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.xxx registry sues US government

An anonymous reader writes in to say that "ICM Registry LLC, the company behind the proposed .xxx internet porn domain, is to sue two departments of the US government for access to documents it claims show the US pressured ICANN into rejecting the domain. The Florida-based startup will sue the Department of Commerce and the Department of State to get them to release documents that they redacted when they responded to a Freedom Of Information Act request that ICM filed last year."

225 comments

  1. IN SOVIET RUSSIA... by yobjob · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...xxx screws YOU!

    1. Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... by DarthChris · · Score: 1

      It has just made my day to see that modded 'insightful'.

      --
      Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
    2. Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... by gerrysteele · · Score: 1

      Just because it's porn doesn't mean that it aint ideologically correct

  2. WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought the government was only allowed to redact documents obtained under the FOIA to preserve national security. Since when does letting people have a naughty domain name threaten national security?

    FFS, kick the knee-jerking puritans out of office already.

  3. Those internal documents by zerojoker · · Score: 5, Informative

    [http://www.internetgovernance.org/pdf/xxx-foiapag e.pdf] are a very interesting read and show how the US Government changed its mind from neutrality to influencing the decision. Probably due to pressure from conservative family-oriented politicans...

  4. From Bush by styryx · · Score: 5, Funny

    BUSH: "Ya see, that's what the pr0n terr'ists want! They'd love us to just release this information. Can't you see people will get hurt! National security (of the children) is at stake here."

    Suing the U.S. Government? Fair play, you got some balls and/or a lot of naivety. Good luck.

    Also, if we don't want a .xxx domain then we should probably take the magazines down from the top shelves and put them with the rest.

    Just a thought

    1. Re:From Bush by Helios1182 · · Score: 1

      I know at least one person who has sued the government and won; and his case was a bit more important than the .xxx domain. Dan Bernstein helped get encryption legalized and covered by the 1st amendment.

    2. Re:From Bush by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Also, if we don't want a .xxx domain then we should probably take the magazines down from the top shelves and put them with the rest.


      Yeah... stop the discrimination against small people
    3. Re:From Bush by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're on crack if you think that only the Conservatives have a stance against this. Go call your Liberal Senator and tell them you want them to pressure ICANN to allow the .xxx domain. Go ahead, I'll wait. Oh.. they laughed in your face? ...as if you didn't expect that to happen. No politician in their right mind is going to come out publicly over wanting to give porn websites "a TLD of their own".

      Serously, what makes that commercial industry so special that they deserve their own TLD? ...and they they get their own, why can't every other commerial industry? It's a question of inches and fairness: If you do for one, you'll have to do for others.

    4. Re:From Bush by styryx · · Score: 1

      The Bernstein reference you speak of shows that after he won the case the government modified the previous changes, substantially loosening them. When he challenged this again in 2003 his case was thrown out.

      The victory was temporary. He may have won a battle but certainly not the war.

  5. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by achesterase · · Score: 1

    I am pretty indifferent to whether .xxx gets approval or not, but the argument that it will make it easier for kids to find porn they shouldn't be looking at is absurd, in my opinion. Nearly every half-computer-litterate kid on the planet knows how to use Google and would be able to find whatever they may be looking for much more precisely and quickly than a new domain extension would ever let them.

    If you want to combat pornography and restrict children's access to it, you need to start elsewhere.

  6. Why?! This .xxx registry is a big blockage. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Secondly, if .xxx sites get registered it'll make it even EASIER for kids to find porn now. "

    It ALSO makes it easier to block. No more wack-a-mole with porn sites.*

    Unless that your kind of thing. Nothing wrong with that.

    1. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big blockage. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, God, just thinking about holding that big, rubberized mallet and POUNDING AWAY AT . . .

      [turns on Safari's "Private Browsing" feature]

  7. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    A lot of kids have a fun time looking at previews of pay sites as well.

    They only need an older brother/friend that points them to this . All the pr0n you need...

  8. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As time goes by, I think that we need less top level domains, not more.

    Since most large companies simply get their name in all namespaces, and the namespaces don't match up to trademark classifications, having multiple top level domains is rather pointless.

    I'd have it set up as: .com - businesses, including internet businesses and network providers .org - non profit organisations

    With possibly: .charity - verified registered charities. .bank - verified banking institutions. Would help stop phishing a little. .xxx or .adult - porn and similar, it's easy to block at the firewall or ISPs could offer it as a service for subscribers with children/wayward husbands.

    Also national TLDs should be emphasised more for non-international companies, although it's so easy with the internet for even a small company to sell internationally these days...

    Of course, we would still end up with things like http://vin-diesel-is.xxx/ and all that.

    I'm sure there's plenty of holes in the above setup too, but hey, just my personal opinion.

  9. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's the mentality of these people. Never tell the truth, or at least the whole truth, even if doing so would be the simplest course. Refuse to release information, withhold vital pieces of information, mislead, or outright lie -- but never just tell people what's going on. Honestly, I think there are an awful lot of people in government who do it, basically, for the little-kid thrill of saying "I know something you do-on't, nyaah nyaah!" It's an attitude which I saw way too much of in the military, and one which, in the *cough* post-9/11 era, has pretty much taken over every level of government from the White House to your local city council.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  10. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by MidnightBrewer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It couldn't be much easier than it is now; you hardly need a .xxx domain to find porn. Theoretically, it would make it easier to keep kids out because you simply tell your web browser to block everything ending in .xxx, thus segregating those sites. There are much better reasons why the .xxx domain is a bad idea. For one, there's nothing forcing the porn industry into investing in the registry, and nothing forcing them to drop their current domains. It'd be little more than a financial nuisance for those companies who felt it necessary to register their names in both. There is no clear-cut, determining factor as to what is porn and what isn't, which also makes the registry kind of useless.

    --
    "Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
  11. In the end... by taskforce · · Score: 4, Insightful
    In the end I think that the domain was rejected becuase it recieved little support from either political disposition.

    Libertarians rejected the domain beucase it would make porn easier to block, and Christian Moralist groups rejected the idea because it would in some way sanction the appearance of porn on the net and make it integral it's structure or backbone. That and they couldn't figure out that it would make it easier to block porn.

    In many ways it has the same advantages for all sides as Net Neutrality does, except without bussiness interests causing corporate lobbyists to stick their neck around the door.

    --
    My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
    1. Re:In the end... by Dasch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "In the end I think that the domain was rejected becuase it recieved little support from either political disposition."

      What right does American politicians to decide whether or not there should be an XXX TLD? It's because of things like this that other countries want an international organization to control the TLD's.

      The only reason I'm skeptical of such thing is that several countries would without doubt use their influence to restrict the freedom of the 'net (*cough* China!)

    2. Re:In the end... by taskforce · · Score: 1

      None... I was merely explaining the rationale behind the rejection, not saying that I agreed with the US Government intervention. I would much prefer a competant, apolitical organisation instead of ICANN making decisions becuase it wouldn't force us to rely on a nation state for the internet.

      --
      My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
    3. Re:In the end... by timeOday · · Score: 1
      What right does American politicians to decide whether or not there should be an XXX TLD?
      I'd say they have more right than anybody else to represent the people under them, because they are elected (or report to elected officials). Are the ICANNN beaurocrats supposed to exercise their own will in a bubble with no input from the rest of the world?

      I support open access to documents used in making public policy decisions, but the plaintiff is only trying to prove something I would assume anyways - that the US government took a side. I think representing US interests in international disputes is the proper role of the government - who else is in a position to do so? And I would equally assume that all other governments did the same.

      The only problem is when the democratic process is subverted, so the politicians don't actually represent the will of the people. But the lawsuit isn't even trying to prove that. Besides, making up some new process outside of government won't make it somehow immune to subversion; more likely the opposite.

    4. Re:In the end... by Andrew+Kismet · · Score: 1

      I'd say they have more right than anybody else to represent the people under them And while that may represent a significant portion of internet users, I doubt that they have any right to represent me or my country (England & UK). The only problem is when the democratic process is subverted, so the politicians don't actually represent the will of the people. Agreed. The US government should be sued in this case, especially if they did influence ICANN to the extent suggested, to the point that other influences (pro .xxx) were ignored.

    5. Re:In the end... by LordNimon · · Score: 1
      Libertarians rejected the domain beucase it would make porn easier to block

      I'm a Libertarian, and I can't see why Libertarians would oppose .xxx. Sure, it's easier to block, but who does the blocking? Private businesses and individuals, and Libertarians are very keen on these two groups more power.

      I don't think anyone seriously expects the government to block .xxx. The Bush administration is a big fan of censorship, so since they oppose .xxx, obviously they don't believe they can block it from people.

      --
      And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
      To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
    6. Re:In the end... by taskforce · · Score: 1

      Countries like Saudi Arabia and China which block "questionable content" can just as easily use it to block content as a private individual... I broadly consider myself a Libertarian and that is why I would oppose the creation of of the TLD. It would argubly of far more use to somebody trying to block content for other people, than somebody trying to censor content for themselves.

      --
      My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
    7. Re:In the end... by timeOday · · Score: 1
      And while that may represent a significant portion of internet users, I doubt that they have any right to represent me or my country (England & UK).
      That's why I specifically said they have the right to represent the people under them. And that I would equally assume that all other governments did the same. Surely the UK govt. turned out to represent the will of people there?
      The US government should be sued in this case, especially if they did influence ICANN to the extent suggested, to the point that other influences (pro .xxx) were ignored.
      If most Americans didnt' want .xxx, then I would expect our government to lobby against it. I would think it strange if every country showed up and argued both for and against.
    8. Re:In the end... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's insightful? Implying that Libertarians have some knowledge about this issue and that Christian moralists are stupid? You must have two accounts.

    9. Re:In the end... by FLEB · · Score: 1

      The general rationale (I believe) is that .xxx can become a "black hole" that sites are put into whether they want it or not. The problem isn't as much "porn goes here" as the varying things that people find objectionable and wish to put in that place. Just look at the controversies around varying types of filtering software, and the "woops!" reclassifications that keep happening as different opinions keep changing the opinion. Now, imagine that the blocklist was global, enforcable only by an "all-or-nothing" policy. The unfairness isn't with obvious and stated porn sites, but with the types of sites of more questionable intent.

      Also, there's the matter of sites giving up their long-established domain names in a number of different TLDs, and having to fight and re-buy .xxx domains.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    10. Re:In the end... by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      Christian Moralist groups rejected the idea because it would in some way sanction the appearance of porn on the net and make it integral it's structure or backbone. That and they couldn't figure out that it would make it easier to block porn.

      As I am far from the first to state: it WOULD NOT make it easier to block porn. Why would porn sites all meekly relocate their sites to a .xxx domain from which many potential customers will be blocked? NONE of the new "themed" TLDs have ever been used for their intended purpose, (the older .mil. .gov. .edu being basically governmental have). Do you automatically search a .aero list to find an airline or airport? If you do, all you'll get are placeholders redirecting you to a .com or a CCTLD. I'm only grateful that one bunch of religious fanatics has blocked this stupid idea of another bunch or rightwing idiots.

    11. Re:In the end... by LordNimon · · Score: 1
      Your scenerio makes two assumptions:

      • That an outside entity is filtering your internet access against your wish.
      • That some web sites will be forced into the .xxx domain against their wish.

      Both of these situations are un-Libertarian. The first one does happen already to a degree, but not to the extant that I think it's a real problem. If a business decides to filter porn, a Libertarian should be okay with that, even if some employees don't like it. That's because when you surf the web at work, it's technically not "your" Internet access. As for the second assumption, I don't know of any web site that's been forced into a certain top-level domain, except for .edu and .gov sites, but I don't think those really count as being "bad".

      I guess the argument is whether the .xxx domain will make either of those assumptions more likely to happen. I don't think it will.

      --
      And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
      To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
    12. Re:In the end... by buysse · · Score: 4, Insightful
      There's a third reason, and the one makes it a bad idea IMNSHO.

      Define porn. In a way that people from (non-inclusively) the Vatican, Tehran, Singapore, Beijing, and a small Baptist congregation in the US Bible Belt will agree to.

      Does it include a site from a plastic surgeon that has before and after pictures? How about information about safe sex, including proper condom use? Does it include the picture of a celebrity with a bit of cellulite that the National Enquirer paid US $50,000 for? How about pictures from a family vacation that include an unmarried woman tanning on a beach? Where can you draw the line internationally?

      --
      -30-
    13. Re:In the end... by FLEB · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Second things first... The situation of sites being forced into .xxx may be un-Libertarian, but this is not a Libertarian situation we're dealing with. Nobody's been forced into any domains as of yet, but a .com setting up in a .org space isn't going to generate near the measure of moral indignation than having PORN (!!!) outside its bounds. Examine that one of the reasons thrown around for this is "protecting people from porn"... without some sort of force, that goal would be no better served than on the current Internet. Having places for widely objectionable material is just opening the door for regulation forcing that material into its place. As I mentioned before, the conflict with that comes when someone doesn't feel their site is pornographic, but the ones in power do.

