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The Internet Censorship

.xxx Domain Remains in Limbo 375

Posted by CowboyNeal from the porn-sites-remain-profitable dept.
datemenatalie writes "CNN.com reports that the Inernet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is still awaiting the decision of an advisory committee regarding .xxx domains. According to the article, "ICANN announced in June it would move ahead with plans to evaluate establishing a sex-site domain, but the proposal hit a snag in August when the U.S. Commerce Department asked for more time to hear objections." ICANN's president Paul Tworney was unable to say when a formal decision might be announced."
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.xxx Domain Remains in Limbo More

.xxx Domain Remains in Limbo

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  • This just in! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:46AM (#14163842)
    General Franco STILL DEAD!

  • ICANN (Score:3, Funny)

    by sloths ( 909607 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:46AM (#14163844)
    Does this mean I CANN't look at porn anymore???

    :(
    • There will always be purveyors of pornography. Even if the US were to attempt to limit the distribution of such material, there would be many in foreign countries who would help fill the void.

      • Re:ICANN (Score:3, Funny)

        by sloths ( 909607 )
        Don't you mean perveyors?

      • Re:ICANN (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        Even if the US were to attempt to limit the distribution of such material, there would be many in foreign countries who would help fill the void.

        Who said the US was attempting to do any such thing? Because the US Commence Department asked for more time to hear objections? I'm not a prude but I'm still not entirely sure what the whole point of this TLD is supposed to be. The ease of filtering is a BS argument unless porn sites are forced into the domain -- which I would not want to see happen just beca

    • Re:ICANN (Score:3, Funny)

      by bmgoau ( 801508 )
      Project Manager: Alright, in light of the Churchs and concerned citizens feelings on the issue of pornography online, we have decided to do the best we can as an organization and insist that all pronographic sites be moved to a new domain, so that they can be very easily blocked thus meaning that...

      Conservatist: Hold on a gawd damn minute, this is an outrage we will not allow it!

      Project Manager: My apologies, is there a specific problem with the idea?

      Conservatist: Absolutly! its a horrible idea!

      Project Mana

  • Don't even bother. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:48AM (#14163850)
    It's probably not necessary to even bother listening to more objections. No matter what they do, the various Christian extremist groups will be against it. No solution will be acceptable to them, except perhaps a complete ban on pornography, erotica, and any such material.

    • Re:Don't even bother. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by coshx ( 687751 )
      The thing is, this would make it easier for them to ban pornography / erotica / alternative lifestyles / education / muslims / jews / ... sorry, I know, they're godly people who only want to do good *ahem, crusades, ahem*

      It's much easier to simply ban all .xxx domains than to ban certain blacklisted sites or keywords or do image recognition.

      With this domain in place, it would also be easier to get legislation passed (in certain countries) forcing all sexually explicit sites to use this domain.

      So...

      • Re:Don't even bother. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by indifferent children ( 842621 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @09:38AM (#14165140)
        The thing is, this would make it easier for them to ban pornography...It's much easier to simply ban all .xxx domains than to ban certain blacklisted sites or keywords or do image recognition.

        The reason that your comment and the GP are missing each other is because of the word 'ban'. You are talking about 'filtering' the content on a family or individual basis. What the GP meant by 'ban' is that the Christians want to make sure that nobody has access to porn. They aren't trying to protect 'the children'; they are trying to assert their God-given right to control your life.


    • It's probably not necessary to even bother listening to more objections. No matter what they do, the various Christian extremist groups will be against it. No solution will be acceptable to them, except perhaps a complete ban on pornography, erotica, and any such material.


      WTF? I'm all for porn (except child) and think .xxx is really stupid idea. There are just too many people with too many definitions of what is obscene to make it work.

      • Re:Don't even bother. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by CyricZ ( 887944 )
        But even then, it shouldn't matter what anybody's definition of "obscenity" is. If Americans truly hold freedom of expression in high regard (as is often claimed by them), then the only focus should be on guaranteeing the ability of pornographers to distribute their pornography.

        That's what freedom of expression is truly about: supporting the expression of ideas which you completely disagree with.

        • Re:Don't even bother. (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That's what freedom of expression is truly about: supporting the expression of ideas which you completely disagree with.

          Er, not quite.

          Supporting the freedom to express an idea is not the same thing as supporting the expression of that idea.

          For instance, I support a fascist's right to express his or her fascist ideas, but I do not in any way, shape, or form, support his or her expression of those ideas. In fact, while I support that right to expression, I condemn the expression itself.

