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

pron.awesome

[deft]

and when porn.com/net/org/everything else is told to move to as single .xxx, what then of mindless politicians with no understanding of the interwebnet superhighway?

I hate grandstanding.

Re:pron.awesome

[rodgster]

But that would break all my bookmarks/favorites!

Re:pron.awesome

[fkamogee]

And I hate when people mod the first post "Redundant".
Unless they were referring to "mindless politicians" as being redundant.

Re:pron.awesome

[jrockway]

??It'd be like a MySpace, but obscene!.

A true programmer. :) You use the ! so that it's scoped to the word "obscene" and thus (mentally) need the . to actually finish the sentence. I often write things like: `` He said, "This is a sentence.". '' with the `.".' construction -- the first period ends the quoted sentence and the second ends the complete unit. Grammar nazis dislike this, but it makes sense to people who think like programmers. Glad to see I'm not the only one :)

Re:pron.awesome

[aichpvee]

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.

So focus on the family is going to move to family.xxx and the discovery institute is going to have to use discovery.xxx? Sounds like a plan!

Re:pron.awesome

[Directrix1]

MySpace can be pretty obscene itself. On a side note, does it strike anyone else as ludicrous that the source of life and the source of nourishment for a young child are dubbed as "harmful to minors", when they were born of one and suckled on another as a baby?

Re:pron.awesome

[ottothecow]

programming != english

That's like complaining about being made fun of by spanish grammar nazis when you use english grammar with spanish words...you're still wrong.

Re:pron.awesome

[Captain Splendid]

That's what you get when you country is founded by puritans, I guess. But yeah, the American hangup/obsession with sex is just ridiculous.

Re:pron.awesome

[Short Circuit]

No...the : is an unary operand on the right-hand argument. Thus the ) is "escaped" from consideration as a closed parenthesis.

Re:pron.awesome

[jrockway]

> programming != english

"!=" != a word ;)

Re:pron.awesome

[cyber-vandal]

The Brits and to a lesser extent the Aussies have the same hangups. I don't understand where it came from, our ethnic cousins over on mainland Europe have no problem with sex, and we all share a pretty similar history in terms of social development.
There was an advert a few years for shower gel that had been shown all around Europe without any problems but provoked major complaints in Britain. The reason? It showed a naked woman in the shower and you saw her erect nipple for all of 2 seconds. Sad. Time we all grew up and started treating sex as part of life, not some dirty secret to be embarrassed about.

Re:pron.awesome

[aussie_a]

I hate it when people use the :) as both a smiley and a closing bracket. I feel like the rest of their post is inside the bracket, and feel like they've finished the post incorrectly when they don't put a final ).

Re:pron.awesome

[Skevin]

> There are, however, instances where you dearly wish that you could put parentheses into English.

I wish it too. I heard a news item a few years back that said, verbatim,
"Scott Peterson told Amber Frey that his wife Laci had died at a party in an attempt to solicit sex."

I almost crashed my car, laughing. For those of you whose first language isn't English, the actual statement should have been:
"In an attempt to solicit sex at a party, Scott Peterson told Amber Frey that his wife Laci had died."

Damn those clause modifiers.

Solomon Chang

Re:pron.awesome

[ultranova]

As to the "unconstitutional" argument, that's just plain bull. The constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it does not guarantee freedom of unlimited sleazy distribution, porn, popups, false search engine results, etc.

Actually, freedom of speech does mean unlimited distribution. That's what the word "freedom" means - that no one tries to stop you. As for the material distributed being "sleazy", that is an appeal to emotion as well as ad hominem attack. Sleaze is in the eye of the beholder - the exact same pic could appear in a porn site or a breast cancer information site.

Putting porn under a .xxx domain is no more an "infringement" on rights than only allowing non-profits to use a .org.

I didn't know that there was a law about the correct use of ".org" domain. Nor does it matter, since it is a lot easier to make appeals to emotion (like you did) for censoring the xxx domain, while it is a lot harder to use "save the children" -arguments to get rid of the org domain webpages.

To put the constitutional issue in another perspective: Does freedom of speech guarantee you can print a flyer, or does it guarantee you space in the New York Times?

False argument. New York Times is a privately owned newspaper, and no one has argued that it should be forced to carry your writings. No, the argument for the XXX domain is analogous to making it illegal to distribute your flyer except in a government-guarded building (the xxx domain), where anyone who enters is logged by traffick analysis and the most politically active groups - such as university students living on campuses - are prevented from entering at all.

Another analogue are the Free Speech Zones - the government doesn't need to silence its critics as long as it can simply move them where no one can hear them. That works as well and pays lip service to the law.