      In things like movies and music, the rating requirement has been largely kept as a private function (with the PMRC stickers and MPAA ratings), but the difference is that the restrictive costs in distribution mean that the private companies can take an effective "gatekeeper" role. Any distributor that can reach a reasonably wide audience is allied with the ratings system, which has made it universal enough that external forces need not apply. With the Internet, though, a site can go online for less than $100 a year, and there's no "Wal-Mart" of the Internet that's big enough to influence private action. What does this leave? Government intervention and legislation.

      Compulsory filtering certainly won't happen, I agree (the people do need their porn, after all), but if compulsory filing-as-.XXX comes into play, it does mean that some of these edge-case "maybe" sites are basically being forced to register to the quick-and-easy central-control block-list that many filtering providers will undoubtably implement across the board. Although I do understand that the Libertarian idea would be "they can block it or not block it", realistically, what blocker is going to scour .xxx looking for sites that might be miscategorised, just so they can put a sticker on the box saying "Now Blocks 10% Less .xxx Sites!" The problem is not that the blocking is universal and compulsory, but that the blacklist would be universal, and implementing the .xxx ghetto just asks for it to be made compulsory.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    14. Re:In the end... by Serveert · · Score: 1

      Either way, the US government has full control of the top level domain system, imposing its moral values on the world. This is in contrast to ICANN claiming independence from the US government. It's time to hand it over to an international body vs letting a government impose its values on the world.

      --
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    15. Re:In the end... by killjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It gets even more complicated when you take into account the billions of fetishes in the world. For some people pictures of people wearing slippers is porn, for others pictures of accidents are porn.

      Porn is what happens in your head, not what's on the screen.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    16. Re:In the end... by infaustus · · Score: 1

      or (*cough* Europe!) While US control of ICANN is not the ideal solution, it's preferable to any others I can think of.

      --
      Frosty piss posts are worthless, GNAA posts are worthless and hurtful, but they are the least of this site's neuroses.
    17. Re:In the end... by Easy2RememberNick · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So you're saying people in different countries with different cultures think differently than each other?!

        Let others (soverign nations) decide what pornography is to them and don't impose US values on them. Sure a breast seen on TV or in a magazine may be OK in the UK but considered pornographic in Iran, that's how the World works. It also doesn't mean the situation can't change later, maybe in a hundred years the example I gave will be reversed.

    18. Re:In the end... by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Absolutely! Why can't we have some sort of international board for these things ? Have one or more representatives from each participating nation and get them to all vote on issues. If the 2-3 US reps don't like .xxx, but a dozen european reps approve it, .xxx goes ahead and the repressive fucks in washington can bite my crank.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    19. Re:In the end... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 1
      an unmarried woman tanning on a beach

      Oh man that's HAWT!!! No tan lines on that ring finger... I'm getting wood!

      --
      This space available.
    20. Re:In the end... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well they can go ahead and block .xxx. It won't accomplish anything because no one is going to give up their existing .com addresses. .xxx is just an attempt for another company to demand payment to keep people from squatting on your trademarks. It benefits no one but the people selling domains.

    21. Re:In the end... by jambarama · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No way the libertarians got this blocked - there are what, 5 of us? Seriously though, there were bigger problems than Christian moralists. For example:

      The domain name allocation problem was a big part of the reason this got killed. Obviously the names would be auctioned but no one was sure if all the names should be auctioned at all. Who gets "baptists.xxx" or "mormon.xxx" or even "usgov.xxx"? Should anyone? The Baptists, Mormons & US Government probably don't think anyone should get these domain names.

      The very existence of a porn site with the same name as a non (or anti) porn product is problematic - Coke can buy Coke.xxx but for those businesses that can't afford to buy out the domain - the very existence of a site could be slanderous. And if firms/churches/organizations all buy thier corresponding .xxx domain, critics could easily say - "look! Disney owns porn sites - they're hippocrites, poisoning young children's minds!"

      Don't get me wrong, the right wing Christian contingency was against this, but they weren't the only ones.

    22. Re:In the end... by pembo13 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Instead of something as vague as porn, offer it as a tld for business that offer adult entertainment as their primary product/service.

      --
      "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
    23. Re:In the end... by teklob · · Score: 1
      Why is everyone approaching this as a censorship issue? Why not create the domain, and allow any websites to put their content on it if they so choose.

      No non-porn website would use it because they would be blocked by lots of filters, so then all we would need is some sort of incentive for porn websites to use it.

      When did the idea of a .xxx domain transform into the idea of forcing all porn sites onto said domain?

    24. Re:In the end... by TheLink · · Score: 1

      The porn providers and consumers sure can define it well enough.

      Same goes for "junk-food¨, even if it's not that clearly defined, the people producing and consuming it know what it is.

      So a .xxx domain would make it easy for them, just like a .junk-food domain would make it easy for people to find new types of junk-food.

      Whilst junk food is unhealthy, what's wrong with making it easier for people to find new varieties of it. Not quite natural selection, but similar ;).

      --
    25. Re:In the end... by glitch23 · · Score: 0

      A picture is porn when it is used to depict a person or people in a sexually explicit way and not for medical purposes, and this is especially so when the owner's intent is to make a profit. A photograph is not needed to show proper condom use. Something handdrawn would be quite sufficient and since it isn't meant to be sexually explicit and could even be considered for medical use then it wouldn't be porn.

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
    26. Re:In the end... by odourpreventer · · Score: 1

      Is it possible to have something similar to W3C regulate this stuff? They seem to be doing a good job, although they don't have any "executive" power, or whatever it would be called.

    27. Re:In the end... by 1u3hr · · Score: 1
      If the 2-3 US reps don't like .xxx, but a dozen european reps approve it, .xxx goes ahead and the repressive fucks in washington can bite my crank.

      However, the only people who like the .xxx idea are a different bunch of repressive fucks, in Florida. Both sets are deluded if they imagine .xxx would make any difference, positive or negative, to porn.

    28. Re:In the end... by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 2, Funny

      Who gets "baptists.xxx" or "mormon.xxx" or even "usgov.xxx"?

      No idea, but I can't wait to find out :-)

      --

      People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
    29. Re:In the end... by GuloGulo2 · · Score: 1

      "It's because of things like this that other countries want an international organization to control the TLD's."

      Well, it's because of things like this that the rest of us think things are fine right where they are.

      http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/ 04/1558212

  12. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by simonjp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would it make it easier to find pr0n? You can type just about anything into google or similar to get something pornographic. It's *already* (too?) easy to find porn online. whatever the tld ending, it wouldnt matter from someone searching as i doubt they rarely check the url and concentrate on the "content".

    However, if a large majority of sites ended .xxx, then if you were say with AOL etc, the filtering of such a site would be very easy and could be done on an account level set by the parents. This surely is a good thing ? Indeed, you might still get the same results from google, but once clicking the link it would just get blocked (so that free previews couldn't get viewed either). If you werent on AOL then perhaps the ISPs could offer it at a different way. Filters based on content of pages being viewed sometimes give false positives but with .xxx i'm sure most filters could get it right.

    Sure there would be sites which wont do .xxx or try to get around it, but at least this would have been a start.

    Oh, and in response to "Who cares if the US pressured them into rejecting the domain" its people like me who believe that the US should not be allowed to dictate what it wants to the world. But thats a different story...

    --
    , , , , , karma elon
  13. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Tatsh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not concerned so much about that (I would search porn all the time when I was under 18). But I think plenty of parents would agree to .xxx be approved and strict regulations that EVERY porn site gets put on that domain. It's easier to block this way. If they know anything about computers, *.xxx would work fine as a filter on any server or software (even Adblock on Firefox could do this). Any "easy-to-use" "dumbass" filter software could just have a tickbox saying "Block adult sites" meaning to apply *.xxx to the filter list. AOL would of course do this.

    The issue I think is that so many sites on .com's and such would have to be moved if they are actually porn sites. It brings in more government regulation on pornography which is something obviously they don't want. I don't think any customers would like this either. So many sites shut down after 2257 was revised, and this just adds on to that.

  14. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I care. I don't care about the .xxx TLD. I think it wouldn't hurt, but it won't help either. But I do care how the decision was made: I want to know if it was independent or if ICANN just executed what the US government demanded. In discussions about control over DNS and the root servers, the US constantly reiterate that ICANN is independent, and even though it is on US soil, it acts without interference from the US government. If there is evidence that the US government pressured ICANN into making a decision that it would have made differently on its own, then it is high time for the rest of the world to establish independent DNS roots.

    1. Re:Who cares? by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 1
      If there is evidence that the US government pressured ICANN into making a decision that it would have made differently on its own, then it is high time for the rest of the world to establish independent DNS roots.

      Go ahead. There is absolutely nothing stopping anybody from doing this.

  15. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by vertinox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Secondly, if .xxx sites get registered it'll make it even EASIER for kids to find porn now.

    And easier for parents to block.

    Well... If they so choose to educate themselves on the matter in order out how to set their router firewall to block all *.xxx connections.

    Not that kids have been looking at their parents porn mags and adult video tapes for the past 20 years. Truth be told... Porn never hurt any kids. Uncaring parents too disinterested in the welfare of their kids have.

    Teach your kids to be sexual healthy and not sexually repressed.

    Otherwise they are going to learn the hard way... You know... Teen pregnancy and STDs.

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  16. From the start-your-moaning dept. by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not really sure how to take that tagline...

    Anyway, why shouldn't there be a xxx domain? Not mandatory, but if a particular site wants to say right up front, "Hey, I'm porn," what's wrong with that? Maybe it seems a little much to give a whole domain to a single topic, but if you don't want to accidentally see porn it gives you a decent way to greatly reduce the amount you see, and it's one of those universal things in our (and by our I mean the whole world's) society, there's some people that want to see porn and some that don't, and at most a very very small percentage that don't care one way or the other. Give the way TLDs are used these days it seems a hell of a lot more useful than any of the others beside .gov and .edu. Doesn't hurt anyone either, anyone that wants to find porn can find it in as long as it takes to type "porn" in the Google search box.

    Don't get me wrong, it's not a "strong" in the computer science meaning of the word filter, but it's decent and it helps out people on both sides of the fence. I don't see why this is being fought. Is disallowing this TLD going to stop porn on the Internet? Am I missing something here?

    --
    <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    1. Re:From the start-your-moaning dept. by Haeleth · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Anyway, why shouldn't there be a xxx domain?

      For all the usual reasons that there shouldn't be any other new domains. When was the last time you saw a legitimate business with a .biz domain? Or a legitimate anything with a .info domain? They're not needed and are used almost exclusively for scams.

      All it would mean would be that everyone would have to buy the .xxx version of their domain as well. For some reason I don't think Coca-Cola wants a porn site at www.cocacola.xxx.

      Not mandatory, but if a particular site wants to say right up front, "Hey, I'm porn," what's wrong with that?

      Um, exactly what is not upfront about "www.hot-lesbian-porn-pictures.com"? I don't see them panicking that people might not realise what their site is about, just because it doesn't have an ".xxx" on the end.

      Maybe it seems a little much to give a whole domain to a single topic, but if you don't want to accidentally see porn it gives you a decent way to greatly reduce the amount you see

      How? It will be of precisely ZERO VALUE for filtering out porn unless it's mandatory. And any attempt to make it mandatory would be unenforcable.

      Look, if you don't want to accidentally see porn, all you have to do is install filtering software, which you'd have to do anyway to avoid being redirected from a .com to a .xxx domain, and which works perfectly well today without needing any special domains at all. See? Capitalism has already provided the answer by making available products that meet a consumer demand. There is no need whatsoever for any legislative solution.

    2. Re:From the start-your-moaning dept. by TheLink · · Score: 1

      It makes it easier to search for in google?

      From your example, someone could do a search for:

      site:.xxx hot lesbians

      And given the polarizing nature of the .xxx TLD, such a query could in theory provide qualitatively better results, than a similar query without the site:.xxx

      The people who don't want to see porn that are being forced to see porn should take it up with the authorities in charge of preventing unauthorized modification to computer systems (I don't see why they should spend so much effort trying to extradite that UK guy to the US, they should go round up all the trojan and spyware people who have broken computer crime laws in practically every country with a computer crime law).

      It's more probably that the spyware and trojans cause the little innocent kiddies to see porn (the not-so-innocent kiddies will find it themselves, and I doubt anything will stop them[1]).

      [1] I'm not a parent but kids not smart enough to bypass filtering software shouldn't be allowed to see porn ;).

      Perhaps parents should gradually increase the technical barriers to seeing porn as a part of training their children. That way kids could learn more and more about networking, transparent proxying, bypassing firewalls etc. sex being one of the significant motivators.

