Pressure Mounts On ICANN To Approve .xxx Domain

An anonymous reader writes "An application for the.xxx domain was first submitted six years ago. ICANN approved the application in 2005, and entered into an agreement with ICM Registry regarding technical and commercial terms. However, ICANN reversed its decision in March 2007. An independent review panel was called to look into why ICANN had changed its mind, and concluded that the body had been under pressure from the US government. Now the registry that submitted that application, ICM Registry, is pushing for .xxx to be approved. The company has argued that the .xxx internet domain should be approved for porn site use, allowing parents and businesses to easily configure browsers or filters to automatically block sites that carry the domain."

Comments

Yay ignorance.

[Pojut]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Dyinobal]

You don't have an excuse like 'oh I didn't know this was a porn site!' when caught. You can't just say you were searching Large fresh melons and accidentally found such a smutty site.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[TheKidWho]

Oh yeah, that's definetly it.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[eln]

Because kneejerk Puritans would go crazy because it would look like someone was actually condoning porn, or at least recognizing its right to exist. We can't have that sort of thing, especially not in America where we practice our bizarre fetishes behind closed doors while condemning anyone who shares them. The only acceptable methods of sexual gratification are intercourse for the purpose of bearing children and the occasional leaked celebrity sex tape.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your idea might have made sense back in the day when people typed URLs into the address bar.
This is silly; Google took the place of DNS long ago.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would existing sites want to migrate their domains?
Should a video about mammography be forced into this TLD?
Who, decides what material must go in this TLD because it is "indecent"?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[buback]

unless the government forces porn sites to use .xxx, it won't make much difference. Sure, a porn site might get a .xxx domain, but they'll also get the .com because they sure as hell don't want to prevent 95% of their customers from viewing their site.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their sites will get blocked far too easily, causing them to lose the huge amount of traffic they get from those who are underaged or browse porn at work.

They don't care where the ad dollars come from, as long as they come.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Fast Thick Pants]

Playing devil's advocate, one could envision an evolution into a system where websites are required to maintain certain censorship standards in order to publish on common TLDs. Slashdot, for instance, doesn't censor, so it would have to have stick up an "I am over 18" splash page on slashdot.org that would link to slashdot.xxx, or slashdot.pg13, or whatever.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wich government?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Locke2005]

Will the excuse "it was an email sent by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator' still work?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

...as long as they come.

Indeed.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me a puritan, but most porn is exploitative of women, and this domain would not stop many of the porn sites from using the domains that they already have.

Really, just another excuse for Icann to whore themselves out some more.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[yakatz]

The problem is that nothing can be "forced" into any TLD.
While there are some TLDs, such as EDU and COOP which are restricted to particular uses, general use TLDs such as COM will not (and can not) turn anyone away.
List of TLDs with notes about restrictions

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Locke2005]

Perhaps the Puritans (and pedophile priests) are on to something here... maybe sex really is a lot more fun if you feel guilty about it, and have to keep it a secret! There is something very attractive about taboo behavior, particularly to adolescents.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[eln]

Of course it wouldn't stop them from using their existing domains. Basically it would mean ICANN gets to collect a bunch of money for more domain registrations from existing clients while not actually changing anything of any consequence. Given that, the question is why the hell won't they approve it? The only possible explanation I can come up with is that anything that smacks of salaciousness must be rejected so as to avoid offending the very loud and very influential Puritanical set.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jandrese]

The reasoning I heard at the time was that they didn't want to create a "red light district on the internet".

Yeah, it didn't make any sense to me either.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

These guys are definitely the devil's advocates; but http://www.cp80.org/ is a creepy pressure group, largely composed of slimy mormons(some of them with SCO ties...), advocating a very similar scheme. Everything on port 80 would have to be PG, with material that makes republican jesus cry relegated to other ports for easy blocking.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[buback]

Well it's have to be all of them to make it work, and that's not going to happen. There's just too much money to be made.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[HungryHobo]

A red light district on the internet is like a paddling pool in the ocean.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that as craigslist and 4chan.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[HungryHobo]

And to make it even more complex if this comes in I plan to buy a .xxx domain and host nothing but non-pornographic political material.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because kneejerk Puritans would go crazy because it would look like someone was actually condoning porn, or at least recognizing its right to exist...

I would think they would welcome this. Then they can start pressuring ISP's to block access to .xxx sites entirely. For the children, of course.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Itninja]

Slashdot, for instance, doesn't censor

Unless, of course, they get threatened with lawsuit by a big scary religion/business.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all it's pointless. Do you honestly believe that all porn sites are suddenly going to switch over to the .xxx domain? Do you honestly believe that porn sites WANT to voluntarily restrict access to their content? I realize I'm making a generalization here, but when talking about porn site owners, we're not exactly talking about your honest, salt-of-the-earth people here. These people, after all, invented SPAM (or at the very least made it into a daily global nuisance). Besides, there's an easy way around filtering out the .xxx domain at the firewall or browser level. It's called URL shortening, and it's why I never click on bit.ly links any more.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[AndrewNeo]

Or more legitimately, trying to go to the Python website, and finding out firsthand it's .org and not .com!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

plus forcing all the pr0n sites onto .xxx will turn .com into a ghost town. In addition, .xxx will be where all the inovation occurs

Re:Yay ignorance.

[denbesten]

> Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Presuming your question is genuine....

A TLD enforces a single global definition, but the definition of pornography is very much a local thing. For example, in some portions of the world (e.g. France), bare breasts are acceptable on the beach and in other portions of the world (e.g. Saudi Arabia), an uncovered face can be a crime. In the end, it is impossible to get global consensus.

This is why commercial filtering systems include more granular descriptions, such as "incidental nudity" and "provocative attire".

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MWoody]

How did your post hit +5? You've missed the point ENTIRELY. The reason the domain is a bad idea is because once you've set off a designation for "porn," the next logical steps for the puritanical minority are clear:

  - demand that ALL sites with pornographic content be stored under the XXX domain. "The pornographic industry can either self-regulate using the tools we've given them or the government will have to step in and do it FOR them. You don't want that, do you?"
  - demand that all work/government/public/houses-with-children computers hard-filter out XXX. "After all, it's explicitly for porn! What, do you want your kids reading porn? This just makes sense!"
  - demand that any site with nudity be classified as "pornographic." Art, medical textbooks, pictures of the diagrams included with the space probe, whatever. "Adults on their own time can access these materials just fine. It's not hard to get around these things on a personal computer. If you need to see them at work, ask for a special exception."
  - bad language and violence are moved into the designation. "We have an opportunity here to create a kid-safe Internet. We're not censoring these things, of course; we're just classifying them!"
  - multiple heavily-conservative foreign nations ban the XXX domain entirely. "We don't feel this sort of content is appropriate for the mental well-being of our constituents. In the name of their safety, the People will block the people from viewing them."
  - major websites begin to heavily censor their content to avoid being banned in entire countries and inaccessible from most terminals. "It's just a few pages cut. When we're only accessible to 10% of the computers out there, our ad revenue no longer supports the site."
  - any and all content that in any way offends anyone or doesn't immediately appeal to the international lowest common denominator of "good taste" is relegated to a tiny, much-maligned red light district of the Internet.

The XXX domain is scary because it's essentially the beginning of an attempt to make the Internet look like broadcast television, only worse.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[TheLink]

That's so inconsiderate, it makes it harder to search for pornographic political material. Think of the people who would want to do Google searches of the form: site:xxx intern

Same for other niche xxx interests :).

So I can understand technical reasons for the TLD xxx (not from the porn blocking POV which is silly, but from the porn finding POV ;) ).

In contrast I don't see good technical reasons for .biz and .info. But the ICANN still approved those.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[cgenman]

1. To a very traditional mind, an XXX domain name implies that it is OK to see pictures of boobies. It is implicit approval of the fad of this whole sex thing.

2. To a less traditional mind, it is the first step along the line of censoring the boobies out of the internet. Immediately upon creation, all of the XXX domain names will be censored from basically every company on the planet. Home networks will probably remain uncensored at first, but who knows what parental moral outrage and very, very old executives will pressure Comcast, etc to do.

3. By implication, there is the messy realm of regulation. Is it freeform, with any websites going on .xxx for any reason? Does .com then become non-porn? Does violence and drugs become XXX?

4. It is potentially pointless. To the website operators, xxx domain names were set to cost 10x as much as normal .com names, and the only advantage was that they're easier to filter out. You might get people randomly appending .xxx to common words in an attempt to find dirty bits, but chances are people will just keep searching through google.

Personally, I still think it's worth doing. But I can understand why people wouldn't want to bother. The new wave of alternative TLD's have basically been failures. 6 years in, and everyone is still a .com. Add in the controversial aspects, and it becomes less attractive.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[bennomatic]

and this domain would not stop many of the porn sites from using the domains that they already have

Not under current rules, but once there's an official adult-site TLD, then they could consider phasing in rules regarding the use of other domains. Even something as simple as requiring a redirect from existing domains to the .xxx version before any content is visible would be a welcome change for parents who are trying to foster independence in their children while not letting them be exposed to every crazy thing under the sun.

