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Censorship

ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain 245

Posted by Zonk from the at-least-it's-over dept.
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."
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ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain More

ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain

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  • Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:07AM (#15307885)

    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 .xxx domain you've neatly made it impossible to protect minors from exposure to pornography (your ostensible goal)...after all, the style is more important than the substance, and 'heroically making a stand against the legitimization of pornography on the Internet' sounds quite stylish, doesn't it?.

    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.

    • Re:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:10AM (#15307915)
      Or, ICANN protected free speech by refusing to restrict so-called obscene content to certain, easily-blocked, corners of the internet.
      • Yes, everyone seems to forget that people across the political spectrum were against this. Seen from the right, is was a tool for propogating porn. Seen from the left, it was a tool for censorship. Seen from the middle, who cares one way or the other?
    • Never mind that by stopping the .xxx domain you've neatly made it impossible to protect minors from exposure to pornography

      Allowing a .xxx domain would've done nothing to protect minors from exposure to pornography.

      I can't imagine why you think it possibly would. The .xxx domain was just another way to make money from a TLD domain rush (quite a good one I suspect, looking at how much sex.com ended up being worth).
      • "I can't imagine why you think it possibly would."

        Naïveté, really. Do-gooders that really have no conceptual skills to realize the logistics of compliance and how badly these initiatives failed in the past.

      • Think "legitimate" porn. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Thursday May 11, 2006 @10:24AM (#15308640)
        Allowing a .xxx domain would've done nothing to protect minors from exposure to pornography.
        That's not 100% accurate.

        With a .xxx TLD, the legitimate porn vendors would have a TLD that could be 100% blocked by schools and "nanny" programs. That means that anything they put there would be as "safe" as possible from innocent children accessing it. Any time a kid at school got to a .xxx site, it would be the fault of the vendor making the "nanny" app or the school for not securing its system correctly.

        Now, this would not do anything to "protect" the children from a .com site run in some other country. But partial "protection" is better than no "protection" at all.

        "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 .xxx.us domain would be better. And so on for each country that wants to do so.
        The .xxx domain was just another way to make money from a TLD domain rush (quite a good one I suspect, looking at how much sex.com ended up being worth).
        Yeah, there would be a rush. But that's just evidence that the TLD system is busted. There wouldn't be as big a rush if it was .xxx.us.

        • Re:Think "legitimate" porn. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <slashdot...kadin@@@xoxy...net> on Thursday May 11, 2006 @11:03AM (#15309092) Homepage Journal
          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.

          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 .xxx, but I don't think you'd get that in other countries. And in case you haven't trolled around the internet recently, there's a lot of porn out there that doesn't call the Estados Unidos home.

          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 .xxx laws? Build a giant National Internet Filter? I'm sure Cisco could get right on that, but then I think you've created a solution that's a thousand times worse than the problem. (Which I'm not convinced is that severe anyway -- I saw my share of porn growing up, and some of it was really filthy shit, and I didn't turn into some sort of maniacal sex pervert as a result. Just one sample, but I'm unconvinced of the "danger" of pure porn. Anyway...)

          Everything about the .xxx TLD was stupid. Just dumb. It was a regulation being promulgated by politicians and pundits and a whole lot of other people who either don't know or choose to ignore the complexities of the Internet, and never wanted to think about the enforcement aspects of such a rule.

          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.

          • 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.

    • Never mind that by stopping the .xxx domain you've neatly made it impossible to protect minors from exposure to pornography (your ostensible goal)...

      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:Well, done, fundies, well done. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:24AM (#15308071)

        I think you're misinterpreting me here...I myself am in no way in favor of the .xxx domain proposal, but I'm just pointing out that by opposing it for their own myopic reasons, the fundies shot themselves in the foot.

        I'm actually very grateful the initiative is dead, because of the slippery-slope argument. Sure, we can all agree that the hardcore stuff can be legitimately classified as 'porn', but what about the nude photo you mentioned above? What about nudes in art? What about nudes in medical texts?

