Plans For .xxx Domain For p0rn Scrapped

William Robinson writes "ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has once again scrapped the plan for a new internet "domain" .xxx for pornography. Supporters of the .xxx address suffix argued that it would have helped to protect children and others from accidental exposure to internet pornography, particularly if stronger filters were used to screen out explicit material from other internet domains. Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year to put off introducing a new ".xxx" domain for pornography on the internet. That drew international complaints that the US exercised too much power over the internet and added to a European-backed movement to shift control of the online medium to an international group."

Comments

Once again, why?

[heinousjay]

I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain. I'm not opposed, per se, but I have a hard time understanding the point to it. It seems more like a fun hot button to oppose the US. If that's the case, cool, enjoy tilting at that particular windmill.

Re:Once again, why?

[mopslik]

I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain.

I guess the main argument is that it should be fairly trivial to filter out any domain ending in .xxx, as opposed to trying to determine is a particular .com domain is pornographic based on domain name, copy, images, etc.

But then, I guess it depends on whether you buy into the "existence = encouragement" argument put forth by some of the other groups.

Re:Once again, why?

[Dr.MiNDKiLLER]

Or, give every existing porn site a free .xxx with the same name as the .com they already have. Then encourage them to put their "You may only preceed if you are over x years old: ENTER, EXIT" at their .com address and everything else on .xxx .

Re:Once again, why?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain. I'm not opposed, per se, but I have a hard time understanding the point to it.

Why do we have any TLDs? We can just shove everything into .com right? The point is to organize the internet into usable chunks both for content providers and consumers. Now I don't know about you, but I'd say porn makes up a significant chunk of the internet. Porn providers want consumers to easily be able to find them. They don't want young children to find them since kids generally don't have credit cards and if they do their parents look at the bills and likely will complain. They don't want people who don't like porn visiting them since it costs them bandwidth and is more likely to result in outrage/persecution of them.

Having an XXX domain gives porn purveyors a place to go where no one can complain they "accidentally" stumbled upon them. It will stop all of the "please think of the children" emotive pleas, since anyone concerned can just filter the XXX domain. This is the whole reason the domain system exists.

As to the reason some people oppose it. Certain religious wackos and the con-men who prey upon religious wackos like having an enemy. Most of them say that "porn is evil" and needs to be stopped. They aren't interested in letting everyone make up their own minds, or easily have a choice. Their concern is in telling each and every one of us what we can and can't do based upon their weird religious interpretations. As a result, they want to increase, not decrease outrage. This means they want children and other people who might accidentally access porn to do so as much as possible. They hope that by making it more difficult for people to find what they want, more difficult to avoid what they don't want, and more difficult to filter based upon easy categorization that they can outright ban porn in the entire world, rather than just let those who to see it do so and avoid it themselves.

Since a lot of these religious wackos and con-men are involved in the US government, which in holds ICANN's leash, they are using ICANN to push this agenda upon the world. That, understandably, makes much of the rest of the world less confident that the US will not use ICANN to push other agendas that conflict with global interests.

Re:Once again, why?

[modmans2ndcoming]

By Fiat.

Re:Once again, why?

[typical]

Yes, some conservative Christian groups oppose it, for the reason that they feel that it will "legitimize porn". I also oppose a .xxx TLD, for completely different reasons:

(1) .xxx sucks from a technical standpoint. Using DNS to categorize sites allows anyone else to set up a non-.xxx address that points at the same address. .xxx is useless for blocking, for this reason. .xxx allows only a single bit of information to be encoded about a an entire domain (is it "adult", whatever that means, or not?) There are better, existing systems to embed metatags in web pages. These approaches are far more powerful ("contains REALISTIC_VIOLENCE and NUDITY" and lets the user or ISP choose how to filter based on these content flags), provide better granularity (you don't have to stick an entire domain in .xxx if it contains one adult page), and can't be bypassed as blocking systems just because someone uses a proxy or something similar.

