New RFC Considers .sex TLD Dangerous

netcentric writes "A post on CircleID has reported about an RFC prepared by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd and Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com's Washington D.C. correspondent, analyzing proposals from various parties to mandate the use of special top level domain names (such as .sex or .xxx) or an IP address bit to flag 'adult' or 'unsafe' material or the like. The analysis explains why these ideas are dangerous and ill considered from legal, philosophical, and technical points of view. Here is the post to this report on CircleID along with some commentaries and link to the entire RFC 3675."

Comments

Re:Lieberman

[Alan Cox]

The problem is that you have to decide what it means to be "adult content". Even between the UK and France you can find the same film labelled "12" in France, while cut and labelled "18" in the UK

At least the ICRA content rating model put the value judgement in the hands of the viewer.

I can see xxx.us working (kind of), and maybe xxx.randomcountry. Personally I'd rather there was a reliable register of adult URLs rather than a bunch of companies all trying to make sure they alone own the filter lists. ".xxx" is addressing that problem but the wrong way IMHO.

Voluntary vs. Forced

[brucmack]

I don't think that any sites should be forced into doing this, but that it would be cool if sites did it voluntarily. I mean, I'm sure the sites don't really want kids visiting anyway... they probably aren't going to be able to find a way to pay for content.

Free-Speech Zones

[LGagnon]

While this seems to be a good idea in some ways, I can't help but be reminded of those "free speech zones" they command protesters to stay within if they want to protest something. After all, the entire country is supposed to be a free speech zone, and the entire internet is supposed to be open to any form of speech (that is, within reasonable limits).

Of course it wouldn't work...

[rjstanford]

Let's work through this. If they came up with ".sex", many workplaces would filter out sites that were listed in .sex. I mean, wouldn't you? Now, let's pretend that you've got a porn site. You want as many people to see it as possible. You could host it at whitehouse.sex and get some traffic, or at whitehouse.com and get more traffic. Which do you pick?

Both, of course.

I mean, why wouldn't you?

It's not just "think of the children"

[PCM2]

While I agree that a .sex TLD is 1.) a dumb idea, and 2.) a potential legal and regulatory morass, I think it's shortsighted to just roll your eyes and write it off as another "won't someone think of the children" proposal.

Some people just don't like being inundated by porn when they use the Internet. Period.

I mean, come on -- we all know that if you spend time randomly surfing the Web, you can hardly go an hour or two without randomly stumbling across some porn -- or reference to porn -- in the form of an advertisement or a pop-up or a joke site or whatever. Half the spam you receive -- and you can't help receiving it -- falls under most people's definition of porn.

So why is that? We don't put up with it in the rest of our day to day lives.

Most communities regulate porn theaters, porn magazines, etc., very strictly. Even if you, personally, like and consume porn in the privacy of your own home, if you leased an office building, you probably wouldn't want a porn theater opening up on either side of you. If your office had a magazine-swap rack in the break room, you probably wouldn't want your employees leaving porn there. Very few people would vote to let their city accept advertising from porn companies on park benches and bus stops.

I don't think it's out of line to have a reasonable expectation of being able to spend your day without viewing porn. So how to tackle that problem on the Internet?

It seems to me that the porn industry has a lot of money, and they're willing to pay it to people to get their advertising and their products out there to where people will pay to consume them. If that's the root of the problem, then it does not seem unreasonable to me to propose possible ways of regulating the way the porn industry does business. The .sex domain is one such idea.

Not the best one, perhaps, but a legitimate one nonetheless.

Re:It's not just "think of the children"

[lkaos]

While I agree that a .black TLD is 1.) a dumb idea, and 2.) a potential legal and regulatory morass, I think it's shortsighted to just roll your eyes and write it off as another "won't someone think of the children" proposal.

Some people just don't like being inundated by black people when they use the Internet. Period.

I mean, come on -- we all know that if you spend time randomly surfing the Web, you can hardly go an hour or two without randomly stumbling across some black person -- or reference to black people -- in the form of an advertisement or a pop-up or a joke site or whatever. Half the spam you receive -- and you can't help receiving it -- falls under most people's definition of black culture.

So why is that? We don't put up with it in the rest of our day to day lives.