If there's an easy way for me to allow my son to browse the net with little supervision, while minimizing the chances that he doesn't mistakenly happen upon 2g1c one day, I'd be thrilled.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[bennomatic]

Isn't 'xxx' what they put on bottles of moonshine in cartoons? I wonder how quickly 'moonshine.xxx' will be registered.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Schnapple]

If I remember right from the last Slashdot discussion we had on this:

1. Some organizations (mostly religious ones) don't want porn to exist at all. They pray (literally) for the day when it is legislated out of existence. a .xxx domain would legitimize it further than it already is.

2. Many porn sites already have a large vested interest in their .com domains. They don't want to have to move to .xxx domains.

3. The porn industry doesn't want some quick/easy way to block them. Sure, you as a parent would like to just block www.*.xxx and be done with it but what if your ISP decides to do the same? Then you can't look at this no matter what. To say nothing of the false sense of security (i.e., just blocking www.*.xxx doesn't really block all porn)

4. How would it be enforced? Anyone can have a .xxx domain? Does it have to be a porn site? Would porn sites have to move to .xxx domains instead of .com domains?

5. Who decides what is porn? An example was given of a stunt to raise awareness for breast cancer or something wherein a thousand women got naked and laid down to pose in a large shape. The photo was carried on a lot of news sites, including Yahoo. Would it be considered porn? It's not video footage of people having sex but it is a photo of a thousand naked women. If it is considered porn, would Yahoo have to host it on www.yahoo.xxx instead of www.yahoo.com? And wouldn't Yahoo get into a shitstorm by even registering www.yahoo.xxx in the first place?

Basically when both the porn industry and the religious movements are agreeing on something, you know it's messed up. Yeah, on its surface it's not a bad idea, it's just one not thought through very well.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

unless the government forces porn sites to use .xxx, it won't make much difference.

W[h]ich government?

Yours. The issue isn't about porn sites as much as it is about what your government defines as porn. Worst case scenario, the law might be written so you can't say "fuck the President" or post Pedobear shops without having an .xxx domain. And the government will enforce it and take you to court, or license the power to do so to for-profit third parties the way the RIAA does. And .xxx domains will be regulated so you have to pay extra $$$ to have one and jump through bureaucratic hoops to get to them such as mandatory registration as a porn viewer. And viewing some other country's porn that is hosted outside of an .xxx domain will be illegal, as will be having open routes to it or attempting to access it through a proxy. If it sounds outrageous, I did say "worst case scenario" but an .xxx domain opens up the possibility of this all happening.

And it will happen to some degree. How can pornography opponents accept pornography to be all over the internet when there is one established place for pornography? And when that is solved, how can pornography opponents accept that pornography is easily accessible when so much of it is concentrated in one place? And what is going to be shunted into the .xxx ghetto? I've seen stuff on BoingBoing that would be considered X-rated pornography by the loose standards of the 1970s.

All the talk about the Internet enabling unbreakable freedom dates back to the time when the government did not regulate what went on on the Internet. It is not coincidental that most spam, warez, and kiddie porn traces back to places where the government does not regulate what goes on on the Internet. Do it in the West and you go to jail. The government has been very effective at suppressing things on the internet. Porn will not be any different.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[TheLink]

They should restrict .xxx to porn sites. but not porn sites to .xxx.

They've got .coop for cooperatives (who aren't limited to .coop) so why not .xxx for porn sites (and not limit them to .xxx either ).

FWIW, I don't think the ICANN does a good job.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[xaxa]

Their sites will get blocked far too easily, causing them to lose the huge amount of traffic they get from those who are underaged or browse porn at work.

So long as there aren't any requirements that porn must use .xxx then this isn't a problem. Most porn sites will use both.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Nuskrad]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

RFC 3675 covers it pretty well

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill the kneejerk Puritans!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Schadrach]

Define pornography in a way that includes everything anyone would consider porn, but doesn't include anything that anyone wouldn't consider porn. Now that you realize how blatantly impossible that really is, consider it for a worldwide audience and not just US.

If you make use of it voluntary, then what function does it actually perform beyond opening additional namespace beyond what is already available in .com, .biz, .info, etc?

If you make use of it mandatory, who's definition of porn do we use? Are you ready to take anything the most puritan person in the world considers pornographic and force it off the rest of the 'net into .xxx?

A ".kids" domain would be a better choice, where you are voluntarily naming your content as child-safe, as there's unlikely to be a push to force you into that category above and beyond your own desire to be there.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[sourcerror]

Oh, it's just simply evolution of memes. Raising babies was always very resource demanding, and it's not such long time since we have cheap contraception. So the taboo is related to population control. (And not having "illegitimate" children; because in a low tech society it's very hard to track the father)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Jurily]

most porn is exploitative of women

No, rape is exploitative to women. Women being presented in an "only an object" light, however, is not. While it can be viewed as a form of prostitution, marrying rich men is legal as well, yet nobody complains about that.

Supply and Demand. Make your own porn with more romance and love stories in it, and see how it sells.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Entropius]

Because typically TLD's are reserved for descriptions of the status of the hosting entity, not the content. .uk tells me a site is in Britain. .org tells me they're a nonprofit.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[EvanED]

Besides, there's an easy way around filtering out the .xxx domain at the firewall or browser level. It's called URL shortening, and it's why I never click on bit.ly links any more.

By my understanding, tinyurl/bit.ly/etc.-style URL shorteners wouldn't do anything to stop .xxx from working. They just send back an HTTP redirect, and then your browser reissues the request (which would then be picked up by the filter).

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Nalez]

So my question is, would the ad that just showed up on slashdot as I went in to this story be porn? It had an attractive lady in some attractive attire.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Locke2005]

There are 3 main costs associated with sex: 1) The probability of pregnancy, 2) The probability of contracting an STD, and 3) The emotional harm caused by later rejection. Those costs have not changed significantly. As far as "illegitimate" children, some matriarchcal socities have been structured so that it doesn't really matter who the father of a child is; illegitimacy only matters in patriarchal societys (some have argued that this is an advantage of patriarchal societies; you can still have a line of succession even if the males are infertile. A 9 month pregnancy is hard to fake, but whenever a Queen gets pregnant, it is always assumed the Kimg is the actual father.)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[eln]

That's one hell of a slippery slope you're sliding down there. In any case, as far as who pressured ICANN to reject the domain and why, you're just flat-out wrong:

After the second .xxx proposal was approved in 2005, the Family Research Council (FRC) mobilized its forces in an all-out crusade. Claiming that the creation of a .xxx TLD would allow pornographers to "expand their evil empires on the Internet," the FRC urged its supporters to express opposition to the proposal. The Department of Commerce alone received nearly 6,000 letters expressing concern on the subject. The Department of Commerce eventually requested that ICANN spend more time considering the implications of the proposal before reaching a conclusion.

(source)

While the porn industry also opposed it for other reasons, the ones that actually caused ICANN to reverse it were the Puritanical minority.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Shakrai]

So long as there aren't any requirements that porn must use .xxx then this isn't a problem. Most porn sites will use both.

Which kind of invalidates the argument that we should approve .xxx because it will make filtering porn easier.....

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mikael_j]

Yes, let's all regulate things we don't personally approve of, I'm sure that will turn out to be a wonderful idea.

So what's next? All companies must use .com or .biz? All personal websites should be in .person? How about forcing national registrars to institute .xxx.cc and force all services with porn onto those domains?

This is a trick, the first part is to come up with a useless but at first glance harmless "protect the childrun!" action and once this is in place it is used for step two, which in this case would be to force porn onto .xxx.

Did I mention that my dangerous dissenting mind was let onto the Internet back as a 12 year-old back in the first half of the 90s? completely unsupervised and yet I, like all of my friends who shared this horrible fate, survived and came out of it just fine. Isn't it amazing, how lucky we must consider ourselves. After all, the Internet is just a cesspool of filth and naughty bits!

How about you either trust your children or You, their parent, take actions to supervise them, don't force all of the world to conform to your prudish standards just because you're too lazy to pay attention to your children.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[wjousts]

Because if there is an .xxx domain the internet will quickly fill with porn. Unlike the totally pure and kid safe environment of the internet now!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that two groups who mutually hate each other more than anything in the world both oppose this might give us pause.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Glarimore]

I think you're taking this a bit far.

Companies filtering out ".xxx" extensions is a long way from requiring people IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOME AND USING THEIR OWN HARDWARE. Remember, we're in the US, not China.

And if you think ISP's are going to do this filtering, you're out of your mind. What are they going to do? Start requiring you to register your children with your ISP?

And I do believe that requiring porno sites to register under a certain extension would qualify as a violation of freedom of speech.

.gov is an extension for.... the GOVernment!
.edu is an extension for.... EDUcational institutions

And it's not like schools are requried to use .edu -- they choose to do so because it helps them be identified.