        No, the .xxx domain is better off dead, but the reasons against it I cited are not the reasons it was killed. It was killed because the fundies were upset that its creation would legitimize smut, seemingly not aware that it was the killing of said initiative that really did the legitimization.
        • I know it's fun and easy to blame so many things on "the fundies", but would you mind referencing ANY influential Christian group that was lobbying ICANN over the .xxx TLD? And just because The Register says so, that doesn't make it true.
          • " but would you mind referencing ANY influential Christian group that was lobbying ICANN"

            Yes, I'd mind, and they lobbied the White House, not ICANN. ICANN, if you recall, had already passed this once, sent it up top DoC for the usual and customary rubber stamp and got rejected.

            See earleir /. stories on this topic for more details.

        • I'm actually very grateful the initiative is dead, because of the slippery-slope argument. Sure, we can all agree that the hardcore stuff can be legitimately classified as 'porn', but what about the nude photo you mentioned above? What about nudes in art? What about nudes in medical texts?

          For all the shock and horror of this argument, this is happening RIGHT NOW. Out there, in Real Life (as much as depictions are real) in TV, movies, magazines, art galleries and so on. Showing a minor pornography is illegal
      • Well, it seems that there is no solid ground for most arguments for or against. Actually, what we should do here is not look at the domain ending itself, instead we should consider the implications of conservaties being able to make it into contreversial issue.

        Porn (except the kind that is involuntary on the part of the participants) should not be a controversial issue. The fact that it has been made into one I think is worrisome and tells of the power of the conservative movement in the US to meddle in the
        • Well, it seems that there is no solid ground for most arguments for or against.

          I agree. IMO the only solid reason for having it is it there are people/companies who want to use it, not because people want to filter it.

    • Wrong solution to the right problem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KlaymenDK ( 713149 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:20AM (#15308024) Journal
      Tripmaster, I often agree with you, but not this time. I would, but for this one thing:

      Creating a 'red light district' would be a fine idea IF that could limit the 'red light' business to that district. But of course it doesn't -- Joe Boobmaster will have one more domain to register, but will keep right on doing business in the existing TLDs -- so this can't be used to protect minors from exposure (one might even argue an extra (obvious) domain would INCREASE exposure).

      If you can come up with a way to effectively force 'red light business' to stay within their designated TLD, I'd be all for it. Really.

      • If you can come up with a way to effectively force 'red light business' to stay within their designated TLD, I'd be all for it. Really.

        Really? And who would decide what exactly constitutes a 'red light business'? Who would do the effective forcing?

        • And who would decide what exactly constitutes a 'red light business'?

          It may be a naive view, but IMO the web sites themselves should decide.

          My first assumption is that porn sites are in it for the money.

          My second assumption is that anyone looking to spend some money on porn would start in the xxx domain if available.

          Thus the "red light" district would develop on the internet just like it does anywhere else. Everyone looking for that "certain something" knows where to look. So if you're selling a "certain so

          • Everyone looking for that "certain something" knows where to look.

            It's a TLD. You can't really 'look' there for porn. Right now, you don't 'look' for educational institutions on the .edu domain, do you? How would you go about doing the looking?

            Just point it to (or run it through) a .xxx address and the filters will work fine.

            Extra work with no appreciable benefit (see above).

      • Is there really a Joe Boobmaster? Website please, I need to research so I can tell everyone not to go there...
    • How do you want to block a top level domain? At the end, you'll find out that those sites will be accessed via the IP address.

      • How do you want to block a top level domain? At the end, you'll find out that those sites will be accessed via the IP address.

        You're making inappropriate assumptions here.

        As lots of others have pointed out, .xxx would either be 1) compulsory for porn sites, or 2) voluntary for porn (and possibly other, probably vanity) sites. The two positions are VERY different.

        #1 would require that `porn site' be carefully defined, and laws created to force this in the big Internet using countries. The anit

        • #1 would require that `porn site' be carefully defined, and laws created to force this in the big Internet using countries... and the pro-porn people would absolutely hate it.

          Why would they hate it? Unless the xxx TLD were horribly expensive, I think they'd just register their domain name and go about their business.

