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Why the .XXX Domain is a Bad Idea That Won't Die
Reader tqft tipped us to an opinion piece on the UK site The Guardian, which lays out the reasons why article writer Seth Finkelstein feels the .XXX domain is a terrible idea. You may recall that last year (being an election year and all), the concept of a triple-X ghetto was revived, considered, and then quashed all in the space of a few months. We also recently discussed the fact that the idea just won't die, as the company ICM Registry pushes ICANN to allow them to pass out the names by Summer. Finkelstein primarily argues that the new domain is a bad idea from a business point of view. Ignoring for a moment the issue that much of this content is already labeled, he sees this as primarily a means for ICM Registry to gain a monopoly on what is sure to be a hot-selling product. Speculators, pornographers, and above-board companies will all jump on the namespace in an effort to ensure that their domain is represented ... or not, as the case may be. Where do you fall on this issue? Would a .XXX domain be helpful for parents, or just a political salve/moneymaking scam?
Ignoring for a moment the issue that much of this content is already labeled
Yeah, it's labeled all right. About the time you see a writhing vulva on your screen, and a mega-penis thrusting repeatedly into it using the latest in animated gif technology, you may notice a small blurb of text that says "Please proceed only if you are 18 years of age or older".
I'm not against it, I just want new tlds to stop being approved left and right just to make profit out of basically no service.
It's starting to get very complicated to rely on URLs and the amount of money you have to spend to keep your companys name in your hands is ridiculous.
what constitutes porn? to a lot of people it's the act of sex between two people that is captured in a form of "real" media (photos or videos as opposed to paintings). however to a lot of america (or amerikkka as liberal websites would say :/) it is nudity in a medical or anatomy book when not viewed by an artist or doctor.
No. Really, stop asking.
http://outcampaign.org/
I help to run web filtering at a small primary school, and while I realise a TLD like this won't shift all the crud into an easily-blocked area of the net, it's a good start. Of course, the downside is that nanny-state governments can then instruct ISPs to block the TLD, thus protecting their good citizens. Protecting primary school kids is one thing, but 'protecting' adults is a whole different ball game.
I guess I just argued for both sides of the equation. I think I'm getting fence splinters.
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This seems to be rooted solely in politics and the money thereof. Let's leave this one to the politicians, knowing when everything is said and done, more is said than done.
Just my $.02
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
No more coffee with your paper? What, did you eat a caffeinated donut?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Be done with what? Good luck getting the porn off of .com domains.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Because the implied assumption is that the whole net except .XXX must be protected, that it all must be made child-safe. This eventually results in treating all adults like children. It is far better to give children their own ( such as .kid or .chd ) and retain the assumption that we adults are capable of making decisions for ourselves.
A) makes porn easier to find
B) Does not solve the problem of being able to filter it with parental control software because nobody is going to shut down the porn.com's.
The porn sites have a right to exist, who are we to force them over to .xxx domains? Forcing them all to register with some central DB so they can be black listed would also be impossible becasue there is no realistic way to keep the DB updated.
My solution for addressing the filtering software problem is very simple. We amend robots.txt to include a section for Adult content.
A simple addition on porn sites of a line like this would solve the problem.
User-agent: * Disallow: /forums/ /members/ /downloads/ /
Disallow:
Disallow:
Adult:
Sites not interested in adding the field to robots.txt are not required to by law, but many websites would be willing to accommodate something like this to assist Net Nanny etc., but would fight having to leave porn.net behind for pornforyou12341.xxx tooth and nail. On the internet your company name and your domain name are often the same. Moving them to another TLD would equate to making them shut down and start over under a new name.
This would also greatly assist Google etc. in blocking some of these sites where "safe search" is turned on thus prevent people form going to a jenny.com by mistake and finding porn.
I have made this suggestion a number of time in the past. Maybe I should look into what it would take to get it drafted into an RFC?
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.
Be done with what? The arguing over whether or not we should have the domain. Once we get it, I'd bet most of the pr0n will move there for "prestige" reasons, and most new adult sites will be there. In the long run, I can't see what possible harm it can do to let them have their tld.
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I don't really get why this is such a bad idea. Especially if they make it so that any site that sells/features nudity/porn has to move to such an extension.
.xxx domains if that was the only place they could be. And all these damn library filters and crap could be made easier. Block blatant porn, and anything else is fair game. I don't see them putting the Anatomy books behind locked doors so kids can't see a drawing of a nude human, and they don't do it with National Geographic, either. This makes it easy to block porn, and keep everything else open.