(2) .xxx sucks from a policy standpoint. We sorta-kinda can get away with saying "This is adult content, and this isn't" in the United States, because we've got a *somewhat* universal standard of acceptable content. Even then, there's friction (in San Francisco, it's been ruled legal to do nude yoga on a city street -- try doing that in the Deep South). But it's not nearly as much as the differences between countries and continents. Remember that this is not xxx.us -- this is a .xxx *TLD*. It applies to *everyone*. In the UK, it's considered perfectly harmless to show topless women on television. In the US, we consider that unacceptable and obscene. In some conservative Islamic countries, a woman in regular business wear (or worse, a bikini) would be considered completely unacceptable. How do you do a good job of reconciling all these various wildly-differing social values into that single bit of information? No matter what happens, an awful lot of people are going to find your classification completely unacceptable. A .xxx TLD promises *years* of culture wars and infighting.

There are two main groups pushing for a .xxx TLD. First, there are a lot of people who simply don't have the technical background to understand the drawbacks of a .xxx TLD, but know that they want to be able to filter porn. They aren't familiar with the alternatives, and a .xxx TLD is easy to explain to them. The other group is the domain name registrars, which are absolutely salivating at the possibility of having people have to pay for a new domain based on the kind of content they are providing. Heck, get past the initial big step of getting people used to paying a domain name registrar tax to serve a particular type of content, and you can do it with all *kinds* of content. There's nothing that a domain name registrar would like better than something along these lines.

And that's why I really don't think that most people actually want a .xxx TLD. They may want to be able to filter porn, but they don't want a .xxx TLD.

Reposted from an earlier post of mine here

Re:Once again, why?

[TheLogster]

As a Christian (aka "Religous wacko") I can see a _very_ good reason to have a .xxx domain. Porn is degrading to women, and it does destroys relationships

No more - "sorry honey - I didn't know what I was doing" crap.

By having a ".xxx" domain, I can set my firewall to instantly block all of the porn in the world. Thus stoping temptation and at the same time protecting my children from seeing things that they are too young to understand..

Admittly - having a .xxx domain would make a lot of software filtering package redundant ... I wonder if those businesses voted "no to .xxx"

Re:Once again, why?

[dlZ]

I like the sound of goatse.kids!

Ill fated from the begining.

[Hellboy0101]

I always wondered what made anyone think that this would be a success in the first place. Registering your pr0n site as a .com, etc would always be the preffered method, since you site would have a better chance of getting around filters. Just another instance of non-technical people trying to make technical decisions.

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[G-Licious!]

Do porn sites actually make any profit out of that, though? Children that are blocked by the filters wouldn't have paid anyways. Other people that are blocked by filters are usually at places you wouldn't normally get off anyways (work, library, etc.)

On top of that, even if there is no filter in place, I don't think they'd get many ad clicks either in any of those situations. But maybe they don't get paid per click at all?

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[Austerity Empowers]

Because you're exactly right, it makes for a good rallying point for the non-technical or at least the non-clueful. It SOUNDS good right? "All porn in .xxx!", and then saying some conservative christian group stood against it makes it sound like some reactionary American group is holding up progress. Americans are the only Christians of course, we all know Christ was born in Cleveland and the Pope lives in Albequerque.

In fact it's a dumb idea and that's why it's not going anywhere.

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[Kamel Jockey]

Registering your pr0n site as a .com, etc would always be the preffered method, since you site would have a better chance of getting around filters.

Most adult websites though do not want to bypass Internet content filters that parents set up for their children. Many voluntarily list themselves with filtering companies expressly for the purpose of trying to keep porn away from those who should not be seeing it. Of course, they don't do this out of moral reasons but rather to save themselves. Anyone who complains about "too much porn" on the Internet can be directed to use the latest available filtering technology to their heart's content with no government involvement needed.

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[sud_crow]

Actually i disagree. If this is implemented correctly, then they should force all *legal* porn sites to use an .xxx domain, and thus, allowing filters to work where is the need for such things, but if you want to avoid filters, then you are either one of this options:
1) a minor,
2) an adult on a protected (as in not yours) pc or public place,
3) someone not willing to pay.

Neither of this options fall into the target of legal, credit card or cash based (as in not-publicity-based) porn sites.
So, in my opinion, the actual porn sites would be in the .xxx domain, and wouldnt want to be in .com (always assuming they actually force porn sites to go to .xxx domains trough fines or something like that, as we all know .com is the most popular domain for everything).
I just think that if i had a porn site, i wouldnt care for people with filters, if they have a filter, im quite sure they cant pay the content.

