ICANN Meeting Passes on .com, .xxx decisions

Rob writes "As the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers wound up its annual meeting in Vancouver yesterday it was inactions that were still causing all the controversy. Major decisions on the .com and .xxx domains had been postponed until next year, as the domain name management body seeks to balance the interests of governments and commercial domain name organizations."

Comments

Why .xxx won't work

[voice_of_all_reason]

If you're not going to mandate that adult content can only be hosted on .xxx, then it will be useless for the reasons the fundies want. You know, that bit about not being forced to give up property of your .com domain?

On the other hand, if you were hoping for a burgeoning directory of naughty stuff, then yes, you're boned :(

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[TuomasK]

And if it is forced, where does the line go? For example, if I have an automobile site that has some pictures of girls leanin on cars without bikinis, do I have to get .xxx domain or can I still use .com? What about wallpaper-pages that have nude pictures along other images? And so on..

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[Pxtl]

And what happens to the many news + porno sites that nerds like to visit? Where do you draw the line? Fark has boobies links for example - but only a prude would call it a porn site. But there are numerous sites that slide down the line between Fark and straight out porn sites.

The big problem would be that only an idiot would put their porn site on .XXX - because with that level of labelling, you'd risk more than just client side filtering (which only a foolish porno webmaster would complain about) but full-fledged back-end censorship - any one of the middling systems between your users and your site could be owned by "family oriented" bodies who might just drop all .XXX packets.

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[LWATCDR]

It isn't just the fundies that want to filter pron. Schools and even relatively liberal parents would like to be have an easy way to lock out porn. As someone pointed out what is porn. Someone asked if they had a car site that had pictures of nude women laying on cars would that be porn? Yea that would pretty much go right in to the adult category IMHO.
I worry more about say a breast cancer site that has information of self examination or birth control sites. You even have to wonder about sites like Slashdot. Some of the children on here use language that is very offensive.
Before I get the "free speech" rants shouldn't parents have the freedom to decide what their child can read? I wouldn't want a nine year old of mine reading Penthouse or propaganda from the KKK or Nazis. Frankly I wish that Slashdot would have a filth filter. I wouldn't want a young child reading some of the posts on here. The amount of profanity and hate speech I see is at times very depressing.

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[Woldry]

You don't have to change Slashdot to prevent yourself and your children from seeing the things you find "depressing".

There are many commercial filters that can filter out offending sites by keyword blocking. The things you object to on Slashdot could probably be blocked, if you truly don't want to read them. The downside is that you would probably wind up being mostly unable to read Slashdot if you applied such a filter.

Alternatively, you could write (or hire someone to write) a plugin for your browser that would find offensive words and, say, display them only in a white font, or insert the word "Smurf" every time an offensive word appears, or any other workaround that would prevent you from seeing the terms that offend you. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already written these, or sells software that does effectively the same thing.

If, however, you meant that you think you have the right to decide what my children should be allowed to read, that's a completely different matter. I will not help you find ways to do that, and I will oppose any effort to impose your standards of what qualifies as "filth".

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[TallMatthew]

Before I get the "free speech" rants shouldn't parents have the freedom to decide what their child can read? I wouldn't want a nine year old of mine reading Penthouse or propaganda from the KKK or Nazis. Frankly I wish that Slashdot would have a filth filter. I wouldn't want a young child reading some of the posts on here. The amount of profanity and hate speech I see is at times very depressing.

Then lock them in the basement. It's difficult as a parent to watch your children exposed to things like profanity and hate speech, but the world isn't puppies and gumdrops. All of us were exposed to profanity and sexual material when we were young and most of us turned out all right. All my parents accomplished by admonishing my use of profanity was that I don't swear in front of them. Same goes with my kids. Instead of trying to shield them from the bad or pretend it doesn't exist, I've tried to introduce them to more "productive" pursuits. No matter what I do, though, ultimately it's their decision how to spend their time.

Re:Why .xxx won't work

[Woldry]

My definition of filthy is simple profanity without reason and the different flavors of hate speech ... the anti-semitic and racist posts that I see

This is not a straightforward definition (despite its brevity). Define "profanity." Define "reason." Define "hate speech." Define "anti-Semitic." Define "racist."

I am sure that you have clear conceptions of each of these (and your conceptions of them might not be all that different from mine), but I guarantee you that your definitions of each will vary widely from other people's. What's more, though I suspect we agree substantially on these definitions, I must admit that I disagree quite strongly that such things constitute "filth".

So whose definitions would you want Slashdot to use to determine "filth"? Yours? What privileges your definition over anyone else's? Why not mine? Why not Larry Flynt's? Why not those of the very people who post what you consider "filth"?