Re:pron.awesome

[mqduck]

programming != english

You're right. It's not so much that it makes sense to programmers, but that programming tends to help one go "oh yea... the official rules of English don't make any fucking sense, do they?" Smart people want to express themselves better, dumb people who want to make themseves feel smart want to have correct grammar.

Not that I'm talking about you, of course. ;-)

Re:pron.awesome

[middlemen]

actually if a "word" is defined as two bytes, then "!=" == two bytes which is a "word".

OK, I knew they were pervs....

[Anonymous Coward]

But openly calling for porn?

What will their wives say? (And you can leave Barney Frank out of that - his "friend" pimped a gay sex ring right out of the Senator's apartment...)

Re:OK, I knew they were pervs....

[tsaler]

Barney Frank is a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, not a Senator. Not yet anyway. It was rumored that he would run for John Kerry's seat, however, if Kerry had been elected President in 2004.

Domain Name Squatters

[The Real Nem]

If that isn't a Domain Name Squatter's wet dream I don't know what is...

Re:Domain Name Squatters

[Khashishi]

I'll have to hurry to the registrar before www.goatse.cx.xxx gets taken!

This applies everywhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties....

Which means big freaking whup for internationally hosted sites?

Re:This applies everywhere?

[GrumblyStuff]

Well if The Pirate Bay is any example....

Re:This applies everywhere?

[Frozen Void]

This is the main reason we need decentralized domain names.
USA is just holding too much power: " the countries could theoretically be strong-armed into complying."
What we need is a rule that makes
each country a complete owner of domain space .TLD, and US may only interfer with .us domain. .com .org .net etc must be free .

Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[lostngone]

So what happens when Porn sites in other countries refuse to move to the .XXX domain? Would the U.S. Government then try and block non .XXX porn sites?

Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[Spy der Mann]

Would the U.S. Government then try and block non .XXX porn sites?

They recently blocked overseas gambling, why not block overseas porn?

Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[chris_eineke]

Would the U.S. Government then try and block non .XXX porn sites?

You can pry porn FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!

Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[neoform]

Here's a better question..

Who defines what "porn" is?

If i run a BBS and someone posts a pornographic image.. do i suddenly have to give up my .com and move to .xxx?

Do i have to remove the image?

This is way ambiguous..

Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[mOdQuArK!]

That's probably one of the reasons why they didn't want to give up control of the root DNS servers.

If they get too uppity about it though, they're going to learn that it's not impossible for most people to select a different set of root DNS servers - outside of U.S. control.

Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX

[larry bagina]

I don't think it's the porn that will need to be pried from your cold dead hands.

Harmful to Minors

[Anonymous Coward]

Would http://www.michaeljackson.com/ and http://www.r-kelly.com/ be forced to move too? Say it ain't so.

Time to register

[BigBuckHunter]

Time to register "BringBackPorn.com"

BBH

It could be struck down beacuse...

[NevarMore]

looking at this map: http://moat.nlanr.net/International/images/collab_ world_map.gif

There are a lot of places that, surprisingly, are NOT The United States of America. I hear that those places are prone to ignoring laws passed by the United States. I cannot fathom why those things that are not America would not follow our laws, but I do believe it would make it hard to use a United States law to get them to move thier titties and cockies to a different server.

Re:It could be struck down beacuse...

[product byproduct]

Ironically you're the one with a narrow view of things.

You can't get the whole world to switch at the same time. AGREED. But
you can try to achieve it over a longer timespan: You show the example by switching in your own country. Other countries will look at you, and if they think that it's a good idea they will follow.

Pretty much the same happened with Copyright Law. Some countries started it. Year after year more followed because they thought it made sense for them too. Eventually so many countries had a copyright law that they felt the need to standardize (Berne convention). Nowadays almost everyone has it and it is considered "uncivilized" to not have a copyright law, which puts pressure on the few who don't have it.

The same thing could work for this .XXX idea.

Re:It could be struck down beacuse...

[Unordained]

Someone else can follow up with details, but as I recall, a lot of countries have the IP (copyright and patent) laws that they do only because they wanted to join an international organization like the WTO, and were required to "match" laws in order to join. We export our laws overseas by requiring other countries to match them in order to trade with us, something they're not willing to do without.
The same goes with countries fighting drugs at home -- those were profitable businesses that local governments probably didn't care about, until we told them they needed to care if they wanted funding from us.
Yes, it's their choice every time, but let's not pretend it's always about us having bright ideas nobody can resist. We have the market, deep pockets, and military power they can't resist, which is different.

Re:unconstitutional?

