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

Who's surprised?

[Verteiron]

The USA has maintained a "take our ball and go home" attitude on other international issues, and there's no reason to expect anything different here. After all, the US Commerce Department maintains that it reserves final policy control over the authoritative root server. ICANN simply cannot do its job as long as the USA controls (or claims to control) the DNS.

Or not...

[sterno]

Creating a .xxx domain would actually be potentially more risky to free speech than to prevent it. Here's the problem. If you have a .xxx domain, then it's possible to distinguish between the part of the internet that's supposed to have objectionable material and the part that isn't.

So this would open the doorway for regulation to go after merely indecent material on non-xxx domains. They could argue in court briefs that it's not preventing them from existing. This would make it far easier for the merely indecent material to be isolated out of the mainstream Internet. Then the filters get put in place and suddenly people get a controversey free Internet.

So for once I agree with the Bush administration but probably for the exact opposite reason.

Re:Or not...

[Nuclear Elephant]

Not trying to flame, though I'm not sure why this would be considered censoring free speech. As a society, we place markers on adult shops so that minors don't enter them. We place black bars on risque magazines so that minors can't see them. Movies are labeled 'R' or 'NC17' identifying them as adult-only. We have ESRB ratings on games, V-Chip ratings on TV shows, and explicit lyric labels on CDs. Has any of this censored the adult industry or put them out of business? No, what it has done is to inform people about questionable content, so stupid parents don't accidentally plan their seven-year old son's birthday party at a strip bar. It's still illegal in the United States to sell pornography to a minor, and if I walked up to your kid on the street and showed them porn, I'd be arrested. I don't see why the same rules shouldn't apply on the Internet, especially in this age of popup teasers, porn spam, and misleading domain names. So what if the porn industry is forced to use .xxx? It's a slimeball business, and it needs to be marked just like we mark it in the real world.

Re:Or not...

[10101001 10101001]

As a society, we place markers on adult shops so that minors don't enter them.

Actually, that's local zoning law, which is rather questionable on its face.

We place black bars on risque magazines so that minors can't see them.

Actually, risque magazines are usually kept behind the counter. So, the we is store owners who fear losing customers after a vocal threat of boycott.

Movies are labeled 'R' or 'NC17' identifying them as adult-only.

Most porn movies aren't labeled. Rating is a voluntary process. It's mainly the fact that most theaters choose to not carry NC17 rated films nor unrated films (again, threat of boycott) that force such films primarily to be sold as VHS/DVD.

We have ESRB ratings on games,

Again, voluntary. Of course with games, getting AO games is relatively hard (smaller market than movies) and M games are on the shelf by other games.

V-Chip ratings on TV shows,

Okay, this was forced by the government. For at least the broadcast stations there's at least a legitimate basis by which the government can support this, but I can't see how pushing it on cable/satellite is legal.

and explicit lyric labels on CDs.

That's a combination of (proactive) stores and record labels caving to threats of boycotts.

The reason I mention all of these separately is to point out that in all but two cases it was voluntary, economic interests that were the root behavior modifier. If anything, to me that indicates that we don't need the government to step in and block people.

Has any of this censored the adult industry or put them out of business? No,

Yes. At least some adult shops have been forced to close as a result of zoning laws. Also, indirectly the unified rating system combined with the forced v-chip rating system has certainly caused some films to be censored so they are an "acceptable" rating. For the rest, the government wasn't involved, so censorship hasn't occurred. No, the industry as a whole has not been "put out of business".

what it has done is to inform people about questionable content, so stupid parents don't accidentally plan their seven-year old son's birthday party at a strip bar.

Nothing can overcome the stupidity of people. Besides that, I question just how many seven-year old boys really have had that happen. I certainly wouldn't stake forcing behavior on a group to try to overcome such an issue.

It's still illegal in the United States to sell pornography to a minor, and if I walked up to your kid on the street and showed them porn, I'd be arrested.