      And in the future when the kids inherit a Gov like the current Chinese Gov (or the future US Gov?) they might stand a better chance of survival.

      Then again, maybe they should be brought up to just consume, produce and conform, much like egg laying chickens.

      --
    3. Re:From the start-your-moaning dept. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't they go the opposite way and have a .kids domain instead? This could give the powers-that-be more income as anybody wanting to put their website onto the .kids domain has to 'prove' to the issuing authority that it's intentions are for pr0n-free (or whatever the puritan version of 'clean & healthy' content are today). Any questionable content would have to be removed inside of 24 hours of notification from the issueing authority, or be (fined/sued/banned from the .kids domain for a period - circle as necessary).
      Imagine: bbc.kids/NBC.kids/LargeCorp.kids. They'd love this.
      The registration system could also relieve the companies from the threat of litigation from the I'm-American-so-I'm-going-to-sue-you brigade, as there would be links on every page to report questionable content, so that it could be reviewed (checks & balances can be used to lower abuse of the abuse reporting system(?) such as high-traffic websites need y complaints, whereas lower-traffic websites need fewer. Also, the nature of the offensive material would have to be documented, not just "I find it offensive!". Repeat abusers of the offence reporting tool would also get ranked lower in the investigation chain).
      Sounds like a fair chance to me.

    4. Re:From the start-your-moaning dept. by dourk · · Score: 1

      Um, exactly what is not upfront about "www.hot-lesbian-porn-pictures.com"? I don't see them panicking that people might not realise what their site is about, just because it doesn't have an ".xxx" on the end.

      I wasn't sure, so I checked it out. Definitely porn. Bookmarked.

      --
      Wake up.
  17. A stack of links by jginspace · · Score: 2, Informative

    I went a searchin' for alternative sources - that cbronline article has problems in Opera for one thing - http://bigblog.com/search.cgi?id=535484929

    1. Re:A stack of links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I went a searchin' for alternative karma - that dont require any real information for one

  18. This is just stupid.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know why .xxx got rejected. Like someone said, maybe it will be easier to find, but it will ALSO be easier to block. Second, it would help porn sites by giving them a new array of domain names (NOT that I approve them in the first place).

    And third, of course kids will find ways around, we can't stop EVERYTHING! This will just discourage their access to kids, but what can we really do about the others?

    Geeze, quit searching for a perfect solution, you cant prevent skin cancer by BLOCKING THE SUN WITH A GIANT EARTH-SIZED UMBRELLA!

  19. Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Zweideutig · · Score: 5, Funny

    Many people (including myself) resent this disgusting smut. I would rather it didn't become legitimized by having its own top level domain. These "adult entertainment" companies should all cease and desist for the morality of the U.S.

    --
    Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
    1. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by M1FCJ · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You are free to not to visit any porn site. Why do you want to ruin my internet experience with your moral values? If you think your moral values are superior to mine, what is your moral basis in this? A fictitious book? I don't think you have the right to assert your own beliefs to others.

    2. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by peektwice · · Score: 1

      And the morality police should be allowed to scan your hard disk for smut. And the safety police should be allowed to make you wear a helmet in your car.

      Since the dawn of the commercialization of the Internet, porn has been making it tick. Yes, the internet is great for online shopping, free information exchange, online collaboration, and more. But porn makes it tick. I say, make ALL porn sites reside in the .xxx domain, and that way the smut filters are bullet proof. Any domain serving porn that is not in the .xxx domain, gets shut down at the root servers.

      --
      Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
    3. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by masterpenguin · · Score: 1
      And the morality police should be allowed to scan your hard disk for smut. And the safety police should be allowed to make you wear a helmet in your car.


      The saftey police DO make me wair a seatbelt in my car...
    4. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      I say, make ALL porn sites reside in the .xxx domain

      Who gets to say what is porn? The morality police?

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    5. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Tatsh · · Score: 1

      (tests for sarcasm)

    6. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by kanweg · · Score: 1

      Well, just a quick look at the situation in Iraq already told me that the "Make love, not war" isn't too popular anymore.

      It is sad that people want to determine other people how to live. Or die.

      Can't they just show some confidence in their belief that God is almighty and that he'll punish bad people when they're dead? So, the justice department only has to be involved in people who do bad to other people.

      Bert
      Who lives in a country where gay people can mary and teens rarely get pregnant.

    7. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Zweideutig · · Score: 1

      I was not being sarcastic.

      --
      Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
    8. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dude, your on /. By definition, your a nerd that didn't/won't have sex until age 30, and you can't talk to a girl to save your life. By virtue of your being a /. nerd we know that you hard drive is stuffed with porn.

      sarcasim? Of cource I know it when I see it! This was... oh, nevermind.

    9. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mark parent as Troll... or at least to damn self-righteous to properly participate in the world... or Internet for that matter.

    10. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Killshot · · Score: 1

      You can't make all porn sites do anything.. not unless one single government takes over the world...

      I wish morons would stop suggesting this.

    11. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by xamomike · · Score: 1

      ROTFLMAO you moron.

      --
      There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
    12. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by dteichman2 · · Score: 1

      We know.
       
      That's why it's funny.

      --


      Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
    13. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Who lives in a country where gay people can mary and teens rarely get pregnant.

      I'm sure there's a correlation there somewhere...

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    14. Re:Hopefully the domain registry company loses... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Morons", eh? Obviously the poster is projecting. There is ulterior motive here, since his/her website is a porn site. As far as using the term moron, the poster should learn to spell definitely and obscenity (definately(sic), obcenity(sic)) before throwing stones. Spelling taken from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183938&cid=151 94081 and http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183829&cid=151 84137

  20. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by jawtheshark · · Score: 1
    Also national TLDs should be emphasised more for non-international companies

    Look, I completely agree with that. There is but one problem: depending on the country you are in, the prices for these might be horrendous. I live in .lu and frankly, a domain costs 40€ per year. (It used to be a lot more, back when my dad registered our family name, it was about 100€ initialisation fee and, IIRC 45€ per year) Compare that to 12€ for a .com at Gandi. For businesses that might be acceptable, but me standalone-geek, I have to look at least a bit at my (frivolous) depenses.
    So, often national TLDs are simply not competitive with the generic and most people prefer the generic anyway. (It was called the dot-com boom for something, and not the dot-US boom.)

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  21. The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn. by FatSean · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You know, out of sight out of mind. The people who fear porn and their own sexuality often stand by these trite axioms. They don't want condom use being taught in school because it will increase teenage sexual activity. They don't want female nipples seen on television because it will encourge children to have sex. They don't want an XXX domain because it will make it easier for children to find porn, which will irreperably damage them somehow.

    Also, they don't want their government supporting porn in any way. There is no grey area for these simplistic people. They got their marching orders from the corpse of a long-dead civilization and they are sticking with it.

    --
    Blar.
  22. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by XXIstCenturyBoy · · Score: 1

    Unfortunatly, sex website operator are unscrupulous.

    We'd end up having microsoft.xxx, slashdot.xxx, digg.xxx. It would be ridiculous. .xxx domain are only a good idea if existing registered domain holder can get the .xxx version locked to them for free and for life.

    Of course one could easily block .xxx domain. But how long will it be before 60 minutes and friend 'expose' the scandal of known company name being used as sex portal, and pointing everyone to it like they are doing for MySpace? Or that some christians fundies boycott Walt Disney over disney.xxx?

  23. There was no technical justification for .xxx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is some company trying to get rich and ignoring the fact that most people thought the .xxx domain was a stupid idea from the outset. I hope these morons end up covering the governments costs!

  24. And the point is....? by nbannerman · · Score: 1

    Regardless of whether or not you agree with the decision, surely I can't be the only person that doesn't believe anyone has a 'right' to get a domain set up?

    1. Re:And the point is....? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Regardless of whether or not you agree with the decision, surely I can't be the only person that doesn't believe anyone has a 'right' to get a domain set up?

      Well, it's an interesting question; if you consider the web to be a vital tool of speech, which these days it can certainly be considered to be, then any government interference with domain registration can be construed as government interference with freedom of speech. And I'm pretty sure there is something about that right in some government document ... hmmm, I know I left that goddamn piece of paper around here somewhere ...

      Really, though, this isn't (or shouldn't be) about porn, or TLD's, or anything that specific. It is about our unquestionable, self-evident right to have a government which goes about its business in a way that is as transparent as possible to us, the citizens of the country it governs. The FOIA is one of the strongest tools ever created for enforcement of that right (yeah, I know, rights shouldn't have to be enforced, but of course they do) and we should fight vigorously, on every front, against every attempt to gut it.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:And the point is....? by nbannerman · · Score: 1

      we should fight vigorously, on every front, against every attempt to gut it.

      Agreed. Definately.

      I don't have a problem with these guys using every legal means to get the information they required. However, I do disagree with the idea that just because they want something, they should get it. Of course, if there have been under-hand dealings that have prevented them for getting the domain, then I do question whether or not there needs to be a much clearer seperation of ICANN from the US Goverment.

    3. Re:And the point is....? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      But you do have a right to have organizations deal with you in accordance with their own rules, charters, etc. It's not difficult to see a court extending this to a right to find out how you were dealt with (otherwise the former right becomes unenforceable).

      This is true in the UK anyway, but I'd expect it to be true in any civilised society.

  25. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you're wrong. We need all the TLDs we can get, precisely because nowadays companies try to register the same name under all TLDs. The only way to stop this silly practice is to increase the number of TLDs by leaps and bounds. Besides, only if every conceivable TLD becomes available will users learn that the TLD is an important part of the domain, not just an always-there ".com". In every discussion about DNS, someone proposes that we get rid of TLDs entirely. It's an entirely logical conclusion when you look at the way domains are registered and used today, but what are the consequences? Would you really want all domains to be in the hand of one domain registry? How are you going to determine prices without competition? No, the only way to go is to enable as many TLDs as you can find businesses willing to be the registries.

  26. Re:WTF? Redacted? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough girls and boys to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian.

    - Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951)

  27. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 1
    EVERY kid knows what XXX means

    A really shitty film "starring" Vin Diesel? Or is that a case-sensitive xXx?

  28. US Govt to CM Registry LLC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    US Govt to CM Registry LLC: "Suck it".

  29. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Sigh.

    You just don't get it. Pron is not difficult to find now. What's a lot more difficult (relatively) is filtering it out. If you take all of the existing pron sites and force them to move to .xxx domain, then all you need is one simple rule and your job is done. No constant updating of filters, nothing slipping through the cracks - you're done. That's it - that's all.

  30. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by jacksonj04 · · Score: 1

    I think a lot would move, since (think about this) those who would have .xxx filtered out are most likely to be under 18, and therefore unable to purchase a subscription. Porn sites would be effectively signing up to limit their audience to those who are capable of paying, and are therefore not wasting bandwidth on kids with strange fetishes who are never gonna pay.

    Parents win, porn sites win, filter companies have more time to spend doing useful stuff (Perhaps then winehq.org won't be classed as Drugs/Alcohol), and 12 year olds get a nice clean(er) internet. What more could be wanted?

    --
    How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
  31. Re:WTF? Redacted? by automandc · · Score: 1

    There are a number of exemptions to FOIA, of which national security is only one. I have not seen the responses given in this case, but I would speculate that they included the (b)(4) exemption (Trade secrets, commerical or financial info) and (b)(5) (privileged inter- & intra-agency memoranda and letters), which are probably the two most frequently used exemptions. A full list of the exemptions can be easily found through a Google search. E.g., http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/~foia/foiaex .html.

    --
    I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
  32. Re:WTF? Redacted? by six11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I completely agree that these people (government types) play this childish "nyaaa-nyaaah I know something you don't know!" game. I don't know if things are more likely to be redacted now than before 9/11, but it's been crazy for a long time. A long time.

    Yesterday, I was just curious what one had to do in order for the FBI to start a file on you (something that I aspire to have at some point), so I googled for "How do I get an FBI file?"

    The second hit is the John Lennon FBI Files, which is hilarious and frightening at the same time. In particular: The Parrot Story was at first given to a researcher in a completely redacted form. Only after going through a court battle over this and other redacted documents did the true, criminally horrifying nature of the Parrot Story become clear. John Lennon had been harboring "Linda", who owned a parrot:

    THE PARROT STORY

    The informer's report written by Julie Maynard about her trip from Madison to New York in March 1972 continues with a story about "a girl there named Linda" who has a parrot that "interjects 'Right On' whenever the conversation gets rousing" (NY-88 page 5). That story was featured in news reports on the settlement as an example of the trivial information the FBI had been collecting in 1972, information to which the FBI devoted substantial resources to keep secret through ensuing decades. This page includes a variety of other movement gossip and information, none of which describes plans for criminal activity. This page was withheld in its entirety for fourteen years as confidential and then released as part of the 1997 settlement.