So in the end, I think this would be a-okay, at least in the US. Your point about foreign countries blocking sites does raise interesting point, though.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[sgt scrub]

it would give the government the ability to create a law forcing all pornographic material to have the .xxx domain. with the ambiguity of what is or isn't porn the slippery slope would begin there and end in your bedroom. imho NOBODY wants to know what you do in the bedroom!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[russotto]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Makes the censors jobs easier in the US. They get laws passed to force porn into the .xxx ghetto (which will pass review as a time/place/manner restriction), and then depend on ISPs, corporations, educational institutions, etc, to actually do the blocking, thus putting it beyond legal review.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[chudnall]

So long as there aren't any requirements that porn must use .xxx then this isn't a problem.

They will be required. Not explicitly, but laws will be drafted that make porn sites liable for minors viewing their material unless it's through the .xxx domain. Sites will comply out of financial reasons. Honestly, I can't figure out why the moralists are against this.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mwvdlee]

If you want to squeeze large melons, you might search for some big jugs too.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DarkKnightRadick]

*rimshot*

Re:Yay ignorance.

[farble1670]

why would i need an excuse for visiting a porn site? it's not illegal to look at porn.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[vlm]

#5 was a good try, but weak. The problem isn't the majority Christians but the fringes... Moslem women showing ankles, or their faces, or having a suntan belong, according to them, in .xxx

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Tiger4]

That is EXACTLY the other part of the problem.

Once there is a designated place for porn, anyone who doesn't conform to the designated sense of decency will be compelled to stay there. Creating a .xxx ghetto for porn also invites the Disneyfication of everywhere else.

If the lawyers get into the act, suing for "too much" pornlike content, it will be a race to the bottom. Just think how first they got Playboy and Penthouse to put covers on their magazines. Then it was required by law in many places. Then other mags, like Maxim and even GQ and Vogue, got pushed into the gray zone of questionable for public viewing. .xxx is an invitation to do it on the web.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[russotto]

While the porn industry also opposed it for other reasons, the ones that actually caused ICANN to reverse it were the Puritanical minority.

The porn industry should be used to strange bedfellows.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jythie]

I think the argument is generally that by giving it an official place, you legitimize it. Thus it is a step in the wrong direction from the perspective of people looking to clean it off the internet completely.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mwvdlee]

Exactly.

All the .xxx domain will do is cause every single porn site to pay for a .xxx domain before their competitors do. It'll be a mirror image of all porn .com domains.

Actually, that would be convenient; simply block every .com domain which has a .xxx equivalent. Sounds like a great idea! In fact, I'm going to preregister microsoft.xxx right now!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jdoverholt]

- bad language and violence are moved into the designation. "We have an opportunity here to create a kid-safe Internet. We're not censoring these things, of course; we're just classifying them!"

Remember that, for some reason, they don't seem to have any issue with violence or bad language.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[sgt scrub]

is an airport bathroom "behind closed doors"? i guess in a way.

http://www.badmouth.net/top-five-republican-gay-sex-scandals/

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jythie]

Oddly enough, I am against it for a different reason. Part of the idea is having a place where kids know they are not supposed to go. Personally I would rather see a .kids domain that is kept kid safe, thus the internet's 'default setting' is adult rather then child. Adding a .xxx domain encourages ghettoizing the adult aspects of the internet and making the other sites 'kid friendly'.. so the net goes LCD.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Shakrai]

I'm going to preregister microsoft.xxx right now!

Actually that raises another valid concern. Do non-porn enterprises have to register their .xxx domains to protect their copyright/trademarks? If they don't register them will a mechanism exist to keep others from using them? If they do register them then what's the point of an 'exclusive' .xxx domain?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[vlm]

A ".kids" domain would be a better choice, where you are voluntarily naming your content as child-safe, as there's unlikely to be a push to force you into that category above and beyond your own desire to be there.

Until the first lawsuit that demanded women with suntans, showing their faces, or bare ankles either be forced into or forced off of .kids either inside or outside of Islamic nations.

Also the first lawsuit in favor of or opposition to anything vaguely sex education related.

Also the first lawsuit in favor of or opposition to anything vaguely religious. For example, personally I don't think the bible is acceptable reading for small children due to the sex and violence, and the distinctly anti-multicultural outlook. Its at least rated R in my opinion. Not that it doesn't have value for adults much like an R-rate movie, just inappropriate for children.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[dennypayne]

The problem is that nothing can be "forced" into any TLD.

...yet.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jythie]

I actually find the anit-porn movement to be far more anti-women then then porn. Steal sexism.. 'oh, poor women! they are not mature enough to decide for themselves, loosing something precious every time they have sex!'. It is just a recasting of the old idea that a women's value (to her menfolk) is measured by her virginity, and thus anything that decreases her purity must be exploiting her since her sexuality should only be owned by her father/husband.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[CarpetShark]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Because rounding up porn into .xxx is to modern society as rounding up jews into camps once was germany?

Basically... since when is it a good thing to segregate society? The internet is cool because it's a mixture of different ideas in one system.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Locke2005]

That depends on the type of porn, and on the locality you are in. Try viewing porn depicting orgies with Muhammed's wives in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find out exactly how illegal it can be to look at porn... we're talking death penalty illegal here!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[kalirion]

And as soon as the .xxx domain is approved, there will be attempts to force porn sites to use it. From that point its a slippery slope. And yes, sometimes slippery slopes are real.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's an easy way for me to allow my son to browse the net with little supervision

You couldn't keep it in your pants, so step up and parent.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[tepples]

Sure, you as a parent would like to just block www.*.xxx and be done with it but what if your ISP decides to do the same?

Request an unblock using the form provided by your ISP. Or threaten to switch to the other ISP (from cable to DSL or from DSL to cable) or even to high-latency satellite.

Who decides what is porn?

In the case of freely available services, the law of the country where the server is located. In the case of subscription services, the laws of the countries where the server and subscriber are located.

n example was given of a stunt to raise awareness for breast cancer or something wherein a thousand women got naked and laid down to pose in a large shape. The photo was carried on a lot of news sites, including Yahoo. Would it be considered porn?

For example, the United States considers something to be porn if it meets the Miller test: prurient, indecent, and lacking serious artistic value. This breast cancer stunt would be indecent but would have artistic value.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[natehoy]

Compelled by whom, exactly?

We don't have an international standard of decency today on the Internet. If you want to host anything, you may do so provided you host it in a country where such things are legal. Playboy, Penthouse, and the other major sites aren't giving up their .com addresses, and those are the big players you can find.

I know this is all very old news, and will probably be tagged "redundant", but the introduction of a "smut zone" on the Internet raises all sorts of issues:

1. Who defines what is "smut"? Go to some countries, and seeing a woman's face unveiled could be considered "smut". In most of Europe, breasts are perfectly OK but bush or sausage-and-veg is right out. Some countries don't care at all. Who gets to decide which sites are OK for a .com, .org, .net, .us, etc domain and which need to be on .xxx?

(several decades pass)

2. OK, we've accomplished the impossible! Bully on us, we've defined the rules on who needs to go to .xxx, and we can now compel every website that meets that criteria to.. uhh.. OK, how do we do THAT? Tuvalu is now saying that .tv URLs can contain smut if you pay a premium for a domain. Oh, we need an international treaty so all countries in the world will enforce this ban for all domains but .xxx. Sheesh.

(several more decades pass)

3. OK, now every municipality in every county in every state in every region in every nation has agreed to turn over absolute control of their domains to a centralized morality body who, as we know, is incorruptible and unbribable in any way. Now all they need to do is find the smut, contact the author, and force them to move it to .xxx.

(several more decades pass)

4. Gee, turns out that porn is profitable, and ways to bypass filters are a key to greater profits. The 12,000,000 agents we've hired at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year aren't even beginning to scratch the surface of the hundreds of thousands of "underground" web sites that come up EVERY DAY, so we'll start automated filtering and hire more people.

(several more decades pass)

5. SHIT!!! WHO KNEW YOU COULD JUST USE A GODDAM IP ADDRESS AND BYPASS DOMAIN NAMES?!?!?!?!?!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

The XXX domain is scary because it's essentially the beginning of an attempt to make the Internet look like broadcast television, only worse.

And then ISPs can charge extra for access to the .xxx domain, kind of like they do with adult specialty channels. "You want to access BigBoobs.com? That will be an extra $15 per month please."

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MWoody]

And if you think ISP's are going to do this filtering, you're out of your mind. What are they going to do? Start requiring you to register your children with your ISP?

If they're smart - and I'm not so certain they are, particularly in Australia - no, the ISP's won't be the ones doing this. Nor do I think anyone will have the balls to tell you what you can and can't filter in your own home, directly.

BUT: If a social worker is ever given reason to visit your home, even for a false complaint, how will "doesn't block XXX sites on house computer" look on their report? How many Fox News reports on people losing their kids because they "let them watch smut" before parents get scared? With the possibility of losing your children in play, how many parents will block .xxx "voluntarily?"

