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Irish Domain Registry Banning Adult Domains
Karate Sid writes "An Irish adult website has blogged about the Irish domain registry banning adult domain names, including porn.ie and pornography.ie. The IEDR's reasoning is that the words 'porn' and 'pornography' are offensive and immoral. Of interest is how Sex.ie took legal action against the IEDR — and proved that neither word is offensive — yet still lost the case, as the IEDR are the highest authority in Ireland when it comes to deciding what is and isn't an offensive domain."
Really. Who gives a shit? Nobody should.
This is just a TLD, which is obviously run by some governing body in Ireland. They get to choose what they want on the TLD, and I assume at some level it is supported by the politicians.
Now, if there are people that feel oppressed in Ireland, they can simply get a domain at a different TLD. They could also just move out of Ireland. That's a choice too.
The real problem is when Irish ISPs start blocking other TLDs and controlling what domains people can resolve on their networks. Then of course come all the blogs and posts about proxies/TOR/Freenet/OpenDNS.
Maybe I am triviliazing the issue, but being restricted on possible domains on a TLD that only applies to a single country does not seem as big of an issue as actually interferring with what traffic can reach a country. It's large scale censorship such as the Great Firewall in China that should be more concerning than this.
If the Irish people feel that they are being oppressed and it is a free speech issue, then they need to address that with their politicians. It's still largely ineffective.
It's still a government trying to tell its people what words they should and should not see, which is censorship and something to notice and oppose.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
When I start seeing porn sites on .us, .gov, or .edu domains, then you have a point. Till then, this is a non-story. There are TDL's out there that are open to everyone. The nationally owned ones are solely responsible to that nation's government.
Slippery Slope arguements are fallacy's. There is no proof that one step forward equates the same thing as ensuring that someone is going to go the full nine yards, or even that if they were, they'd end up where you want to paint them as going.
There is a middle ground here, there are plenty of TLD's out there that you can register with that are open to all comers. Government TLD's, despite the recent trend towards poorer countries whoring them out, are meant for that nation's government's use. If the government of Ireland wants to nix porn on the government owned TLD, that's entirely their perogative (till they are no longer the government of Ireland).
"Slippery Slope arguements are fallacy's. There is no proof that one step forward equates the same thing as ensuring that someone is going to go the full nine yards, or even that if they were, they'd end up where you want to paint them as going."
I've heard THAT bullshit before, and I'll respond the exact same way I do every time I hear it used.
While it may be true that a certain step, in a certain direction, MAY not end up with bad results, if it DOES, you then have to go back two steps, instead of one, to fix that which is broken.
That is PRECISELY the thought process these people are using to THEIR advantage. Take a little at a time, under the radar, infuse yourself into the "system", to the point it is too hard to undo the damage once everyone gets wise to the effects.
The A.I.G. mess is similar. Too big to fail? Not at all. Simply to big to LET fail...as was their intended goal all along.
If it offends you, don't type it into the damned address bar.
Who cares? Just because it hurts your feelings doesn't mean the government needs to do something about it.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Why do we have the TLDs?
They seem to be meaningless and create problems like WhiteHouse.com/.gov. i'd much rather know that www.Coca-Cola belongs to Coca-Cola and not "Jeff who had 20$ and got to it first".
If we had some kind of enforcement of what could be on what TLD, it would make sense. As it is, only .gov, .mil and .edu are meaningful. Even the national TLDs are fudgable.
Having a TLD of .adlt or .prn would allow parents and schools to block pr0n from their kids. Then if a site had porn on it, and it didn't have an appropriate TLD, you could fine it or take it down for a day or two. This would be to the advantage of the porn sites because their customers could easily find the product. "in *.prn: Chasey Lane".
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