          The only people who would hate it are the ones who *don't* consider their site pornographic, and have an objection to having their site associated with pornography, but whose sites meet wh

    • Never mind that your rejection of an accepted place for it to be located just insures that it will remain in unacceptable places.

      What's so unacceptable about pornographic sites residing in .com, .org, .net , etc domains?

      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 f

      • Re:Unacceptable? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by BodhiCat ( 925309 )
        Yes, for a country that was founded, in part, by puritains, America is one of the most sexually obsessed countries in the world. Fundies (as you call them) are just as obsessed with sex as the pervs who surf the net looking for new thrills. The Republicans in America have discovered what the Catholic Church has known for centuries, that people are driven by their sexual desires and by repression and sublimation of their sexual desires. Freud knew this. Unfortuately sex has now become a large part of the
      • "People in western countries, and in the United States in paticular, have, for reasons inexplicable, a huge problem with sex." Western countries in particular? OMG, try showing a boob in Iran or Saudi Arabia, or China where they jail pornographers. The "east" has a much bigger problem with sex.

      • Re:Unacceptable? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AnonymousKev ( 754127 )
        >What's so unacceptable about pornographic sites residing in .com, .org, .net , etc domains?

        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

      • "People in western countries, and in the United States in paticular, have, for reasons inexplicable, a huge problem with sex."

        While you're right about parts of the US (and even then: parts), I'd challenge your blanket extrapolation about "people in western countries."

        E.g., I'm pretty damn sure that here in Germany noone makes a big fuss about it. You can see various degrees of nudity (or lemme qualify that: it's complete nudity, but the girl might or might not have her arms crossed over her breasts or be ph
    • What makes you think that .xxx would have done anything to clean up the internet? All it would have done is make some registrars some $$$, but that's about all.

      BTW, what constitutes pornography? Would it be the American idea? The French idea? The Iranian idea? Maybe the Nigerian idea?

      Oh... and would decide the global definition of porn? How would you determine who finally gets hotteenbabes.xxx domain? Is it the hotteenbabes.com or hotteenbabes.org or the hotteenbabes.net guys?

  • Good (Score:5, Funny)

    by captainclever ( 568610 ) <rj&audioscrobbler,com> on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:08AM (#15307893) Homepage
    1) establish .xxx domain
    2) pass law forcing all questionable content to use .xxx domains only
    3) block all .xxx domains.

    Although it would have been fun to own goatse.xxx..

    • Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 )
      What makes .xxx a farce is that you would never be able to enforce step 2, and the meaning of 'questionable' is highly subjective. I think ICANN is right to reject the idea of the .xxx TLD, it is a ludicrous idea.

      • Absolutely right. After all, the .xxx domain is all about DNS and IP address lookup, isn't it? There is no mechanism to stop you having pron.com and pron.xxx pointing at the same web server. And, crucially, there's no way of forcing out the pr0n-based services out of the .com or .co.uk domains.

        Why don't we propose a .arg domain for sites depicting violence?

        Or .bom for terrorists?

      • Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dreamt ( 14798 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:39AM (#15308208)
        My question is this. Why wouldn't a company who knowingly agrees that they are selling adult content NOT want to store their adult content in a .xxx domain. Have some sort of front end-page at their current site, then have that link to .xxx (which parental filtering software would trivially block)?

        As it is, their sites have an enterance page which asks if you are 18 or older, so they acknowledge that they have adult content. This way, it would be easier to filter out the people that they want filtered out. I would imagine that their lives would be easier if they didn't have to worry as much about filtering, just for easier credit-card processing and less worry about people complaining about their children making purchases which they should not have made.
          1. Extra work for the webmaster to set that up, with questionable benefit.
          2. Potential loss of business due to enhanced blocking of site.

          Not all sites have age checking. Why would they volunteer to place their site into a less accessible place?

          • As I said, I am sure that there are sites out there that want to keep children from obtaining their material, either for their own ideals, or from a business point of view where children obtaining their material costs them money, either in credit-card fees (or refuted charges), or fines (I mean, sites that have must be 18 to enter, not sites with educational/medical/whatever material).