[genrader]

liberty >>>>> safety

Harmful to minors? Is it tubgirl?

[Screaming Harlot]

If the definition requires that a site "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors," many (myself included) might argue that most pr0n sites should be held exempt. I refuse to believe that viewing naked bodies (solo or action) is inherently 'harmful to minors,' especially when 'minors' includes such pr0n-consuming demographics as 17-year-old boys.

useful change

[DreadSpoon]

Despite the huge technical and social problems with this kind of change...

*If* it could happen, it would be great for many of us who want to block it out. Which is the purpose of the bill, of course.

Any mail that references an .xxx site can be blocked, browsers can be configured to refuse to load any resource from an .xxx site, search engines can refuse to search/list pages in .xxx domains, etc.

It's also possible for this to happen, I believe, to an extent; at the very least, due to the wonderful recently-showcased fact that the US controls the Internet naming infrastructure. Even foreign sites can be forced to comply by simply removing them from the top-level domains, and threatening to remove sites from top-level domains that host adult content.

One thing I'd worry about though is how one defines what is pornography and what isn't. Is a site that talks about STDs and safe-sex going to be labelled as adults-only by the religious right? Is a nudist colony site pornographic or simply counter-culture? Is a site that has "bad words" an adult site?

I would want to see a very clear, objective, strict, narrow definition of adult/pornographic content for this bill. i.e., "Images displaying sexual intercourse." (That is slightly too narrow, I'd think, but the intent should be clear.)

Re:useful change

[TheFlyingGoat]

That's a bunch of BS. The quote specifically says a site that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be forced to change. Although I think that's still too vague, it shows that they don't want educational or commercial sales sites included (although I expect adult toy sites would be included). Even though some Republicans are against certain forms of birth control, and although they may find pictures of women in swimsuits offensive somehow, very few would be stupid enough to try grouping those sites with pornography sites. Doing so would alienate many of their voters.

Just as strip clubs and adult toystores have specific rules set up for what they can and cannot allow, as well as the classifications for what constitutes such establishments, rules can be set up to classify adult websites. It would make filtering much easier, while allowing the sites that really do have educational content. That's something that the current filters have a tough time with. I actually think such laws would help resolve far more issues than they would create.

Re:useful change

[Just Some Guy]

It could happen if the Republicans get their way.

And by "Republicans", you mean "Democrats":

On Thursday, two Senate Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana, introduced a bill called the "Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006."

I know this is a difficult concept for Slashdotters to grasp, but neither party has a monopoly on stupid ideas. Vent your anger at the people doing the harm, not at whichever party is the one you don't happen to affiliate with.

If you're a Democrat, write your senator and tell them that you don't approve of these actions. I, a Republican, have done exactly that several times lately. Maybe if we all do that enough, someone will finally get the idea.

Re:useful change

[Dan Farina]

While you are correct that no particular party is immune to stupid ideas, some of his original selection of topics (eg, birth control) would be the favorite fodder of the Republican party. You could probably come up with a similar list that Democrats would prefer to be blocked more often than not (eg, tastelessprolifeshocksite.xxx).

Is there a bias on my part for calling those sites tasteless? Probably. Go and care if you want. It perturbs me not.

Re:useful change

[Just Some Guy]

While you are correct that no particular party is immune to stupid ideas, some of his original selection of topics (eg, birth control) would be the favorite fodder of the Republican party. You could probably come up with a similar list that Democrats would prefer to be blocked more often than not (eg, tastelessprolifeshocksite.xxx).

I truly, honestly disagree that there's a difference. Name a given subject, and you'll find both Republicans and Democrats that would wish to censor it. Both of them seem to think that this kind of jackassery is good, at least in as much as it buys them votes from people too stupid to understand why it's bad.

Painting these issues as wholly (or even primarily) the province of one party and not the other only distracts from the issue at hand, namely that we need to unite to put a stop to this nonsense. Surely that's something that most of Slashdot could actually agree one?

Re:useful change

[Scarblac]

Huh? Has it ever been shown that porn is harmful for minors?

And how did they check? Almost all people have seen porn as minors...

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[Bob The Cowboy]

"What is pornography?"

is photographing a naked person porn? two people making love?

127.0.0.1 *.*.xxx

[Siffy]

That would be the next entry into my local DNS hosts file. They say filtering is a less intrusive means to this, so then make that filtering easier for the average person to do I say. I really don't see how adding context restricts free speech. There's a place and time for any speech, but what about a person's right not to have to listen to such speech (ie, porn pop ups/general porn advertisements, crappy results from google)?