I just wouldn't want any kids under say 14 years old reading some of the posts.

So you are saying that if my kid is under 14 years old, you would prevent him from reading them? That would be my decision as a parent to allow or forbid it. I don't recall surrendering my parental rights or responsibilities to anyone else. If you want to keep your own kids under 14 from reading them, fine and dandy. That's your right as a parent. (Mind you, I'll think you're silly, and naive, and doing your kids a disservice. But I will still support your right, because they're your kids.) Don't fancy, however, that your own necessarily subjective standard should apply to other people's kids.

Finally, just to keep this even marginally on topic, the same applies to the .xxx domain. Whose standards do we use to determine what belongs there? My father thinks Ernest Hemingway is pornographic. Shakespeare has been called that, too. The movie Midnight Cowboy earned an X rating when it was first issued. If it were released today, it might merit an R, but even so, it's significantly milder than much other "R" stuff out there nowadays. I don't doubt that various religious groups would put Baywatch or Richard Hatch's bare-assed antics on the original Survivor into the porn category. Robert Mapplethorpe's photography was attacked in the 1980s as pornographic. Parents have been hauled into court to defend innocent photos of their own nude children. So who gets to decide what qualifies as .xxx material and what doesn't?

If it's meant to be a system whereby people can opt to register as .xxx to make the pornographic nature of their goods clear, then well and good. But if it's meant as a way of preventing "pornography" from being available anywhere but a .xxx domain, then (just as with the parent's apparent desire to filter Slashdot for the rest of us) I would oppose it on both philosophical grounds (as being de facto censorship) and pragmatic ones (as being impossible to draw the line).

Seeking to balance the interests of who?

[dada21]

The only interests that matter, IMO, are those of the individuals. There is no mass-interest-level that can be made into a number and protected by a law or a regulation. In fact, interests change constantly.

For governments and regulatory bodies to try to assess interests for the masses, failure will always be the end result. We have the free market where the billions of consumers make decisions every second and the market continuously changes in response to the demand by consumers and the supply of a given service or product. On the other hand we have regulatory bodies and governments that change over years or even decades in order to satisfy 51% of the voting block.

Domain name extensions don't make sense anymore -- as we continue to add more, the value of the old extensions diminishes (except, maybe, .com). Why not just open the floodgates and let the market create what it needs? Why should anyone have a say in guiding those billions of buying decisions, other than the individual consumers making them?

Re:Seeking to balance the interests of who?

[kindbud]

Why not just open the floodgates and let the market create what it needs?

Because the market is not your girlfriend.

Because the market is not Santa Claus.

Because the market is not a creative entity.

Because the market is dumb as shit, and easily influenced.

Because the market is not a panacea for every societial ill.

(except for extreme forms of free-market-fetishism, in which social ills are wished away)

Is there a new date set for decisions?

[httpamphibio.us]

The article just says, "next year," and then calls the current meeting an "annual" meeting. Does that mean we're going to have to wait another year for any changes?

Who cares

[trollable]

of us?

...as the domain name management body seeks to balance the interests of governments and commercial domain name organizations."

I guess no one.
BTW, ICAAN seems too weak and not able to challenge Verisign or the US governement.

.xxx and .kids

[70Bang]

You might as well have both TLDs and make it known "East is East & West is West".

Turn .kids into a walled garden: *.kids can point to and only to *.kids.

As far as .xxx goes, start peeling the spammers off of everyone's windshields. Instead of waiting for 50'000'000 pieces of evidence, cut them off at the knees a bit earlier. Why with .xxx? redirection. If you filter your email, it doesn't appear to come from someone you know, and it's got .xxx within the content, reroute it to the porcelain euphemism (just remember to flush twice & hard -- it's a long way to the kitchen).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

would adult sites object to self-monitoring?

[rjnagle]

The assumption made here is that porn sites would object to being labeled "porn." I don't think that is the case. They would love a way to make it easy for content filters to block access for children. That makes their job easier, not harder.

There is a benefit to self-description, as long as the registering body isn't forced by that business's government to label certain things as porn. It has to be voluntary.

Ok, I see how edge-cases might raise questions, but why not just open the TLD and see what happens?

Judging from the time for the approval process, you would think they were trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. Hey, guys, it's fricking three letters. What's the holdup?

Robert nagle

Re:But Didnt Condi Say

[grimJester]

The US wants ICANN to have the appearance of being an international organization without any single country in control, while still reserving the option of stepping in to overturn any decision the US government doesn't like. More on these tactics.