And even if ISPs don't outright filter said content, I could see them charging an increased rate for access to the XXX domains. Or, more likely, providing a cheaper "business tier" service with those already removed. After all, XXX means movies and other large content; it's only logical to charge less for those people who use less bandwidth, while at the same time handling the filtering for people not familiar enough with routers to do so on their own (though of course, that does mean the whole connection is filtered, not just the kids' computer, but ah well). And then, at home, people getting service will basically be asked, "do you want access to porn? It will cost more." And just like that, the Internet falls into de facto filtering, not by any grandiose legal procedures but simply because a) ISPs are businesses, b) people are cheap, and c) people are too embarrassed to admit they like porn to a CSR rep. Combine that with the inevitable snowballing of more and more conservative definitions of "pornography," and there you go: a nation restricted to the blandest, least offensive version of the Internet.

Is it a slippery slope argument? Oh, absolutely. But look at the individual steps: do any of them seem all THAT far fetched in the modern US's political climate? Censorship is a lot like a boiled frog that way: you never see it coming when it's done so very gradually.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[LBt1st]

Then we have to determine what is and is not "pornographic". Which is hard to define and will require government. And that definition may change over time (depending on who's got the most money and better lawyers).

Of course there are other issues. Like what happens when your ISP decides it's not going to serve xxx domains anymore due to bandwidth limitations (they may blame pirates/bot-nets/terrorists/boogymen).

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

.gov is an extension for.... the american GOVernment! .edu is an extension for.... american EDUcational institutions

fixed

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but it does potentially give it a legitimate existence. The godsquaders loose an argument because it can be easily filtered. Banning content for .com is dangerous so it doesn't end the argument but encouraging providers to move their most graphic content to the blockable .xxx could take some pressure off. Personally I want to see a .god so they can move all the offensive religious content off the .com web where it's harming children. That's the whole point, everyone has their own idea of what's offensive. At least on paper in the US making laws based on religion are banned. They fight back with vague terms like morality but even then they back up something being moral by using religious arguments. Porn having a domain is a positive move. People try to grey the area to benefit their own positions but I doubt most have little trouble separating the work of some one known for out there nudes like Helmut Newton and some image off a porn site. The moral whackos would because they believe nudity belongs unclothes the way God intended so they really have to useful input in the argument.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mwvdlee]

Wow... those guys have the BEST slogan EVER!

"If a child looked at 1 pornographic web page every 10 seconds, he would be 546.787 years old when he finished looking at all the internet porn that exists today".

Don't worry, that child will never live to be 546.787 years old. If he's lucky he'll only make it to 109. And when he's about 21, he's allowed to watch any porn he likes. So about 99.996% of porn isn't hurting the child. Lets just get rid of that 0.004% then.

If the child looked at a porn page every 10 seconds, the porn can't be very good. We need porn that's worth looking at for more than 10 seconds.

If a child looked at ANY web page every 10 seconds of his life, you'd have a big problem regardless of the content.

And if the child looked at 10.000 porn pages every second, he'd only need 5 and a half years; he wouldn't even care about porn when he's 5 1/2 years old so no harm done.

If an ADULT looked at a porn page every 10 seconds, would he require less or more years to watch it all?

Nonetheless, I agree with their basic premise of limiting the amount of porn to only a lifetime supply of the high quality porn. All that extraneous porn only leads us to search, and time spend searching for porn is time not spend looking at porn.

Talk about meaningless numbers.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[computational super]

an easy way for me to allow my son to browse the net with little supervision

Yes, he'd be "protected" from the horrifying, scarring sight of a naked human body. Of course, we'll also need a ".racism", a ".gay", a ".islam", a ".republican" and a ".democrat", a ".atheism", a ".darwinism" and a ".racemixing" TLD to "protect" all the precious little children from all the horrible things that some stupid parents think they're too delicate to absorb.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MBGMorden]

Easy fix to that (at least for sites willing to set it up): for any .com site if there is a corresponding .xxx version of the domain with the same SSL Certificate, then block access accordingly (I'm talking filters that are voluntarily setup here, as in by parents - not advocating any mandatory filtering).

Over time though I think porn sites would start to migrate to .xxx as people got used to it being over there. Adult businesses don't typically mind being separated from mainstream stuff - the people who want it are usually more than willing to go a bit out of their way, and keeping it out of the public eye keeps criticism (and attempts at bans) to a minimum.

That's why even in places where not required strip clubs tend to open up in industrial areas and backroads. Plenty of people still attend, but the soccer mom who's likely to raise a stink at the next council meeting doesn't drive past it every day. What the puritans don't know won't hurt them.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[computational super]

You're wasting your fingers. If anti-porn crusaders could be swayed by logic (or were even capable of comprehending logic), this would have stopped being a debate decades ago.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MWoody]

^^^ People who responded to my above post saying that this would never happen, behold: the mindset of a parent. THIS is the kind of thought process that would, given half a chance and with the best of intentions, vote the Internet into a bland, filtered, kid-friendly paste.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[FatdogHaiku]

Honestly, I can't figure out why the moralists are against this.

Because they think that anything but obeying their moral standards is sin. So even if the behavior is already taking place, to give ANY credence to the concept that someone has a right to look at porn is against their whole world view. The xxx TDL would be giving sin a home, and official blessing from governments that don't block it automatically... Oh, Hey China, didn't see you standing there.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[h4rr4r]

Who decides what is porn?
Are you going to demand that all porn be put there?

The folks that really want it seem to want censorship.

Making a .kid and keeping that totally clean is a far better approach.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

most porn is exploitative of women

Yup, that explains why women have to be forcibly dragged in to Playboy photoshoots, kicking and screaming, against their will... Oh, wait...

Look, whether you like porn or not, it's a transaction whereby a woman sells images of her nekkid body for money, or get filmed doing consensual things for money. Provided it's consensual, I don't see how anything is being exploited but the sex drive of the person purchasing the resulting images, and even then they are willingly coughing up their money for it.

Wimmin is all growed up now, and they gets ta decide for theyselves. Some of 'em even rent out their bodies. Personally I find that distasteful, but I'm a puritanical American. The point is, unless it's YOUR body, it's not really your decision, now is it?

If you can demonstrate that a woman is coerced into selling her body, or pictures of it, I'll be right next to you on the picket line. I'll even buy the molotov cocktails next time. But everyone should be free to choose what they want to do with their own bodies. Much as you apparently don't appear to like the concept, even women.

They're not just barefoot and preggers in the kitchen any more. They're functional adults with brains and decisionmaking capabilities and all. Sorry to have to be the one to break the news to you. Be strong. You'll get through this.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mwvdlee]

If they do register them then what's the point of an 'exclusive' .xxx domain?

I'm pretty sure this was a hypothetical question, but for completeness sake...

Revert to point 1 in my post; the sites have to pay for the domain. The point of a .xxx TLD is to make the .xxx TLD registrar rich.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MBGMorden]

I don't know. The fact that the site exists doesn't bother me. Free speech and all that. Slimy mormons will do what slimy mormons do.

What scares me more is their list of contributors (http://www.cp80.org/getinvolved/sponsors) A slightly shortened list of the particularly interesting ones:

Amazon.com
Apple iTunes
Apple Store
Best Buy
Dell Home Computers
Disney Movie Club
Expedia
Fujitsu
History Channel
Iomega Corporation
Nokia
Office Depot
Overstock.com
The Sharper Image
Sony Music Store
StarWarsShop.com
Target.com
ToshibaDirect.com
Wal-Mart

Re:Yay ignorance.

[h4rr4r]

So who decides what is porn?

I have a better idea, put the computer in the living room and be a fucking parent.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[JWSmythe]

    The biggest drawbacks I see to the .xxx domain are...

    1) Name conflicts. If I have exampleporn.com, and you have exampleporn.us, and someone else has exampleporn.ru, we'll all be trying to get exampleporn.xxx. That would be a nightmare of arbitration.

    2) Migration requirements. If people know exampleporn.com, they'll keep going there. If I shut it down and only run exampleporn.xxx, I'd have a dramatic drop in traffic. Some repeat traffic, even for popular sites, don't come back every day, or even every month. They may only go there once every year or so. If they can't find exampleporn.com next time they go, they'll assume the site went away.

    3) Filtering. If places restrict access to .xxx, it's advantageous for adult sites *not* to have their domain under the .xxx domain. Tomorrow, your ISP may say "We operate a child friendly ISP, where we don't allow pornography." Yippie fuckin' skippie. In the wholesome "think about the children" world, that's great, until your wife leaves you, takes the kids, and you want to see some porn. :)

    4) Protection of trademark. If Disney doesn't buy disney.xxx, someone's going to put a porn site on it. If they do buy disney.xxx, it can (and likely will) be perceived as their own intention to run a porn site on it.

