.xxx Domain Remains in Limbo

datemenatalie writes "CNN.com reports that the Inernet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is still awaiting the decision of an advisory committee regarding .xxx domains. According to the article, "ICANN announced in June it would move ahead with plans to evaluate establishing a sex-site domain, but the proposal hit a snag in August when the U.S. Commerce Department asked for more time to hear objections." ICANN's president Paul Tworney was unable to say when a formal decision might be announced."

Comments

Re:Informative?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a metacomment. He is using an old SNL skit to make the point that this article is of no newsworthiness.

"ICANN still waiting for answer"?? What kind of story is that? Unless there is a movement in either direction, reporting on the continuing waiting is worse than reporting on people lined up for Star Wars openings. At least we can laugh at those idiots.

Interesting podcasts from Vancouver

[miller60]

Lawyer and ICANN blogger Bret Fausett is providing a steady stream of podcasts from Vancouver, including this one, which reviews the meeting in which the "non-decision" was announced. Apparently the staff at ICM Registry (the folks slated to run the .xxx domain) were completely blindedsided by Vint Cerf's announcement that .xxx had been tabled - which came right before ICM was to make a presentation on it.

Re:Don't even bother.

[grimJester]

The thing is, why would the international authority on top level domains listen to US evangelical christians? Doesn't this prove ICANN is controlled by the US government and that this is a problem?

Blame religion

[typical]

If Americans truly hold freedom of expression in high regard (as is often claimed by them)

We actually don't. The US is pretty religiously conservative. Religion is the largest source of objection to freedom of expression, regrettably enough. It always seems to be Southern Baptists out claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and needs to be removed from school libraries...

If you think about how Christianity works, it's not such a surprise. Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the universe perhaps not circling around the Earth, Christianity worked very quickly to stifle him and keep him under house arrest until he died. The folks living large at the top of the religious food chain didn't try to just *defend* their ideas -- they knew that they were wrong, and that they were only going to win by suppressing competing ideas.

And then when Martin Luther translated the Bible into a language that commoners could read...he nearly was killed by good ol' Christianity. There was the risk that someone would have to actually *defend* ideas, instead of being able to just indoctrinate kids at a young age ("If you don't do what the priest says and give him money each week, you're going to BURN IN HELL FOREVER").

Christianity is steadily dying out in the United States. Christianity now claims 10% less of the population than it did a decade ago. Still a long way to go, though.

Re:Blame religion

[kale77in]

If you think about how Christianity works, it's not such a surprise. Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the universe perhaps not circling around the Earth, Christianity worked very quickly to stifle him and keep him under house arrest until he died. The folks living large at the top of the religious food chain didn't try to just *defend* their ideas -- they knew that they were wrong, and that they were only going to win by suppressing competing ideas.

Jeez, where to begin?

• The problem was not that they 'knew they were wrong', but that they 'they knew they were right', but for wrong or inadequate reasons (they were married to Ptolemaic cosmology, via Aristotle and Aquinas, with some scriptural window-dressing) -- and Galileo's evidence was by no means knock-down-drag-out compelling.
• Would you say Marxist Russia, or modern China, or the 'Reign of Terror' in the fiercely secular French Revolution, tell us anything meaningful about "how Atheism works"? Ignorance of atheistic history produces its own kinds of prejudice.
• Have you ever considered perhaps reading about Galileo? About the live scientific options of the time, the relative state of the evidence either way, who his supporters and opponents in the Church were, and how he managed to finally put all of them offside by his rather strikingly abrasive writing and debating style? Martyrologies of ALL kinds are notoriously prone to embellishments and omissions.

Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start. You might also see:

For centuries the trial of Galileo (1564-1642) was the stuff of myth: Galileo tortured by the Inquisition; his defiant words after recanting ("e pur se muove," "but it does move"); the infallible Church proclaiming the dogma that the Sun goes round the Earth. None of these details is true, but that did not seem to matter much to those who exalted Galileo as a martyr to truth.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0401/revie ws/barr.html

(A review of some recent books on the issue, in a fairly responsible Catholic journal. IANA Catholic, incidentally.)

Re:Blame religion

[dasunt]

You should look up Galileo's interaction with the Jesuits (specifically the origin of comets). He could be a complete PITA, especially when he was quite sure of himself.

He also decided that the planets went in circulate orbits with epicenters. This resulted in a Copernican system that was no more accurate than the Ptolmic system.

Combine this with his caustic nature and his writings that could be construed as attacking the Pope, and it was no wonder that he was excommunicated in Italy during the middle ages.

Catholics are moving the kids out just in case...

[kale77in]

In a particularly eerie co-incidence... Catholic theologicans this week urged the Pope to agree that unbaptized children don't go to Limbo.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Vati can_Limbo.html

Just in time, apparently, now that .xxx is there!

As an aside, the Marxist-Feminist author Andrea Dworkin's angry, angry, angry book "Pornography" is a good read for anyone wishing to become thoroughly disgusted (or at least, morally and intellectually challenged) by the barrenness and degradation of the pornographic enterprise in general. There's more than one side to the freedom question here.

Re:Don't even bother.

[John Hurliman]

Why would Christian extremist groups be against it? They want to eventually mandate that all questionable content (determined by the U.S. government, maybe the FCC) is forced in to some sort of adult domain, and require ISPs to provide optional filtering of these TLDs. The adult webmasters are the ones against this, and are actually donating big dollars to their lobbying group to fight it. The Internet porn market is already saturated. You aren't going to get a larger percentage of the net viewers to start looking at porn, but these TLDs will require re-registering your domain name again to protect your namespace. For example a site like sex.com is pretty much forced to purchse sex.xxx to keep from losing it's marketshare, and at what price? According to this chairman of the ICM Registry in this article, about $75 a pop. It's a porn tax, an easy money grab at the net's most profitable industry.

Re:In Limbo

[mattjb0010]

Modded 3:Funny? Ah, come on, if I had mod points it'd be 5:Informative.

No, +5 Informative is when you link to the song

Re:pr0n is TRASH

[dasunt]

I know you're joking, but many Europeans find it hilarious how those in the US who go on the most about bringing "freedom" to Iraq and Afghanistan are often amongst the leaders in wanting to limit freedom in America.

Lets see. Germany bans Scientology as a cult. France went after Yahoo for selling Nazi memorabilia on its English site. English had the McLibel case due to its free-speech unfriendly libel laws.

The US has its idiosyncrasies, but it isn't the only western nation that has them.

Re:They want eradication, not censorship.

[shmlco]

And everyone who smoked grass became a heroin addict, and everyone who drank an occasional beer became an alcholic, and everyone who plays video games will go on psychotic shooting sprees.

The fact is that there are addictive personalities, and SOME people will take their drug of choice to extremes, no matter what it is. The vast majority, however, do not.

Me, I can't stay away from fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. [sniffs the air] Sorry, gotta go...

Re:good idea, but impractical

[Dave2 Wickham]

Movies have one. Television shows have one. Song lyrics have one. Games have one.

And web sites have one. Prior to ICRA, there was RSACi. It's been around for quite a while, so IE supports it (IE supporting something, a shock, I know). I'm not sure if any other browsers directly support it, though.