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
What motivation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, dividing what some in society see a deviance is just asking for problems down the road related to censorship and restricted access. "Oh, you wanted
Flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
Dot Why? Why? Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't with the true .xxx folks, who probably don't really care and figure their market will find them.
The problem is with people who have content that is ambiguous and only "arguably" covered by this.
The problem is there is no .PG, .PG-13, .R, .X before .XXX ... which means there will suddenly be a binary division between
"good" and "bad". The world is not so black and white.
The real problem is that there is "middle ground", and there must be at minimum three systems, not too: Things unambiguously acceptable, things unambiguously outrageous, and things in between (i.e., hybrid). By making only two groups, you necessarily merge the hybrid with either the protectedthe outrageous. To say that anything not for highly protected people is outrageous is ridiculous and a sudden huge shift to the conservative that seems unlikely to succeed, though it would be a stretch to say that nothing like that would ever be tried--consider Prohibition.
Also, since it's defined in a way that makes it sound like you're in with scum, anyone who voluntarily enters is practically signing a confession that they think their ambiguous content to be depraved. I think that's the saddest of all: That someone who is just worried they might offend someone is basically forced to stand in the street and wave a sign saying "kick me" as their reward for being nice.
It would actually be an infinitely saner thing to create a .G or .KIDS domain where people could move to who want to live in a bubble.
There would then be no confusion about who belonged there: anyone who wanted to live by a lot of rules and wanted to be around others of like kind. And there would be very little motivation to cheat, since people who like that kind of thing would rush to it. There's no stigma, after all.
Nor are the standards for what must be in this domain clear in a way that makes sense globally. It seems to me something that will not be meaningfully able to be administered globally, since some countries that think nothing of certain controversial issues will not require .XXX, and it will just end up a casual tax on those who do choose to use it.
Or else it will be be the Internet version of McCarthyism, and the .XXX will gradually expand to be the list of everyone... until it breaks down and you can't watch a PG movie without it being .XXX and people say "why is this closet so crowded?" and demand to be let out.
None of the present plan makes any sense, really. So why are they doing it? The unspoken truth, of course, is that this is not about Net safety. It is about dictating morality. And why is that? Perhaps because they're being unable to sell the same morality voluntarily.
The strange thing to me is that this is all about sex. What about violence? Will there be a .MURDER TLD for people who think killing others is bad?
Will the evening news go there? What about unpopular wars? Or just people who are trying to save young women from unscrupulous coathanger-wielding men in alleys or trying to save the world from overpopulation?
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Holy crap someone edit the summary (Score:3, Insightful)
This means that parents will most likely have an easier time protecting their children from these sites and these sites will be more tightly regulated and easier to scrutinize by authorities.
I can't even count the number of ways this statement is blatently false.
Well, here's a few:
OK... let's pretend for a sec that all of the above is solved... all a kid who wants access to a .XXX TLD has to do is discover the IP address of it via a WHOIS lookup or other means, then create a DynDNS domain name pointing at this new IP. You think this is too complicated fro a kid to do? I know kids in elementary who have their own DynDNS hosts. It's not rocket science.
Here's a newsflash - since the advent of photography, kids have had porn. Hell, even before then hey had nude sketches of women. Kids have ALWAYS had porn. What guy on here hadn't seen a playboy by the time they were 12?
Re: (Score:2)
The argument that it makes it easier to find things is non
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Easy, The guy who owns the XXX.XXX.XXX domain.
Re:if only (Score:5, Insightful)
Just two questions:
Who defines illicit sexual content?
Who is the worldwide enforcer?
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