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[aiken_d]

That's not it at all. There are several issues:

- "Harmful to minors" is in the eye of the beholder. It is unconstitutional for a law to be vague, since it means people can't know if they're breaking the law or not. Is a warez site "harmful to minors" since it corrupts their morals? How about frank discussions of wartime atrocities? Sites that debunk Santa Claus?

- This particular proposed law would require, for instance, websites for crappy teenage hijinks movies (Dukes of Hazard, etc) to use the .xxx domain. Basically, anything sexual that has no artistic or social merit gets taggede

- Laws like this impringe on adults' rights to free speech. Have a blog where you share your innermost thoughts? Hosted on a .com? Write about the hot sex you had last night, get fined (or go to jail).

And, of course, in addition to the blatant unconstitutionality, there's the fact that it's pointless: .com is an international domain.

The only solution for this kind of thing is a .kids type domain, where only content that meets certain criteria is allowed *in*. Trying to regulate the entire world's speech in the .com domain "for the children" is a bad idea, totally unconstitutional, and ultimately doomed to failure anyway, since .com is an internataionl domain.

-b

dear lord.

[sheaman]

OH! I get it now! It all depends on the extension! So sexyhotpixxx.com is fine, but when you get sexyhotpix.xxx, WOAH THERE! Also, "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" RAWR I HATE YUO! A kid who knows that "xxx" is bad would be much less likely to head over to .xxx than .com.

Harmful?

[NilObject]

material that is harmful to minors

How the hell is porn harmful? That's the worst part of this American culture. Killing people is glorified but OH CHRIST DON'T LET ANYONE BE SEEN MAKING LOVE!

Re:Harmful?

[1in10]

It's harmful to both minors and adults.

Exposure to porn makes people more likely to believe that rape is acceptable. Exposure to porn makes people more likely to believe domestic violence is acceptable. Exposure to porn makes people more likely to be opposed to women's rights. Exposure to porn makes people believe fringe sexual activities like beastiality are more common than they really are. Exposure to porn makes people less happy with their own sexual partners and their sex lives.

And that's not even getting into the harm it does to the women actually appearing in pornography. That's just the users.

I used to think porn was harmless too, but there's a whole heap of research that shows it is anything but.

Re:Harmful?

[hyfe]

Killing people is glorified but OH CHRIST DON'T LET ANYONE BE SEEN MAKING LOVE!

Well, in all fairness, I'm actually for banning American porn.

The bang! bang! 'enjoy what I'm giving ya!'-mentality that seem so amazingly permeant throughout it is fucking degrading and has bloody nothing to do with real life. It teaches people to view women as objects and not as actual persons, which really, really is a dangerous line of thought. Impersonalisation of sex is a bad, bad thing.

My own experiences with young Americans and their views on sex has basically lead me to believe that majority of you are semi-psychopathic, ie unable to empathise and recognize that other people are actual people with feelings. This is scary.

Once upon a time...

[The Warlock]

Once upon a time, Frog was taking a look at Toad's garden. Toad had separate plots out marked "carrots" "tomatoes" and "peppers". He also had one plot marked "weeds", which was unkempt and full of weeds. "Toad," asked Frog, "why the hell do you have a separate plot for weeds?!" "Well, Frog, it's so that they stay in that plot and don't go in any of the others."

Re:Once upon a time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Toad lived in the land of the free where growing weed violates the Controlled Substances Act. The resulting DEA sting was not pretty. Toad is currently serving multiple life sentences alongside murderers and rapists for manufacturing a plant.

God (Judeo-Christian only, please) Bless America.

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[Meagermanx]

"What is pornography?"

is photographing a naked person porn? two people making love? Is it two people and a donkey covered in Jell-O instant pudding, making love? With half-a-dozen vibrators and bondage tape and a gimp mask?

Yes.

porn.com.xxx, porn.net.xxx

[XanC]

Whoever registers .com.xxx and .net.xxx first wins!

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[Directrix1]

That domain already exists, except its .cn not .kids .

Re:unconstitutional?

[etymxris]

Because peanuts can kill those with allergies. I don't think stumbling across a pornographic website can have quite the same effect.

A little sanity here folks

[TexNex]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this whole "xxx" TLD issue started when a porn mogul requested a specific domain for all porn so that he and the rest of the industry could avoid legal issues?
I see nothing wrong with this so long as its not the "religious" right deciding the definition of porn.

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[Rob T Firefly]

The unconstitutional bit comes in when you tell the porn sites they are not allowed to use .com, .net, .org, or other US domain names.

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[bmo]

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting"
-Gloria Leonard

--
BMO

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[interiot]

So, would it require wikipedia.org split part of its content off into wikipedia.xxx? Note that all of those are (ostensibly) there to be used for encyclopedia articles. Nonetheless, per the law, quite a number of them are "lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast".