        • Blame religion (Score:3, Informative)

          by typical ( 886006 )
          If Americans truly hold freedom of expression in high regard (as is often claimed by them)

          We actually don't. The US is pretty religiously conservative. Religion is the largest source of objection to freedom of expression, regrettably enough. It always seems to be Southern Baptists out claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and needs to be removed from school libraries...

          If you think about how Christianity works, it's not such a surprise. Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the un

          • Re:Blame religion (Score:5, Informative)

            by kale77in ( 703316 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @04:40AM (#14164357) Homepage
            If you think about how Christianity works, it's not such a surprise. Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the universe perhaps not circling around the Earth, Christianity worked very quickly to stifle him and keep him under house arrest until he died. The folks living large at the top of the religious food chain didn't try to just *defend* their ideas -- they knew that they were wrong, and that they were only going to win by suppressing competing ideas.

            Jeez, where to begin?

            • The problem was not that they 'knew they were wrong', but that they 'they knew they were right', but for wrong or inadequate reasons (they were married to Ptolemaic cosmology, via Aristotle and Aquinas, with some scriptural window-dressing) -- and Galileo's evidence was by no means knock-down-drag-out compelling.
            • Would you say Marxist Russia, or modern China, or the 'Reign of Terror' in the fiercely secular French Revolution, tell us anything meaningful about "how Atheism works"? Ignorance of atheistic history produces its own kinds of prejudice.
            • Have you ever considered perhaps reading about Galileo? About the live scientific options of the time, the relative state of the evidence either way, who his supporters and opponents in the Church were, and how he managed to finally put all of them offside by his rather strikingly abrasive writing and debating style? Martyrologies of ALL kinds are notoriously prone to embellishments and omissions.

            Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start. You might also see:

            For centuries the trial of Galileo (1564-1642) was the stuff of myth: Galileo tortured by the Inquisition; his defiant words after recanting ("e pur se muove," "but it does move"); the infallible Church proclaiming the dogma that the Sun goes round the Earth. None of these details is true, but that did not seem to matter much to those who exalted Galileo as a martyr to truth.

            http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0401/revie ws/barr.html

            (A review of some recent books on the issue, in a fairly responsible Catholic journal. IANA Catholic, incidentally.)

          • Re:Blame religion (Score:3, Informative)

            by dasunt ( 249686 )

            You should look up Galileo's interaction with the Jesuits (specifically the origin of comets). He could be a complete PITA, especially when he was quite sure of himself.

            He also decided that the planets went in circulate orbits with epicenters. This resulted in a Copernican system that was no more accurate than the Ptolmic system.

            Combine this with his caustic nature and his writings that could be construed as attacking the Pope, and it was no wonder that he was excommunicated in Italy during the mid

          • Lies. Damn Lies. And Statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by xstonedogx ( 814876 ) <xstonedogx@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @05:02AM (#14164404)
            We actually don't.

            Who the hell is "we"? Americans are not one homogenous group. In fact, we're one of, if not the most diverse nation ethnically, religiously, politically, philosophically, and every other -ly on the planet.

            Religion is the largest source of objection to freedom of expression, regrettably enough.

            In the same way that weapons are the largest source of murders, right? Religion is many things, and that some use it as a tool of oppression does not necessarily mean religion itself is the source of the oppression.

            The largest danger to freedom of expression is people in power who stand to lose power, whether they are popes or presidents. Religion is sometimes used. So is patriotism. So is the public good. So is individual safety. So is fear.

            It always seems to be Southern Baptists out claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and needs to be removed from school libraries...

            Ah. So Southern Baptists claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft are representative not only of all Southern Baptists, but also all Christians.

            Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the universe perhaps not circling around the Earth, Christianity worked very quickly to stifle him and keep him under house arrest until he died.

            Christianity was used to stifle him by people in power.

            If I use a hammer to oppress people, does that mean the hammer did the oppressing?

            The folks living large at the top of the religious food chain didn't try to just *defend* their ideas -- they knew that they were wrong, and that they were only going to win by suppressing competing ideas.

            Finally. Corrupt people in positions of power are the problem. Blind faith in religious organizations are the problem. Religion is not the problem.

            And then when Martin Luther translated the Bible into a language that commoners could read...he nearly was killed by good ol' Christianity. There was the risk that someone would have to actually *defend* ideas, instead of being able to just indoctrinate kids at a young age ("If you don't do what the priest says and give him money each week, you're going to BURN IN HELL FOREVER").