    Remember, that ENTIRE STORY had been redacted, and remained so until after a court forced the FBI to reveal what the page contained. Not only did the federal government spend American tax dollars collecting the story, they spent money, time, and legal resources depending their goal of keeping it secret.

    I suspect the reason the government does this is similar to the reason that the RIAA or commercial software publishers might corrupt peer-to-peer networks with corrupted versions of files. In both the redaction and peer-to-peer cases, The Man is introducing noise into the medium and frustrates efforts of users to get at the content they are looking for.

    Maybe the sequel to the Freedom of Information Act should be the Freedom from Redactions act.

  33. I wonder what would happen if.. by Plunky · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder what would happen if this company ICM just went out and bought some bandwidth (guess they already got some of that), and set up a DNS server that would handle requests from the .xxx domain, and started selling subdomains of it to people who wanted name resolutions there. Although ICANN are 'the domain authority' they have refused to handle this TLD so surely its up for grabs? ICM could advertise their services and its up to the DNS admins of all the DNS servers around the world if they want to add it as an authoritative server, surely? If some porn sites decide to get on board and offer free porn to all comers (heh) then the end customer demand might be high enough that ISPs the world over add it. I freely admit, I am no DNS admin and I dont know how it works.

    1. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by JPriest · · Score: 1

      This would likely have to be hard coded into bind, few ISP's would be interested in taking such measures especially considering it may open them up to law suits. This would _definitely_ be overstepping their bounds.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    2. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by kasperd · · Score: 1

      It would be possible, but an unofficial tld just won't get as much attention. I don't think many companies would want to buy a domain which the majority of the users don't know how to access, and they couldn't even be sure to get the official domain if xxx ever becomes an official tld.

      If one company actually manages to make money from an unofficial xxx tld, I guess others will follow. Now we could have a handfull of companies selling the same domain, and anybody who wanted to be sure, would have to buy it from all of them. And even that wouldn't guarantee, that they would be able to get it under the official xxx tld, if that is ever going to happen.

      Probably some of the alternative DNS roots are going to pick it up. Maybe some of them already have their own xxx tld. This is just going to add even more to the confusion.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    3. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by rekoil · · Score: 1

      That's all well and good, right up until the moment that some other company tries to do the same thing with the same .xxx TLD (and don't think that no one will try...) You will use the global uniqueness of domain names that makes the net work - www.sex.xxx will go to one website for one user, and another for a different user whose ISP is pointing their .xxx resolution to a different registrar. And of course, it will go nowhere if your ISP hasn't added an NS record for the domain at all.

      My issues with .xxx aren't moral, but practical. Who in their right mind would use a .xxx exclusively knowing how easy it is for providers to block? And how do you force all the sites currently using .com/.net/etc to switch? ICANN should not be in the business of policing content. If they did, slashdot wouldn't be a .org. :)

    4. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by ConfusedVorlon · · Score: 1

      I don't see your issue.
      You say many people wouldn't use it. Do you object of some do?

      My guess is that it would be popular, and would mostly not be blocked. After all - there is a lot of demand for porm on the internet....

    5. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by rekoil · · Score: 1

      Site operators, not customers. I just don't think that operators would choose to use .xxx over the usual .com unless they had no choice, given how easy it would be for ISPs and other enterprises to block access to .xxx wholesale. And the only way to force adult site operators to use .xxx would be to police the .com/.org/.net/etc namespace for content. That's the slippery slope that I don't think ICANN (or any government agency) should be getting themselves into...

    6. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by Dj-Zer0 · · Score: 1

      You cant do that without setting up the TLD in the root servers and root servers are under ICANN regulations. Unless you want all the DNS servers in the world to read from you, thats just not going to work, you better get an OC192 just to handle all the DNS traffic.

      --
      http://iesucks.org
    7. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by aybiss · · Score: 0

      That's why the whole argument of control and routing on the internet is a farce. All it would take is for someone to start resolving URLs that end in .xxx and we will have a new 'TLD'. Screw the idiots that think they are in control of things - it is they themselves that want all this publicity, so that Joe Average thinks that someone actually controls the internet and doesn't give it a second thought.

      --
      It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
    8. Re:I wonder what would happen if.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Like New.net which already sells their own version of the .xxx domain name.

  34. Insightful by Teun · · Score: 1
    Well spoken vertinox!

    The more liberated people are regarding one of the most beautiful things God gave them the less likely they'd spend time and money on what most porn usually is; fake sexuality.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  35. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Offering an optional domain suffix registry is the first step in corraling the porn industry. As with tobacco, liquor, etc it will not go away ever. There is just too much friggin' money being made from such.
    If it was to come to fruition then it would be even EASIER to BLOCK such filth. It would be a red light district of the digital age. If you choose not to drive your browser there or block out your browser from accessing *******.XXX sites then you would be blocking out the majority of porn. I enjoy porn....but I do not believe children should be exposed to or have easy access to it.

    www.jeffellisconstruction.com

  36. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 1

    Yeah. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

    And I do think it's worse now. Remember a while back, there was a /. story on reclassification of a bunch of documents that had been accessible to the public? Some of these were CIA documents going back to the Korean War. There is absolutely no justification for this, except we know this stuff and we don't want you to.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  37. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by remembertomorrow · · Score: 1

    Blocking a few .xxx sites and leaving the hundreds of millions of .com|.net|.org|.whatever sites isn't really effective... but it will probably allow AOL to advertise "NEW CHILD PROTECTION FEATURES, PORN SITE BLOCKING!".

    --
    Registered Linux user #421033
  38. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Hercules+Peanut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's an attitude which I saw way too much of in the military, and one which, in the *cough* post-9/11 era, has pretty much taken over every level of government from the White House to your local city council.

    I tend to agree and hope the rest of the /. community (and America realizes) what I have come to sincerely believe. This isn't a Bush thing, it isn't a Republican thing, it's a government thing and we, the people, are losing control. I'm not really sure how to get it back but my approach right now is to vote against any incumbent regardless of party to make a statement that this is unacceptable.

    So, who will our third party candidate be this year?

  39. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
    Actually, I think the whole concept of TLDs makes no sense. Why not be able to register any string of characters? (Yes, I know, an RFC will be necessary, but it would resolve the issues once and for all.)

    And I also know the reason it hasn't been done yet: money. There's a lot of value (for the seller) to be able to sell the same thing, over and over and over again, for no additional expense. "New .food domains! New .travel domains! New .name domains! New .fuck domains! Purchase your name in the new space before someone else does!"

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  40. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Tatsh · · Score: 1

    Probably what the .xxx registry wants. And it's not a terrible idea I guess, for "responsible parents".

    I kinda see myself as an example. The "every kid" who got away with looking at porn online throughout my under-18 years (meanwhile some of my friends got caught, being stupid). Do I want my kids to look at porn? I think that up to age 9 they'll think it's gross, and they'll probably think erected penises and penetration is gross until another point shortly after. If they came across it online at that age, they would probably close it out right away. Kids at age 9 are online?

    When I was 11 I started to look every once in a while, and then went on from there. I think to be a so-called responsible parent, you should probably block. But I don't think pornography has really had an effect on me, and I've seen tons, of many genres. Who hasn't?

    It is an easy way to block .xxx. But is Interpol gonna go nuts on anyone who has porn on a .com, or .org? I don't think so. Neither will any government agency. Also, what's porn? Is this? Or this? I think some may think they are and need warnings on the pages. There is never ever going to be a definition of porn. This is what's so bad about filters.

  41. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by Thing+1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    They don't want condom use being taught in school because it will increase teenage sexual activity. They don't want female nipples seen on television because it will encourge children to have sex. They don't want an XXX domain because it will make it easier for children to find porn, which will irreperably damage them somehow.

    In addition, they don't want a new vaccine that prevents early stage cervical cancer and cancer lesions caused by HPV infection, because this may encourage teenagers to be more sexually promiscuous.

    To restate: they would rather watch teenagers die a horrible death through cancer, than allow teens to bump and grind a little.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  42. Times have changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I was a kid, nixon was in trouble for covering up a break-in. The amount of lieing was really quite small. Yet, nearly ever american that I knew hated the president for being a liar WRT to the country. You were allowed to lie about your personal life, but to be honest, the press stayed out of it. All in all, as long as you were somewhat honest WRT to the policies of the USA, then you were OK.

    But since then, the far right has redefined honor and integrity. Reagan was allowed to lie at will and they accepted his policies and deficts. Likewise, we poked our nose into Clinton's personal affairs and then put him on trial. Finally, when little bush commits real treason (outing a spy), he has lied about it, and offered up his underlings hopful that they would lie to cover his butt (coward), the right does not care. In fact, they try to re-define what is a spy ignoring the lies and cowardess parts; That is a person (not a man) who should be executed or simply given life in prison.

    Times have changed and the far right is allowing it all in the hopes of getting a country that the control. Sadly, this is exactly how Nazi german started.

  43. Making .xxx work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To really make the .xxx TLD effective, you need to outlaw pornographic content on all other TLDs, and get as many countries as possible to enact relevant legislation. Then you can either go to the search engines and ask them politely to stop indexing pornographic content on non-xxx TLDs or just pass legislation that makes it an offence to be complicit in the distribution of pornographic content on non-xxx TLDs.

    This will obviously not stop pornography existing on non-xxx TLDs, nor will it stop children coming across pornography. But the key point is that it will increase the ability of parents/schools etc to prevent children from easily accessing pornography.

    The problem with the .xxx plan as it now stands is that there are simply no measures planned to reduce the amount/accessibility of pornography on non-xxx TLDs. Without such measures, introducing an xxx TLD would simply increase the amount of pornographic websites on the internet.

  44. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Chatmag · · Score: 4, Funny

    I gave it a try, and googled just about anything

    The third result is the porn site, how to bang just about anything around the home.

    --
    Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
  45. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    "you were say with AOL etc, the filtering of such a site would be very easy and could be done on an account level set by the parents."

    The internet is somewhat of an abstraction - in other words, a part of our imagination, our fantasies.

    Nobody has ever controlled what is in my head, not my government nor my parents at any age. They want to, and very soon they will be capable using implants and brain scans to make sure your son isn't too "violent", or too "sexual" for their liking. (Prescriptions and therapy are already used for this, but those aren't always reliable you see....)

    Anyway, nobody has a right to filter our fantasies. Unfortunately, this is damn near a reality.

  46. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by simonjp · · Score: 1

    But it a few more blocked than before. Sure, allowing .xxx is not the "be all and end all" of the situation, but you got to start somewhere :) Combined with a possibility of having to have all new adult domains registered .xxx or requiring a transfer off .com (etc) would obviously increase the usefulness.

    And yes, AOL can do what you said, and I bet they would have done!

    --
    , , , , , karma elon
  47. Kids today have it too easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Otherwise they are going to learn the hard way... You know... Teen pregnancy and STDs.

    Hard? HARD?!? In my day "the hard way" meant a shotgun marriage and a lifetime of alcoholism. And we lumped it!

  48. Using TLDs For Filtering Harmful by EzInKy · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a W3C article, Why Using TLDs for Filtering is Ineffective, Harmful, and Unnecessary, that points out all the downfalls of creating a .xxx domain. This excerpt sums up why I am personally opposed to the idea:

    "7. The definition of what is offensive obviously differs greatly from country to country, from year to year, and from person to person. If bare ankles are considered obscene in some cultures, but are permitted in photos of Web sites in France selling sandals, then individuals wishing to keep photos of bare ankles out of their home using filtering on ".xxx" are unlikely to succeed. How will sites about safe sex or AIDS be treated? Who will establish what is art and what is pornography?"

    Also, having read these documents it appears to me that this whole thing is nothing but a land grab by ICM.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    1. Re:Using TLDs For Filtering Harmful by styryx · · Score: 1

      Well, isn't that the case in real life?

      I would like to see some real, uninterpretted figures that show the exact percent of how much easier it will be to find pr0n on the internet will be if .xxx becomes available. I estimate, given how incredibly easy it already is, this figure would be less than a percent, most. By imposing age restrictions, and certifying top level domains it may actually make it harder. As in, you know it's there, but won't be able to see it.

      What if we all embraced it, firefox included and allowed for, I don't know, something insanely as obvious as .xxx filtering on ones own browser, activated by default and requiring an admin password to change. Like, if that get's patented I came up with it first! But wouldn't parents active interest in their own child's activity be far better solution to this alleged problem. .xxx domains will just make it easier for parents to do just that. Why is it being challenged?

      If you did legitimize it, then you would be able to control it. By not doing so you are burying your head in the sand in the vain attempt the problem will go away. Unfeasable and unreasonable.

      Let me just point out that you're right, it WILL encourage it. However, it will encourage it to be in a responsible environment with people held accountable for their actions. By not legislating it, you will only ENCOURAGE it to be irresponsible and underground, and as long as human beings get horny I don't see the second oldest profession dissappearing. The entire line of reasoning opposing this bill is inherently specious.