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[foniksonik]

Getting around filters... suddenly that porn outlet is the target of an investigation into selling porn to underage... which is the whole point. It's like the red light district... it makes it easier for patrons to find and harder for underage would be patrons to access without drawing attention to themselves, either from their parents or the authorities (which would only get involved if the business were actually soliciting to minors).

Morality nazis just don't want to appear to be giving their support to something that legitimizes pornography. SO instead we have porn abolition, which is much the same as alcohol abolition in that the suppliers still sell their product and people still buy, but there is no regulation of quality and no means of officially monitoring or regulating product access to minors.

I'd like to be able to block ads from .xxx and emails from .xxx and if i wanted to see some fat titties I'd like to go to google and do a search on .xxx and not see this: fat titties.

Re:Ill fated from the begining.

[scatteredbomb]

omg, i live like two hours away from the pope. hell yes!!

Trolling Post

[Serapth]

Are you all ready for the barrage of thousands of comments about how much fundamentalist Christians suck. This obviously leads to conversations about how evil the Bush administration is. Naturally this will lead to a number of non-Americans saying how the States has too much power and is too conceited. And finally, this will be followed up by comments from Americans claiming to be the core of the world anyways so the rest of the world can go stuff it.
BR> Paint by numbers, brought to you by Slashdot.

It's just as well...

[BakaHoushi]

While I admit, in theory, it sounded like a great idea, helping to keep a lot of unwanted images out of my google searches, there were just too many holes in the idea and too many ways it could be abused for it to seriously work. Defining what constitutes as pr0n, whether it should be manadatory or merely encouraged, and the fact that not all pr0n sites are here in America.

Nothing else to see here, move along...

Re:It's just as well...

[MindStalker]

What would work best is pressure to use a .xx domain and .com domain where the .com redirects to the .xxx. The porn companies have worked hard on their brandname and image. They arn't going to give up a .com without a fight, but a simple redirect would allow the .xxx filters to still work while retaining the .com

Re:It's just as well...

[BakaHoushi]

Well, the problem with that is, does this count for ONLY porn? If so, who decides "this is porn, and this is not?" In New York City or Las Vegas or another major city, what constitutes as pornography will likely be higher than, say, a rural community in the Bible Belt. Whose definition do we use? And if it's not just porn, and it's just "offensive" sites, well, that's even worse.

Of course, this is just if the switch from .com to .xxx is mandatory. If it's not, and it's only encouraged, that leads to another problem. Say, for instance, I have an art site with nude models. It's not porn. It's nothing worse than looking at, say, Michaelangelo's David. But now some little boy gets on the big, scary Internet and finds my site. His mom walks in and sees it and blows her top. I'm at fancypantsart.COM! How dare I peddle my smut on a .com when I should know full well I need to be on .xxx like the other filth-fests. A few angry calls later, and I might be pressured to move my domain.

It sounds good on paper, but it's ugly no matter how you look at it.

Huh

[romka1]

What do "conservative Christian groups" have to do with internet domain names...
EU has full right to complain about us control over the domains

Re:Huh

[falcon5768]

its article flamebait. The groups had almost no say (though they did speak against it) Who was more against it was other countrys like China and Russia. The EU picked up the whole "Christan Fundi" thing so that it could have a better footing in opposing US control, since the whole argument is lost when you find out that it was other countrys who oposed it along with the US.

The fact remains though that the EU should continue to have no say. They dont fund it, they never created it (at least how it is today, though England Universitys did help in some early tests) and they have shown in the past that there is no way the EU could get its head on straight enough to even run things half as well as the US has (they already admitted that they would allow countrys to limit control by their own people, exactly what they accuse the US of being capable of). If they want their own network thats fine, but I could garentee that their own people would revolt when they flicked off the switch to the rest of the world who would stay with the EU

Re:Huh

[JanneM]

The fact remains though that the EU should continue to have no say. They dont fund it, they never created it

A bit of a misconception. "The Internet" is a bunch of national networks (funded by their respective countries, with Arpanet being the US network, SUNET being the Swedish one and so on) interconnected and with common rules to make them work together seamlessly. The US funds the US networks and part of the transnational links; the EU countries fund their parts and part of the links and so on.

