Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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...)
Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties....
Which means big freaking whup for internationally hosted sites?
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?
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.
That's not it at all. There are several issues:
.xxx domain. Basically, anything sexual that has no artistic or social merit gets taggede
.com? Write about the hot sex you had last night, get fined (or go to jail).
.com is an international domain.
.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.
- "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
- Laws like this impringe on adults' rights to free speech. Have a blog where you share your innermost thoughts? Hosted on a
And, of course, in addition to the blatant unconstitutionality, there's the fact that it's pointless:
The only solution for this kind of thing is a
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
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!
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."
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
??It'd be like a MySpace, but obscene!.
:) 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 :)
A true programmer.
My other car is first.
In accordance with megan's law, CmdrTaco.net has been renamed to CmdrTaco.xxx
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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!
The Farewell Tour II
And by "Republicans", you mean "Democrats":
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Inconstitutional? That's unpossible!
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".