      And, not trying to be condesending, but if bare ankles are offensive I don't think that person would be trying to buy sandals off a French website in the first place, moot point. I mean, what was he trying to do? Offend every one of his neighbours. Because if that's his game he probably wouldn't be too offended by the website in the first place. Talk about "people in glass houses...".

    2. Re:Using TLDs For Filtering Harmful by styryx · · Score: 1

      Apologies for the second reply.
      I forgot to ask how the issue of people being offended by French sandals would be fixed by opposing this domain type? Seemingly making the point irrelevant.

  49. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by Photon+Ghoul · · Score: 1

    And the saddest aspect is that teenagers always have and always will be having sex. Denial of information about sex only causes pregnancies and the spread of STDs - and now cancer!

  50. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Secondly, if .xxx sites get registered it'll make it even EASIER for kids to find porn now."

    So what? Why should "the internet", or society in general, be responsibile for hiding from the kiddies the reality that adults like to watch other adults screwing each other? If you don't want your kid watching porn, that's your responsiblity, not mine or anyone else's. YOU take the time to make sure YOUR kids aren't doing/watching things YOU don't want them to do/watch. Don't rely on laws, society, or anything else to raise your kid for you. Parents CAN restrict their kids' access to the internet/tv/media in general. It's called Parenting. If you don't have kids, then don't worry about it.

  51. Silly startup by eargang · · Score: 1

    They should know that based on previous decisions, ICANN doesn't need no stinking government agencies to make stupid, badly thought out decisions. I mean, really. psah.

  52. US Gov't Response by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Due to the highly sensitive nature of the information involved in this lawsuit (namely George Bush's nightly visits to www.wifeysworld.com and the fact that he doesn't know how to change the bookmark address in IE), we're not going to grant you the necessary security level for which to challenge our authority. Lawsuit dismissed!

  53. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by EzInKy · · Score: 1


    You just don't get it. Pron is not difficult to find now. What's a lot more difficult (relatively) is filtering it out. If you take all of the existing pron sites and force them to move to .xxx domain, then all you need is one simple rule and your job is done. No constant updating of filters, nothing slipping through the cracks - you're done. That's it - that's all.


    Bullshit. The only way you could achieve that kind of filtering is to create a ".safe" domain and prohibit access to everything else.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  54. Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by JPriest · · Score: 1

    The only way for this to make "porn easier to block" is if hoving porn on all the other domains was outlawed requiring it be moved to .xxx. What kind of slashdot user would be FOR banning porn on the internet?

    --
    Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    1. Re:Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by Duds · · Score: 1

      I'm more than happy for it to be forced onto .xxx. Easier to block is only a problem if you have that kind of sysadmin. If they want to block it from you at work/school then live with it. Don't be a twat.

      And for the rest of us it means that if you want porn it's that much easier to locate.

      Everyone wins, no-one except people trying to get around academic/company networks loses.

    2. Re:Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by JPriest · · Score: 1
      Why is it OK to show pictures of war, death, violence, blood, people mutilated by accidents, but not naked or half naked women?

      Who's definition is used to define exactly what pornography is? There are more cultures in the world than just yours.

      What of the all separate sites that have porn .com/.net/.biz/.info/.to/.tv/.ws/.ca/.de, which of them is to be given porn.xxx?

      Who is going to enforce this ban of porn on the internet? Who's jurisdiction exactly is "The Internet", the US? Should US tax dolars pay for this, or should the US impose an "Internet tax" on the rest of the world to fund this?

      Hate groups are welcome, but porn sites should be banned?

      These are organizations whose brand name IS their address, moving them would be making them start a new company somewhere else.

      Even if we could eradicate the entire internet of ALL porn and force it to .xxx for easy blocking, would more restrictions on accessing porn send more sexual predators to websites like MySpace?

      Who is going to track down all porn on the internet and the people responsible for it and threaten them with fines, prison etc.?

      With as lawless as the internet is today (scammers, viruses, spyware, spam etc.), do we really need to invest every resource available to begin some holy crusade against porn?

      All becasue it makes filtering it easier in schools, and in your own words: "And for the rest of us it means that if you want porn it's that much easier to locate" . NEWSFLASH: Kids in school have internet access at home too pal. Most kids won't risk looking for porn at school so they do it at home, so the entire effort behind this is pretty much for nothing.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    3. Re:Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Hate groups are welcome, but porn sites should be banned?

        good point. i propose all hate groups and white supremecy groups be forced to move to the .kkk TLD.

      it will be that much easier for me to blanket-enroll them in gay black pron mailing lists.
    4. Re:Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone with points please mod this up.

    5. Re:Would need to outlaw porn on .com to work by slothman32 · · Score: 1

      I'm not happy on anything being forced.
      I would only want it if it is like a suggestion.
      It may not be as effective but I think it is better.

      Forcing it would be like forcing Democrats or Repubs. on their own TLD. Or black people on their own.

      [troll]
      Oh wait those two types are good.
      Pron=bad or possibly bad.
      [/troll]

      --
      Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
  55. political gangs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The D and R parties should be mass sued under RICO provisions. They have conspired and colluded to completely hijack government and to perpetuate themselves handsomely at the public trough and with enjoying the power over people that "government leadership" gives them in an arbitrary and malicious dictatorial manner. They have quite literally become our political overlords. It has become so onerous that the bulk of the US population labors under the false assumption that we somehow have a codified "two party system" when nowhere is that part of any actual law or document. They, along with the MSM toadies, even have the gall to promote the "national debates" which are restricted to only their members on the podium, which was such a blatantly obvious power consilidation move that the League of Women Voters, who had sponsored the debates for decades completely withdrew sponsorship.

    When people finally realise that there's little practical difference between criminal gangs, perhaps then we can get true political reform.

    And in my opinion, by far the most dangerous aspect to this is when so called intelligent and aware politically active people insist and recommend that you don't "waste your vote" and stick to one of the political gangs. Voting for one of those two political parties/gangs is the most destructive and wasteful vote possible!

    Let us revisit history a little

    1960s, a dangerously destructive and very long running war based on false presumptions and outright lies from the political insiders, combined with massive corruption, cronyism and bribery/kickbacks being the norm in government. The military industrial complex profits mightily. Domestically we had illegal police snooping, intimidation of people and a lot of suspicious activity with unexplained and serious happenings, such as with rather peculiar assassinations, promoted violence by "undercover" police agents, etc, etc, with the executive branch and both houses of congress controlled by the D party. Main stream media, owned and controlled at the top levels by a handful of very rich insiders who are also politically active and major contributors to "the party" helps to perpetuate the lies and obfuscations to a great extent, always seemingly being months or years behind with factual and accurate reporting. Some dissent in the reporting ranks occurs, but is minimised and called "conspiracy theories". People are outright encouraged by top political leadership on down to label government questioners as "unpatriotic" and "for the enemy", they use psychological code names freely to lable all dissent, "filthy commie lover", etc. etc in an obvious demonization attempt. The "enemy" overseas is commonly called anything BUT human, they are "filthy slopes","gooks", etc..

    Flash forward now to 2006, replace just the capital letter D in the above detailed description with the letter R,exchange a few of the descriptions and nouns to modern situational equivalents "ragheads" "Camel jockeys" "filthy arabs" and dissenters as being "with the terrorists", etc. And "we can't pull out now, it will cause a domino effect", although they don't use the word domino any more, they just say it "will encourage the 'terrorists' and show them they have won".

        Now, does anyone see any significant difference between when it was mass D leadership or now mass R leadership?

    The only change I see from the 60s to now is that we have more high tech toys for government D and R criminals to use and the advertising/brainwashing/indoctrination through media manipulation and what is pushed in the public schools is MUCH more sophisticated and extensive, because they have had decades more practice to refine their techniques on what works and what doesn't.

    1. Re:political gangs by ShaneThePain · · Score: 0

      WOW! someone gets it. that's how democracy works! ABANDON IT! There is something more progressive, and the AFP is it. DEATH TO DEMOCRACY!

      --
      Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
    2. Re:political gangs by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      The 'libertarian leaning' part of me wants to sum up a lot of what you say metaphorically like 'the state power is like a nest of machine guns planted in the middle of the town square.'

      The existence of the machine gun nest (a powerful state government) is the problem, no matter who controls it.

      The 'conservative leaning' part of me has always been of the 'take away the motherfucker's ability to fuck with us' tendency. And one of the few appeals that 'conservatives' of the modern ilk have had for me is when it seems like they're shuttin' down bullshit and firing bureaucrats.

      Needless to say that the Bush administration and the bullshit that has transpired over the last bunch of years with 'the Republicans being in power' has disgusted me. But it makes me want to shitcan ALL the politicians, not flip the channel back to the corpulent tax-n-spend Democrats.

      It's one big stupid bird. Flap the right wing, flap the left wing, fly up over everybody and shit on them.

  56. SUE SUE SUE! by alexandreracine · · Score: 1

    Let's sue everybody!

    --
    No sig for now.
  57. Re:WTF? Redacted? by hotspotbloc · · Score: 1
    I thought the government was only allowed to redact documents obtained under the FOIA to preserve national security.

    I once saw a page that had every word redacted including the preprinted form descriptions. The only thing visable were the preprinted lines of the form (and I don't think I should've even seen that). =)

    --
    "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
  58. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Ogive17 · · Score: 1

    You apparently don't get it, the .xxx move would be voluntary. The new .xxx domain would not clean up the .com domain, bascially leaving us in a worse position (depends on your viewpoint I guess). So .xxx could be blocked, but the already existing porn pages would still be out there.

    How many would move to .xxx domains knowing how easy it would be for their site to be blocked? .xxx is worthless.

    --
    "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
  59. Re:WTF? Redacted? by timeOday · · Score: 2, Funny
    The Man is introducing noise into the medium and frustrates efforts of users to get at the content they are looking for.
    Right On!

    ...Macawwww!

  60. ICM should dick someone else around... by CrypticSpawn · · Score: 1
    ICM wanted the Adult industry to take it upon itself to register their .com domains under the .xxx extension; to go from paying 8-14 dollars a domain a year to 60 dollars a domain a year. The scheme by ICM was to get it approved as voluntary, and lobby the governments to pass legislation to make it mandatory.

    As far as this law suit is concerned, I don't see how the government pressured ICANN at all. If ICM was on the ball, they could have gotten the word out to have people show their support for .xxx. Since they were caught sleeping on the job, (being sore losers) they want to sue because the other side was deligent in making their views heard. Besides, ICANN can vote however they see fit, if they let the views of others sway them against what they know is morally right, then those weak minds need to be replaced. But then, that statement could also be made about alot of our politicians who are swayed by the lobbyist of big businesses.

  61. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by donscarletti · · Score: 1
    You just don't get it. Pron is not difficult to find now. What's a lot more difficult (relatively) is filtering it out. If you take all of the existing pron sites and force them to move to .xxx domain, then all you need is one simple rule and your job is done. No constant updating of filters, nothing slipping through the cracks - you're done. That's it - that's all.

    We could have used you as a general at Verdun in WWI. We could have won that battle in a day if we had simply taken all the German soldiers and forced them to move to the open ground, then we could have simply shot them. No year long trench battle, no 700 000 casualties, no eventual stalemate. We win - that is all.

    --
    When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
  62. .co.us for Colorado only by tepples · · Score: 1

    (It was called the dot-com boom for something, and not the dot-US boom.)

    Until recently, each domain directly in the .us TLD was allocated to a U.S. state. Any other entity had to be located in Colorado to get a domain in .co.us, in Nebraska for .ne.us, or in Oregon for .or.us. Compare to .com, .net, and .org, which allowed domain holders nationwide (even worldwide).

  63. The other justification... by hackwrench · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    We don't want to incur the costs involved in figuring out whether we don't want you to know something, so just to be safe we'll just prevent you from knowing, because once someone knows something they can't unknow it, but the reverse is not true.

  64. Re:WTF? Redacted? by mpe · · Score: 1

    Remember, that ENTIRE STORY had been redacted, and remained so until after a court forced the FBI to reveal what the page contained. Not only did the federal government spend American tax dollars collecting the story, they spent money, time, and legal resources depending their goal of keeping it secret.

    Which also makes you wonder what else they might be up to, instead of doing their actual job.

  65. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by donscarletti · · Score: 1

    By the way, when I say "We" I'm not French, I'm just thinking about the Entente in general.

    --
    When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
  66. Fallacy alert by djeca · · Score: 1

    ...if you don't want to accidentally see porn [the .xxx TLD] gives you a decent way to greatly reduce the amount you see...

    Bzzt! You're assuming that because some porn is in .xxx, there's less porn in .com. It won't work out that way; any porn site with a .xxx domain will offer exactly the same content from a .com address, precisely to be able to service customers with the .xxx filter in place.