Let's face it. www.whitehouse.com was one of the all-time great name squatting done. For the longest time, that was a porn site. How many kids and unsuspecting adults stumbled onto that one in the early days?
I'm no screaming conservative by any stretch of the imagination. I lean a lot further towards liberalism than I ever though I would, mostly because I am tired of religion affecting our laws so much, and personal freedoms being stripped from us left and right.
But I don't see any harm in setting these websites up in a much easier to control/block segment of the websphere. And many of these webmasters would love it if it was that much easier to block content by parents. Just think of all the credit card charges to crap companies that supposedly verify age because a person has a CC #? Sheesh, I had one at 16!
At the very least, I could see killing 50% of the pop-ups I run into, simply by blocking all
Besides, think of all the business that it would stir up for a while. All those porn banners having to be redone! hehehe
In some countries it is considered wrong for women to lift their veils so other men can see their faces, and in some women walk around with no shits on like men. Sure there are obvious cases, but who has the final word on what is and isn't sexually explicit content? Who is going to pay to enforce these new morals and who's morals?
Do the American tax payers launch a multi billion dollar crusade to purge the internet of porn and bring our Christian morals to the internationally based Internet?
Early proposals for .xx were to mandate that all porn sites use some form of age verification (ie credit card). With all the fraud on the internet do you honestly believe entering your credit card number and personal into on every porn site you see is a good idea? What age constitutes a "minor" anyway? 18 y/o like in the US? How many people here have never seen any porn before the age of 18? How did you turn out?
To me this only sounds like a pathway for rampant fraud. I don't want to complain without offering up my own solution, so I think if anything is to be done then appending robots.txt to include a line for "Adult: /" where the webmaster of the site sees fit is a much better idea. I posted more on this suggestion here
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.
Why would you ever move to .xxx? Prestige or not, it's just too easy to block .xxx. Access is everything to the porn industry.
.xxx, and they obviously only want to make a big shiny penny (just like every other stupid specialized domain, e.g., .mobi).
While a few of the large-profile sites can afford to move (the subscription-based ones), the smaller sites that are based on the shared subscription model (you pay $XX/year for access to all member sites, those member sites take a portion of profit) will just multiply, compounding any filtering problems.
Has anyone actually investigated whether the XXX industry actually WANTS the tld? The only thing I've seen personally is the company that is pushing
The basic issue of porn, etc, isn't gonna go away: a significant proportion of people think that sex is bad/dirty etc. In the US we now have a fairly zealous set of laws prohibiting various sexual action/production (just look at the ESPN.com headline yesterday about the 17 year old who's in prison 10 year mandatory for getting a blow job from a 15 year old). With people that are willing to agitate for these beliefs around, I think in terms of technology we should work to make things like porn as clearly classed as possible, like the xxx domain. I would much rather fight over these issues in the .xxx domain, rather than having my freedoms circumscribed in misguided efforts to attain the approval of the zealous because porn is 'hard to filter.'
While I can't speak much about the registry part of a .xxx name, I believe that it would be useful in the long run.
.xxx name for sites that are looking for a purely adult audience. Not just porn, but maybe places like adultfriendfinder, discussions involving less pleasent ideas, and so forth.
.xxx and helping the government look better at "protecting children", the FBI and what not leans off them a little. Yes, there are filters in place for porn, but they aren't always the best- it can be hard to teach a basic filter the difference between HOT NAKED BOOBIES and a page about breast cancer. Along with blocking out content that shouldn't be, it means that content that shouldn't get through does. A .xxx domain would ensure that the filter knows what to and not to pick out. (Hell, some crappy ones might now mark this page as pornographic since I mentioned "boobies".)
.xxx, and thus bringing us into the realm of "what exactly defines porn", but if it can stay as optional as choosing a .com or .net domain, then I don't see a large downfall. I'm sure others will disagree with me, though, and reply as such. (I welcome this, as someone may talk about a point I haven't thought of.)
While porn ad sites don't care about age, regular pay-for-porn sites would probably prefer those with access to a credit card, meaning those who can likely be there legally. Basically, market the
The government could work off this, too. They allow it to pass, and encourage its adoption by the "less scrupulous businesses", and in return for them moving to a
I can understand the fear of governments forcing porn sites to move to
Here is the direct quote:
"Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department."
Please do not blindly support the bill without first understanding just what exactly it proposes.
I had another post covering why I think this is bad here and proposed an alternate solution here
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.
The idea that the Internet should be made "safe" is offensive to me on so many levels. If parents would do their job and not let their kids roam the Internet unsupervised, this entire argument would disappear. I, for one, want the puritans the hell away from technology legislation. What about you?