    5) Customer stupidity. Most people don't understand that some names don't end in .com. I had a .us domain a long time ago, under the old structure [name].[category].[state].us. If I told someone to go there, they'd try to put .com at the end of it. This still applies today. I have a subdomain for a special app. special.example.com . People almost always read it back as www.special.example.com, regardless of the fact that I tell them to type exactly what I say to them.

    6) Implication to registrars. If a registrar handles the .xxx domain, they're not only handling names for run of the mill porn stuff, but they may also be handling names for illegal activites (very.young.kiddieporn.xxx, nasty.bestiality.xxx, etc). That could tarnish their image.

    I know it's been argued that by creating .xxx, implies ICANN is open to allowing pornography on the Internet. That's stupid. I know a long time ago there was a filter on domain name creation. You couldn't include the letters f, u, c, k, in that sequence. Sometimes a name that could be too naughty would not be allowed either. Those filters are obviously gone now.

    With all that said, I'm not against .xxx being created. Those are just potential problems of it. I think it *should* be created, and allow a smooth migration towards it. If it is created, I don't it won't be the exclusive realm for dirty sites.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[allo]

yes, rule 34 requieres them to do so, and put some decent porn of their products on it.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod this up had I not already posted. This should be +6

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing, fucktard; not loosing, losing. Even a goddamn monkey can get this right.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

um.. why should sex be censored?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[computational super]

demand that all work/government/public/houses-with-children computers hard-filter out XXX.

You forgot - all the ISP's will start charging $49.99/month for "basic internet access" - $149.99/month for "unfiltered" internet access.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Tiger4]

A reason for the moralists to hate .xxx would be that it LOWERS the fear of other content.

If I can put porn anywhere, then the moralists can scare parents into thinking porn is everywhere. If porn is only in .xxx, and .xxx is filterable, their fear whip goes away. Parents will reasonably assume it is less likely their children will run into objectionable content outside of that domain. The parents are probably wrong, but the power brokers can't risk even that.

Porn everywhere on the web is an easy to sell, all pervasive fear. They won't give it up.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[computational super]

And I do believe that requiring porno sites to register under a certain extension would qualify as a violation of freedom of speech.

So does requiring that TV and radio stations conform to certain arbitrary "moral" standards.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[natehoy]

Yes, we're in the US, not China. Oh, by the way, the Chinese have access to the .COM domain. What's the age of consent for porn there?

Companies can filter out the .xxx domains all they want. There's no effective international way to keep all the smut there, even if you could come up with an international definition for smut.

I think you'd find the US Government hard-pressed to force Playboy to give up its .com address, or to move all the nekkid bits to their .xxx domain and make .com a simple front end. That's a major, well-known, well-regulated, US-based company, operating under US law. Who's going to tell China that their citizens can't post porn in .com? How about .cn, their own domain?

The introduction of the domain is trivial, but its impact will be functionally meaningless. It's a great way for ICANN to sell off an assload of new domain names with almost no effort on their part. Other than that, it won't change jack shit. People looking for porn may use it, but their existing purveyors will still be on .com, same as it ever was.

Of course, the .com could also just serve as a simple redirect to a direct IP address, which means all your filters just went out the window.

ICANN will benefit, one-handed-surfers might find the content they want easier to find, but this won't really change anything.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[JWSmythe]

It then depends on how "porn" is defined. There are obvious examples, but there are plenty of gray areas. Some people think women in bikinis is pornography. Is this pornography, or a clothing sales company? Should it be in .xxx or .com?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[vlueboy]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

For starters, having to re-register your legitimately and costly-obtained .com domains to ensure that your brand remains un-diluted. Think of what confusion and money loss would exist if playboy.com and playboy.xxx are owned by different companies? Think of whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com back when the latter was a pornsite.

But the purpose is to allow companies who failed to grab a "good" domainname to try again this time, and legally get it. And no matter who gets the domain first, registrars will NOT sell playboy.xxx for cheap due to brand recognition. Worse yet, xxx doesn't exist, and any blocking will mean further costs to provide for blocking at your firewal or home PC level. And playboy.com won't shut down even if they simultaneously buy the .xxx domain, so think about duplicating rules and having pornsites potentially double nearly overnight. Remember also that lots of spyware comes from fake pornsites, and your anti-spyware may not protect against evil new xxx infection sites quickly enough while that happens. Now think about all this, and weep :)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mikael]

Having an offical porn designation .xxx sounds like porn is offically recommended by ICANN, and not just something that happens to take advantage of the Internet.

Filtering domain name strings for the "xxx" string might make writing internet filters work that bit better. Though anyone could still reach a server by typing in the IP address alone. It would probably be better to have an official class A "porn domain range". Even then, somebody could still use a proxy server to bypass the filter.

Then there is the issue of what is defined as porn - obvious things are the nude pictures. But then there are also medical research papers, A&E case reports and news channels. Like that news report on the home-owners who were ordered to cover up a snow-sculture replica of a famous stone carving.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Jer]

Honestly, I can't figure out why the moralists are against this.

Because if you have a certain mindset, if the government doesn't make it illegal then the government approves of it. It's even worse if there's a place specifically cordoned off for the purpose of propagating the "immorality" they despise - that makes it seem like the government approves of it even more. And, like most people, they don't like their government approving of things that they disapprove of. So you get moralist crusades against drugs, gambling, alcohol, prostitution, porn, video games, and just about anything else that the moralist doesn't like. Setting up a sanctioned area for porn is like setting up a sanctioned area for gambling or a sanctioned area for prostitution - the government is saying "it's okay to do that here" and in their minds the government should never be giving approval for "immoral" activity at all - the government should at best be criminalizing it and at worst not saying anything about it. It's the mindset that got Prohibition enacted into law in the 20s and the same mindset that keeps the "War on Drugs" going despite its consistent failure to do anything about the actual drug problems of the US. It doesn't matter that what the government is doing doesn't work - the only thing that matters is that the government is taking the "correct" moral stance.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Saudi Arabia? Child porn is illegal everywhere.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[h4rr4r]

No the majority of Christians are the only reason we can't just call a spade a spade and laugh at these myth believing fools.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DJRumpy]

You make an excellent point from the porn industry, but from a parents point of view, the .xxx domain would seem like an excellent solution.

About the only "resistance" I can think of from the 'goodly and cleanly' side is simply having to acknowledge and accept that people want to go to such sites. Probably like small town cities resist book stores, adult entertainment, liquor stores, etc. They can never seem to get enough control over other peoples lives and choices.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[h4rr4r]

The ISP will then charge extra if they even offer it. You can be sure the sat ones will block first, they have mostly rural customers.

The reality is we should openly mock these myth believers, you can't reason with them anyway. They believe in fucking fairy tales and magic so reason is right out the window.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[JWSmythe]

... and when I was a teenager, I was downloading porn from BBS's that also had door games. Before that, boys would "find" dirty magazines and pictures that their fathers had hidden away. As long as humans are humans, and we have our instinctual urges, we'll likely have porn of some sort somewhere. Ahh, Ms. November 1968...

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Maestro485]

...loosing something precious every time they have sex!

Ironically, that sentence still makes sense with the typo.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[nitehawk214]

While it can be viewed as a form of prostitution, marrying rich men is legal as well, yet nobody complains about that.

I will speak up for all the non-rich men out here... We are complaining about it.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Let us rephrase your questions: Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want to discover that 95% of all Internet traffic is related to pornography? What possible downside would there be to discovering that?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[ShadowDragoonFTW]

But the definition of "child" is different, literally everywhere...

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Jer]

If there's an easy way for me to allow my son to browse the net with little supervision, while minimizing the chances that he doesn't mistakenly happen upon 2g1c one day, I'd be thrilled.

Um yeah.

This domain name scheme isn't going to work like that. 2g1c and things of its ilk are pranks - things that your kid's idiot friends will show him. There is just about nothing more resourceful on this planet than a 13 year old kid who wants to find a way to gross out a friend for a prank. Even if this domain scheme could actually manage to put all of the porn on the internet behind a single 3-letter domain, your kid's friends will find a way to emotionally scar him. 2g1c is just a means to an end in that respect.

But to get back to the question of "protecting your kid from porn" (rather than "protecting your kid from the gross-out"), think about how ridiculous the whole idea sounds - given the Internet as it exists today, do you really think it's possible that somehow this scheme will manage to move ALL OF THE PORN ON THE INTERNET behind the .xxx domain? It's a ludicrous idea - each country controls their own domain space, and so they'd all have to buy in. And then, if your kid is even halfway intelligent, he's going to quickly figure out that there are these things out on the internet called "proxies" and that he can get into the porn ghetto pretty damn easily no matter what kind of domain name filtering you're having your ISP do on your behalf. And if you're relying on a local blacklist of the .xxx domain to keep the porn away from your kid, he'll figure that one out even faster.

As a nice side benefit, your kid will probably know quite a bit about how computers, the Internet and TCP/IP work before leaving High School. So there are a few merits to this approach.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

This should definitely happen, and all porn be forced into 'xxx' domains. This is the most eloquent argument; kids today have it too easy. They should have to work for their porn.
 