So the EU already has "their own network" just like the US, and it's the EU part of the Internet. Having a say on it is perfectly reasonable.

Re:Huh

[turnipsatemybaby]

Ok, for me this brings up a question and a couple points:

Where did the submitter get this "Christian Veto" thing if they don't (And I certainly hope they don't!) have one.

I find your arguments against the EU are completely unfair. The US doesn't WANT other countries to fund it, because that would take away from the absolute control the US currently has.

You also complaining about the EU "already admitted that they would allow countrys to limit control by their own people, exactly what they accuse the US of being capable of". If I am readin that statement properly, there is a HUGE difference between what the EU wants and what the US is doing. The EU wants individual countries to have the right to exercise some levels of control. The US wants to IMPOSE their brand of morality on the rest of the world.

I have to say that the way the US treats other countries, I can hardly blame the EU for wanting the US to give up some of its power.

V is for Veto

[digitaldc]

Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year

So, please tell me why they have a veto, and the progressive Buddhists do not?

Re:V is for Veto

[hal9000(jr)]

Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year

I think this is poor use of Englitsch. I think what the author was trying to say was, "The US, which has veto over the internet addressing system, was pressured by conservative Christian groups ...."

Re:He who funds, controls

[nagora]

I don't see the problem here. Who has financed the internet into what it has become today. Who developed the technology and who operates the largest backbone?

Who gives a fuck? The Internet in my country was funded by my tax, and my country's backbone is the important one for me.

This "Oh, we did the initial research so we own everything that ever originates from that point" argument is pathetic. Did America invent roads? No!? Well then, I think the rest of the world should be able to tax American cars. What about railroads? Another non-American invention. Tax please!

The light bulb is another non-American invention. I think for that one the rest of the world should just refuse to licence it and people like you can go and live in the dark age you so surely deserve.

TWW

The End of the Internet

[neoshroom]

A plan for a new internet "domain" for pornography has once again been shelved, dealing another blow to the US-backed addressing system that acts as the glue holding together the unified global internet.

The setback is likely to add to pressure stresses that could eventually fragment the internet, breaking it into a collection of separate national systems, some internet experts warned.

The reason for this I assume is because if users can't easily access porn, there really is no point to the internet, is there?

__
Elephant Essays - Custom-created essays and research papers.

Subtlety at its best

[Mayhem178]

I like all the subtle little messages in this article, further reinforcing the fundamentalist Christian conservative stereotype and implying that the Christians are the ones feeding fuel to the ICANN vs. Europe dispute.

Seriously, this debate already has enough touchy issues to keep both sides warring with each other. Looking at the situation objectively, I don't think ICANN can make any kind of intelligent decision now without sparking accusations from European protesters. So what, then, makes this .xxx domain decision any different than any other domain decision made by ICANN? Easy...it's a touchy issue with Christians. Christians who, by stereotype, are all conservative, and therefore are an easy target for the liberal media (yeah yeah, "liberal media", buzzword, I know).

Personally, I see this article having little to do with the .xxx domain decision at all.

Cognitive Dissonance

[sgant]

A psychological phenomenon that refers to the bad feeling one gets when a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation from someone else. Religion usually falls in this framework when two people who are on opposite positions begin discussing and get further and further away from true understanding one another.

This doesn't fall under religion exclusively either, almost any aspects of life can become deeply held beliefs that we don't want to let go of when something new comes along to upset the apple-cart.

Re:Cognitive Dissonance

[Lars83]

Religion usually falls in this framework when two people who are on opposite positions begin discussing and get further and further away from true understanding one another.

This really isn't cognitive dissonance. It's more like the polarization effect.

Sigh

[Zerth]

And this will keep coming up until somebody realizes we can't force everything naughty into a ghetto.

If they want a kid safe internet, they should put their efforts behind the .kids domain registrar'ed by a US company/NGO simultaneous with a law being passed covering what kind of content was allowed in .kids . Whitelisting is the only way to keep the pr0n out.