And if Wikipedia doesn't have to split its content off, does that mean that full-on porn sites can simply copy some wikipedia content onto their site, and therefore claim that the site is not primarily/exclusively meant for serving porn?

"harmful to minors"

[larry bagina]

In accordance with megan's law, CmdrTaco.net has been renamed to CmdrTaco.xxx

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.

Degrading standards of society...

[Wes Janson]

...once upon a time, stupidity of this magnitude from public officials would not have been tolerated, let alone encouraged by any significant percentage of the public. If they thought the public would like it, our senators and representatives would rush to create and pass a bill titled "Resolution To Make Bad Things Go Away". It's frightening how close we seem to be to that level of problem solving and critical thinking in the legislative branch of our government.

Probably constitutional

[Rydia]

In the same way that controls on pornography are constitutional. They're protected speech, but not as protected as most, so legislatures can make laws telling them where they can be, what they can do, who they can admit, etc. As long as there's money in it for someone, congress can have a ball.

You people really need to get over the "first amendment + internet = whatever we want" thing.

Re:Way to go, Congressmen!

[Spy der Mann]

I'm glad the senate is worrying about my ability to quickly locate porn.

This is one of the most filled-with-BS comments i've ever heard in my life.

First of all, this proposal was made by TWO SPECIFIC SENATORS.

Second, if these senators didn't propose this, would the debt disminish? No, it's a COMPLETELY UNRELATED thing.

Third, you don't know these particular senators' stance on the debt.

Fourth, the congress discusses laws and votes in favor or against. Voting for an initiative doesn't make congressmen vote against another.

Fifth, searching for porn would be a LOT EASIER with the .xxx domains (have you thought about how many different domains one single porn site has?). Classification is one of the factors that make searches more effective. It also prevents you from dealing with scam sites that require you to use a long distance dialer and all that crap. Also, filtering "*.xxx" is much easier than filtering (insert very complex regex with lots of nasty words on it).

Sixth, do you realize how much money is spent in porn? If young children find porn, they might like it and later spend your precious american dollars in (either national or overseas) crap, instead of using it for better stuff like cleaning up the planet?

Seventh, the senators are NOT proposing this to limit your ability to search for porn, they're doing it so nobody searches for one thing and ends up with porn on his web searches. Don't children matter? I know it's a cliché saying "think of the children", but let me tell you, if a parent is having trouble with SPAM, do you think he'll be able to block his kid from accessing porn from his computer?

Eigth, there's a lot of porn SPAM arriving to our e-mails daily. Don't you think that forcing porn sites to have a .xxx domain would help at least a bit against the spam which we all dread?

Finally, if you don't agree with what a senator says / does, why don't you vote (or tell your parents to vote) against him?

Re:unconstitutional?

[MacDork]

Because there isn't really any argument about what constitutes peanuts. One man's porn is another man's art.

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[eMartin]

Just recently, an art teacher was suspended and may be fired for *recommending* to his *high school* students that they *consider* attending life drawing classes outside of school.

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Best_of_AR C/best1.asp?msg=716&forumID=56

So what would happen to an art-related site that has nudity, either in the form of art or reference for art? Should it be forced to use .xxx? I bet some people woud think so, but many of us would object.

Hmm.. if this extended to cable television

[tinkertim]

Ok, let see what's on channel 169, hmm how about 269 ... wait, try 369 ... nah see what's on 469 .. I didn't mention channel 69 because that's now msnxxxbc.

There are far more greater dangers our children are exposed to on a daily basis than internet porn. I have a 4 month old and quite frankly my fear that she'll have clean air to breathe is more startling to me than what she might or might not be able to access on the internet. But .. I kind of like to watch my kid and see what she gets into, novel concept.

This is the result of lazy parents who want their p4 to babysit their children safely, without much attention from them.

Much like our lawmakers, parent's need to understand technology before exposing their children (or their legal pads) to it. I think congressmen should have to display a CCIE / CCIP along with that spiffy Harvard degree if they wish to legislate the portion of the internet US entities serve.

But in the spirit of cooperation and being a good citizen, I'll take ta.xxx please.

Could someone much smarter than I am please calculate the amount of oxygen that has been processed (and wasted) on this effort?

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[ozmanjusri]

Can anyone explain me why tagging a website as "porn" (in the domain) could be declared inconstitutional?

Its a classic "divide and conquer" move from the religious fundies. The intent behind the .xxx tld is to be able to segregate the porn from the rest of the internet. Once you have achieved that, its a simple matter for fundamentalists to shut down all the pornography on the internets by blocking the domain.

