Senators Renew Call for .XXX Domain

An anonymous reader writes "It's an election year again, and the usual PR causes are being picked up. Senators are once again pushing for a .XXX top-level domain to 'corral pornography'." From the article: "The bill suggests, but does not require, that .xxx serve as the domain name ending. Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department. It's unclear whether the measure will go very far. First of all, it could be struck down as unconstitutional, said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "

Comments

Going about it all wrong

[Spazmania]

They're going about it all wrong. If they want .xxx to fly, they should require the ICANN to create one and pass a law affirming that if a web site is only accessible via its .xxx name then the site operator is deemed to have taken adequate care to prevent access by minors.

Then let the individual site operators decide whether they want the liability shield. Guess what? They want it. And if that means they elementary schools will have an easy time blocking access I guarantee they won't shed a tear.

Free Porn

[yintercept]

Personally, I don't mind the idea of moving porn to a .xxx extension. IMHO, the one thing we need to avoid is tossing up barriers to porn that people have to pay to get around. If porn is free, then the pornographers don't make money. Throwing up artificial barriers to porn creates income opportunities for the pornographers.

For example, a few years back, there was the stupid suggestiong that giving a credit card numbers for age verification would prove a person was old enough to view porn. Getting the credit card number is the hardest part of making an online sale. This idea taught a generation of teenage boys how to steal credit card numbers. It also put a lot of money in the hands of pornographers.

The .xxx extension might be good in that it would help people who want to avoid porn to filter it out. It might help those looking for porn to find free porn. It seems to me that if a .xxx extension created a path to free porn, it might undermine the income source for pornographers.

There are economist who think like that

[LeonGeeste]

believe it or not. There's a concept called a "deadweight loss" in economics. And basically, it's any kind of harm (something someone dislikes for whatever reason) which has no corresponding *benefit* for anyone. If I take a dollar from you, that's not a deadweight loss, because your loss was my gain. But if I burn your dollar, you lost, and no one gained. (That's a simplification, but you get the general idea.) And obviously, deadweight losses are bad.

Now imagine a town that has a problem with thieves breaking windows so they can get into stores and houses to steal TV's. Here is ranking of the TV owners' preferences:

1) No TV's be stolen or windows broken.
2) Windows broken, but no TV's stolen.
3) TV's stolen, but no windows broken.
4) TV's stolen, and window's broken.

Here is the typical thief's order of preference:

1) Get TV's, but not have to break windows.
2) Get TV's and have to break windows.
3) Not get TV's and not have to break windows.
4) Break windows for no reason.

Currently, option number 4) on the TV owners' list, and option 2) on the theives' list are prevailing -- TV owners lose TV's and windows. Thieves get TV's but have to break windows.

Now here's the kicker:

For some economists, an "efficient" move would be to give the thieves free TV's! Why? Well, the thieves are better off -- they get TV's, but no longer have to break windows. The owners are better off because, while they still lose some TV's, at least their windows aren't broken! Everyone wins! Yay!

Except, as anyone with a functioning brain knows, all that would accomplish is that the thieves would get TV's, and then some of them (or newcomers to the thievery profession) would still steal more TV's. The problem, like with the "separate plot for weeds" that you bring up, is that you can't corral thieves by giving them free stuff. Give weeds a place, they'll demand more. Give thieves TV's, and thieves will take more.

It amazes me how the average person sees this, but some economists don't.