Not that they could agree on what falls on the "not pr0n" side of the fence.

Re:Vote yes for .xxx

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

If you're having such a hard time finding it, perhaps you'd like a free beta account?

For God.COM's sake ?

[craznar]

" from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system"

And you guys wonder why the rest of the world doesn't trust the US to run the internet ...

Tell me the above is a late April fools joke.

Re:For God.COM's sake ?

[bcattwoo]

That poorly constructed sentence is saying that the US has veto power not the conservative Christian groups.

For those who haven't been keeping up...

[TechnoGuyRob]

If you're unaware about the current .xxx domain battle, see these earlier Slashdot posts throughout the years: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and tons of news articles.

Overall, a very interesting battle: should we place man's vices (it's true, admit it) in one desolate, but convenient group, or leave them interspersed with everything else?

Re:For those who haven't been keeping up...

[TechnoGuyRob]

I'm sorry, the preview of the post renders the links differently--remove the "slashdot.org/" at the beginning of the hyperlink.

Re:He who funds, controls

[Serapth]

CERN?



...atleast initially.

Re:He who funds, controls

[zerojoker]

>Who has financed the internet into what it has become today. Who developed
>the technology and who operates the largest backbone?

That's Al Gore obviously. He should be in charge alone!

surprising

[sjg]

Given the predominantly republican controlled government at the moment, I figured the proper strings would get pulled to slip this through. It would have been good move in that it would have given adult companies the opportunity and an avenue to regulate themselves, something that is sorely needed. For better or worse, it would also have prompted future legislation requiring adult companies to live solely on the .xxx TLD, which was the main complaint of those in the industry. Many adult industry heavyweights fought this tooth and nail.

Why blame the religious right?

[oneiros27]

There are plenty of technical reasons why not to do it. See RFC 3675 for details.

The only justification for new TLDs that I've seen is that it makes companies have to buy them to protect their trademark, thereby making profit for the new registrar.

Re:Conservative groups don't want this?

[Stanislav_J]

This I don't understand. Can somebody help me out? Why wouldn't they want to keep all of the porn sites in one domain, where a very simple filter could eliminate all of it from view? It's very simple -- Christian groups don't want porn "segregated" -- they want it to disappear entirely. Providing a special domain is an admission that porn has a legitimate place on the Net, and that concept is anathema to the folks who don't just want to avoid it themselves, but deny anyone else the choice to view it.

It was bound to happen.

[tetrahedrassface]

It was bound to happen again. The net is just too big to enforce something like a .xxx domain, i still think that parents should be more involved with their children. As someone whos wife is a now retired teacher (to stay home with our kids), I have seen just how BADLY a lot of parents engage their childrens minds.

for example..

Children coming into school smelling like meth, (ie parents cooking it off in the house)

Children sexually abused.. A lot

Parents that expect society to instill values and morals instead of the home.

\ Nothing but tv and games all day/night.

I could go on buts its just too damn depressing. BUt we have seen it all.

If the .xxx domain was supposed to protect children well.. nothing can be better for a child than a good sound creative, loving, and supportive home, where the parents actively are a part of the childs life..

Maybe we need a .ped domain (parental education domain)... hehe or something like it.

Ive even seen crack/coke babies with all types of physical defects, while mommie is still out on the streets.

Ive seen a so much of the crazy stuff with regards to bad parenting that i think its about 75% of the problem. The children + porn thing just comes from turning Johnny loose on the net because it shuts him up so the parents can forget about him for a while..

Thats my 2$

DNS isn't a content label

[Fastolfe]

Both .xxx and .kids are bad ideas because the Internet is not "teh interweb". DNS domains are not "web sites" and it's dangerous to say you want to standardize on "web site content labels" by way of DNS.

What happens when a company publishes both pornographic and non-pornographic content? Do they now have to split up into two DNS domains?

We already have content labels today: PICS and ratings bureaus like ICRA (which actually uses RDF instead of PICS lately).

If you want a kids-safe browsing experience, get the kids-safe web sites to start labeling their content. IE, at least, can be configured to only display pages that meet certain minimum requirements defined by the type of label you use.