In theory, anyway...

Smart Move.

[Geekenstein]

So, a bunch of senators were sitting around a table and said to themselves "Hey, how can we lose the tax revenue and jobs of a highly profitable industry and push it out of America to make us look better, while doing nothing to make it less prevalent? Oh yeah, let's go after porn!"

And not we have this bill.

Seriously, do these pompous old men believe that they can actually control the internet in this fashion?

Re:Define "harmful to minors"

[Siffy]

Finally after 30 minutes of looking for a description of it. Here's a Congresscritter's words on "Harmful to Minors". As defined by him/his committee/his intern in 2003.

• "Harmful to minors" is defined as content that:
  • appeals to minors' morbid interest in violent or sex
  • is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community, and
  • lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Fact Sheet on H.R. 669: Protect Children From Video Game Sex & Violence Act of 2003
http://www.house.gov/baca/hotissues/video_factshee t.htm

Re:127.0.0.1 *.*.xxx

[1u3hr]

That would be the next entry into my local DNS hosts file.

And that's exactly why the worst, sleaziest porn sites will never move there. The relatively sedate Playboy site will move to .xxx; FarmSex.com, SluttyLolitas.com, AnalMasochist,com... will not and will keep popping up in your browser.

Be fruitful and multiply.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that someone thinks 'making love' and pornography are the same thing is evidence of how screwed up society has become from overexposure to images of gratuitous sex.

The fact that someone thinks that society has been somehow screwed up by exposure to sexual imagery is evidence that that someone would like to force his or her religious morality on others. But I'd expect this from someone who clearly has no problem with the assault and battery of those who would teach that creationism has no supporting evidence. So tell me... How did "Thou shalt not kill" and "Be fruitful and multiply" become {violence:good, sex:bad} in your mind? You must have let someone else 'interpret' those two statements for you at an early age, no?

Re:unconstitutional?

[mikiN]

Um, no. The majority (81 out of 114) of root servers are not in the US. I may have miscounted a few (me being stoned and it being late), but that doesn't invalidate my point, not by a long shot.

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.

Re:Free Porn

[TheJorge]

You're running a difficult line here if you support this move. A bill such as this would essentially grant the government the power to regulate some things it has no business regulating. Consider that all "porn" is moved to .xxx. Who decides what's porn and what isn't? Is a movie site for an R-rated movie relegated there? How about my 2TB archive of incredibly disturbing homemade movies I want to give away for free? According to a strict reading of the bill, the former must have an .xxx TLD while the latter can be powerrangres.com. And once we've partitioned up the internet, what's to say that ISPs can't decide to block all access to these sites for its customers? This may not be a big deal, but what happens when we propose another bill to create a .anti-us TLD for unamerican sites and .heathen for non-christians? And by this day and age, WalMartISP will of course block domains that don't support family values... So perhaps my tinfoil hat's showing a bit, but this doesn't seem far from some pretty serious censorship waiting to be applied "by choice".

No.

[quokkapox]

No.

.XXX NOT Needed

[Temujin_12]

There are simply too many worms in the .XXX can to open it. But why do we need that when you can use free, objective, open community, content advising systems. Check out siteadvisor.
From their webpage:

SiteAdvisor's safety ratings are based on automated safety tests of Web sites (including of our own site) and are enhanced with user feedback from our users and our own manual analysis.

We do not accept payment from sites to be rated, so we have no conflict of interest. We also document our safety tests for every site we analyze.

So John Doe can stumble upon a pornographic website, and if it isn't already rated, dutifully provide feedback so that future viewers can be warned. John Doe can continue to enjoy his porn and can help others avoid or find it. The great thing about this is it doesn't just work for porn, it also rates sites owned by Domain Squatters (labeling them as false information), scamming sites, and other sites with "not so safe" content. Again, the beauty of this is that it is open to the community so ratings can be reversed if some overly conservative person rates a medical site as "unsafe" and each site has its own history/explination of ratings and user feedbacks.

I've been enjoying it and have found it to generally improve my web-surfing experience.

Re:Harmful to minors? Is it tubgirl?

[Demerol]

Mod parent up. That's not a troll. What the hell is with the moderation.

His point is valid. The blanket statement that pornography "is harmful to minors" is absurdly assumptive. Sure, some content *could* be harmful to minors, but it's ignorant of those with influence to suggest that erotic material is inherently "bad" or "dangerous" simply because our over-protective society has decided it should be based on a sad tendency to involve religious values in law.

Segregating pornography to a specific TLD is not the solution to your problems, people. Educating children is.