  Penny Arcade

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your disgusting sexual acts off my slashdot!!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[bertoelcon]

while minimizing the chances that he doesn't mistakenly happen upon 2g1c one day,

2 gold and 1 copper isn't to bad. I see many times that on WoW.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see much use for www.cumguzzlingsluts.com either, except for the porn industry.

(warning: didn't check, if link resolves, guaranteed to be NSFW)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Inda]

You can download porn over the World Wide Web? How quaint.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[natehoy]

Downsides:
  - It's utterly useless, since pornographers will not stop using their existing domains.
  - It will have the opposite of the desired effect (assuming your intentions are puritanical), since the .xxx will be an additional route to find porn.
  - It will cost both pornographers and businesses real money (The CEO of Ford is not about to allow ford.xxx to be an active domain with smut on it!).
  - It will start international debates on what constitutes porn. Said debates will cost a lot of time, effort, etc and are societal differences that will probably remain unresolvable. Who is forced there?

And, yes, I hear some of you out there saying, "but there's clearly a line that can be drawn!".

Fine. Let's do an informal poll. Everyone post the letter you feel represents the "minimum content" that would require moving someone's domain to .xxx - let's see if a small, technically-minded group from mostly free countries can decide uniformly what the standard should be.

None - Nothing should be moved. The internet should be free.
A -- Violent/Kiddie Porn (sure, everyone hates violent porn!)
B -- Playboy (umm, yeah, visible bush)
C -- Jugs-type sites (topless only? That's OK in most of Europe, but not the US, right?)
D -- Teenyweeniebikini sites (is there really a difference between 1/4" square of flesh-colored cloth and topless?)
E -- Victoria's Secret (well, umm, it's, well, underwear, but don't tell me the pictures aren't there to appeal to men)
F -- Sports Illustrated (regular bikini shots)
G -- The Sears Catalog (also underwear, but certainly not as "porn" as Victoria's, but...)
H -- Regular clothing catalogs with no underwear or bikinis (shows women's faces and the general shape of their bodies, right, that's porn in some countries!)
I -- Zappos.com (there are pictures of women's ANKLES on there! Allah be praised we can be saved from that wanton smut!)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[natehoy]

1. ICANN...
2. Makes...
3. ??? how much? A LOT of...
4. PROFIT!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[natehoy]

Laws drafted by whom? Enforcing rules decided by whom? And covering whom? Iran cannot pass a law that a US business operating in its own country, so if Iran wants the Victoria's Secret catalog moved to .xxx, we can inform them of how much sand they have and suggest they go pound it. Neither can Canada. Hell, New Hampshire can't even pass a law that tells a company in Maine how to do business within Maine's borders. The US similarly can't tell European countries that titties are not OK any more.

We are a world of hundreds of countries, each made up of hundreds or thousands of municipalities, and we can't even get uniform rules of what constitutes "porn" within the same family in some cases.

Just try to get the respective governments of Las Vegas and Texarkana to agree on where the line is. If you can manage that, you're about 1/1,000,000 of the way toward working out an international standard. Good. Luck. With. That.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Funny

Re:Yay ignorance.

[shoehornjob]

Fck that right wing "pornography should be filtered to save our children...(and any other term that fits our agenda)" bllshit. The tools are out there for anyone who wants to filter their searches, webpages etc. I am perfectly capable of filtering what my daughter see's when she goes online so I don't need the nanny state to do it for me.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MostAwesomeDude]

I'm sure I'm going to lose karma for this...

Sexual response is conditionable. That's the entire basis of a fetish. As an example, let's say a young woman is told, repeatedly, over the course of her adolescence, that sex is shameful and embarrassing. She should be highly embarrassed whenever she thinks about anything sexual. She hears the word, "penis," and is mortified and ashamed. Now, since she can't separate the ideas of shame and sex, shame becomes sexy. When she gets embarrassed, she also gets aroused.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Myopic]

Oh yeah? Well there is also something very attractive about your mom, particularly to adolescents.

Rimshot!

(This joke is a complete non sequitur. I do not mean to be offensive... that's your mom's job.)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[fusiongyro]

One downside is what happens if the registrars decided to force existing porn sites to give up their domain names under other TLDs and reregister under xxx? Whether or not they have the authority to do that, they would obviously be destroying a great deal of intellectual capital, and not necessarily freeing up many domains for more prudent users, since they do tend to indicate what they are about in their name already.

If they're not planning on doing that, it amounts to opening up a new TLD that nobody except the porn sites are going to want to use because it is so likely to be blanket blacklisted by everyone's office or school. I'd wager that a significant percentage of their traffic comes from these sources, so there's another forced loss of revenue, albeit not necessarily one they should feel too indignant about losing.

It also creates the illusion that you can just block that one TLD to block porn sites, which wouldn't be true even if they were forcibly evicting porn sites from the other TLDs. To do so would be just as bad as battling viruses, with the disadvantages that the "law" against it would be hard to enforce globally, and the businesses have a lot of capital to invest in the problem. Not to mention it would open up ICANN or the registrars to a lot of the same philosophical problems that NetNanny and the Australian firewall come up against: defining the boundary between art and porn is an intractable problem.

If they aren't evicted from the other TLDs, it could create more problems for ICANN; it would look like a massive giveaway to the biggest industry on the internet without a corresponding concession to the rest of the businesses. How many TLDs do we want to have for different business categories? How do we decide when something is important enough to get its own? .com is getting pretty loaded now, do we want to live in a world with a hundred or a thousand TLDs? I'm not saying this side effect is necessarily a bad thing, it's just something we haven't been seriously talking about that might need to be.

So, I'm against it because I think it'll be too expensive and not have enough benefit to make up for all of the side effects.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, loosing might actually be correct in the context as well. Think about the mechanics, yeah?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Locke2005]

Thank you. That finally explains to me why it is that every time I beg and plead for something, I get a hard-on!

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DrGamez]

I don't know what you did when you had internet alone for the first time but I was clocking a bit more than one page every 10 seconds.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[savuporo]

Of course, we'll also need a ".racism", a ".gay", a ".islam", a ".republican" and a ".democrat", a ".atheism", a ".darwinism" and a ".racemixing"

and sci.anatomy.clusterf*ck

Wait. Thats usenet ?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[jgagnon]

I wish I could mod this up as funny... :p

Re:Yay ignorance.

[MadnessASAP]

Is this pornography, or a clothing sales company?

I dunno, give me 10 minutes and I'll tell you.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many companies register all the TLDs for their brand because domains are cheap, but they don't *have* to do anything. There already is a mechanism through WIPO for reclaiming a domain that you believe misappropriates your trademark

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

How much you wanna bet that they have apps and books and other such nonsense that they sell on places like Amazon and Apple Store and Nokia market and thats why they call them "contributors"

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mapkinase]

"I actually find the anit-porn movement to be far more anti-women then then porn." [citation needed]

The most argument I am hearing are "porn is immoral" (nothing to do with women, but has to do with the health of society), "porn is destructive to young (and what not) minds", "porn is addictive".

I would like to hear from you how did you acquire that sort of impression?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[hairyfeet]

Because it would make it easy for both the fundies and the nanny state types to decide it doesn't match up to "community standards" and block your ability to access it? As it is now the only way for them to completely block your access to porn is a "great firewall" or a really locked down DNS, whereas with .xxx they could just black hole the entire domain "for your own good" and make it disappear.

Never forget there are tons of people out there that want to tell you what to think, read, see, etc and power will ALWAYS be abused. I personally wouldn't want to give my "community" filled with nosey fundies the ability to black hole anything they don't like. Now if it were required that ONLY businesses and individuals had the right and ability to block it? Sure I'd be all for it. But I'd be worried about ISPs being pressured by "community standards" to just black hole .xxx for entire areas.

Call me paranoid, but considering the way we have seen fundies trot out "community standards" in the past I just don't trust having something bible thumpers hate lumped together in an easy to kill area.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[aaaantoine]

Supply and Demand. Make your own porn with more romance and love stories in it, and see how it sells.

Are you talking about porn for women^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H romance novels? Those sell fine.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[ajlisows]

I don't know. Sex was pretty fun when I was a teenager, back in the days when I wasn't "Supposed To" be having sex. Now I'm a tad older, married, and the fact that I'm having sex doesn't need to be a secret. Frankly, it is a lot more fun! Of course, that has a lot to do with the quality of the other party.

Yeah, sex is supposed to get boring once you are married, but there are advantages. I'm not dealing with young women who will only get involved in one position, are against using hands, mouths, oils, toys, chocolate, whipped cream, whatever. I don't have to wonder what the other person would like me to do or if they are enjoying what we are doing. I don't have to deal with the "my parents are home, how about yours? Damn. How about your car? Your brother has it? How about in the park? It's snowing? I don't care!" type arrangements that come with taboo sex.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Sancho]

It's a slippery slope, however there is no other good reason for a .xxx domain. The "you can filter it!" argument is pointless if pornographic sites aren't required to stay off of the other TLDs.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Tiger4]

Difficulty of implementation isn't the issue. Most web sites now are created, hosted, or managed from the US. Most businesses just want to make money, not make legal precedent. Legal, or even extra-legal, harassment of those people will happen, forcing the US based people to change, either by moving off shore or moving domains, or maybe both. If any community can decide what is decent enough to be hosted in their town, then .xxx can kick off a new round of mischief.