If you merely want a safe-from-porn browsing experience, get the porn sites to label their content and indicate that the content is porn. They're just as likely to do this as they are to voluntarily move to .xxx.

Unless this move is made mandatory, many (most?) porn site operators are not going to move to .xxx because they'll look at it the same way that businesses look at .biz: it's for low-budget operations.

Re:He who funds, controls

[zaguar]

For those of you who thought that Edison invented the light bulb, as I did, think again. He did not.

Choice quote from Wikipedia article: Many of his inventions were not completely original, but improvements which allowed for mass production. For example, contrary to public perception, Edison did not invent the electric light bulb. Several designs had already been developed by earlier inventors including the patent he purchased from Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, Moses G. Farmer,[2] Joseph Swan, James Bowman Lindsay, William Sawyer, Humphry Davy, and Heinrich Göbel. In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although English inventor Joseph Swan used the term prior to this. Edison took the features of these earlier designs and set his workers to the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. By 1879, he had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, Edison concentrated on commercial application and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

More info: Thomas Edison and Light Bulbs from Wikipedia

Mr. Foot, meet Mr. Bullet

[Citizen of Earth]

Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year to put off introducing a new ".xxx" domain for pornography on the internet.

This reminds me of far-left types who demand world peace and the end to world hunger but vehemently object to the only credible means of achieving either. War isn't going away without the removal of all tinpot dictators; hunger isn't going away without pervasive globalization of all commodity production and the removal of all tinpot dictators; and Internet porn isn't going away without the marshalling of all material into a single TLD and the eradication of all human males.

Re:He who funds, controls

[Renegade88]

Ignoring the fact the grandparent didn't mention anything about a "tax", the parent still is a non-sequiter. America has it's own railway and highway system, it didn't augment an existing system built by another party. If you wanted to compare apples to apples, your country would have invested it's money in a separate internet system that it could control as it sees fit. If your country didn't accept the control authority of the existing internet, it should not have invested in it.

Re:Not how I remember it....

[joedoc]

Er...maybe I'm appearing to be an uninformed dumbass here, but I'd really like to know who these "conservative Christian groups" who opposed this might be. The moment I read that, some red flags went up:

1. The original story is published in the Financial Times (London). A nice publication, but this stiry is lacking on the details. It's not likely the NY Times or WaPo would get away with that too frequently. Name names.

2. In today's political and media environment, it frequently appears that tossing up "conservative" and "Christian" (especially in the same sentence) is an easy way to create some kind of nameless, Luddite, Dark Ages bogey man. I'm conservative and Catholic, and I don't have a problem with this. Nor do a number of fellow conservatives and Christians that I know. I realize that my circle of acquaintences is pretty limited, but just who are these nameless "groups"?

3. What is this "pressue"? A letter writing campaign from some pro-family church-based group? I would call that the right to express one's opinion. Does this mean there was no "pressure" from non-conservative Christian groups to crate the domain? Alternatively, was there any pressure against the domain from adult content providers? I see a number of reasons why they wouldn't want this (some expressed in the replies here), so doesn't their opinion also have some sway with ICANN?

4. Just because a bunch of people write some letters, send some e-mails or make some phone calls doesn't mean there's "pressure" to do something. Once again, people express their opinions, which is a right. How many times have similar campaigns failed against some TV show that some groups found offensive?

5. How certain are the reporters that these groups are completely "conservative" or "Christian"? I'll bet I could find someone in my circle of liberal, Jewish, agnostic, athiest or libertarian friends that take the same position.

I'd prefer some reporting with factual substance. Not some drive-by shots at some straw man.

The following links paint a fuzzier picture

[what about]

I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)

The proposal for .xxx is here apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994

Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM

Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here it is June 05

And finally one of the many comments, of various type, basically it seems to me that there is not a clear cut idea if this is good or bad...

What I cannot find is a reference to what the article under scrutiny says, maybe it is just rumors ?

Re:Conservative groups don't want this?

[Dr. Evil]

As long as your little sister is 18 or older, it's perfectly legal.

Why .xxx must never be

[jmorris42]

> I guess the main argument is that it should be fairly trivial to filter out any domain ending in .xxx,

Which is why it must never be allowed to be brought into existance. Listen up a second before that inflamatory slashdot article turns this thread into today's two minute hate.

