Top Level .xxx Domain Concept Under Scrutiny

An anonymous reader writes "The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. This is despite the the .xxx domain being approved in June and New.net selling domain names using the .xxx suffix for many months before the approval." From the ZDNet article: " The sudden high-level interest in what has historically been an obscure process has placed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in an uncomfortable position. ICANN approved the concept of an .xxx domain in June and approval of ICM Registry's contract to run the suffix was expected this week Other governments also have been applying pressure to ICANN in a last-minute bid to head off .xxx. A letter from ICANN's government advisory group sent Friday asks for a halt to 'allow time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed before reaching a final decision.'"

Comments

Riiiight... Listen up.

[DaedalusHKX]

You're dealing with Christian fanatics and right wing psychotics. Neither of these groups would have any trouble slapping ALL content THEY find objectionable to THEMSELVES into the XXX TLD.

Problem with it is that they'll most likely automatically demand (by law, easily enough) that every ISP to block anything they don't like, the ones that don't comply will be shot in the foot in various, republican financial hamstringing type ways...

Who knows, Microsoft might petition that Slashdot and OSDL/Sourceforge/Newsforge get put in this TLD because they're "offensive" to "microsofties and minors".

Sounds far fetched, but that's what my grandparents thought about the fall of the berlin wall. (And what do you know...)

Mreh?

[Fordiman]

Ok. Situation:

There's a pool in a neighborhood with kids. The risk is that the kids fall in.

Do you build a fence around each house to keep the kids in, or a fence around the pool to keep kids out?

If you say the latter, you're thinking coasean economics. Why? Because, for the same societal benefit, you're adding fewer costs. It's what's called "Socially Efficient".

Having explicit porn sites restricted to a TLD is a very smart way of doing this (granted, it's not being done smartly; $60/name is excessive).

Problem comes in the definition of pornographic. In legalese, most people get tetchy about this.

Ok, pornographic: adj. depiction of sexual acts or sexual parts for the purposes of sexual arousal.

There we are. That keeps merely "offensive" and controversial material, and artistic nudity out of it.

Unfortunately, I'm not the law, politicians rarely ever define anything in the public interest, and ICANN is a large group of captured bureaucrats.

Do I think it's ok for .xxx to exist? Sure. I'm not blocking off any TLDs.

To tell the truth, though, I have no idea what Bush's objection to a dot-ex-ex-ex domain would be. I meaan, unless he doesn't understand what a domain is...