            Remember, this issue isn't as clear as the religious 'right' (now there is an absurd combination of words) or as the everyth
          • Not all sites have age checking. Why would they volunteer to place their site into a less accessible place?

            Exactly. Here's my favourite porn site... [google.com]

            I wish porn was so easily accesssible when I was 12... Back in my Day I was downloading EGA .gif files to my 4.77Mhz XT over 2400 baud modem using zmodem over Telix from various bbs's.

            I had to actually work to get a hold of porn. Whether it was a grab and dash from the local grocery store or trying to fake my identity on a bbs, it was a pain in the ass.

  • United at last! (Score:5, Funny)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:08AM (#15307899) Journal
    Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites

    I guess that if those two can be united against a measure, it's probably a really iditotic measure.

    • Still, it's good to see social conservatives and pornographers united like this. Who knows where this alliance could go?
    • Two wrongs don't make a right.
    • The really intelligent measures would be to create new TLDs that are restrictive to other areas.

      There should be a TLD for registered businesses only. One for registered trademarks only. One for registered non profits only.

      I should be able to know that if I go to http://www.wwf.nfp/ [wwf.nfp] that its a not for profit agency. .net, .com and .org became completely bastardized. Lets get some organization involved again.

  • Oh no! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where else will I find porn on the internet now?

  • Utter stupidity... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drakaan ( 688386 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:09AM (#15307907) Homepage Journal
    Well, I suppose that if you ignore the reality that internet porn will continue to exist, then it's a good thing to not have it segregated to a particular TLD.

    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.

    • I'm guessing their fear is that entire cities or coutries may block .xxx
    • 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?

      Asked and answered.

    • One of the reasons that many conservative groups opposed the TLD was the thought that giving the adult industry a place to do their... sinful business also gave them some measure of... legitimacy. Instead of being able to be firm in saying "we disapprove of what you are doing so please stop" they are forced into an alternative position of position of "we disapprove of what you are doing and if you won't stop... at least do it over there."

      Then again this is in many ways similar to the hold up in the release
    • 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.

      Because it means having to maintain more domain names, and another landrush on a new TLD. The only people who would have benefitted from this proposal would have been the registrars and a handful of squatters.

      Personally, I'm glad the idea is dead, not because I care one bit
    • 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.

      I don't mind measures to make porn less accessible on the Internet. I just mind stupid measures to make porn less accessible on the Internet. I would have to get raging drunk and lobotomize out everything I know about human nature and technology to think, for an instant, that this would be in any way successful. The problem is that whole "for sites fol

  • Not to worry (Score:5, Funny)

    by Toreo asesino ( 951231 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:15AM (#15307972) Journal
    This can only be good news for the Cook Islands - for all your pr0n domain-name needs, just get a .co.ck [google.co.ck] site instead!

    http://www.big.co.ck/ [big.co.ck] is still available I believe; let the auctioning commence!

  • Who are they kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrother AT optonline DOT net> on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:15AM (#15307977) Journal

    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.


    • 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.


      Actually there are many of us who are more concerned about free speech and access to information than the "problem" of pornography who are opposed to the idea.
      • Actually there are many of us who are more concerned about free speech and access to information than the "problem" of pornography who are opposed to the idea.

        Why? How is this a denial of free speech? The .xxx domain allows the pornography to be easily found by those who want to find it, and avoided by those who don't want to see it. It doesn't make it illegal to display porn or have a pornographic web site; only local regulation can do that. Isn't this akin to the adult books at a bookstore being in thei

    • I'd just like to quote,

      "Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography web sites" (emphasis mine).

      Many seem to miss that last part. AFAIK, nobody actually liked the idea. Not liberals, not conservatives, not the porn industry. Who's idea was this anyway?

  • Conservatives vs. liberals? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:22AM (#15308045) Journal
    In many discussions it seems that this is getting turned into a "conservatives vs. liberals" discussion or similar. I do not really see why.

    It seems there are both good sides and bad sides to having a XXX domain, but many of them do not have to do anything with the question of whether one hates or not pornographic web sites.