            Martin Luther was a Christian. Do you think Martin Luther would blame Christianity or the power structure of the Catholic Church?

            Christianity is steadily dying out in the United States. Christianity now claims 10% less of the population than it did a decade ago. Still a long way to go, though.

            The publication you cite does show a 10% decrease in the percentage of Christians among the total population.

            However, these statistics hardly support your claim that "Christianity is steadily dying out". According to the publication, self-described Christians actually increased in number by 5% and are still a whopping 76% of the total population.
    • The thing is, why would the international authority on top level domains listen to US evangelical christians? Doesn't this prove ICANN is controlled by the US government and that this is a problem?
    • In a particularly eerie co-incidence... Catholic theologicans this week urged the Pope to agree that unbaptized children don't go to Limbo.

      http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Vati can_Limbo.html [nwsource.com]

      Just in time, apparently, now that .xxx is there!

      As an aside, the Marxist-Feminist author Andrea Dworkin's angry, angry, angry book "Pornography" is a good read for anyone wishing to become thoroughly disgusted (or at least, morally and intellectually challenged) by the barrenness and degradation of the por
      • a good read for anyone wishing to become thoroughly disgusted (or at least, morally and intellectually challenged) by the barrenness and degradation of the pornographic enterprise in general

        The barenness and degradation of the meat packing industry is stomach-churning. I still love steak.

        The barenness and degradation of the garment industry (mostly in third world countries) is terrible. I'm not volunteering to go naked (usual /.'er dimensions).

        If you have a problem with industry practices, work to cha

    • Why would Christian extremist groups be against it? They want to eventually mandate that all questionable content (determined by the U.S. government, maybe the FCC) is forced in to some sort of adult domain, and require ISPs to provide optional filtering of these TLDs. The adult webmasters are the ones against this, and are actually donating big dollars to their lobbying group to fight it. The Internet porn market is already saturated. You aren't going to get a larger percentage of the net viewers to start

  • In Limbo (Score:5, Funny)

    by umbrellasd ( 876984 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:48AM (#14163851)
    How low can it go!?

  • Slashdot.xxx (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:48AM (#14163853)
    Slashdot.xxx only for articles on device dissections like Xboxes and PSP with the cover off. Maybee even Source code... how sexy.

  • pr0n is TRASH (Score:5, Funny)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:50AM (#14163858)
    I think they should put ALL sex sites on this .xxx domain. And, yes, I know that U.S. laws won't do jack for sites that are elsewhere in the world, but that is exactly why the U.S. should retain complete control of ICANN and the domain name system, without giving in to anybody. This is how to solve the problem of pr0n getting into schools, public libraries, and your child's computer: The U.S. says, ok, any sex related site has to go on the .xxx domain. All sex sites have six months to comply and move their site in its entirety to this domain. Then, a government office is set up where government officials comb through the Internet with a big comb, a la Space Balls. Any sex site that is found in a non .xxx domain will have its domain name revoked immediately and the government will immediately go after them if they're in the U.S. or will work with foreign officials to make their life really, really suck. Those who go on the .xxx domain will have no problems and they can put whatever pr0n they want on there for all ya'll's enjoyment. Public libraries, parents, businesses, and whoever else who doesn't want pr0n in their place will have a simple task of blocking .xxx domains.

    Get rid of that fscking stuff... Because you should just get your own anyway.

    • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:57AM (#14163897)
      I know you're joking, but many Europeans find it hilarious how those in the US who go on the most about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and Afghanistan are often amongst the leaders in wanting to limit freedom in America.

      Like it or not, to be against pornography depicting consenting adults performing various sexual acts is to be against freedom. Freedom is one of the few black-and-white situations. Either you have freedom, or you do not. Any amount of censorship, however minor, automatically means that one is not free.

      • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lehk228 ( 705449 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:14AM (#14163969) Journal
        you guys may find it funny sitting thousands of miles away. living here it is fucking scary.

      • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:5, Funny)

        by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:32AM (#14164029)
        "I know you're joking, but many Europeans find it hilarious how those in the US who go on the most about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and Afghanistan are often amongst the leaders in wanting to limit freedom in America."

        I don't find it hilarious, not even a bit. I find it sad.
        • "I know you're joking, but many Europeans find it hilarious how those in the US who go on the most about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and Afghanistan are often amongst the leaders in wanting to limit freedom in America."