Yes, it's illegal to knowingly show porn to a minor in most locals. To me that's pretty crazy, given that a minor is defined as anyone under 18.

I don't see why the same rules shouldn't apply on the Internet, especially in this age of popup teasers, porn spam, and misleading domain names.

Actually, the same rules do apply already. There's already law that requires that US commercial pornography sites are required to have the user sign an electronic waver stating their date of birth under penalty of perjury.

So what if the porn industry is forced to use .xxx? It's a slimeball business, and it needs to be marked just like we mark it in the real world.

There's many problems with this. Not all places are under US law, so they do not apply. As you might have noticed above, current law about porn doesn't apply to non-commercial content. This is because commercial speech is granted less privilege than non-commercial speech. As a result, a blanket push to require all porn to be on .xxx domains in the US would be very clearly unconstitutional. Also, the internet is more than the web. What sort of chaos would occur if all p2p users who every uploaded/downloaded porn were required to get an .xxx domain? There's no way, short of 4th amendment violations, to adequately go

Well, duh. They can't morally support a .xxx TLD

[Seumas]

I won't bother discussing how stupid yet another batch of useless TLDs is - much less one specifically for "adult" content (whatever THAT is).

However, it's damned obvious that the reason they don't support the .XXX TLD is because it would be condoning something that the moral majority (the guys who would like Bush to have a third term) finds reprehensible.

If you oppose pornography and adult content, you can't very well go and support having a special area for it. These people don't care about the constitution or freedom of expression or speech or allowing adults to do what they wish. They don't want this material, PERIOD. It's the same reason they oppose medical marijuana. Not because it may not have medical benefits. Not because it can't be used responsibly. Not because it's seriously harmful or will destroy the fabric of marriage between a man and a woman yadda yadda yadda. Simply because it's "not right" and you can't support such things AT ALL or your constituency will eat you alive.

It would be a lot like the Bush administration saying "prostitution is horrid and evil and wrong and .... we're going to support setting up districts in every city where it can be done legally by adults".

So I have to say, I'm stuck on this one. Yet another stupid TLD is retarded. Squeezing all adult content into one place is retarded (by the way, because one or two pages of my site might have adult content, does that mean my friends and family can't access my site AT ALL from work or a hotel or a library?). On the other hand, the reason Bush opposes it is retarded, too. In this case, both "enemies" are enemies of my enemy. Heh.

With or without .xxx

[kickabear]

Internet porn is here to stay. Every technological advance ever made by mankind has been used to facilitate the spread of sexual thought. The telephone, mobile phone, ascii art, copy machine, Bluetooth, two-way pager, fax machine, pen and paper, stone tablet, gun, knife, club, airplane, automobile, cart, domestication of the horse, television, VCR, home video camera, IM, DVD player, the computer, and finally the Internet have all been used to disseminate (pardon the pun) sexual thoughts, facilitate the personal connections necessary for sexual intercourse, or make one potential mate more attractive than the others.

It doesn't matter what the rules are, or what the government says. Everything people do, in one way or another relates back to reproduction. It's in our genes at the most basic level. We're going to have sex no matter what. We are programmed to seek sexual pleasure in whatever form is available. We'd all prefer to have that pleasure be shared with a warm-bodied partner, but we will also seek the pleasure alone, or through the stimulation of one or more of our senses.

How many activities do we engage in which use all five of our senses? There are two of them. Eating and fucking. But if we have a head-cold and can't taste or smell food, we will still eat based on sight, sounds, and texture. If we can't touch the object of our sexual interest, we still become stimulated by the sight or sound of that person. Porn is just a variation on a theme. And it's going to remain popular until something better (like the Holo-deck) comes along and steals porn's thunder the way VHS porn did to printed porn.

Now get that banana out of your ear, and get back to work.

Re:Cue

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The real question the Bush Admin seems to be missing isn't between an internet with a red light district and a clean interent- it's between an internet with a red light district and an internet where every third .com that pops up on a search for breast cancer on yahoo is a pornographic site.

