ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain 245
stalebread writes "Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites, the Internet's key oversight agency voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet." From the article: "In a split 9-5 board decision, the organisation acted ruthlessly, against its own previous position, in order to put an end to an increasingly difficult and controversial issue - the approval of a .xxx top-level domain. The .xxx registry application has been the focus of enormous political pressure on ICANN for the past six months and was used at one point as a political football in a wider tussle for power within the internet."
Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:4, Insightful)
By managing to force ICANN to kill this initiative, you've made certain smut remains where it belongs...out of sight and out of mind (your sight and your mind, anyway).
Never mind that by stopping the
Never mind that porn is as old as the human species, and will continue to be present on the Internet just as it has been present in every other media in human history.
Never mind that your rejection of an accepted place for it to be located just insures that it will remain in unacceptable places.
Nope...it's much more important (not to mention easier) to address the hot-button issue of the legitimization of adult content, while conveniently ignoring the reality: that porn isn't going anywhere, no matter how much the fundies shout..
So porn on the Internet will remain where it belongs...all-pervasive and impossible to effectively block...but at least you made your 'stand'. Well done.
Utter stupidity... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't get why "conservative" groups would *not* want it...it would make filtering (for sites following the rules) so trivial it'd be ridiculous.
For that matter, why are some of the porn outfits against the idea? Aside from worrying about a squatter getting your domain name, what's the downside? It's not like a .xxx domain is going to have some stigma that customers would avoid.
I just don't get it.
Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing a
I can't imagine why you think it possibly would. The
Who are they kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
A huge campaign against .xxx has seen ICANN's public comment board for the registry flooded in recent days by hundreds of posters with little or no understanding of the .xxx bid, but all stating their opposition to its approval. The same campaign has been raging for months, with one ICANN Board member sent threatening letters due to an assumed bias for the registry.
Sounds like a typical day on Slashdot... but seriously, everyone's so concerned about the problem of pornography and had to limit access to it, and yet here is an attractive solution, with very little downside, and of course the fanatics are opposed. They want porn banned entirely, and aren't willing to even see a half-measure put in place to curb and control it. THey want to throw the baby out with the bath water, all because their "morality" is somehow superior to mine. Well, last time I checked, the Constitution of the United States gives me the right to decide for myself what I want to look at and see, and also allows me the right to do it without fear of persecution by the Government or my fellow citizens.
Not everyone believes what the fanatics believe and every individual is entitled to his/her own opinion. And while your opinion might be different than mine, I don't get to foist mine off on you and visa versa. So the fundamentalist s need to go home and play with their toys in private and leave me alone.
What happened behind the scenes was that the US administration told ICANN chairman Vint Cerf and head Paul Twomey that it did not approve of the domain, but due to the difficult political position that it would put both ICANN and the US government in were it to be seen to be directing internet policy (against its publicly stated "hands off" policy), there has been a carefully co-ordinated effort to kill the registry through delay.
Ok, who sees this for the FUD it is? Of course the US Government is directing things at ICANN; they've been basically getting ICANN to thumb its nose at the rest of the world's concerns for years. Why should now be any different? They undoubtedly made it clear that this wasn't going to happen, and Cerf and Twomey then had to find some way to kill the thing gracefully, rather than coming out and saying "the US made us do it" and face the wrath of Congress. And so the slow, lingering death.
ICANN gets less relevant every month it seems.
Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:5, Insightful)
I normally agree with you, but I think you're completely off-base here. I was against .xxx because it was a bad idea. There were two main possibilities: 1) usage was voluntary, or 2) usage was compulsory. The former was silly; I don't recall anyone ever saying that they actually looked forward to using .xxx. The latter was scary; who decides what goes in there? What countries are affected? What's the penalty for deciding to publish a nude photo under .com and being ratted out by an over-zealous watchdog group?
No, I can't think of a single change from this proposal (other than compelling 90% of the population to add .xxx to a TLD blacklist in their browser - if you don't want to look at porn, you won't mind blacklisting it, ja?). No one wanted it, it couldn't have worked, and it would have caused more problems than it ever could have solved.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
2) pass law forcing all questionable content to use
3) block all
4) Now that the
5) Create a timemachine go back to the earlier stages of the domain suggestion and cancel it.