          Being truthful is sometimes not the most effective short-term way to herd people. Playing off fears and irrationality often works a lot better.
      • To be strictly accurate, I'd say that being against porn isn't to be against freedom. However, to be in favour of imposing your own views on everybody else through censorship and regulation is, in fact, to reduce others' freedom.

        In truth, we all accept that freedom cannot be complete. That would be anarchy. I would be quite free to simply kill some fellow who irritated me (though I would not) and his friends/family would be quite free to return the favour. We all accept some restrictions on our freedom in e

      • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:3, Informative)

        by dasunt ( 249686 )

        I know you're joking, but many Europeans find it hilarious how those in the US who go on the most about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and Afghanistan are often amongst the leaders in wanting to limit freedom in America.

        Lets see. Germany bans Scientology as a cult. France went after Yahoo for selling Nazi memorabilia on its English site. English had the McLibel case due to its free-speech unfriendly libel laws.

        The US has its idiosyncrasies, but it isn't the only western nation that has them.

    • Then, a government office is set up where government officials comb through the Internet with a big comb

      Where do I sign up for that job?

    • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Think about the amount of work involved in what you propose. Then think about the benefits. The only reason you give is for porn not to be accessible to kids, however forcing all adult entertainment sites to switch domains through legislation is not the answer. Besides, there are a lot worse things on the Internet than just the porn. It may hurt productivity, and the paysites can be hazardous (to one's personal economy), but other than that.. It hard to see how anything done by two (or more :)) consenting a

    • Re:pr0n is TRASH (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DarkTempes ( 822722 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:22AM (#14163989)
      what about bloggers and review sites and not entirely porn related sites that occasionally have links to or actual nude/pornographic images.

      what about nudist webpages?

      what about nude photography art?

      'Sir, this is the FBI. You recently posted to foo.bloggerbar.com a pornographic image of your new baby boy. Because you posted this horrible pornographic image, I am sorry but we have no chance but to confiscate all evidence, including your child. Thanks for your cooperation in this matter of National Security in our efforts to Save the Children of Tomorrow.'

  • GIVE US OUR PORN DOMAIN! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:50AM (#14163859)
    Give it to the people or we'll riot to get it!

  • This is the stupidest thing ever (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:51AM (#14163863) Journal
    well, maybe ever... if all sex sites had to have a .xxx tld, it would be *SO* easy to block it.... How can even the religious zealots be against that? If you have pr0n on something other than a .xxx site, you get a big big fine... this sounds too easy to ever be workable...

    • They want eradication, not censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:00AM (#14163912)
      It's because religious zealots do not want just censorship. They want complete eradication of such material.

    • How can even the religious zealots be against that?
      They seem to think that creating a .xxx TLD condones pornography's existence and possibly even encourages it.

      I don't buy it either.

      The only problems I see with this are, as others have said, enforcement and categorization (what constitutes porn).
    • if all sex sites had to have a .xxx tld, it would be *SO* easy to block it.

      Porn is one area where an alternate root system might actually catch on.

    • If porn is on .com then your next religious zealot can always say "i was searching for web site on horse, and really , I clicked horseteen.com but it turns out it was not about teen riding horse lessons". Now if it is with XXX at the end they can't plausibly deny they clicked on it accidentally.



      ;).
    • It's not that easy at all.

      First, you ignore the very real issue of defining "porn". Secondly the issue of who should hand out the "big fine" for having something considered porn under some non-.xxx domain (the US government ? Like the rest of the world would stand for that...)

      To some, Basic Instinct is porn. It does show a blurry shot, about 0.02 seconds long of a pussy, and it does have graphical, violent sex in it (though you don't see actual penetrations) to others it's not.

      To most of the "religiou

    • .xxx is a really, really bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)

      by typical ( 886006 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @03:07AM (#14164123) Journal
      if all sex sites had to have a .xxx tld, it would be *SO* easy to block it.... How can even the religious zealots be against that?

      A lot of reasons. I've posted scads of problems with it, but here are my two favorite reasons:

      (1) .xxx sucks from a technical standpoint. Using DNS to categorize sites allows anyone else to set up a non-.xxx address that points at the same address. .xxx is useless for blocking, for this reason. .xxx allows only a single bit of information to be encoded about a an entire domain (is it "adult", whatever that means, or not?) There are better, existing systems to embed metatags in web pages. These approaches are far more powerful ("contains REALISTIC_VIOLENCE and NUDITY" and lets the user or ISP choose how to filter based on these content flags), provide better granularity (you don't have to stick an entire domain in .xxx if it contains one adult page), and can't be bypassed as blocking systems just because someone uses a proxy or something similar.