    Your other assumption is that "there's some people that want to see porn and some that don't". That should read "there's some people that want to see porn, some people that don't want other people to see porn, and some people that don't want other people to know that they want to see porn". No-one is interested in censorship for themselves; it's always to protect the children, or to maintain public morals.

    Look at the .xxx TLD pragmatically: the most that will happen is that whitehouse.com is obliged to buy whitehouse.xxx to protect their "brand" - but they're sure as hell not going to let go of whitehouse.com and lose all those customers surfing from work (pr0n is not a business-related activity), school (protect the children!), home (if you're in a loving relationship, why would you need to unblock porn?), church (heh...)

    .xxx is not a filter. It won't help people searching for or filtering out porn. It's a money grab, pure and simple.

    1. Re:Fallacy alert by Alfred,+Lord+Tennyso · · Score: 1

      It's a money grab, pure and simple. As are all of new TLD proposals. One of these days we might see a TLD proposal where the domain registrars actually do work for their money, thus providing some sort of value (the way the guys who run .edu ensure that only legitimate institutions get a .edu domain). Any new TLD that doesn't require work from the registrars is just a money grab.

  67. Re:WTF? Redacted? by mpe · · Score: 1

    And I do think it's worse now.

    The "War on (some) Terror" provides a good excuse.

    Remember a while back, there was a /. story on reclassification of a bunch of documents that had been accessible to the public? Some of these were CIA documents going back to the Korean War. There is absolutely no justification for this, except we know this stuff and we don't want you to.

    There's the possibility of embarrasment for people still involved in government. In some ways it's a bit like extending copyright terms on works which already exist.

  68. It could be argued ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That your experience affects other people in society, and if the effect was negative enough, then it would make sense to not make this thing legitimate.

    If those who viewed porn were more likely to objectify or in any other way be less kind to women ( a signification portion of the population :P ) that would be a good argument by itself to disallow porn. To my knowledge, this hasn't been proven, but it hasn't been disproven either.

    All the moral rules from fictionous books, as I'm assuming your referring to religious texts, are meant to be followed first of all for the individuals' good, and secondly in many cases for the good of society.

    We shouldn't force people to follow these rules for their own sake, ( forcing them is missing the point, among other things ) but if we figure something could be harmful to society, we certainly shouldn't legitimize it.

    1. Re:It could be argued ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If those who viewed porn were more likely to objectify or in any other way be less kind to women ( a signification portion of the population :P ) that would be a good argument by itself to disallow porn
      There are problems with that besides proof:
      • If it's selection bias (men are more willing to use porn because they think poorly of women, rather than the other way around) banning porn would not improve their attitudes.
      • Sexual harassment, assault, and job and housing discrimination are illegal. Objectification is not. US constitutional law rightly defends the expression of far uglier ideas than "I resent women's low regard for sex with men."
      • Porn may be a substitute for prostitution and rape. You have to weigh what men may do because they can have the illusory hope of finding eager partners, against what they may do if they can't.
  69. Here's the problem by rben · · Score: 1

    What about sites that are art sites that include nudity? Should they be placed under the XXX domain? That would greatly restrict their potential traffic, since people might feel uncomfortable about visiting a .XXX site.

    Exactly how are you going to define a porn site? Some of the non-nude sites are pretty racy, while some of the art sites with full nudes are very tastefully done. Does picture of a woman a wet clingy t-shirt justify forcing a site into a .xxx domain? What if it's a picture of a famine victim in Africa dancing in the first rain in a decade?

    I think most legitimate adult sites would prefer to be under a .xxx domain, but I'm concerned that a lot of other sites that deal with mature subjects might be pushed into the .xxx domain against their will. It will become a convenient ghetto that the conservatives can use to limit access to anything they don't like.

    Once the .xxx domain is set up, expect to see legislation forcing some sites to move. Shortly after that, expect to see a "sin" tax imposed on the registration fees for .xxx sites.

    I suspect the .xxx domain will eventually be set up. I also suspect that in twenty years, .xxx will be associated with a lot more than just porn. It will be associated with anything the government doesn't like.

    --

    -All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
    www.ra

    1. Re:Here's the problem by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      There is an easily discernable difference between artistic nudity and porn. Granted, it isn't one that uptight 'porn opponents' can understand, but the rest of us don't have difficulty figuring it out.

      There are some 'rough edges,' i.e. some of Robert Mapplethorpes works, and boys-will-be-boys and they'll jerk off to the native women in National Geographic if needs be, so there's no way to 'block' it. But what most people view as out-and-out pornography isn't difficult to identify. Fetish, kink, explicitly sexual acts, etc. meet the definition.

      When someone like you tries to 'fog the issue' with arguements that no definition can exist, you undermine yourselves to anybody who has actually visited a porn site and can tell the difference.

      So better arguements are needed.

    2. Re:Here's the problem by CaseOfThaMondays · · Score: 1

      i know people who say Victoria Secrets ads are pronagraphic, and i know some who disagree. i think your over simplifying the issue by only polling yourself on what porn is. this "you can just tell" definition only works for... well.... just YOU. while most can agree that certain things are definitaly porn, thats not the problem. the problem is the, as you say, "rough edges". it would not be fair to force VS to redo their entire site(and comercial ads) just so they do not have to be forced to be victoriasecrets.xxx because one guy thought they were porn. the problem is, who gets to make the definition: you, the current administration, the pope, me? all 4 of these people will produce different deffinitions, and that is unfair to the other 3. if the pope gets to decide then VS may become porn, and i think you and i can agree thats not quite right. if the current administraion gets to decide then a statue of lady liberty becomes pornagraphic, and im pretty sure you disagre with that, right? i dont think that many people are saying "that no definition can exist" like you claim. i think the problem is, "who gets to define it".

      --
      thats pretty much my best post ever. I spent like 3 hours typing it.
    3. Re:Here's the problem by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I didn't try to 'simplfy' by declaring only I know what 'porn' is. I simply tried to make the point that while there isn't a tightly defined definition, 'people know it when they see it.'

      Oversexed adolescent boys will find stimulation on the underwear page of the Sears catalog, for goodness sake, so let's not get carried away about Victoria's Secret ads. A 'you can tell' definition works for communities that share collective values. That means that what is 'porn' in a neighborhood on Castro Street isn't the same as what is 'porn' in Lawrence, Kansas.

      I repeat: making the claim 'there is no way of telling' is on it's face a ridiculous assertion, and there are people who frequent both art galleries and adult bookstores who will agree. You discredit yourself making that arguement to those people.

      Ultimately, it is the 'taboo' nature itself of porn that defines what is pornography. In a world where female dominant rubber bondage was taught in fifth grade, femdom rubber mags wouldn't be porn. Likely, recorded episodes of the television show 'Father Knows Best' would be considered taboo porn in such a world.

  70. Nathaniel Hawthorne by smwoflson · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that the .xxx distinction would be a little like a scarlet letter to slap on a porn site so the whole world will be told a)that the people who run it are perverts and b)that who ever visits the site is a pervert without even having to find out what the site is. .xxx = bad. Who knows how long after that then .xxx start being banned by ISPs. And then what, give Deomcrat and Republican websites disctinctions of .dem and .rep. And then how long after that might an ISP block access to one or the other because of the political leanings of the owner. And since it is far to easy to track a person's movement on the net, how fast will a catalog of users who visit .xxx (or .dem or .rep) sites be developed and exploited. Any regulation of the net scares me. Any attempt to ostrasize and/or single out on class scares me. Especially when it has to do with out freedom of speech, something which must be protected.

  71. same thing that happened to new.net opennic etc by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    A few people may register domains for defense reasons, philosophical reasons or because they are gullible. Everyone else including most ISPs will simply ignore them. So while there may be some money to be made this way it will be nowhere near what could be made by running a real TLD.

    No ISP is going to be interested in a service that noone really uses (by really use i mean as critial to access there stuff not aliases) and noones going to wan't to really use the names while most ISPs don't support them.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  72. Needless complication by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 1

    Why can't we just continue to use the dedicated pornography domain, .ru, like we have been for all these years?

  73. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, the other reason is: if they had released the info when it was still fresh, it would have appeared the FBI had too much time on its hand (keeping track of a singer's wife's parrot's speech peculiarities) and thus threatened the FBI's appearance of doing an efficient job of expending its Congressionally-granted resources. That is, the FBI was threatened by the revelation of what it had done (wasted time/resources) and so sought to cover it up until 14 years later when they could say, look, the FBI has changed since then. No need to cut our funding/investigate our misuse of funding/etc.

    In fact, I'd say the covering up incompetence/waste rather than misdirection is the more likely explanation. You give them too much credit (does that earn me one?)

  74. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1
    Good idea. Now all you need to do is design the domain name infrastructure that could cope with it. You see, currently domain names are arranged hierarchically. When you request it.slashdot.org, the following steps are performed (simplified slightly):

    Get the .org server address from the root servers.

    Get the slashdot.org address from the .org server.

    Get the it.slashdot.org address from the slashdot.org server. Any one of these steps can be cached. The more domains under a server's authority, the more likely that they will be cached. Hardly any requests go to the root servers, because everyone has the locations of the .com, .org, etc. servers cached already. The commonly used domains within these servers are also cached, so they only need to server the less common ones, and this load is spread around (the root servers, .com servers, .org servers, .uk servers etc. are not all run by the same people).

    While the system you suggest would be possible, it would mean that every single DNS request would have to go to the root server. You want www.microsoft? Go to the root server. www.slashdot? Same. www.bbc? You guessed it. The increased load would not be sustainable with the current infrastructure. Since you'd need a lot more root servers (there are 14 currently) than there are now, and they would need a huge amount of storage space to store every new TLD, you would end up with updates taking a very long time.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  75. Registry lawsuit less to do with porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems to me that this really has little to do with porn and more to do with sales of the xxx tld. There are people out there that make tons of money just selling domains to others. They probably think that xxx would be their goldmine for sale of all simple xxx tld names such as blue.xxx and fetish branded sites like feet.xxx and corncobb.xxx. Probably this is will be owned and operated mostly by mob influence.

  76. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't hold someone accountable if you don't know anything. :(

  77. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
    That's why I said it would require an RFC.

    Caching is a fairly developed technology. One could envision a system where the root server almost never gets touched, because all the "second level" servers cache all the requests.

    I'm not attempting to define those "second level" servers; that's what the RFC would do. However, it's not necessary to break a string into "groups of characters separated by periods" in order to effectively cache lookups from that string to a group of 4 (or 6) bytes.

    Off the top of my head, we could have 26 "second level" servers; each would serve requests of domain names that started with "a", "b", etc.

    If one of those got heavily loaded, it could be broken up into 26 more servers each, keying off the second letter in the string. (And of course the "q" and "z" servers would likely be broken up some time after the "e" and "i" servers.)

    Stuff like that. It's not difficult, we've just got a lot of momentum behind the current system.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  78. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

    I thought the government was only allowed to redact documents obtained under the FOIA to preserve national security.

    You mean "to preserve things marked as Secret", which ammounts to the same thing, if you call "national embarassments" national securiity.

    And you're also forgetting that the government agencies can redact to perserve the privacy or trade secrets of its employees, contractors, or the general public, or that the government HAS to redact any document when ordered to by a Judge. (For example, a sealed juvenile file.)

  79. Re:.xxx by pjt33 · · Score: 1

    Manufacture, distribution and possession of child porn is already illegal in all civilised countries. Banning it from TLDs won't make a bit of difference.

  80. Re:.xxx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't be silly. Child porn on .com is just as illegal as child porn on .xxx would be.
    How would having .xxx prevent kids getting sexually abused?

  81. Yes, so smut can't be filtered. by redelm · · Score: 1
    Why? I'd be easier to filter with it's own domain. Arguably force sexually explict materials onto that domain specifically. Using other domains could fairly easily be ruled "wilfull and reckless exposure to minors", with the established severe penalties.

    I don't think this ringfencing has been ruled unconstitutional.

    Many things [like this] are completely different from first appearances.

    1. Re:Yes, so smut can't be filtered. by don.g · · Score: 1

      Er. How does this argument work if you take into consideration "adult sites" being run outside the jurisdiction of the US?

      --
      Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
    2. Re:Yes, so smut can't be filtered. by redelm · · Score: 1
      The standard extraterritoriality mechanism: impound the US-origin loans/CC charges for the non-compliant. RICO. For the extra-overzealous, nab'em at customs. Anything remotely smutty most certainly can be stopped at borders without offending the 1stAm. Imported speech doesn't seem to be Constitutionally protected, so is subject to the tyranny of the majority.

      Do _not_ mess with the govt. They have lots of arms. Pr0n is serious business and they would comply. They're mostly in it for the money.

  82. MOD PARENT UP... to stop un-informed ranting by HighOrbit · · Score: 2, Informative
    Exactly, there are several exemptions. As somebody who has filed a FOIA request before ( as part of a grievance process), I know first hand that you often get redacted documents back as a matter of course. You can read the full text of the "Freedom of Information Act" here.