I Hate To Admit It

[Paul Slocum]

But I already found some porn on the internet, even though they haven't added the xxx domain yet. weird.

Which is not unconstitutional at all.

[brunes69]

So this would open the doorway for regulation to go after merely indecent material on non-xxx domains. They could argue in court briefs that it's not preventing them from existing. This would make it far easier for the merely indecent material to be isolated out of the mainstream Internet. Then the filters get put in place and suddenly people get a controversey free Internet.

The constitution gives you a right to freedom of speech. It does not give your a right to have people want to hear what you have to say, nor does it give you a right to force people to listen to you.

Forcing porn site operators to operate on a .XXX TLD would be no different from forcing them to be rated X and thus not accessable to minors. it is not unconstitutional at all so long as it is available to those looking for it ( if the government forced Google to not index .XXX for example, *that* would be crossing the line ).

Re:Well, duh. They can't morally support a .xxx TL

[Seumas]

If you support freedom, free speech and the constitution, yes.

But they don't care about that. Remember, Bush has the support of the type of people that form organizations who then go and send a 250,000 complaints to the FCC about ridiculous things on television from three or four individual people claiming to represent the entire country. He has the support of people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who think 9/11 was God's way of telling us that lesbians are evil. He has the support of people who think that a flash of a boob with a pin-covered nipple for one second on television is going to harm people.

These are groups that want all "inappropriate" material to be done away with. It isn't a matter of "only adults should have this". It's a matter of "this is filthy and we should burn it". Politically, his most staunch supporters would see any step to set aside an area just for porn as condoning it.

Oh, and using the ESRB to suggest that this is just "a way of rating content" is silly. How are you going to rate content that belongs in .XXX universally? In Australia, it's not a big deal to show naked people on television (at least after a certain hour). I've heard the word "shit" on British television. In America, you can't even say "nuts" if you're clearly referring to testicles.

Would the web-equivalent of what you see on Fox News Channel be considered .XXX? I've seen film clips of chicks making out, Dr. Ruth and a news woman talking about vaginal dryness. Car chases. Discussion about beheadings. Half naked strippers sitting around and giggling with Donut Boy (Neil Cavuto). Not to mention stuff on the actual Fox Network. Or even the big three broadcasters.

Should I have to register my entire domain as a .XXX because I have a couple pages mentioning a wild party with some hot chicks I was at? Or because I have a webcam and my girlfriend happens to walk by it without a shirt one day? If some middle eastern country finds that showing a woman's face is pornographic and offensive, does that mean that any website anywhere in the world where a woman isn't clad in a burka belongs in the .XXX TLD?

Since Netflix rents rated R movies, does that make them an adult site? Do they have to become a .XXX? Does a medical website with photos of genitalia have to be a .XXX?

Is a website about boxing or professional wrestling acceptable, even though it "promotes violence" but a site about swimsuit models isn't? Is ICANN going to become the arbiter of what is is "adult" the world-over? Or is some American agency going to be responsible for that? If I'm Korean and I have a .COM site that someone in the US finds offensive are they going to seek to have me extradited to face charges in the United States?

What about Amazon.com? What about your local library's card catalogue? Both link to and provide adult content (everything from Fanny Hill to "art" books of lesbians in latex whipping each other and sex manuals). Do they both have to move into the .XXX TLD?

And, more importantly, if we MUST do something stupid like this, doesn't it follow more with the Supreme Courts previous rulings to have a .KIDS TLD into which only completely kid-friendly content can be placed? When regulating free speech, they've typically ruled that you must choose the solution that will least impact the freedoms and rights of the majority. Rather than sanitizing the entire internet for the sake of toddlers, it would be easier to sanitize a single TLD for them.

Anyway, in my entire life I've never accidentally come across mass quantities of adult material. Or any quantities really. You have to go looking for the content. If you're coming across hard core facial sites or something, it's because you're looking specifically for them or you're clicking on links at illegal warez sites. Either way, your eight year old is not going to "accidentally