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ICANN Rejects .XXX Top Level Domain, Again
eldavojohn writes "After yet another contentious vote on the .xxx concept, ICANN has finally rejected the pornography TLD. The debate has gone on for quite some time, and the 9-5 decision was the third time a decision was reached on the subject. This is the second time the body has ruled against the idea, and is likely the last time we'll see it come up for vote any time soon. One member abstained from voting. From the article: 'Many of the board members said they were concerned about the possibility that ICANN could find itself in the content regulation business if the domain name was approved. Others criticized that, saying ICANN should not block new domains over fears like that, noting that local, state and national laws could be used to decide what is pornographic and what is not. Other board members said they believed that opposition to the domain by the adult industry, including Web masters, content providers and others, was proof that the issue was divisive and that .xxx was not a welcome domain.'"
Is that classification does not equal regulation. It can be used to assist regulation, but usually classification serves a lot of good purposes outside of regulation. That being said, I don't know that .xxx would be the only place the target material could be put (if it were, then it would be regulation), but honestly, unlike a '.adv' (advertisement), I would think they would like the TLD themselves (the content providers) because it would make them just that little bit easier to pick out.
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...door?
.XXX domain would make a simplistic filters only effective for simple people. I doubt a porn domain owner is going to drop chickswithhorses.com and move everything over to chickswithhorses.xxx. He'll just use redirection and have two front doors to his domain.
.com. There's simply too may jurisdictions out there in our wonderful world.
.XXX media attention and effort seems pointless to me.
Having a
ISP's and government authorities will NEVER be able to move porn off of
All of the
In the absence of an international treaty governing pornography, any decision to create a .xxx domain would probably violate the laws in one country and the civil rights in another. Avoiding the problem was a wise choice.
.xxx domain is just trying to get someone else to do their dirty work for them. Sorry dudes.
We have international treaties on things like trade and maritime law but something on pornography is unlikely because it's a moral issue. What is viewed as harmless erotica in one country will get you executed in another. Anyone trying to get the
It sounds like not everyone in the adult industry was happy about the domain.
Actually, it sounds like, this time around, there were more people against it than for it, but the people against it didn't really find a consensus on why they opposed it, only that they did. Which is interesting. At least this time around it doesn't look like a case of "the Republicans told us to reject this."
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Because having .com .net .org and .museum means you're _not_ in the content regulation business.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Country-level TLDs are significant. For example, I KNOW that http://www.toyota.ca/ takes me to Toyota Canada's page, while http://www.toyota.com/ takes me to the US page. Using country-level TLDs for this purpose is correct and should be encouraged - it is a lot better than the alternatives like having a stupid URL like http://www.hyundaicanada.com/, or forcefully re-directing people based on their geographic location (what if I am using a proxy? Or what if I want information on the American prices for comparison?).
.net, and .org), are indeed irrelevant.
.com / .net / .org. Then a company doesn't have to register 3 domains, and they only have to register country-level domains in contries where they actually have a presence.
The "generic" top level TLDs however (.com,
Personally, I think the answer is not to *abolish* TLDs, but to make them *optional*, and abolish only
But how would you implement it - how do you reconcile those domains if different people own them, who gets the new TLD when they are amalgamated?
C'mon, at least cite your source.
Um, so who gets to decide what should be age restricted? What age should it be? Why should I submit my content to the demands of your arbitrary rules? Who exactly is going to US banks not to do business with a website that refuses to participate in this scheme? And of course, who gets to decide what kind of content should be age restricted? I, for example, think that no one under the age of 95 should be exposed to websites promoting crackpot extremist christian views like intelligent design. Can we add that to your list? Enquiring minds wanna know.
Life needs more saving throws.
The other, and I feel even more important, issue is.. who gets to decide what "porn" is? The definition of what is and isn't acceptable changes from year to year, country to country, state to state, and household to household. People have been arguing over what's acceptable for (literally) ages, and it's definitely not going to be solved anytime soon.
.xxx domain, what has to be moved there? One person's obscenity is another person's fine art, medical diagram, or even religious iconography. Everything from Gray's Anatomy to cultural studies to the contents of any art museum could end up sequestered to .xxx because someone somewhere doesn't want the kiddies to accidentally see naughty bits.
So, if we did get the
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The inverse (a domain exclusively for child appropriate sites) always seemed much more practical and effective to me. Let's call it .kids.
.xxx is that undesirable club that you have to force people in to. The pornographers don't want to be in it because they know that it will get filtered out at a lot of places. So it cuts into their business.
.kids domain, is the place where everyone who produces child appropriate material will want to be because they know that a lot of parents will filter out everything but .kids. So you set up .kids and put in place a gatekeeper who monitors to make sure that only the material you want is in it.
.xxx want to run .xxx and not .kids because running .kids will be a lot more work (with the content monitoring and all) so they won't make as much profit.
.xxx to .kids because their ultimate goal isn't just to prevent children from seeing pornography. Their goal is to prevent you from having any access to pornography. And that will be easier if it is all in one place.
.kids will admittedly be challenging (I would suggest putting librarians in charge of that, they have experience with classifying material and setting up child-appropriate sections). But it won't be that challenging because companies would have a very strong incentive to follow the rules. So isn't .kids a much better idea?
.kids better.)
Let's put it this way, if you were starting a club, would you A) make the club undesirable for people to come to and then try to force them into it, or B) make the club a place where people wanted to be and then only allow in the people you wanted.
Well,
But a
Of course, the companies pushing
And the moral crusaders prefer
Now, that "gatekeeper who monitors" bit about
(If you're really going to pursue porn filtering at the network infrastructure level, that is. Personally I think the whole idea is stupid. I'm just saying that if you're going to do it, isn't