.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

This just in!

[ReformedExCon]

General Franco STILL DEAD!

In Limbo

[umbrellasd]

How low can it go!?

Slashdot.xxx

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot.xxx only for articles on device dissections like Xboxes and PSP with the cover off. Maybee even Source code... how sexy.

pr0n is TRASH

[rice_burners_suck]

I think they should put ALL sex sites on this .xxx domain. And, yes, I know that U.S. laws won't do jack for sites that are elsewhere in the world, but that is exactly why the U.S. should retain complete control of ICANN and the domain name system, without giving in to anybody. This is how to solve the problem of pr0n getting into schools, public libraries, and your child's computer: The U.S. says, ok, any sex related site has to go on the .xxx domain. All sex sites have six months to comply and move their site in its entirety to this domain. Then, a government office is set up where government officials comb through the Internet with a big comb, a la Space Balls. Any sex site that is found in a non .xxx domain will have its domain name revoked immediately and the government will immediately go after them if they're in the U.S. or will work with foreign officials to make their life really, really suck. Those who go on the .xxx domain will have no problems and they can put whatever pr0n they want on there for all ya'll's enjoyment. Public libraries, parents, businesses, and whoever else who doesn't want pr0n in their place will have a simple task of blocking .xxx domains.

Get rid of that fscking stuff... Because you should just get your own anyway.

Re:pr0n is TRASH

[CyricZ]

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.

Like it or not, to be against pornography depicting consenting adults performing various sexual acts is to be against freedom. Freedom is one of the few black-and-white situations. Either you have freedom, or you do not. Any amount of censorship, however minor, automatically means that one is not free.

Re:pr0n is TRASH

[Lehk228]

you guys may find it funny sitting thousands of miles away. living here it is fucking scary.

Re:pr0n is TRASH

[DarkTempes]

what about bloggers and review sites and not entirely porn related sites that occasionally have links to or actual nude/pornographic images.

what about nudist webpages?

what about nude photography art?

'Sir, this is the FBI. You recently posted to foo.bloggerbar.com a pornographic image of your new baby boy. Because you posted this horrible pornographic image, I am sorry but we have no chance but to confiscate all evidence, including your child. Thanks for your cooperation in this matter of National Security in our efforts to Save the Children of Tomorrow.'

Re:pr0n is TRASH

[A beautiful mind]

"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."

I don't find it hilarious, not even a bit. I find it sad.

GIVE US OUR PORN DOMAIN!

[Lisandro]

Give it to the people or we'll riot to get it!

My 2 cents? bad idea

[directorx]

Why do we need a .xxx account? If it is implemented, it will be two months until The Raging Arsemunching Mothers for Protection against Society (TRAMPS) will be requiring that all pr0n will be put on .xxx servers and not on anything else. Or anything that looks like it might link to something that MIGHT talk about birth control. And there, ladies and gentlemen, goes the internet as we know it.

Re:My 2 cents? bad idea

[Mattintosh]

I like what someone else suggested in the last thread about this (very stupid) .xxx TLD idea - a "whitelist" in a .kids TLD. No porn allowed. Nothing even remotely close to porn allowed, in fact. Hell, let the freak-ass religious retards regulate it to their liking. Then let schoolkids look at *.kids and nothing else.

Meanwhile, leave the rest of us alone to put up sites about interesting, mature, and even possibly (god forbid!) nude things.

.xxx - worse than nothing

[YrWrstNtmr]

What would it acheive? A false sense of security for those would would want to filter based on it. Nothing really requires pornography to belong to a xxx domain.

That is, if we can actually define porn. Beach pics? Lingerie ads? A hand, 6" one way or the other, is the line between porn, and sales.

Re:.xxx - worse than nothing

[Lisandro]

That is, if we can actually define porn. Beach pics? Lingerie ads? A hand, 6" one way or the other, is the line between porn, and sales.

    Reminds me of the great late Bill Hicks... "The US Supreme Court defines 'pornography' as 'any act without artistic merit that causes sexual thougths'. Mmmm... sounds like every God damned commercial on TV these days to me!"

good idea, but impractical

[aj1]

Making the general internet purely a kid friendly zone would help with many concerns parents have, but I do not believe it is going to happen. What is the likelyhood that the bad people who share unlawful or illegally copied pornography will all switch over to the xxx domain? The only real reason I see in this is to protect children from accidentally stumbling across bad things.

What's my prediction if this ever gets passed you asked? You will have an easier way of finding porn for sale by searching with the .xxx domain (as if you needed one), but nothing will change in the .com world. People who want too will still view porn. People who don't will still complain.