Most communities regulate who's allowed in it, housing prices, etc. very strictly. In fact, in the South there are still many towns that do not have a single black person. Even if you, personally, like and talk to black people in the privacy of your own home, if you leased an office building, you probably wouldn't want a black person moving in on either side of you. If your office had a magazine-swap rack in the break room, you probably wouldn't want your employees leaving a rap magazine there. Very few people would vote to let their city accept advertising from Gangster Rap labels on park benches and bus stops.

I don't think it's out of line to have a reasonable expectation of being able to spend your day without viewing black culture. So how to tackle that problem on the Internet?

It seems to me that the NAACP has a lot of money, and they're willing to pay it to people to get their advertising and their agenda out there to where people will pay to consume them. If that's the root of the problem, then it does not seem unreasonable to me to propose possible ways of regulating the way the NAACP industry does business. The .black domain is one such idea.

Not the best one, perhaps, but a legitimate one nonetheless.

Note: It's amazing how quickly a s/porn/black/g can demonstrate how unreasonable you're actually being.

Re:Lieberman

[Sheetrock]

I think there is another subtle problem, and one that has occurred to me after seeing how our legislators have reacted to the situation regarding Janet Jackson; a .xxx domain will become a bin that the government will want to sweep everything that could be considered remotely offensive into.

But could this mean, for example, that a website such as this which is providing a forum to the public will have to more vigorously scrub the content of its users in order to remain visible or within the law? I fear that this wave of neopuritanism in the U.S. would wield a domain such as .xxx as a club against websites that are not deliberately providing prurient content yet manage to provide offense (much like a radio show that accepts calls from listeners and is forced to block their obscenity or face steep fines.)

Far better to determine a system like the ICRA to leave it up to the viewer, as you say. We've got mandated V-chips in our television sets that permit the set owner to restrict programming to a particular standard which is apparently broadcast with the TV signal, but the broadcasters still censor their content. A .xxx domain will not satisfy the vocal minority that has been responsible for pushing censorship in movies, music, or radio because they are not content to control what they consume, but what we all consume.

Re:ddd?

[Zeinfeld]

This gets hashed out every time the proposal rears its head. From a constitutional point of view it is clueless, what does the .sex domain mean if not licensing the press?

Spreading porn is a serious part of the work the Internet does. The best way to change the societies in the middle east whose screwed up 'religious' bigottries lead to terrorism is with mountains of porn.

Yep I am 100% serious here.

I believe in cultural relativism, Whahabi 'islam' is barbaric relative to any acceptable moral standards. Women are treated at best as second class citizens and at worst as mere property.

It takes powerful forces to break down that type of prejudice. Pornography is a very powerful force. That is why the Saudi and Iranian mullahs fear it so much.

The fundamentalist christianity that spawned David Koralishen, the anti-abortion assasisnation squads, Timothy McVeigh are not too great either. The answer is more porn.

Watching people having sex does not break down many social barriers, but the idea that religious authorities don't have to run a society does.

You Americans Are Fucked Up

[nathanh]

A post on CircleID has reported about an RFC prepared by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd and Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com's Washington D.C. correspondent, analyzing proposals from various parties to mandate the use of special top level domain names (such as .sex or .xxx) or an IP address bit to flag 'adult' or 'unsafe' material or the like.

So now the underlying protocols that drive communications for the entire world need to have bits to designate "sexual content", just to appease the ridiculously puritanical Amercians.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell happened to your priorities. You'll go to war and kill 1000s of people to find WMD (which it seems never existed). You'll televise your murderous rampage to the world in all its horrifying brutality. Yet if a woman shows a breast on television then there's a "moral" outcry. Whose morals? It seems your society's morals are those of a prudish spinster.

The incredible thing is that in the area of morals and censorship, America shares more in common with religious regimes like the Taleban than with any other group. I can only think of two regions in the world that are so ridiculously out of touch with their human nature: the USA and the religious nutcases in the Middle East.

It'd be so easy to dismiss this rant as a troll or flamebait. Sure, it's easier to ignore that which you wish wasn't true, but you know that I'm making you uncomfortable because I'm telling the truth. There's a serious problem with morals in America right now. Your laws are repressing a natural part of the human existence, imposing an incredibly puritanical view of humanity onto millions of people, yet your same lawmakers allow a 10 year old child to see a man murdered on television. What the hell is wrong with you people?!?