If a .xxx domain is ever created the legal climate in the US will force any content that isn't 'child safe' into it. All it would take is one threat of a lawsuit from a rapacious trial lawyer (and we have a couple million of those monsters lurking here) and any site that wasn't perfectly safe for kiddies would move. Combine that with the law that would shamble out of Congress within a year or two of .xxx going live that would require every ISP to filter .xxx by default for new customers (to protect the 'precious innocent children' of course) and we would see an Internet as locked down as China. Just filtering different stuff, but counted by sites almost certainly more and counted by sites that are useful about as many.

Re:Why .xxx must never be

[jmorris42]

> My, that slope sure is slippery.

No, just a realistic appraisal of the legal and political climate in the US, as observed by a native who has followed politics for longer than the average slashdotter has been potty trained. I'm not even a crazed leftwing moonbat who sees a police state hiding under every rock, I'm a libertarian leaning small government Republican. But I know what Congress is capable of though, and have to speak out even when it would be Republicans leading the charge.

The only thing that keeps the trial lawyers at bay now is the reality that there IS no effective way to keep objectional content in a dank corner of the Internet so you can't sue every time your little hellion sees something naughty and our 1st Amendment won't allow the whole Internet (as viewed in the US) to become a big freaking Barney masturbertorium. But you give em a .xxx TLD and everything outside it that isn't Disney's version of reality will get their butts sued. And if you don't believe Congress won't force the default position of the ISP filters the second they would A) be affordable and B) effective hasn't been following the continual efforts of Congress to 'protect the children' from the 'evil, wicked and outright depraved Internet.'

If we just have to have a segregated Internet create .kids and force disney.com into it.

Re:And the crystal ball says...

[spacebird]

Actually, the Internet was developed to combat the USSR by the decidedly American DOD. It was created by Americans, for Americans. Obviously it has since expanded into something else entirely, but America invented, developed, and spent 30+ years laying the groundwork for it starting back with ARPA in the 60's - it wasn't until CERN in 1991 that the idea of a global network was even brought up.

The EU created the WWW

[abigsmurf]

The US created the internet communication protocols, the EU created the world wide web. Learn your facts. Infact domain names are far more relevant to the EU created side of what's collective known as the internet which begs the question : why did they US get 100% control over TLDs in the first place?

the real story about .xxx

[Xyonz]

No one seems to understand this topic so I'm going to do my best to bring you all up to speed.

As a point of interest, I have attended ICANN conferences, and I know personally members of various ICANN subcomitees, as well as know personally the two gentlemen behind .xxx.

A .xxx domain would cost in the neighborhood of $60 to register. Some of this money goes to ICANN obviously, but the rest will be used to make sure the site complies with the rules and regulations associated with the aggrement that goes along with a registration. For example, the sites may not use any models under the age of 18, they must follow some best practices such as not having annnoying popup ads that can not be closed, etc. .xxx is not attempting to remove porn from .com or any other TLD, it will simply be another domain a site can register. However, as part of the agreement, all other doians owned by the company that registers the domain must also comply with the standards and practices required of the .xxx domain. A .xxx domain will also only be able to be purchased by a company with a legitimate adult business. For example, suicidegirls.xxx would be a valid registration, but disney.xxx could never be registered because there can not be a porn business named disney.

Also as part of the agreement, the business myst have an actual person as a contact, with a valid phone number.

They must also rate their site with ICRA, a web standard meta tag that most filtering software uses to determine the content of a site and whether ot not it is sutible for the filter to show.

I'm not personally affiliated with .xxx, despite the fact I know those involved, but I see no reason why it, or any other TLD for that matter shouldn't be approved. The catholic league or what ever specific christian orginization is against .xxx doesn't have any idea the benefits it will have as far as cleaning up the internet and ultimately protecting children from adult content.

.xxx a good idea, but for different reasons

[AeroIllini]

The creation of a .xxx TLD is a good idea, but not because of censorship.