      (2) .xxx sucks from a policy standpoint. We sorta-kinda can get away with saying "This is adult content, and this isn't" in the United States, because we've got a *somewhat* universal standard of acceptable content. Even then, there's friction (in San Francisco, it's been ruled legal to do nude yoga on a city street -- try doing that in the Deep South). But it's not nearly as much as the differences between countries and continents. Remember that this is not xxx.us -- this is a .xxx *TLD*. It applies to *everyone*. In the UK, it's considered perfectly harmless to show topless women on television. In the US, we consider that unacceptable and obscene. In some conservative Islamic countries, a woman in regular business wear (or worse, a bikini) would be considered completely unacceptable. How do you do a good job of reconciling all these various wildly-differing social values into that single bit of information? No matter what happens, an awful lot of people are going to find your classification completely unacceptable. A .xxx TLD promises *years* of culture wars and infighting.

      There are two main groups pushing for a .xxx TLD. First, there are a lot of people who simply don't have the technical background to understand the drawbacks of a .xxx TLD, but know that they want to be able to filter porn. They aren't familiar with the alternatives, and a .xxx TLD is easy to explain to them. The other group is the domain name registrars, which are absolutely salivating at the possibility of having people have to pay for a new domain based on the kind of content they are providing. Heck, get past the initial big step of getting people used to paying a domain name registrar tax to serve a particular type of content, and you can do it with all *kinds* of content. There's nothing that a domain name registrar would like better than something along these lines.

      And that's why I really don't think that most people actually want a .xxx TLD. They may want to be able to filter porn, but they don't want a .xxx TLD.

  • This is a collossal piece of cowardice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LardBrattish ( 703549 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:51AM (#14163865) Homepage
    Looks like the American government is controlling the internet.

    Even though this would make the lives of concerned parents (etc) 3,000,000x easier by putting an e-red-light-district on the web to make either finding or filtering pr0n a non-issue.

    What a stupid decision.

  • My 2 cents? bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by directorx ( 935574 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:53AM (#14163879)
    Why do we need a .xxx account? If it is implemented, it will be two months until The Raging Arsemunching Mothers for Protection against Society (TRAMPS) will be requiring that all pr0n will be put on .xxx servers and not on anything else. Or anything that looks like it might link to something that MIGHT talk about birth control. And there, ladies and gentlemen, goes the internet as we know it.
    • Good point, it's easy to broaden the definition of pr0n to something unacceptable to a pressure group to make it unavailable.

      If they do that to the San Diego Chargers website because of the cheerleader shots I'm going postal...

    • Re:My 2 cents? bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mattintosh ( 758112 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:10AM (#14163948)
      I like what someone else suggested in the last thread about this (very stupid) .xxx TLD idea - a "whitelist" in a .kids TLD. No porn allowed. Nothing even remotely close to porn allowed, in fact. Hell, let the freak-ass religious retards regulate it to their liking. Then let schoolkids look at *.kids and nothing else.

      Meanwhile, leave the rest of us alone to put up sites about interesting, mature, and even possibly (god forbid!) nude things.
      • I like the idea, but there are flaws.

        1) Lots of duplication of sites.
        2) A single instance could screw something over. Anytime CNN.com discusses sex, does it get booted off *kids? How about Wikipedia? Just try to block the "bad" articles?
        3) The idea of a .kids TLD seems like the Windows root/basic user quandry. Windows users are forced to run as admin or root or whoever because most legitimate programs require it. If a young teenager regularly needs to access sites outside of .kids, he gets "adult
      • (a) Why does it have to be a TLD? This is a US issue. Why not *.kids.us?

        (b) This has already been proposed [icann.org]

        (c) Many of the problems of the .xxx TLD still apply. It's still a single bit. It tries to apply a global bar for what is acceptable for a kid to view to the *entire* world, rather than flagging based on type of content. It is primarily pushed by registrars that just want to sell more domains. It has only domain-level granularity. It's a lot easier to bypass than metatagging.
    • I think we all might be overreacting here. Sure there's going to be a huge debate about what is porn and what isn't. But lets just say some site about birth control does get forced into the .xxx domain. So what? It's not being taken down. Most will still be able to access it.
    • Agreed. While I'm normally pretty quick to get mad about religious groups holding up the implementation of new technology, this is an exception. The .xxx TLD is a painfully stupid idea.