    My main reason for not finding the .xxx tld domain a good idea after all is that I cannot see how one would ever be able to come up with rules about what should or should not belong there, in a world with such diverse opinions about what is sexual/inappropriate/pronographic/etc and in a world with such diverse laws about pornography.

    So remind me: what *good* was this TLD supposed to be again?
    • In many discussions it seems that this is getting turned into a "conservatives vs. liberals" discussion or similar. I do not really see why.

      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.
    • The way the proposal was structured there should have been no problem trying to figure out what was pornography. The whole domain was supposed to be self selecting so only people who thought they were making porn would take the domain. Much like .net and .org, there would be no process for disputing a domain name over misclassification.

      I think if they had proposed that all porn sites must leave their current domains and get a .xxx instead, then it would have been a massively unwise proposal, but that'

  • This is like refusing to consider adult businesses (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...in zoning regulations, and accidentally allowing them to pop up anywhere without restriction.

  • Damn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:24AM (#15308075) Homepage Journal
    I was all excited about buying an xxx domain and putting no porn on it, thereby breaking the system.

  • In many ways the .xxx doman was bs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:28AM (#15308108) Journal
    As stated, it is a foothold for censorship... of the worst kind, and that is because it will be totally ineffectual, cannot be enforced any better than any other pornography law. Worse, it would make some groups feel they are getting something done, and soon there would be other domains where this or that is supposed to be neatly filed away.

    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 .xxx domain is the right thing to do as it would only allow the same result as above, and not achieve anything but allow ICAAN or others to make more money off of the porn industry... sigh
    • The ONLY real answer is sensible sex industry cooperation and self censorship.

      You're operating under two false assumptions here:

      1. That all sites that happen to have pornographic images are business sites. A blog with vacation pics from a topless beach could be considered 'porn', yet is clearly not part of the sex industry.
      2. That something like a sensible sex industry is actually a possibility.

      The only REAL answer is for people to censor themselves, their kids, and their own online access.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:33AM (#15308149)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Pornography is only art if you consider a picture of the virgin Mary painted in elephant dung to be art.

      Some people do [guardian.co.uk].
    • No, each adult has to work on their own morality and forcing them won't make the right moral changes to fix society.

      That says it all. The hallmark of liberalism isn't that we lack moral values, it's that we just don't feel right about shoving them down everyone's throat.
    • sorry, but a .xxx wouldn't help you block anything except websites whose operators chose to sign up for a .xxx domain. there's no clear definition of what constitutes porn. does it need to involve more than one person to be porn? or a girl with toys? is playboy porn? what about photos that are only topless? where i live (ontario, canada) women are allowed to wander the streets topless, just like men, so trying to blacklist images of things that we can see everyday by looking out our front window would
    • I'm a fundie and a social conservative
      No shit. I'd never have guessed.
    • "Pornography is only art if you consider a picture of the virgin Mary painted in elephant dung to be art."

      In Africa, there are many tribes whose livelihood depended on elephant dung. They would build their houses with it, and it moved into the realm of a holy substance. The concept behind the virgin Mary painted in elephant dung is the merging of two religious icons that clash horribly. It could be a commentary on missionary work. It's conceptual art, so the idea behind it is a very large part of the ex
    • Actually, there is no way to let you conservative Christians or anyone for that matter block porn regardless of what the courts say.

    • Re:I'm a fundie and a social conservative (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Folks like you (not schooled in art) say "I don't know what art is, but I know what I like."

      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 conside
    • So block it on YOUR computers, you sure as hell don't have the right to block it on MINE.
    • There are two good reasons for not banning porn: we don't want judges and legislators legally defining what is and isn't art and it's a private moral issue that cannot be stopped by the stroke of a pen.

      Would other kinds of strokes be effective?

  • Let's see.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Churla ( 936633 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:38AM (#15308198)
    The conservatives don't want an easy to access way to find lots of porn. They want to keep it tucked out of sight.

    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 .org or only net based businesses being .net or only businesses in a certain country using that countries extension (i.e. .us and .uk for example))

    Is there ANYBODY who actually has a good reason for this to exist?