.obscene is next

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Someone route a group of bird flu infected flocking geese over washington. Make sure they're wired to shit on command. .osbscene is next kids.

Get ready for it, its coming.

What does this mean for newsgroup jackers?

What does it mean for an individual that wants to post nude pictures of themselves online?

This is not only impossible to do, its completely fucking illegal. The government should not be involved in censoring speech on the internet just to get votes.

Just because they want the angry mother that wont fuck her husband, vote... doesnt mean they can take a giant shit on our freedom of speech and expression...

or does it?

This is the government we have folks. They chip away at freedom just to win votes. But hey, i guess we're a democracy, and if we all chose to no longer be a democracy... that is just democracy in action.

Good job America.

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.

Re:There are economist who think like that

[Mike Peel]

It sounds like they're mis-applying Game theory. They economists are thinking that the thief is someone who will play along with the game so that overall everyone wins, whereas the thief's better modelled as someone who defaults all the time.

Summary is misleading...

[Anonymous Coward]

While I in no way support this bill, the summary is quite wrong; neither of the senators (Max Baucus and Mark Pryor)who proposed this bill are up for reëlection this year...election-year grandstanding this is not.

typical slashdot.

Absolutely stupid legislation

[Antony-Kyre]

One, they cannot force foreign countries to comply.
Two, it's deliberate censorship.

Re:Come again?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The government has harmed more minors than any pedophile on the planet.

They wont pass national healthcare, so millions of children do not have healthcare.

They do not properly fund education, thus hurting millions of children

They allow corperations to dictate our country and outsource jobs at an alarming rate, thus putting the parents of children out of work, thus taking away any healthcare they had. (if they had any)

They send the children of parents off to die in an illegal war, started by the criminals that run our country. Bush, Cheney, Wolfiwitz, Rove, Powell, Delay, Abramof, Frist, Santorem, hatch, Leiberman, Kerry, and countless others... AND the ones that survive... come back seriously injurred and need special care their entire lives... which the government fails to provide.

They most certainly do hurt far more children than all the pedophiles on the planet combined.

Maybe a .kids domain?

[NetSettler]

A .xxx domain can't work to do what I think people want of it. At least not by itself. No matter how hard you try, there will be some things that don't make it into .xxx that someone will complain about. The non-.xxx domain can never be clean enough. Plus, putting someone in .xxx will condemn them to additional costs for no other reason than that some people who don't use them think that they should bear additional costs. I think it's great to have a .xxx space for those who think it's a virtue, but treating it like the presence of .xxx means you can then proceed to overregulate .com is bad.

By contrast, a .kids domain would be something that people should aspire to be a member of (to attract that fussy audience that wants it), and that you can be exiled from if you don't adhere. Plus, the cost would be on the people who think it's needed.

There will always be a clash between people who think that "public space" is "unregulated" space and that people who want "regulated" space should get a private area and people who think that "private space" should not be regulated and that people who want regulation should keep it to the "public areas". Society simply does not agree. That points to the notion that there must always be two kinds of public space, and it should not be thought of as all of one kind. So let there be .xxx, and let it be unregulated. And let there be .kids and let it be hyper-regulated. And leave the middle ground to those more Libertarian among us who think we don't have to hide out in one or the other space in order to get along just fine.

Mod me down!

[FS]

I know I'm going to get murdered for this on here, but what about my right to protect my child from pornography online? I'm not asking that it be eliminated from the net, or that my kids never see pornography, but I want to make sure that at least while they are young they don't get exposed to it. Yeah, I'm a geek and I have filters up with a transparent proxy and all that on a separate Linux box, so I feel pretty safe about it right now, but the average person doesn't have the knowledge to do that.

A .XXX extension would make it as easy for me to block content for my kids as it would for you to find the content you are really after on the net. I think the real problem here is that most people here don't trust the government to not take the next step. I'm not sure I blame anyone for that - our government, both Democrats and Republicans, have given us little reason to trust them. Having said that, the .XXX extension in and of itself is not at all bad, and I think a happy medium would be to add the extension and encourage it from within the industry to make both sides of the playing field happier. The US Government is not going to be able to regulate foreign companies providing this stuff on domains other than .XXX, and I think it would be a huge waste of time and money to spend the effort attempting to regulate it within the US. Any attempt to do so would end in utter failure. I believe that the industry would self-regulation. I think it would benefit the average addict enough knowing that http://anything.xxx/ would get him porn, that he, and thus the industry, would stop wasting as much time on other tlds.

Ok, go ahead and mod me into oblivion.

Re:Mod me down!