      There is no reason the Internet needs to create discriminatory domains. Would anyone seriously argue that there is a shortage of porn-related domain names? To use an infamous example, does anyone think whitehouse.com would have tried to get whitehouse.xxx instead, but was forced to use the .com address because they had no oth

  • .xxx - worse than nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:54AM (#14163887)
    What would it acheive? A false sense of security for those would would want to filter based on it. Nothing really requires pornography to belong to a xxx domain.

    That is, if we can actually define porn. Beach pics? Lingerie ads? A hand, 6" one way or the other, is the line between porn, and sales.

    • Re:.xxx - worse than nothing (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:57AM (#14163898)
      That is, if we can actually define porn. Beach pics? Lingerie ads? A hand, 6" one way or the other, is the line between porn, and sales.

          Reminds me of the great late Bill Hicks... "The US Supreme Court defines 'pornography' as 'any act without artistic merit that causes sexual thougths'. Mmmm... sounds like every God damned commercial on TV these days to me!"
    • I don't understand how this can possibly be worse. Lets break down the different motives...

      First, you are right, there will always be a huge gray region as to what is or is not porn. Depending on how puritan you are, Greek art can be considered pornography. Hell, there's plenty of T&A on MTV, MuchMusic, or even Billboard ads, let alone the Internet. Come to think of it, have you recently flipped through and issue of Cosmo? Plenty of those lying around in hair salons. But we're not out to censor th
      • For public sites and services like libraries and Google, their job is now infinitely easier. Just exclude .xxx. Done.

        Right. and www.spankmyass.com is going to voluntarily give it up to become www.spankmyass.xxx? Please...

    • What would it achieve?

      2 things:
      1. A new TLD to sell at a premium price.
      2. Good PR for ICANN.

      What? You thought it was "to protect the kiddies"? Or so employers can protect themselves from lost work time, allegations of failing to enforce policies to minimise sexual harassment, and lawsuits from employees who suddenly develop hairy palms?

      No, it's all about making money and looking good...

    • What would it acheive?

      More money for registrars. That's the sole motivating factor.

  • good idea, but impractical (Score:4, Funny)

    by aj1 ( 935405 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:00AM (#14163909)
    Making the general internet purely a kid friendly zone would help with many concerns parents have, but I do not believe it is going to happen. What is the likelyhood that the bad people who share unlawful or illegally copied pornography will all switch over to the xxx domain? The only real reason I see in this is to protect children from accidentally stumbling across bad things.

    What's my prediction if this ever gets passed you asked? You will have an easier way of finding porn for sale by searching with the .xxx domain (as if you needed one), but nothing will change in the .com world. People who want too will still view porn. People who don't will still complain.

    In my opinion instead of pushing the .xxx domain, we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing. Then educate parents on how too set up firewalls to keep their minor children away from the stuff. Next we can encourage parents to spend enough time with their children they will feel confident in their childs choice in the matter.
    • In my opinion instead of pushing the .xxx domain, we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing. Then educate parents on how too set up firewalls to keep their minor children away from the stuff. Next we can encourage parents to spend enough time with their children they will feel confident in their childs choice in the matter.

      There's a lot of commercial products (here's [cybersitter.com] one, for example) that do just that.
      • There's a lot of commercial products [link to cybersitter] that do just that. Unfortunately, opinions on what's "acceptable and non-questionable" can vary wildly.

        Absolutely, and quite often even the lists themselves are skewed to promote an "acceptable" view. I have at one point had the unfortunate task of doing technical support for systems containing similar products. Quite often they offer category based restrictions; but there is noticible gaps. The filter for "Religion" for example tends to only

    • Movies have one. Television shows have one. Song lyrics have one. Games have one.

      Maybe it's time for a website rating system.

      Make it voluntary and easy (something as simple as placing a .rating file in the root folder)and I think most sites would comply. Once enough sites have this in place, filtering can commence.

  • I've got the solution! (Score:3, Funny)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:08AM (#14163941)
    All these folks up in arms about their children possibly seeing even slightly "objectionable" material would most likely be best locking their children in a closet. Don't let them near a computer, let alone a computer hooked up to the Internet. Don't let them near a television. Don't let them visit the local video shoppe. Don't let them visit the library (there may be medical texts there showing penises, vaginas and anuses!). Don't even let them go to school, as little Jimmy might bring in the Hustler he found in his daddy's sock drawer.

    If they were to keep their children locked up in the dark all the time, then they would never accidentally encounter anything objectionable.