The alternative is to actually go through all the frivolous courtroom crap. Lots of test cases may eventually decide that localities cannot decide what is decent for the whole internet. May decide. It isn't clear that position will win. It should, but you always have some judge somewhere that didn't get the latest word. Again, Most businesses just want to make money, not make legal precedent. The same thing would happen, to a lesser degree probably, in other nations.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[soundguy]

For example, the United States considers something to be porn if it meets the Miller test: prurient, indecent, and lacking serious artistic value. This breast cancer stunt would be indecent but would have artistic value.

The Miller Test is used for OBSCENITY, not pornography. Two entirely different concepts for anyone with an IQ over 80.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who decides? You probably have a different idea about what "porn" is than the next person.

Can they make them? I would love to see that battle but I believe the answer would be "no". So then what is the point?

Will all countries comply? Heh.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Al Dimond]

You don't have to be an anti-porn crusade to recognize that most porn glorifies the objectification and exploitation of women. Really, I'd go beyond what most call porn and include many mainstream sexualized portrayals of women (especially in advertisements). To be sure, it's both a symptom and a cause of our society's ideas about women (and, thus, about men also) -- it's inevitably tied up in those things.

I'm not really sure what "debate" you're talking about. Should portrayals of naked people be banned on the grounds of obscenity? Hell, no. Should exploitative portrayals of people generally be noted and shamed? Hell, yes, wherever they're seen.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[uncoveror]

Unless we can force all porn sites to move there, it will just be another useless TLD. Already, your site will never be seen if it ends in anything but .com, because most of the public thinks all sites do.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[macdaddy357]

Why not .cum?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Main reason is all porn sites will not be xx.xxx, many will continue as xx.com.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mdwh2]

That's the point though - why is it that porn is demonised, when the problem of sexual portrayals of women is a far bigger problem in mainstream media and advertising? Why aren't things like gay porn and porn where the men are in the submissive role exempt from such criticism, if it was really about the objectification of women?

Not to mention that the whole point of porn is to be sexual - the problem is when it creeps into everyday things where there's no need for it to be sexualised.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Scrameustache]

most porn is exploitative of women

No, rape is exploitative to women.

To PEOPLE. Have you never seen a prison movie?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be a little more specific than mdwh2's post, I take it that you would consider "pegging"[1] porn to be just fine and dandy, since it clearly doesn't exploit women? I'd argue that most of that genre doesn't exploit men either, since they're quite obviously willing participants.

More likely, you just want to control what other adults view, and the objectification argument plays well for the crowds.

- T

[1] Do *not* google for "pegging" if you're at work or anywhere else where you'd be disciplined/embarrassed due to the results.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[beakerMeep]

It's not a slippery slope. Apparently you have never heard of the PTC. If you don't think some new group will spring up and play "we're the saviors of morals for everyone," you're deluding yourself. Or perhaps you forget what Janet Jackson's nipples looks like.

FCC chairman Michael Powell stated that the number of indecency complaints to the FCC had risen from 350 in the years 2000 and 2001, to 14,000 in 2002 and 240,000 in 2003.[62] It was also found that the PTC had generated most of the indecency complaints received by the Federal Communications Commission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Television_Council

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Agarax]

Call me a puritan, but most porn is exploitative of women,

Some people want to be exploited ... like factory workers.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[beakerMeep]

Oh and another good quote about them going after the internet already:

YouTube -- Twice has the PTC targeted video-hosting website YouTube in its campaigns and statements. PTC called for NBC to reconsider uploading the uncensored clip of the Saturday Night Live novelty song "Dick in a Box" on NBC's site and YouTube channel.[101][102] In 2008, the PTC released a report The "New" Tube: A Content Analysis of YouTube—the Most Popular Online Video Destination, which praised YouTube for filtering adult content but criticized the site for not filtering profanity and other explicit content from comments sections.[103]

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Agarax]

Keep in mind how many regular non geek people probably get the net for the following reasons:

1. ebay
2. espn
3. *porn*

Re:Yay ignorance.

[cadience]

About once a year I read a comment that I wish I could nominate for "insightful comment of the year" or some other slashdot-esque award. You sir/mad'am receive my nomination.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[plan10]

Only the uneducated parent.

There are responsible porn sites that play nice with filters and have entry pages without explicit conent. Then there are other sites which are not so charitable. The sites that play nice will always play nice, and the sites that don't will still be sneaky.

Anyway, when was the last time you randomly stumbled upon some porn? You have more of a chance seeing boobs at a football game than through Googling for your class assignment.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DJRumpy]

Actually, quite a few malware infections, and pop-up storm days would just send you to random porn sites. I recall having problems if you went to a bad torrent site, you would get hit with pop-up storms that did exactly that. If they were forced into an xxx domain, you could easily block such sites.

I agree that only a 'bad' parent would resist this, but then again, there is no training required to raise children ;)

Re:Yay ignorance.

[currently_awake]

Might i suggest a .disney domain? Where only wholesome kid friendly fare can be found. As the domain would be run by puritans there would be no risk of anything bad ever showing up there. You can have all "kids" computers locked to only access content from that domain. It will satisfy the extremists and negate the "need" for Australia style filtering completely.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[mabhatter654]

who decides what's a "porn" site?

In the US we're mostly worried about boobies and goatsex. In Europe "porn" is an state-rated "mature" material. A History Channel page about Hitler is worse than porn in Germany. In some countries religion (other than mine) would be considered "pornographic".

On one hand I agree with the idea of self-censoring material. It would make keeping kids off porn sites easy. On the other hand NOBODY should be in the business of telling me what I can have on my web page. This would be disaster for someplace like Deviant Art or even the occasional XKCD strip.

FREEDOM of SPEECH isn't EASY!

People have to be responsible for their own consumption... and it means "bad people" get away with bad things.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

....so we'll start automated filtering and hire more people.

Which is what our Draconian Australian Labor Government is proposing to do right now. They have only just woken up to point 5.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Dr Herbert West]

jeesus you are so f**kin right... fap-fap-fap-fap

Re:Yay ignorance.

[nixkuroi]

I think the fear is that once there is a .xxx domain, you'll get a "save the children" law in most countries that forces all new porn sites into the .xxx TLD. Once that happens, ISP's, cable companies, and countries can block access to all of them at once. China and Australia come to mind. When that happens,

At that point, it becomes a freedom of expression/free market question when potential customers are barred from a seeing/buying a product by some kind of intermediary censorship. Since the US is all about freedom of expression and free market/pro business, it becomes an endless DOJ issue dealing with lawsuits both for and against regulating access to the adult portion of the net. It seems far fetched, but would anyone really be surprised if Comcast or AOL started blocking .xxx domains by default claiming it was standing up for the children (and not at all saving bandwidth from porn video and torrents)? Now you're talking about Net Neutrality too...enter the FCC. How many billions would the US spend deciding whether or not to defend the porn industry?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting up a sanctioned area for porn is like setting up a sanctioned area for gambling or a sanctioned area for prostitution

Isn't this all of Nevada?

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Same mindset that will not allow distribution of condoms in prisons, even by the separate med department.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Al Dimond]

This isn't about some desire to repress sexuality. Yes, porn should be sexual. And most adults are sexual beings -- we have sexual desires, we find each other attractive, we enjoy sex. This is good.

This isn't about the role of submission in porn, exactly -- if you're going to create appealing porn, there's a good chance someone is "taking it". It's quite possible to be dominant sexually while respecting your partner, and tending to his or her needs. Egalitarianism in sex doesn't mean nobody's on top (lots of great positions have someone on top!), or that everyone climaxes at the same time.

This is about the promotion of behavior of men in pornography that ranges from selfish to abusive. It's about labeling female participants "sluts". It's about the women in many films begging for and enjoying selfish and abusive treatment. These things aren't really specific to porn, even, porn is just where they're seen most graphically.

And it's not about what's in any one porn film. I think there's room for just about every kind of portrayal of people generally. But in the overall body of work you hear of the same patterns over and over again. It's the same thing in advertising, on TV, in movies. I think that speaks badly for our society, as it's at least as much a symptom as a cause of our attitudes, probably more. A non-porn example: the Beatles. You might hear one song, say, "Run for Your Life" (on Rubber Soul), and note that it's from the perspective of a downright abusive man. So it is; I guess a band might sing a song about anything. Then listen to some of their other songs and records from around the same time. It starts to get really creepy, far beyond the typical casual misogyny of early rock-and-roll.