6) MORE PORN!=)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
This is like refusing to consider adult businesses (Score:2, Insightful)
In many ways the .xxx doman was bs (Score:3, Insightful)
The ONLY real answer is sensible sex industry cooperation and self censorship. I don't mean they should take their websites down, but they should open their site with a uniform warning page allowing the site to be filtered thereafter, or other such methods. By following rules that make them nice netizens, they will effectively allow the law enforcement agencies to track those that are not playing nice... and it IS the ones that don't play nice that we all want hammered into dust. Pop-ups, spam, pop-unders, hijacking... all these things need to go away, and if legitimate porn sites played nice, it would soon become apparent how to attack the problem from a legal standpoint.
Not having the
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The porn industry doesn't want to be partially forced into one little cubbyhole where they can be easily targeted and persecuted for the services and products they provide. They want to stay out of the limelight of persecution.
The geeks know that this is useless as it will be impossible to enforce (just like ONLY non profits being
Is there ANYBODY who actually has a good reason for this to exist?
Unacceptable? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's so unacceptable about pornographic sites residing in
People in western countries, and in the United States in paticular, have, for reasons inexplicable, a huge problem with sex. It's still seen as wrong, dirty, nasty, etc, etc. Unfit for public exposure. Unacceptable.
Tough shit. People are interested in sex. People want to know about sex. In fact, people need to know about sex. Just because certain wretches find anything to do with sex perturbing does not mean that the rets of us have to kowtow to their demands.
Of course, most contemporary pornography is pretty grotesque. This is of course, a result of the mass censorship and taboos placed on it, not because sex is inherantly predisposed to concoct such images.
Todays fun fact: In the 1930's, the Irish Free State Government commissioned a report into the sexual behaviour of the strongly Catholic, highly conservative irish population. What did they find? Rampant deviancy. Incest, Beastiality, pedophilia, rape, extra-marital affairs, sado-masochism, etc were all extremely common. Why? Because of the censorship and vilification of normal healthy sexual relationships. The report was vigourously supressed, and is largely unspoken of to this day. Now I understand where all those jokes about farmers and sheep came from when I was growing up.
My own opinion is that the Bible Belt territory of the United States is probably in a similar state, thank' to years of repression. Whenever I see images of crowds of "moral crusaders", I'm of the opinion that a large number of them are very depraved in private. I think statistics would back me up if anyone had the gall to do some surveys on the matter. I suspect that these are the people buying all this twisted porn.
So screw them. And screw the opinion that the rest of us should have to censor ourselves because of their dirty minds. People should grow up knowing what a clitoris is and what it's for. If some poor girl grows up never knowing because her idiot parents or pastor felt it was better that she didn't, that's unacceptable.
Re:Conservatives vs. liberals? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because the whole issue only exists because of a division in US Republican Party internal politics. And since the Republicans control the US Congress and White House, they have a certain amount of influance over ICANN and were pushing this issue one way or the other.
Apples and Oranges (was Re:Who are they kidding?) (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, take the analogy to the next step: .whitesupremacy. I don't think a great majority of the planet likes the idea any more than I do, so let's segregate it as well.
This isn't a free speech issue. Anyone can sign up for a domain name and host a web site. You can have just about any combination of domain and TLD you can think of to represent your business, your ideas, your organization. And it's free for anyone to access (except in China [different topic for a different day]). Not only is it free to access, it's also possible for you to avoid content you don't like. The choice is yours -- it should not be up to any subgroup or splinter faction.
Now, I hate white supremacists, but they have the right to espouse their views just as I have when I post here. Do I go to their web sites? No. I avoid them. Real easy -- I don't search for them and don't follow links to them. If they wanted their own TLD (and ICANN decided [with US Government "assistance"] it was ok) that it was ok, fine by me. It makes it easier for me to find, true, but it also makes it easier for me to avoid. Don't go to sites with the TLD .whitesupremacy. Buy filtering software for my computer so my kids can't go there either.
In the end, this is not some heinous idea. It won't lead to the fall of civilization -- lying, backstabbing, graft, corruption and violence will take care of that. I see your point, but I don't think you've taken into consideration the scope of human belief. THe only way we're going to make things work in this world is to accept the premise that everyone is different, while at the same time those differences can be bridged by common, fundamental rights that all can enjoy without duress.
Re:Utter stupidity... (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of artists and photographers would probably take issue with that comment. The line is far from clear-cut and this is not the first argument over what is classified art vs pornographic material. And not just visual/audio information is a problem. What if people blog about something inappropriate (sexual experiences, whatever), are then, all Livejournal/Blogger/etc. sites required to move to
Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Understandable but still wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Think "legitimate" porn. (Score:4, Insightful)
With a
Now, this would not do anything to "protect" the children from a
"Protection" is in quotes because this is about filtering and legal liability, not "protecting" children.