[Winlin]

I understand what you're saying...i have a kid myslf and the first instinct is to try to protect him. But this wouldn't do that, since the rest of the world will be able to go along just as they already are. It's a false sense of security, and that is more dangerous in the long run. The best way to protect them is to just keep aware of what they do...be involved, which it sounds like you are. And quietly go gray :)

Re:Mod me down!

[VGR]

You don't have a right to your kids not being exposed to porn. You never had that right in the US, not since the day the Constitution was signed.

You do have the right to monitor what they do. That's your job. Not the government's.

You have the right to earn their respect such that they'll consider porn lame because they know you consider it lame. That too is your job as a parent.

I don't care if every little thing on the net with a mention of a body part is relegated to .xxx, as long as it's never blocked.

But the moment a library terminal blocks .xxx, we have government censorship. And do you really think there won't be anything of value that gets lumped into .xxx by the US government's indefatigable wisdom?

Hell, I've done searches for information on obscure Java bugs while at work, and ended up blocked by the incompetent WebSense filter.

Harmful?"

[Transcendent]

has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors

What if I think it's educational, or artistic? Are we going to make bomb making sites have .xxx domains? What about religious sites? Some may find that harmful, even detrimental.

Now I'm not a bleeding heart liberal or anything, but you cannot go around imposing *your* view on the rest of the world. Parents are supposed to guide their children, not the government.

And while these politicians (who have no touch on anything computer related) think it's ok, they're also effecting the rest of the world.

What I think is harmful to minors

[Nice2Cats]

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.

You know, I have a whole list of stuff that I think is "harmful to minors". I think it is harmful to minors to not give them access to real, serious sex education, resulting in the teenage pregnancy and STD rates the U.S. is justly infamous for. I think it is harmful to minors to tell them to turn off their brain and just believe God does everything instead. I think it is harmful to minors to pretend that drug abuse is a problem of supply, not of demand, that can be solved by bombing coca plantations in Columbia. It's a pretty long list, actually.

I think what I am going to do is take a look at that bill and see if my senator is somehow involved. And if yes, I am going try my best as a citizen of the United States to get his or her stupid ass kicked back out on the street where it belongs. My friends and countrymen are getting slaughtered in a senseless war in Iraq, North Korea has the bomb and Iran is going to get it, and here Congress is, trying to get around the First Amendment again. Just what is it with these people?

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[JambisJubilee]

Inconstitutional? That's unpossible!

The headaches of running a real porno site

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in San Francisco, I know four women who run bondage porno sites. Unlike most "adult webmasters", who buy content and put it on some offshore server under a fake name, these women are visible - their names and pictures are on their web sites. Two use their real names; the others use a stage name.

It's a tough business. None of them makes enough money from their site to quit her day job. One has been visited by the FBI for an 18 USC 2257 records audit. (That's a scary experience, because record keeping errors are felonies, but it went OK.) Two of them enjoy the business and have fun with it. One is just doing it for extra cash until she can start school again, and one is getting tired of it.

So that's a sense of what it's like at the working levels.
(If you want to meet these people, they'll all be at the SF Fetish Ball Saturday night.)

Re:Hmmm, I seem to recall a

[BrainInAJar]

Except that the "anti-sex" interpretation of the Bible isn't the only one. The Bible's full of sex. Song of Soloman, for an obvious example

It's not so much a matter of "the Bible says X, so we believe in X" as it is "we want Y, let's find support in the Bible".

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[DrSkwid]

Pornography was originally the academic study of prostitution.
The English, during the reign of Queen Victoria then started using the term for erotically arousing material.

The English had regarded themselves as the civilized decendents of the classical Greeks and Romans, pure of thought and mind. The discovery at Pompey that a high proportion of Roman dwellings had sexually explicit paintings in them was a shock to the sensibilities. A particularly stunning statue of the god Pan making love to a goat which was found at Pompey, is locked away in a special room in the British Museum, along with hundreds of other sexually themed items of historical interest. One is only allowed acess to this room if one can prove some sort of academic interest in sexual themes.

The decision that the viewing of such material was harmful to those with weak minds i.e. the uneducated and children has been pervasive in the 200 years since, but not in the 1000s of years previous.

Re:inconstitutional? WTF?

[slavemowgli]

Actually... to paraphrase a comment I heard a long time ago (not sure where from), "erotica is what I like, pornography is what people I don't know like, and filth is what people I dislike like".

I'm often surprised by how true this is - there's a surprising number of people out there whose sexuality would be considered "deviant" at best by mainstream society, and who will still berate you for being a sick pervert because you have some fetishes they don't have. Talk about cognitive dissonance...