    Meanwhile, the rest of us could continue to enjoy freedom of expression.

    • Yeah, right. If you rally think that a lot of the stuff online is merely 'slightly objectionable', then you have some serious issues.

      Not that I agree with the xxx thing in the least, but you know as well as I do that there are some seriously disturbed individuals online. And ready to display that to the world.

      "Mommy? Why is that lady hanging from the ceiling?"
      "Mommy? Why is that lady pooping on herself?"
      "Mommy? What's worng with that guys butt?"

      Are you ready to explain that to a 6 year old?

      • Are you ready to explain that to a 6 year old?

        So the purpose of censorship is to help adults deal with their own childhood censorship-induced fears and neuroses and inability to deal with them rationally, rather than to actually produce a benefit for children?

        Paul Graham once wrote that the real point of PowerPoint is not to help present information in a memorable manner. It's to help presenters confront their fears of public speaking, since it means that the audience is looking at a projected square and t
        • "Censorship"? No. Not showing *everything* to a kid until you, the parent, determines that they are ready, yes.

          If you haven't noticed, there is a huge, wide range of maturity between 0 and 18. Maybe when you have children of your own, you'll realize this.

          • "Censorship"? No. Not showing *everything* to a kid until you, the parent, determines that they are ready, yes.

            If filtering out content that you consider objectionable (even if you intend to stop doing so two decades in the future) isn't censorship, I'm curious as to what your definition of the word is. Mirriam-Webster says "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable".

            If you haven't noticed, there is a huge, wide range of maturity between 0 and 18. Maybe when you have child

  • Good thing the evil UN isn't involved in DNS! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by leoc ( 4746 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:14AM (#14163967) Homepage
    Because if it were, some dumbass religious zealots from a backwards country would be using their influence to stifle things they don't like... oh wait, never mind.

  • No more new TLDs! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:19AM (#14163977) Homepage
    We have too many TLDs now. Remember all those stupid TLDs from the last round, like ".museum"? Nobody uses them. The big-name museums are under .org or a country domain. (Here's the complete list of domains registered under .museum. [index.museum] Most of them don't even work, and for the ones that do, they're usually an alternate name.) Have you ever seen a domain in ".aero" or ".pro"? ".biz" gets used, but mostly by sleazy operators. There are so few legitimate businesses in ".biz" that it has the reputation of a strip mall in South Central LA.

    ICANN should stop considering new TLDs. In fact, it might be worthwhile to start phasing out some of the newer TLDs due to lack of interest.

    • Re:No more new TLDs! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Animats ( 122034 )
      Incidentally, ".aero" works, sort of. If you type "<airport code>.aero", you get the web site for that airport. Sometimes. But that's just because the domain registrar set up dummy redirects. But they botched the job. Try, for example, dfw.aero [dfw.aero].

      lax.aero [lax.aero] does work, if anybody cares. But it's just a redirect to the main site for all Los Angeles County airports. [lawa.org] It doesn't even go direct to the LAX site.

      Totally unnecessary.

      • Less TLDs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by typical ( 886006 )
        Totally unnecessary.

        Not from a registrar's point of view.

        Their take (which is apparently correct) is that if they're selling database entries, then a business needs to buy subscriptions for *all* possible related entries. If they come out with a .biz TLD, then IBM needs to buy ibm.biz to avoid concerns that someone *else* might buy it.

        It's completely necessary to enforce an ever-increasing tax against businesses. It's free money for the registrars -- why *wouldn't* they push for more TLDs?

        It's sad that IC

  • It'll never pass (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foreverdisillusioned ( 763799 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:19AM (#14163979) Journal
    Or rather, if it does pass it will still never become compulsory.

    Disregarding the issue of different countries and differing standards of pornography, I'm sure some bright fellow will point out that several passages in the bible are explicit enough to qualify for the xxx classification.

  • You could always just use... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:23AM (#14163991)
    ...the .co.ck domain name. Really... http://www.google.co.ck/ [google.co.ck] I couldn't make it up if I tried.

  • Will slashdot have to register slashdot.xxx just to block porn companies from doing same?

    Obviously this is something which could be abused by people who register in the xxx namespace.

  • Interesting podcasts from Vancouver (Score:5, Informative)

    by miller60 ( 554835 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:28AM (#14164013) Homepage
    Lawyer and ICANN blogger Bret Fausett [internet.pro] is providing a steady stream of podcasts from Vancouver, including this one [lextext.com], which reviews the meeting in which the "non-decision" was announced. Apparently the staff at ICM Registry (the folks slated to run the .xxx domain) were completely blindedsided by Vint Cerf's announcement that .xxx had been tabled - which came right before ICM was to make a presentation on it.