In my opinion instead of pushing the .xxx domain, we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing. Then educate parents on how too set up firewalls to keep their minor children away from the stuff. Next we can encourage parents to spend enough time with their children they will feel confident in their childs choice in the matter.

They want eradication, not censorship.

[CyricZ]

It's because religious zealots do not want just censorship. They want complete eradication of such material.

No more new TLDs!

[Animats]

We have too many TLDs now. Remember all those stupid TLDs from the last round, like ".museum"? Nobody uses them. The big-name museums are under .org or a country domain. (Here's the complete list of domains registered under .museum. Most of them don't even work, and for the ones that do, they're usually an alternate name.) Have you ever seen a domain in ".aero" or ".pro"? ".biz" gets used, but mostly by sleazy operators. There are so few legitimate businesses in ".biz" that it has the reputation of a strip mall in South Central LA.

ICANN should stop considering new TLDs. In fact, it might be worthwhile to start phasing out some of the newer TLDs due to lack of interest.

You could always just use...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the .co.ck domain name. Really... http://www.google.co.ck/ I couldn't make it up if I tried.

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.

To repeat myself.

[thisissilly]

.kids.us is a better idea than .xxx. The US government could regulate content within the domain to its heart's content, and parents who want the government to raise their children for them could set their kids' firewall to only allow access to that domain. There would be no question of "who owns the TLD", like the current .com/.net/.org struggle, no worries about what people in other countries find kid-acceptable that would raise flags in the US (e.g., beach photos where mom is topless), restrictions and fines could be placed on all .kids.us operators for violations, and advertisers and others would be lining up to pay registration fees so as to be able to hit a target audience. And best of all, the politicians can claim that they are doing it all "for the children".

We don't let kids drive freely over real highways. Why are we letting them drive freely over the 'Information Superhighway'? Rather than forcing all drivers to 5 m.p.h., let us make a kid friendly bike-path.

.GOD

[Belseth]

I say we put all religous content under a .god address. I'd like the option of blocking all such offensive material. As a parent I should be able to shield my children from such corrupting influences. I'm terrified that my young son will wind up in a chat room with a priest. They should be given their own web domains and leave the net to decent folk.

Who will be the first?

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

to register goatse.xxx?

Limbo Is So Second Millenium

[bottlerocket]

I thought being "in limbo" was on it's way out?

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.)

Lies. Damn Lies. And Statistics.

[xstonedogx]

We actually don't.

Who the hell is "we"? Americans are not one homogenous group. In fact, we're one of, if not the most diverse nation ethnically, religiously, politically, philosophically, and every other -ly on the planet.

Religion is the largest source of objection to freedom of expression, regrettably enough.

In the same way that weapons are the largest source of murders, right? Religion is many things, and that some use it as a tool of oppression does not necessarily mean religion itself is the source of the oppression.

The largest danger to freedom of expression is people in power who stand to lose power, whether they are popes or presidents. Religion is sometimes used. So is patriotism. So is the public good. So is individual safety. So is fear.

It always seems to be Southern Baptists out claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and needs to be removed from school libraries...

Ah. So Southern Baptists claiming that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft are representative not only of all Southern Baptists, but also all Christians.

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.

Christianity was used to stifle him by people in power.

If I use a hammer to oppress people, does that mean the hammer did the oppressing?

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.

Finally. Corrupt people in positions of power are the problem. Blind faith in religious organizations are the problem. Religion is not the problem.

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").

Martin Luther was a Christian. Do you think Martin Luther would blame Christianity or the power structure of the Catholic Church?

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.

The publication you cite does show a 10% decrease in the percentage of Christians among the total population.

However, these statistics hardly support your claim that "Christianity is steadily dying out". According to the publication, self-described Christians actually increased in number by 5% and are still a whopping 76% of the total population.

In the immortal words of Voltaire the Pornographer

[Eternal Vigilance]

"I disapprove of what you f*ck, but I will defend to the death your right to post pictures of you f*cking it."

"Vidi, veni" - Caesar

Re:Don't even bother.

[indifferent children]

The thing is, this would make it easier for them to ban pornography...It's much easier to simply ban all .xxx domains than to ban certain blacklisted sites or keywords or do image recognition.

The reason that your comment and the GP are missing each other is because of the word 'ban'. You are talking about 'filtering' the content on a family or individual basis. What the GP meant by 'ban' is that the Christians want to make sure that nobody has access to porn. They aren't trying to protect 'the children'; they are trying to assert their God-given right to control your life.