The Internet is not a playground for children. It's not a fun Christian diversion. It's a network for anyone and everyone to connect to one another electronically. Let's not turn it into Disneyland or Utah. The last thing society needs is FCC-like regulations on everything they do online. Besides, the responsibility in raising children shouldn't fall into the hands of people than don't have any. Parents need to police this issue, not parents AND single individuals.
The "save the children" argument is just a cheap way to achieve the anti-porn agenda. Don't be fooled. It has nothing to do with kids. Trust me, they'll have pre-marital sex and get each other pregnant without online porn. It's been happening for 1,000's of years and will happen for a thousand more. Humans will do what they're biologically designed to do. Legislation can't stop that.
It CAN, however, open the door for more censorship-inspired legislation. How long until the FCC steps in and begins to fine people that use profanity online? I don't think I'm exaggerating my fears. It's already ridiculous that you can't say "Shit" on the radio. After all, how many kids listen to Larry King Live?
Censorship of any kind is fascism. It doesn't matter what cause it's attached to. Today it's porn. Tomorrow it's anti-Americanism. Just because you may not agree with porn, doesn't mean that laws should be passed to control it. Look away. Install commercially available filtering products. Don't let your kids surf unsupervised. For that matter, don't leave your kids unsupervised near ANYTHING you don't want them around. Just don't ask big brother to watch over you. That fucks us all.
If it is such a good idea, then why don't webmasters use xxx instead of www in their URLs? It would allow for all the filtering that a top-level domain name would. Just label a site something like "xxx.pr0n.com" instead of "www.pr0n.com". Simple.
Or is it simply about the registrars making more money off of a new TLD?
You're not going to sell porn to people who aren't looking for it. And a TLD makes it easier to find, how is it a bad idea again?
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I'd rather not see hillaryclinton.xxx, either!
RTFA. Or were you just gunning to get first post?
No one wants .xxx except the registrars, who would sell .xxx domains, speculators would would buy them to resell to companies defensively. Big companies would be forced to buy the .xxx rather than let one of the scumbags set up a site on yahoo.xxx, etc. Companies already buy .info, .biz, .net, .org and usually just park or redirect from them. There won't be any less porn on .com. It's just a complete scam.
What does a TLD have to do with finding porn, or anything else? Are you gong to make a list of words, append .xxx, and type them into your address bar: aardvark.xxx,.... zygote.xxx?
If you can't come up with a more imaginative description of people exchanging zygote's, this domain is not for you.
The biggest advantage for the porn industry is that afterward everybody typing in the address of the link or clickijng a link ending with .xxx KNOWS what he/she wants and thus can be blamed itself for what he tried to see. Whereas with the situation now, the porn industry TAKES the blame if anybody (adult or infant does not matter) accidentaly type in/click a .COM address which does show porn image. By having .xxx everyone wins : all parents or sensible person which can simply then block all .xxx domain, the porn industry because then nobody can anymore talk about being "accidentally" there. The ONLY loss for the porn industry is that then every consenting adult lose any excuse to have browsed on porn domain by accident since with .xxx it willl be obvious that you are on a porn page. ? "ho honey, no I just wanted to learn more about how to solve multiple-body physics interraction and I accidentally clicked onn that porn link" won't hold water if all link end with .xxx
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How does it make it easier to find? Well, I daresay, if you went to whitehouse.xxx you would know in advance that it's going to be naughty bits.
.com TLD that share a similar or same name as a non-porn .org TLD. So, yeah, it's possible to go to the naughty sites and not intend to. Which, of course, can lead to all kinds of trouble at home, work, wherever.
.xxx TLD exists... well, it's difficult to imagine, at least in the U.S., that someone would go to a .xxx site looking for facts on the President. (see the whitehouse.xxx example above). Basically, people would no longer have the excuse that they went to the wrong page by accident. Of course, this will mean that some people will get in trouble because they can't bullshit their way out of the fact that they were looking at llama porn, but hey... not everyone gets to be a winner.
There are plenty of porn sites that are at the
Yet, if a
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
For example, to get a list of
http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.org
to get a list of
http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.mus
To get a list of
http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.xxx
"But", you say, "of what use is a mssive list of all domains? You could never click them all!" The truth is that we can go EVEN FURTHER and search for key words within sites in those domains, but I fear the culture shock from showing you this would be too much for you to bear.
This may all sound like science fiction in your primitive era but one day this technology will seem almost common place.
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