  • ouch (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LoneWolf367 ( 931839 )
    That article didn't really provide any information reguarding reasoning for allowing or disallowing. Would xxx domains be reserved for porn sites only like a .edu or .gov? That would be rediculous. As a "religeous zealot" I wouldn't mind owning a few myself. If anyone could use em lets face it, having xxx in your name would drive TONS of traffic to your website you might not normally get and even though perhaps the individual is looking for adult content ya might have a good website with other content they

  • To repeat myself. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thisissilly ( 676875 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:38AM (#14164052)
    .kids.us is a better idea than .xxx. The US government could regulate content within the domain to its heart's content, and parents who want the government to raise their children for them could set their kids' firewall to only allow access to that domain. There would be no question of "who owns the TLD", like the current .com/.net/.org struggle, no worries about what people in other countries find kid-acceptable that would raise flags in the US (e.g., beach photos where mom is topless), restrictions and fines could be placed on all .kids.us operators for violations, and advertisers and others would be lining up to pay registration fees so as to be able to hit a target audience. And best of all, the politicians can claim that they are doing it all "for the children".

    We don't let kids drive freely over real highways. Why are we letting them drive freely over the 'Information Superhighway'? Rather than forcing all drivers to 5 m.p.h., let us make a kid friendly bike-path.
    • Yes, if other memes get to them before their indoctrination is complete, they might come up with different ideas than others.

      My take: if your ideas are good enough, you don't need to try to silence others to ensure that your ideas take root.
  • That domain is super-lame.

  • So what happens if you put a porn pic on a .com? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @03:38AM (#14164199)
    whats the point of .xxx ?

    What if i want to show my buddy some hot chick? What if i want to put a naked girl on my website?

    would i have use a .xxx just because theres nudity?

    Whats the point of .xxx?

    Sounds like censorship to me.

    • If it was about censorship the rightwingers would be for it. It's about freedom actually so they are against it. The point is a .XXX domain could easily be blocked on computers so children couldn't cruise them. The porn industry wants this very badly because it can get rid of most of the arguments against them. The Christian right doesn't want them segregated into their own part of the web they want them out of business all together. You have to remember what concerns them isn't their children seeing it it'

  • ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pliep ( 880962 )
    1. PARENTAL ATTENTION is the way to bring up and protect children. Not dumping them in front of a TV or internet and have the insane fscking government decide.

    2. If all US pron was to be put on .xxx domains, I for one would be the first to claim the now-free porn.com domain from within a non-US country and get rich by selling porn.

    3. The definition of "porn" has been undecided and vague for about 500 years. Go and try outlaw "porn" to special domains, and see where medical images, scientific articles ab

  • .GOD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @04:01AM (#14164267)
    I say we put all religous content under a .god address. I'd like the option of blocking all such offensive material. As a parent I should be able to shield my children from such corrupting influences. I'm terrified that my young son will wind up in a chat room with a priest. They should be given their own web domains and leave the net to decent folk.

  • Who will be the first? (Score:4, Funny)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @04:05AM (#14164279)
    to register goatse.xxx?

  • Limbo Is So Second Millenium (Score:5, Funny)

    by bottlerocket ( 605232 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @04:11AM (#14164293) Homepage
    I thought being "in limbo" was on it's way out [news.com.au]?

  • This is way offtopic but I don't care (Score:3, Funny)

    by Busy ( 890287 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @05:10AM (#14164427) Homepage Journal

    I'm blown away by the submitter's website [datemenatalie.com]

    XHTML strict? Ok, I guess that's a good habit but how did you come to the conclusion that you need seperate(sp?) style sheets for screen and print?

    ...

    And now I'm stuck wondering why I wanted to see the source in the first place :(

  • In the immortal words of Voltaire the Pornographer (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eternal Vigilance ( 573501 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @05:12AM (#14164433)
    "I disapprove of what you f*ck, but I will defend to the death your right to post pictures of you f*cking it."

    "Vidi, veni" - Caesar

  • this is a great idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by mrfantasy ( 63690 ) <{mike} {at} {chairthrower.org}> on Friday December 02, 2005 @11:04AM (#14165689) Homepage Journal
    I think it's about time we're able to know that only one TLD on the Internet will contain Vin Diesel content.

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