If we tried to force all pornographic sites to move to .xxx names, then we would by necessity need to define "porn" to decide who has to move. Is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition porn? What about the Victoria's Secret or Abercrombie catalogs? What about National Geographic's images of tribes in the Amazon who don't wear much clothing because it's frikkin' hot there, and don't worry about modesty? Is that porn? Defining porn is a difficult task at best, and defining it and moving it to .xxx wouldn't guarantee that suddenly, magically, .com is free of it.

However, internet porn is a very popular vector for the delivery of spyware, malware, and phishing attacks, because of its popularity and taboo nature in our society. If the company that registers .xxx domain names can guarantee that the sites who buy .xxx domain names are reputable and free of [spy|ad|mal|phish]ware, then people would probably be willing to pay a premium for access to that site. (If I recall correctly, .edu does this type of thing already.) It would not take the malware out of porn sites, but it will take reputable porn sites away from the disreputable ones, and generate some trust between merchants and customers. After all, a reputable porn site is just a business, and they don't want to hurt their customer base. Ask yourself, would you be more willing to give your credit card to a .com site, a .biz site, or a .edu site? If that same high level of trust was created for the .xxx domain, everyone would benefit: the reputable porn sites get a good name and distance themselves from the malware-ridden experience that is online porn, the customers get a better porn-browsing experience and don't compromise their computer's security just by looking at naked people, and the registrars get to make money. The .xxx TLD could become a sort of Better Business Bureau for online pornography sites.

If we really wanted to make censorship easy, let's create a .kid TLD, which is porn-free. Block everything but .kid, and maybe a few select whitelisted .com or .edu sites, and let your kids run wild and free on the internet without encountering a single filthy, traumatizing boobie.

An uphill battle, anyway

[abb3w]

Registering your pr0n site as a .com, etc would always be the preffered method, since you site would have a better chance of getting around filters.

Actually, I expect the preferred method would be much similar to the online casinos that use a .net for the legal-in-the-US no-money online poker, and a .com for the not-legal-in-the-US real-money online poker.

Porn sites would probably register (or maintain) their .com address, and keep the "clean" content there — probably a "WARNING: ADULT CONTENT" page, and maybe a copy of the TOS page. The main site with the adult content would then be on a .xxx address.

As others have noted, most porn sites want those who choose to do so to be able to filter them. They also want those who DON'T chose to filter them to be able to see them unfiltered. Of course, there are some bad apples out there — the sort of "gallery" metasites that only point to other metasites, or which attempt to install various trojans. The scammers and crooks probably won't care (nor move), but the bad apples are the minority.

No, the real bane in this effort is the Religious Conservatives who don't want ANYONE to be able to see smut, regardless of the individual's age or personal preference. Which, in the present US (or globabl) political climate, isn't a complete obstacle, but is a non-trivial problem.

why .xxx will never work

[cashman73]

I personally can see the benefits of a .xxx domain. It's actually a good idea in principle, but IMHO needed to have been put in place as one of the original TLDs in order to be effective. Plus, I like the idea of .xxx a helluva lot better than some of the other completely useless TLDs that ICANN has actually approved, like .biz, .museum, and .aero! WTF?!?!

The main reason that we'll never see a .xxx TLD is for these reasons:

1. The box is already open. P0rn site operators have operated for years with .coms, and there's no way you're going to get every single one of them to voluntarily transfer their registrations to .xxx (and pay a higher fee for additional maintenance and additional rules). If you want this to happen, someone has to actually force them to go there and automatically transfer their .coms over to .xxxs.

2. The problem with #1 is that if you actually force these people to go to .xxx, who gets to decide? The U.S. government has no right or jurisdiction to force Russian or Albanian p0rn site operators to move to .xxx. And if the Christian "Right" (I have a hard time calling them the "Christian Right," when 99.9% of the time, they are wrong) is in charge of this, they're going to force all sorts of people to move over there. Sites like Victoria's Secret, Sports Illustrated, and even Wikipedia are going to be forced to register as .xxx sites! Heck, somebody's probably going to force McDonald's to register as a .xxx site because their hamburgers are "damaging" to the children (remember, it's all about the children, folks).

So today, we've basically got a huge can of worms with this situation, that no one wants to touch. Sure, if .xxx existed originally, I think most p0rn site operators would have registered in that domain (it makes sense). But nobody's going to go back.