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ICANN Meeting Puts Off XXX Domain Again

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the porn-still-easy-to-find dept.

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an International Herald story about a recent ICANN meeting on the proposed .XXX domain. Australia, the U.S., and the EU have moved to block the idea, with most commentators surmising this will prevent the concept from ever moving forward. From the article: "Some people maintain that a triple-x domain name, and the ability to enforce rules to qualify for it, would rein in an out-of-control Internet phenomenon. In registering, a company could have to abide by ratings agency standards, require proof of age for entrants, maybe even pay for Internet filtering research. The company pushing the idea, ICM Registry, also argues that dot-xxx would be good for customers of pornography sites, assuring them of certain business benchmarks, like being free of adware or computer viruses."

4 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. the real reason.. by Tepshen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That they keep putting this off is because of the embarassment it would cause when .xxx sites outnumber all .com .net .biz and .org sites put together.

  2. old .com names? by theStig · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does that mean I can then secure whitehouse.com to peddle my lucrative house painting business?

  3. wont really solve anything by spazoidspam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    adding a XXX domain wont solve anything. Its like having a town where everyone HAS to carry a gun. It doesnt address the problem of guns being everywhere else in the world.

    a better solution is to create a domain that only has child-friendly material on it. Like creating a town with NO guns allowed.

    Parents could choose to only allow their kids to visit this domain and be assured they wont stumble across pictures that they might not want them to see.


    I don't think I would have my children live in censorland, but at least the parents afraid of letting their children see the real world would have a place to hide it from them.

  4. Maybe, just maybe by jfengel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because the .com TLD is the repository of all crud. It's open to everybody.

    If the TLD isn't .com, the registrars should guarantee that it means something. For example, the .edu domain is restricted, and the registrar (a compnay caled Educase) is responsible for guaranteeing that it doesn't get full of spammers and scammers. Some country code domains are usefully geographically limited. By contrast, the .biz domain is stupid, because there's nothing in it that wouldn't be better off in .com unless you're trying to fool somebody with your scuzzy "CapitalOne.biz" domain.

    People trust .edu domains because Educase backs them with their reputation. If the rep fails, the .edu domain owners will be pissed off, because they're paying for exclusivity.

    So maybe, just maybe, these guys will be vigilant about kicking out the registrations of people with .xxx domains who host malware. The guys keeping them honest will be the .xxx domain owners themselves, who are selling a legal but sleazy project where some degree of trust is needed. (In the real world would you trust a porn purveyor with your credit card?)

    That "guaranteed free of malware" would involve a lot of vigilance on their part, and in return the .xxx domain owners would get people less wary of visiting their sites. They'd pay through the nose for that. They can't guarantee it completely, but if they investigate reports seriously and shut down domains spewing malware they might just get some trust. I'd be willing to give them a shot. It's a valid reason to establish a new domain, unlike most of the other new TLDs, which are just pork for domain registrars.