Re:You Americans Are Fucked Up

[chefmonkey]

Ermmmm... RTFRFC. The entire point is that putting morality-related bits in the protocols or partitioning off morality-related TLDs is a tremendously horrid idea. It was published to warn off any misguided attempts that might arise along those lines.

That's not to say your rant is completely invalid, but I do take objection to your painting a group of several hundred million people with a single broad stroke. Your beef is with "the religious nutcases in the USA", not "the USA."

Re:Lieberman

[Babbster]

No, actually it's not in the adult sites' best interest. Just like any other for-profit web presence, they want as many page views as possible. If they really wanted to restrict access to adults only, they wouldn't buy misleading URL names, they would put the letters XXX in ALL of their URL names, they wouldn't sponsor pop-ups on non-adult sites, etc.

There's no way the porn industry would restrict themselves to a separate TLD, if for no other reason than it would make it far too easy to screen that domain and prevent access on any system.

The reason self-regulation has worked (to some extent - retailers need to get better about giving some support in terms of enforcement) in the video game industry is that they have a vested interest in alleviating parental concerns. If they ignore the concerns of parents, many of those adults are less likely to buy ANY video game for children, which constitutes a large part of their market. In the porn industry, they care less about the concerns of conservative parents because that's not their audience.

How about .PRUDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of trying to figure out what's naughty and what's not, we can just whitelist all white-middle-class-evangelical-family-friendly content, put it in .PRUDE, and they can block everything else.

Advantages: the evangelicals are happy because they can be pure and clean without having to actually make any moral choices, and the rest of us can use this thing called "free will", which allows people to view and avoid whatever content they desire.

Re:No, YOU RTFA.

[JDRipper]

Read the RFC and you'll understand the problems with a mandated TLD. It's not about protecting the kids, it's about being forced to have a TLD that might not be appropriate for your website. If you discuss abortion rights, would you need an adult TLD? If you discuss condoms, would you need an adult TLD? Who decides what is adult? The FCC? Congress? RTFRFC

Parents

[nnet]

In all this, one recurring theme repeats itself. Its the parents responsibility, not the govenments, to make sure children can't access adult content. If, as a parent, you don't have the time to ensure this, you have no right HAVING children, simply because you cannot give them the time required to properly educate, supervise, nurture, and raise them. TV and the internet are NOT babysitters. There wouldn't have to be government intervention online if parents took their child-rearing responsibilities 100%. And don't give me the "but I HAVE to work 80-24000 hrs a week to support my family" crap because it simply isn't true. Thats pure greed talking. I know, I'm a father of three, and while I'm nowhere near rich monetarily, I'm drowning in the wealth of my love for my family, and their love for me. And I can enjoy that wealth because I'm not at work for the majority of my waking time. When my kids go online, my wife or I supervise, and educate them. When something untoward happens, like a porn popup, we explain to the kids what it is, whats its meant to do, and why its unacceptable/illegal/inappropriate for them to access such content. Too many of todays, and yes, older parents, turn a blind eye to their kids online activities, until the cops come to the door, then they have the audacity to blame the kid when it is in fact their own fault.

Dummy up you parents, start taking back control of your kids lives instead of letting MTV and the internet be in control.

.xxx is backwards

[The Monster]

The Internet was created by adults, for adults:

• DOD employees including uniformed military (the expression 'curse like a sailor' comes to mind, although jarheads, grunts, and flyboys hold their own)
• DOD contractors in industry
• researches at universities and technical institutes.

But demanding that adult sites label themselves as adult is the wrong way to go, and mandating a particular filtering scheme for everyone is worse yet. Somewhere along the line, somebody decided the it was important for schools to be connected to the Internet. And now they're shocked, shocked! at what they've found. It's as if a teacher took a bunch of grade-school kids on a field trip to a titty bar and then demanded that the authorities shut it down.

If someone wants to create a TLD like .kids, and make whatever rules they want for their piece of cyberspace, more power to them. Net Nanny and its ilk can whitelist the 'safe' sites, blacklist the 'unsafe' ones, and parents who want their kids subjected to such filters may choose to employ them.

As a father (and grandfather!) I have always figured that if my children want to look at something really perverted, it's their desire to look at it that's the problem, so me putting up filters really won't accomplish much other than protecting them against fat-fingering an URL (or forgetting that the White House is part of the .governmnent