.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.

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.)