    Specifically, the exemptions are [and this case my money is on (b)(5)]:
    • Exemption (b)(1) - National Security Information
    • Exemption (b)(2) - Internal Personnel Rules and Practices
    • - "High" (b)(2) - Substantial internal matters, disclosure would risk circumvention of a legal requirement
    • - "Low" (b)(2) - Internal matters that are essentially trivial in nature.
    • Exemption (b)(3) - Information exempt under other laws
    • Exemption (b)(4) - Confidential Business Information
    • Exemption (b)(5) - Inter or intra agency communication that is subject to deliberative process, litigation, and other privileges
    • Exemption (b)(6) - Personal Privacy
    • Exemption (b)(7) - Law Enforcement Records that implicate one of 6 enumerated concerns
    • Exemption (b)(8) - Financial Institutions
    • Exemption (b)(9) - Geological Information
    1. Re:MOD PARENT UP... to stop un-informed ranting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exemption (b)(9) - Geological Information

      Um... WTF?

    2. Re:MOD PARENT UP... to stop un-informed ranting by HighOrbit · · Score: 1

      Location of Oil Wells, Gold Mines, etc on Federal Property

  83. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by pjt33 · · Score: 1
    It brings in more government regulation on pornography which is something obviously they don't want.
    I presume the government to which you refer is the U.S. government. Given that this lawsuit is aiming to expose said government covering up efforts to influence ICANN, do you really think the same government would openly legislate on TLDs?
  84. Re:WTF? Redacted? by sconeu · · Score: 1

    one which, in the *cough* post-9/11 era

    If we allow pr0n to have a .xxx domain, then the terrorists have won!!!

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  85. Re:WTF? Redacted? by redelm · · Score: 1
    First, the FOIA never was intended to provide information. It was always intended as a sop to people who wanted info. Congress has oversight comittees and gets info that way.

    Second, there is very little protection against corporate or governmental employee malfeasance, short of clearly criminal behaviour. Both hide under the doctrine of "vicarious liability" and escape personal consequences. Perhaps this doctrine should be made more porous or pierceable. This would serve as some counter-balance to defacto job security.

  86. Re:.xxx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So the criminals will willingly move their illegal sites to .xxx. You do know that child porn is illegal right... As is Necrophilia, and beastiality. I'm not sure what other stuff you consider disgusting, but for the most part, the harmful stuff is illegal and shouldn't be allowed anywhere.

    Then again, maybe you consider procreation disgusting.

  87. Re:.xxx by kanzels · · Score: 1

    I meant that controlling .xxx porn sites will be easier. Now it is almost impossible to find all porn sites distributed along tlds.

    --
    Pixel image editor - http://www.kanzelsberger.com
  88. Re:.xxx by kanzels · · Score: 1

    Another thing is that parents would easily disallow .xxx sites on their home computers to prevent their kids on seeing porn. Same goes for schools maybe.

    --
    Pixel image editor - http://www.kanzelsberger.com
  89. why am I not surprised? by qzulla · · Score: 0, Troll

    That this comes from Florida, the most spam operator ridden state in the US?

    qz

  90. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    Right.

    1. An RFC is published.

    2. Magically, it is implmenented with little effort.

    3. Profit.

    'Off the top of your head' is right.

    'It's not difficult...' Uh.....

  91. Re:.xxx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody "accidently" stumbles on porn. If they're viewing it it's because they want to view it. If you just slap a filter on and hope the problem (if you want to call it a problem) will sort itself out, then the people that are trying to get to censored material will simply find ways around the filters.

    Maybe actually TALKING to the kids and telling them why you don't want them viewing the material would be a better solution. Oh wait, did I say talking? About sex? That's exactly what the parents have been trying to avoid. No wonder the idea of pressing a button and being done with it would be such an appealing idea to some of them.

  92. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 3, Insightful
    FFS, kick the knee-jerking puritans out of office already.

    You're the knee-jerker. The .xxx domain is almost universally despised.

    1. Pornographers hate it 'cause it forces one level of regulation upon them. Then it's easy to block *.xxx at the ISP level or even at the national level (in slightly more repressive countries). Filtering software is easy to enable. Porn sites have to declare themselves and provide information about themselves, which makes them easier to target.

    2. Borderline sites (artistic nudes, SI swimsuit, etc.) may have to move to .xxx by the law, which would be unfair to them since nothing is actually pornographic. In fact, nothing there would be illegal to show to minors, but .xxx requirements may be more than simply the Miller test. Educational institutions may filter *.xxx, preventing students from learning about Titian's Venus of Urbino or Boticelli's Birth of Venus , both of which prominently feature naked women. In fact, most art websites would either have to self-censor or move their entire gallery to .xxx. DeviantART would be in trouble because it would have to separate the really deviant art from the normal stuff. I've seen on Yahoo! Photos a checkbox to mark photo albums as "over 18 only." The new proposal would force a split of photos.yahoo.com and photos.yahoo.xxx - and then the next big news story is "Yahoo launches yahoo.xxx domain".

    3. Conservatives/reactionaries and rabid Christians despise it because it legitimises porn. It also makes finding porn theoretically easier, and gives the raunchy stuff which they'd want to outlaw the excuse of saying that they're on .xxx so they should be immune. .xxx creates a "virtual red-light district" in the words of some conservatives. If the goal is to ban pornography on the Internet, why give it a TLD of its own?

    4. The only group that seems to really want .xxx is the .xxx registrar itself. Note who's suing the US - the registrar that stood to make a profit, not any porn sites. What they're asking is for a government-sponsored choke hold on the entire online pornography industry, so that they can force all existing sites to re-register at whatever prices and under whatever terms they dictate.


    When pornographers and conservatives both oppose something, you know it has to be bad.
  93. As much as /. wants it to be,xxx is NOT a solution by xIcemanx · · Score: 1

    http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt explains why pretty clearly

  94. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

    Teach your kids to be sexual healthy and not sexually repressed.

    1. Sexual healthiness is no more sexual indulgence than it is sexual repression.

    2. Sexual healthiness is not porn.

  95. In SOUTH KOREA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .xxx is for really OLD people.

    It is true.

  96. Re:WTF? Redacted? by dcoriole · · Score: 1

    I remember many years ago reading an OpEd by former NY Rep. Otis Pike in which he said that the most of the 'secret' documents he saw were classified not for national security, but to cover somebody's ass.

  97. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The .xxx domain is almost universally despised.

    Cite please.

    Pornographers hate it 'cause it forces one level of regulation upon them.

    It forces fuck all. Nobody is forced to use .xxx, it's optional. And pornographers like it because it's easy to block. Kids don't have credit cards, kids are just a waste of bandwidth to pornographers - or worse, if the kid gets hold of a credit card he isn't supposed to, there'll be chargebacks on their account, which can cause problems if it happens often enough.

    Have you ever actually visited a porn site? Absolutely loads of them have free adverts for things like NetNanny on their front page. And you think pornographers are against blocking?

    Borderline sites (artistic nudes, SI swimsuit, etc.) may have to move to .xxx by the law

    You really are talking out of your arse. Which law, precisely, would this be? The one that only exists in people's heads?

    Conservatives/reactionaries and rabid Christians despise it because it legitimises porn.

    Yes, and those are the knee-jerkers I'm complaining about.

    It also makes finding porn theoretically easier

    No it doesn't. Again, you are arguing from ignorance.

  98. overlooked market by belg4mit · · Score: 1

    porn? what about whiskey?

    --
    Were that I say, pancakes?
  99. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by SamSim · · Score: 3, Funny
    EVERY kid knows what XXX means
    That would be the number thirty. Personally I'm still waiting to find out what happened to the .i, .ii, .iii, .iv, .v, .vi, .vii, .viii, .ix, .x, .xi, .xii, .xiii, .xiv, .xv, .xvi, .xvii, .xviii, .xix, .xx, .xxi, .xxii, .xxiii, .xxiv, .xxv, .xxvi, .xxvii, .xxviii, and .xxix top-level domains.
  100. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by zippthorne · · Score: 1

    Wait a minute, they have a valid position (but they don't voice it correctly...) Vaccines are serious business. You are injecting something directly into your body. Every vaccine has risks and this one is a vaccine for a disease whose mode of transmission is a fairly deliberate act. Unlike smallpox or polio, there's no public health reason why it should be a required vaccine.

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  101. -- Something Overlooked -- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    -The owners of .XXX have also been waging a campaign inside global governments to force pornographic companies to register with .xxx domain names only.

    -Would that not create a monopoly?

    -Would that violate anti-trust laws?

    -Rumor also has it that the lawsuit by .XXX against America, is being secretly supported indirectly by sources tied to governments outside of America.

    -Rumor or not, as time goes by, more politicians will separate themselves from the .XXX organization for both PR & legal reasons.

    -Making .XXX dead in water and the lawsuit ultimately a sinking ship.

    -Conclusion, any more money poured into this investment is a waste, move on!

    JDjournal@msn.com

  102. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Same would happen if you just took out TLDs, right. Also there would be no remembering the TLD.

    The other solution is to get a TLD regester and allow people to get their own TLDs, then we would have msdn.ms instead of msdn.microsoft.com, or linux.sd instead of linux.slashdot.org.

  103. Can't win by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

    If ICANN grants the .xxx domain, it is accused of trying to ghettoize porn. If it doesn't grant the .xxx domain, it is accused of trying to ban porn. No matter what, they can't win.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  104. Definition of porn by smileylich · · Score: 1

    I love how people balk about how to "define" porn. I can immediately think of 2 definitions to start with:

    1. Public Decency - The US (and other countries) has laws to indicate what is "decent" in public. If it's not decent in public, I shouldn't have to see it on my computer either. A "safe filter" should be available to screen out these things. Whether the .xxx domain could be used as this filter, who knows, but it's better than nothing, which is what we have now.

    2. Not Safe for Work (NSFW) - This is fairly easy to define. If I wouldn't want to see it at work, it's porn or obscene or should be able to be filted out.

    I would accept either of these definitions as the basis for a "safe filter". Yes, this would classify things like "artistic nudity" as porn. But frankly, I don't want to see any sort of nudity at work, artistic or not. And I don't want my children to see nudity, artistic or not. If you want your kinds to see artistic nudity, turn the filter off, but I think you would be in the minority of parents.

    I find it kind of interesting that we cannot be nude in public, but once we go on the internet, we are bombarded with nudity and other obscene things.

    I like porn as much as the next guy, but it would be nice to be able select an option to say "I don't want porn right now" if I don't want it available.

    1. Re:Definition of porn by CaseOfThaMondays · · Score: 1

      this governemnt has people that think a statue of lady liberty with a breast showing is not fit for the public. Do you agree? i know i dont. i dont care if my children see the The Birth Of Venus(which hangs in my living room), or The Creation of Adam (which is located on the ceiling of a church - this church is displaying porn by your definition). I have had bosses that feel woman in bikinis is NSFW. do you agree? i know i dont.(ive also had bosses that didnt care what i looked at). so whos NSFW are you going by? Many safe sex sites by your definitions would be blocked as porn. do you feel children looking for safe sex information should be blocked from these sites? i know i dont.(ex: safesexforminors.xxx - just doesnt seem right) Many medical sites would also be blocked by your defnintions. do you agree? i know i dont. Your definitions do nothing for defining porn. actualy your definition are dangerous, as the answers to them are based of what YOU or your BOSS think is porn and has nothing to do with what is really porn, as none of your definitions even once mentioned "sexualy explicit". in your "its ooohh sooo easy" comment you forgot to mention the one thing that woud actualy make sense (sexualy explicit). so maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and realise "its not easy as i thought". it sounds to me like you just want your morals made into laws and ignore the rest of our opinions.

      --
      thats pretty much my best post ever. I spent like 3 hours typing it.
    2. Re:Definition of porn by Mattwolf7 · · Score: 1

      One of the Popes cleared up the Sistine Chapel years ago, they covered all of the "dirty" body parts with little leaves or sashes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel

    3. Re:Definition of porn by CaseOfThaMondays · · Score: 1

      if i remember correctly they only removed genitalia, not breasts. so they still have porn in the sistine chapel. i may be wrong though. anyway, some would still consider them porn even with the fig leaf because they show a naked man and woman together.

      and still, what about novels? is graphic sexual novels considered pornagraphic? some say yes, some say no - and these have no pictures in them at all.

      the definition of porn isnt that easy.

      --
      thats pretty much my best post ever. I spent like 3 hours typing it.
  105. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by Watson+Ladd · · Score: 1

    Yes there is. Let's apply your argument to filters on ciggarets: Smoking is deliberate, so filters are a bad idea. And not knowing people are vaccinated restricts my sexual freedom by increasing the risks unecessarily. And you can't say that my having sex with my lovers (yes, plural) harms anyone, so dissaproving of it isn't logical in any free society. Not that we have the aformentioned disease, but it still restricts our freedom.