That being said, I don't think another TLD is scalable. Instead, a
Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm a fundie and a social conservative (Score:2, Insightful)
One of my art instructors was fond of saying "I know what art is, but I don't know what I like."
The fact that you hated the elephant dung piece so vehemently is proof that it IS art. Art is NOT a pretty picture on the wall (sometimes if it is stunningly beautiful, but not simply "pretty"); if it doesn't elicit a reaction, it isn't art.
You probably don't consiter a Picasso to be art, either. However, if you do consider Picasso an artist, you will be chagrined to learn that in his final years, he drew and painted nothing but vaginas (google if you wish, or search a wiki).
Matt Groening hiliariously shredded you folks in a Simpsons cartoon where Flanders tried to ge Michalangelo's "David" censored. Or don't you consider Michaelangelo an artist either?
As to your Christianity, you might want to read a little of the NEW testament - you know, the part that actually has Christ in it.
Before you try to take the speck out of my eye, you might get the two by four out of your own (yes, I paraphrased Jesus there).
Unless you are without sin, perhaps you should drop your rocks, eh? You raise your children as you see fit, read, watch, and ignore what you want, pray for those you think are sinners (as if you're not), speak against what you percieve as evil, and leave everyone else alone? Because, after all, that IS what Jesus would have done. Hypocrite.
BTW, I'm a Christian. That means I'm against the war (ANY war, my greatest sin was being in the Air Force) and against capitol punishment. And FOR a higher minimum wage and universal health care. Again, you might want to crack open the last several chapters of your Bible, you folks seem to have not read much past Deuteronomy. Have you read the Song Of Solomon? I'd have to place that part of my bible [holy-bible.us] (yes, I posted it there) in an XXX domain.
It's hypocrites like you and Pat Robertson who give Christians a bad name.
-mcgrew
Re:Unacceptable? (Score:3, Insightful)
I often ask myself a similar question. What's wrong with raw sewage flowing down the middle of my street? Defecation is a normal and natural part of everyone's life, why shouldn't it be put on display in public areas? In vast quantities. If someone wants to take a simple stroll without having to deal with the visuals and the smell, well, just screw them.
Your response is fairly angry and, ironically, makes the same bad assumptions of the people you're blasting. I only have time to briefly address your mistakes, so here's the quick outline.
Granted, this line will never be definitively drawn. It varies from person-to-person ... and always will.
But --in general-- information about sexual function is not
the same as explicit sexual photos/descriptions for the purpose of
excitement. The .xxx domain idea was to catagorize
pornography, not censor it. I personally don't think it will work
for reasons better stated by other posters.
You should at least read the article summary: "conservative groups and some internet porn sites". Both sides had arguments against the proposal.
You paint the "fundies" as sex-hating hypocrits who want to solve the problem by locking up all references to sex. But your solution is to release it into all aspects of life. There is no ON/OFF solution to this problem. No matter how much politicians and TV anchors try to convince you otherwise.
At it's core, the argument concerning how a society handles sexually explicit material is a matter of compromise. And, like all matters of compromise, require a level of respect and reason to reach a satisfactory solution. Yes, you will find unyielding jerks on both sides of this argument, but try to reduce the count by one and be part of the solution.
Re:Think "legitimate" porn. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see that happening. Oh sure, maybe in the US, in the current political climate, we'd see a rush of laws to require "adult" sites to be in
I'd wager once you had all of the good, wholesome, American style big-boobies-and-sultry-lips porn locked up behind nanny filters, instead you'd just have kids seeing what kind of new and different Japanese tentacle porn they could turn up. Or German schiesse porn -- now that's what I want to see at my local library.
So what do you do about all the porn from the foreign countries that don't have
Everything about the
Partial protection is NOT better than no protection at all. That's where I fundamentally disagree with you. Any level of protection is just going to cause parents to get lazier, and feel that they can send their kids down to the library to use the internet in lieu of daycare or a babysitter (or actually spending time with them), because someone on TV told them the internet was now "safer." A false sense of security is worse than no security at all.
Re:Think "legitimate" porn. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all very well and good, but it relies on porn sites having 100% compliance with the .xxx TLD -- that is, they have to agree to be in the porn ghetto themselves.
No, it doesn't. Reread the post you responded to.
Solutions don't have to be perfect to be useful.