  • Unneeded (Score:2, Funny)

    by buxrule ( 970805 )
    There's already a dedicated top level domain for porn: .com The ICANN should put a stop to all those wise asses trying to make legitimate, non-porn related .com sites that have popped up throughout the sea of quality sex media.

  • ICANN adopts more specific .FUK and .SUK (Score:4, Funny)

    by SlappyBastard ( 961143 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:40AM (#15308222) Homepage
    ICANN today announced the introduction of two new TLDs: .FUK and .SUK.

    The announcement coincides with ICANN's move to dismiss the introduction of .XXX.

    An ICANN spokesman commented off the record, "In truth, we should be more honest. XXX indicates we're hiding something."

    He added, "That can't be on the open and transparent internet. We feel that Dot-FUK and Dot-SUK represent what everone is looking for, just like all Dot-ORGs are not-for-profit groups, right? Know what I mean? Say no more."

    ICANN also expressed interest in adding .GAY so "straight dudes and closet dudes needn't worry."

    ICANN's next step coming in June is a decision on .PERV, whose supporters hope can be used to herd all the child molesters into one spot.

    The move is opposed by the producers of Dateline: NBC, who say it could destroy their growing cottage industry of filming pedophiles being confronted.

    ICANN is believed to be leaning toward adopting .PERV, as all things on the internet belong in nifty containers marked accurately.

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Thursday May 11, 2006 @09:47AM (#15308278) Homepage Journal
    It's a shame that some of the biggest influences who were lobbying against it from inside the adult industry were domain owners who did not want to lose their most valuable .com assets. That's the problem with business being done over the internet, it seems as if there is no real loyalty to others in the same business as you, more of a dog-eat-dog and selfish attitude, which one day may well contribute to the downfall of the current widespread availability of porn on the net which makes so many people money.
  • Although an .xxx domain would help with the blocking of adult content to minors or the easily offended, would the creation of it eventually lead to even slightly provocative content banned to a wasteland awash with garish porn? For example, if one had a website with an image of a woman with a bared breast or fiction with a passage describing an erotic scene, would a complaint from a fundie group lead to the owner of that domain having to remove the content to a .xxx domain or perhaps having the .com one shu

  • Understandable but still wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2NO@SPAMearthshod.co.uk> on Thursday May 11, 2006 @10:11AM (#15308515)
    The problem is this. If you create a top-level domain specifically for porn, you are admitting that porn exists. And unfortunately, there are too many people who have a problem with that.

  • How can mere pornography compare to the soul-eating danger of Cthulhu [hello-cthulhu.com]?

    ICANN must act to wall off this seeping horror, for the sake of sanity itself!

  • The following instructions are for members of the congress, and specifically, the ICANN, to stop internet pornography.

    1. Put hands on the level of your face
    2. Open your hands.
    3. Face your palms towards your face.
    4. Cover eyes with palms.

    CONGRATULATIONS! You have stopped pornography!
  • Setting the substance of the decision aside, was anyone else intrigued by the tone of the article? Was this meant as an editorial piece? It is far from straight reporting. The Register's taxonomy categorized this article in The Register Internet and Law Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs.

    The article starts off colorlessly enough:

    Plans for an area of the internet dedicated to pornography were killed last night in a vote by overseeing organisation ICANN. In a split 9-5 board decision, the organisatio
  • I would think everyone, especially those against pr0n, would want to confine all pr0n, as much as possible, into one neat little box, where it could be easily filtered out.

    I would think everyone, especially those for pr0n, would want to confine all pr0n, as much as possible, into one neat little box, where it could be easily found.

    Steve
    • A problem with .xxx for the pr0n vendors is that it would be easy for Google to offer a far better safe search facility, by simply filtering all .xxx domains in the results. It comes and goes (fnarr fnarr), but over the years I've had the most innocuous searches return pr0n results (remember the days when META tags were still respected, and pr0n people just folded every popular search string into them?)

      ian

  • Five people voted for this crap? Man, that's unsettling...

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