    --
    Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
  106. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DNS is a system of delegated authority. The purpose of domains isn't to provide a topical index. Domains are boundaries of authority. The authority to delegate all first-level domains lies with the people who control the DNS rootservers (ICANN). Now suppose you remove TLDs. Then everybody would have to get their delegation from ICANN, not from one of the country NICs or the gTLD registries/registrars. Without competition, nobody would know what a fair price for a domain is and if ICANN decided to enact new rules, you would have nowhere to go if you don't agree.

    Compare to a situation with many TLDs: In order to receive a delegation for a TLD, you would have to pay a fee to ICANN and abide by some rules that ensure that you act like a proper registry. For example, you would have to delegate second level domains undiscriminatingly, you would have to make sure that DNS service for your TLD is reliable, you would have to agree not to serve anything but registry related information under your TLD, etc. And then people could come to you and buy delegations from you. Or they could go to any of the other registries and buy delegations from them if they're cheaper. The limitation that top level delegates must be registries (and the ICANN fee) would keep the system from degenerating into one where some people use TLDs for websites or mail. Then there's a market of registries, which keeps the system honest, affordable and devoid of bullshit regulations. The splitting of authority at the TLD creates competition, and a nice side effect is that people get used to the fact that a domain doesn't always end in .com.

  107. Why not? by Valar · · Score: 1

    I hear Cuba is sunny and warm this time of year. Enjoy.

  108. Re:WTF? Redacted? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    The only group that seems to really want .xxx is the .xxx registrar itself.

    Not exactly. I know more than a few business sysadmins (myself included) that would welcome it. While easy to block at the ISP or national level is a downside, able to block at the subnet level is definitely an upside.

  109. XXX extension by xamomike · · Score: 1

    There are good arguments on both sides, for and against the top level domain. 1) Those who are for it, want it because it puts porn in it's own distinguishable category, makes it easier to filter if need be (provided there is regulation of its use, and non-use, which only works in North America). 2) The people that don't want it, for one the porn industry in general, because it makes it easier to filter not only for individual computers, but for large networks and possibly ISP's (which is good AND bad for the industry, and lets face it it's a big money industry), and because it attempts to classify content on the web (not DNS's purpose at all). When there is too much for and against it, you can't expect ICANN to approve it when there is too much opposition on both sides. Hence, don't change anything. The stakes could be big financially for the porn industry, which don't kid yourself folks, would affect the networks, credit card companies, some banks, and associated businesses financially as well. This could be negative, or positive, which is a risk. Billions of dollars here in our country alone. Do I think there should be a classification? Yes. But my friend says no. I think polls would reflect the same.

    --
    There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
    1. Re:XXX extension by tinkerghost · · Score: 1
      because it attempts to classify content on the web (not DNS's purpose at all).
      • .edu - sites or domains maintained by & for educational institutions.
      • .com - commercial sites
      • .gov - sites for/by the US government
      • .mil - sites for/by the US Military
      • .org - sites for non profit Organizations.
      • .us - sites for/by US citizens / entities
      • .etc
      so yes it is DNS's purpose to classify site contents. That's the whole purpose of the Heirarcal [sp?] domain scheme to begin with.
      Now with that in mind, no there should not be a .xxx TLD. There should be a .ent (entertainment) TLD with a .xxx subdomain - WWW.PRONSITE.XXX.ENT - of course that's not how the world want's to see things so we won't.
  110. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by zippthorne · · Score: 1

    Bwah? No Your example is flawed. Filters aren't a bad idea, and neither is the vaccine. But if you want to smoke unfiltered cigarettes, (and if for some reason filters had some kind of negligible or even perceived health risk that even partially justified your desire) you should be able to buy unfiltered cigarettes. You don't want to have to worry about it. Take the vaccine. Someone else might have other reasons not to worry about it. don't FORCE them to take the vaccine.

    The decision to make a vaccine mandatory shouldn't be based on whether or not teenagers are going to have sex whether we want them to or not. It should be based on the public health risks.

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  111. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
    I apologize for not communicating more clearly.

    I never said "little effort". I said "it's not difficult"; what I had hoped the reader would understand as "there are no technical challenges to this implementation."

    Then I ended it with "we've just got a lot of momentum behind the current system." I had hoped that the reader would understand this as "there are significant political challenges to this implementation."

    I agree that sometimes I do not communicate effectively. I will close with, your projected attitude is not conducive to productive discourse. But it's clear from your projected attitude that this was not your goal, as your words added little value to the discussion, serving only to drag the idea down (and also to cause me to state this position more clearly, which perhaps does help other participants in the discussion, so your added value is greater than zero).

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  112. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    We'd end up having microsoft.xxx, slashdot.xxx, digg.xxx. It would be ridiculous. .xxx domain are only a good idea if existing registered domain holder can get the .xxx version locked to them for free and for life.

    Microsoft.xxx - We have plugs for ALL the holes!

    Slashdot.xxx - Plenty of hot pics of geeky babes spread out on PCB schematics, coming soon: the Women of MIT shoot!

    digg.xxx - ... (nah, too easy)

  113. Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    New flash - US DOJ will Assert Military and State Secrets Privilege

  114. where's the benefit by the.house · · Score: 1

    I think that I'm for it if it makes people taxable money. I know, however, that the internet is for porn, and regardless of the name it will be there. Maybe if all porn was regulated to .xxx it be of moral benefit, filtering it would be much easier.

  115. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ">The .xxx domain is almost universally despised.

    Cite please. "

    The Romulan Empire has detailed writeups as to why the .xxx domain is unacceptable.

    The Klingon Confederacy has Wpublicly stated that they despise the idea of forcing their nude quanfti-wrestling into the .xxx domain.

    Surprisingly, the idea actually made a Vulcan laugh. Which of course doomed it for their entire planet. Not that Vulcans don't love porn, which they do. But this .xxx domain can ruin their entire culture with its absurdities.

    And don't get 7 of 9 started. She knows what the first site would be named.

    So yes, it is universally despised.

    Thank you for giving me this time.

  116. Re:The fundamentalists fear it will encourage porn by Trogre · · Score: 1

    Do you really believe that? Honestly? That teenagers won't listen to people telling them there's a better way to live life? Forget about stereotypes for a second and consider teenagers who actually do have some self control and aren't dictated to by hormones.

    You don't really think that teenagers aren't impressionable do you? That they just might be influenced by a bombardment of movies music and television effectively saying "have sex now or you're a loser, look everyone else is doing it!".

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  117. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Trogre · · Score: 1

    Teach your kids to be sexual[sic] healthy and not sexually repressed.

    Care to define these two conditions?

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  118. Re:WTF? Redacted? by glitch23 · · Score: 0

    You need to go back to school since you obviously don't know how Puritans really act. This isn't puritanical by a long shot.

    --
    this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  119. Need 2 Designations: .XXX and .ILL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    A single .XXX designation is not sufficient. We need an additional designation: .ILL (meaning "illegal").

    Consider the myRedbook website. (Note that myRedbook will log and trace your Internet-protocol address, so take the necessary precautions.) myRedbook is an electronic sex supermarket where prostitutes (having a wide range of ages) sell their sex services across state lines and national boundaries. Clearly myRedbook should have the .ILL suffix.

    Note that myRedbook is not some "joke" web site. It is the real McCoy. Customers and prostitutes brag about their experiences in myRedbook discussion forums.

  120. Artistic websites by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    I have a site showing my photographic work.
    Amongst the many photos of landscapes, portraits, events, animals, architecture and fashion are some nudes; would my site have to be hosted on .xxx?

    Though I like the idea of having all the porn sites on a .xxx TLD so I could easily find and others could easily block it, my example is just one of many which makes the distinction between xxx and non-xxx content hard.

    As posted elsewhere, there are many cases where cultural, political, religious and moral influences change the perception of what should be considered xxx content. Having a xxx TLD would only be useful if it could be enforced and enforcing it would be the worst thing you could do to a xxx TLD.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  121. Re:WTF? Redacted? by MathGod · · Score: 1

    I've read that there used to be a time when a celebrity would visit a talkshow without throwing a crazy shit-fit. I don't know; it sounds Utopian

  122. Re:WTF? Redacted? by wathiant · · Score: 1

    What you're assuming here is that the .xxx domain would be MANDATORY for all porn sites. This is a false assumption. There are guidelines for .net, .com, .org etc domain names as well, but there is a huge overlap between them and there are a lot of domains under the 'wrong' TLD. The .xxx TLD would make it easier for someone that wants to SELL porn to advertise this. The easy filtering of a .xxx domain is just a side-effect as most porn-hosts will also have a number of alternative .com domains. If you think your artistic works or even your vacation photographs qualify as porn and you want it to be clear to anyone that might inadvertently wander onto your site, a .xxx domain would make it easy and clear. It would mean no more 'are you 18+?' screens / popups / scripts (which everyone answers with YES even if they're not ;) ) since the entire .xxx should fall under this category. If you don't think your work would benefit from being on a .xxx domain, then you don't have to put it there! The US government will want to enforce this relocation, but they shouldn't get away with that. The argument about conservatives and reactionaries is what's wrong with the current power-distribution in the world. Somehow most governments (and one of the worst in this case is the US) consists of a staggering majority of uptight religious fanatics that fail to see that their views belong in the dark ages. They want to deny joy to the rest of the world because they are too scared to re-evaluate their own beliefs and since people refuse to oppose their power they get away with it. (read Faith of the Fallen for a nice fntasy-based case-study ;) )

  123. Internet is for porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Internet is for porn
    How you think the net was born?
    Porn Porn porn!

  124. Like Measels, Mumps, Rubella? by FatSean · · Score: 1

    You know, mandatory vaccinations.

    --
    Blar.
  125. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Footnote: having actually done a little digging it turns out that one of these, .vi, IS in fact the TLD for the US Virgin Islands. The rest don't mean anything. For anybody who's playing at home, the other Roman numbers which are also ccTLDs are .cc (Cocos Islands), .cd (Congo), .ci (Ivory Coast), .cl (Chile), .cm (Cameroon), .cv (Cape Verde), .cx (Christmas Islands), .li (Liechtenstein), .lv (Latvia), .mc (Monaco), .ml (Mali), .mm (Myanmar), .mx (Mexico) and .mv (Maldives).

    Yes, I do have work I'm supposed to be doing.

  126. Whisk[e]y by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice idea, but the ".W" TLD is already reserved for some reason.

  127. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "That would be the number thirty. Personally I'm still waiting to find out what happened to the .i, .ii, .iii, .iv, .v, .vi, .vii, .viii, .ix, .x, .xi, .xii, .xiii, .xiv, .xv, .xvi, .xvii, .xviii, .xix, .xx, .xxi, .xxii, .xxiii, .xxiv, .xxv, .xxvi, .xxvii, .xxviii, and .xxix top-level domains."

    I don't know what's more worrying - that you typed all those in specially, or that you wrote a script to do it...

  128. un-informed ranting is funny by MSZ · · Score: 1

    This is so you won't be able to find these secret underground FEMA bases where captured aliens commence genetic experiments on abducted redneck and sheep.

    Also, the seven best spots to plant the nukular device in the San Andreas fault to make certain city into an island.

    --
    The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
  129. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Darby · · Score: 1

    I'm not really sure how to get it back but my approach right now is to vote against any incumbent regardless of party to make a statement that this is unacceptable.

    Absolutely. I've been doing this ever since I turned 18 oh those many years ago.
    I'd say give Russ Feingold a pass if you're in his district, but other than him, no member of either house has demonstrated any integrity in years.

  130. Re:As much as /. wants it to be,xxx is NOT a solut by slothman32 · · Score: 1

    Hows about you post the relevent 1k or so.
    I know I can't real legalese, or RFC-ese in this case.
    In any case it is not clear to me.

    --
    Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
  131. Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    "there are significant political challenges to this implementation."

    Right. Just like there are 'significant political challanges to switching the whole mechanical world to the left hand thread.

    I don't think they are 'political' challanges. Except in a command-based authoritarian political world. Agreed, someone with the character and political power of Stalin, could probably address it as a 'political' challange.

    And that last paragraph in your comment is just bizzarre. You picked one HECK of a way to declarate that you don't communicate effectively.

    But this isn't about you, or me.

  132. Re:WTF? Redacted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What you're assuming here is that the .xxx domain would be MANDATORY for all porn sites.

    All it takes is one bill to make it mandatory.

    If you think your artistic works or even your vacation photographs qualify as porn and you want it to be clear to anyone that might inadvertently wander onto your site, a .xxx domain would make it easy and clear.

    So would content tags.

    The US government will want to enforce this relocation, but they shouldn't get away with that.

    But they probably will. They get away with a lot lately.