That's why we need to acknowledge these sorts of portrayals, and what they say to us and others. Banning porn is almost never the answer (maybe never never?), but understanding its meaning, and trying to improve ourselves and our society is.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[opus_magnum]

I think it some people still don't accept porn as an acceptable sort of business and they don't want do do anything to make it appear legitimate.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Schadrach]

Distinction: The point of a .xxx domain is to mandate/require/force all "pornography" on to it, specifically not to be voluntary (otherwise it doesn't serve a meaningful filtering function). So demanding Veggie Tales be pushed out of .kids is different than demanding pictures of the statue of David be pushed into .xxx.

As far as filtering goes, the point of .xxx is to create a place you want to specifically block. The point of .kids is to create a place you'd potentially want to whitelist.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DarwinSurvivor]

Exactly.

There are 2 types of restrictions that can be put in. You can say "all porn sites must be on .xxx" and "all sites on .xxx must be porn". The first one would LITERALLY put 90% of the worlds websites on ONE TLD (you do the math). The second one is easily circumvented with "yeah, our contact page has a tiny, barely visible naked chick in the bottom-right corner, so we deserve access to this really cool TLD for our deathmetal band"

Either way, I give he TLD 2 years before it's completely useless.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[DarwinSurvivor]

I would LOVE to see ANYONE try to force 90% of the internet (including those from hundreds of countries) to reside under a single TLD.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[npsimons]

You might hear one song, say, "Run for Your Life" (on Rubber Soul), and note that it's from the perspective of a downright abusive man. So it is; I guess a band might sing a song about anything. Then listen to some of their other songs and records from around the same time. It starts to get really creepy, far beyond the typical casual misogyny of early rock-and-roll.

I've always thought "Please Don't Let me be Misunderstood" was being sung from the POV of a wifebeater. Just listen closely to the lyrics.

That's why we need to acknowledge these sorts of portrayals, and what they say to us and others. Banning porn is almost never the answer (maybe never never?), but understanding its meaning, and trying to improve ourselves and our society is.

Porn will improve when society improves; "hurtful" porn is a symptom, an effect, and it's very obvious that it is highly market/demand driven. Like any market with high demand, it will create its own supply no matter how you try to regulate it. Fix the sick society that demands the sick porn and it will go away.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Fastolfe]

A .kids domain has exactly the same problems as a .xxx domain. What's kid-safe in one community may not be in another. And then the filtering would start, and people would try to stretch the definitions of kid-safe to get their content through the whitelists (as opposed to an .xxx domain, where they'd be trying to get around the blacklists).

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I’m sorry to inform you, but IP addresses ran out earlier in the century.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Tubal-Cain]

I doubt prostitution falls under the Commerce Clause, so I'm pretty sure the Federal government has it's hands tied by the Constitution. If anyone makes a stink about not having a Federal ban the congresscritters can rightfully point out that it's up to the states.

Re:Yay ignorance.

[Tyyrlym]

...I fail to see the big problem with this.

Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Mounts.

ICANN is nothing but a scam

[winkydink]

Constantly creating new domains to force brand owners to pony up more money for new TLD's thereby lining the pockets of ICANN's stakeholders (registries and registrars) and further funding their own existence.

Re:ICANN is nothing but a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

This raises an important point:
Currently, most major corporations buy up all the domains referring to their brands. If XXX is approved, this means we'll soon see coke.xxx, mcdonalds.xxx, disney.xxx etc. as the brand owners scramble to protect their brand image -- the problem of course, is that in registering those domains, they are sullying their brand image. So, all these major interests would rather the TLD just didn't exist so that they don't end up in such a situation.

For fun, try trolling whois for domains registered by Microsoft sometime -- some of the domains they own are quite amusing; but not as amusing as some of the ones owned by companies like Mattel.

Re:ICANN is nothing but a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

What horseshit. This is the Big Brand PR, but it has no basis in fact. There are plenty of studies that show that brands DON'T register in new TLDs.

RFC 3514 redux

[Todd Knarr]

Yes, because this will work just as well as RFC 3514 - The Security Flag in the IPv4 Header.

Re:RFC 3514 redux

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the porn industry makes most of its money tricking people into looking at pornography against their will?

Dated rating system

[Anonymous Coward]

What we really need is a .nc17nc17nc17 toplevel domain.

What about softcore sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they certify .R18 or .x ?

This is stupid.

[CondeZer0]

> The company has argued that the .xxx internet domain should be approved for porn site use, allowing parents and businesses to easily configure browsers or filters to automatically block sites that carry the domain."

This is a ridiculous idea, there are mountains of porn all over the web, and specially if it is known they are going to be filtered .xxx domains will constitute an insignificant percentage of the porn online, and I'm certain all of it will be available outside the .xxx namespace.

Yet one more aspect of the domain system that turns out to be a scam, what a surprise!

And ICANN are the first to be a bunch of corrupt incompetent idiots.

The net needs badly an alternative DNS root that is run competently and honestly.

Re:This is stupid.

[mconeone]

Why is this ridiculous? Just because they aren't blocking every porn site doesn't mean it isn't a simple way to block a bunch of them at once.

An analogy: "why have marijuana-sniffing dogs in airports since it can be grown in the US?"

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea! It can be run by a new government setup to run competently and honestly. At least until they become corrupt again.

Re:This is stupid.

[jandrese]

I'm thinking that a filter would do a reverse DNS lookup on every connection.

Re:This is stupid.

[buback]

You obviously have NO idea how big the marijuana black market is in the US. It's not like having dogs at the airport is stopping the people who want weed from getting it.

Your analogy is actually pretty apt. Having a .xxx TLD would be as effective at preventing porn viewing as drug dogs at the airport are at stemming the flow of marijuana.

Re:This is stupid.

[jellomizer]

Except there are a lot of Legit Adult Entertainment companies as well who would welcome this. They want the business but they don't want the legal hassle for operations. If you site can be blocked easily then it just may be good as you don't get hassled for trying to attract kids to your site. As there are easy ways for parents to block it.

Re:This is stupid.

[amorsen]

I'm thinking that a filter would do a reverse DNS lookup on every connection.

You have WAY too much faith in reverse lookup. Reverse lookup on the open Internet is a way to say "Yes, I really want to run a mail server on this IP, so please don't block my mail". Apart from that it's used to make troubleshooting with traceroute slightly easier, but all the juicy stuff is in txt records or stored in whois anyway.

Re:This is stupid.

[Just Some Guy]

Why is this ridiculous? Just because they aren't blocking every porn site doesn't mean it isn't a simple way to block a bunch of them at once.

...where by "a bunch" you mean "none". What webmaster in their right mind is going to make their whole site that trivially simple to block? You seem to be under the impression that the porn industry is run by naive morons.

Re:This is stupid.

[mtinsley]

The only sites that will be blocked are the ones created as a result of the new TLD. Meanwhile domain registrars will clean house on the millions of porn sites that want a .xxx domain in addition to their existing domains. Not to mention the non-porn sites that just want to protect their brand.

Re:This is stupid.

[Sir_Sri]

ya but if you're a legitimate porn company you don't want your product showing up legally from you on school computers or in a place that will get your customers fired. If someone has to pirate your product to view it on school/library/work computers that's fine - you aren't going to get in trouble over it (it's not our fault he was looking at our stuff without our permission basically).

Sure, lots of other sites will still make it available, but if you're a legitimate porn seller I would expect you to want to be supporting filtering as best you can. If people really don't want to (or shouldn't) be seeing your content right now, then you don't want them to. If I were a big porn company I'd be sitting on the existing .com .country .whatever domain and just having a redirect to the .xxx site. Then no nutcase in south caronlina can say 'CondeZer0 is trying to corrupt our youth by making his porn onto our school computers!', because if he does your reply is 'block all .xxx and you wont' see it'.

Re:This is stupid.

[Entropius]

Less effective.

To make weed you have to grow it.

To make porn you just have to take your damn clothes off.

Re:This is stupid.

[russotto]

Sure, lots of other sites will still make it available, but if you're a legitimate porn seller I would expect you to want to be supporting filtering as best you can. If people really don't want to (or shouldn't) be seeing your content right now, then you don't want them to.

Right. Sure. Porn sellers love it when their prospective customers can't see their content because some intermediary decided the customers "shouldn't" be seeing it.

Re:This is stupid.

[h4rr4r]

I agree lets get rid of the marijuana-sniffing dogs.
They serve no purpose other than to oppress and remove your civil rights.

Re:This is stupid.

[CondeZer0]

> An analogy: "why have marijuana-sniffing dogs in airports since it can be grown in the US?"

Except that, as others have pointed out, this is going to be even more useless than the War on Drugs is at stopping people from taking drugs, or the airport security circus is at fighting terrorism.

How many times do we need to explain that the net treats censorship as damage and routes around it? And screaming "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!" is not going to to make any difference.

Re:This is stupid.

[Myopic]

I'm honestly curious, do you yourself think that is a good analogy?

Re:This is stupid.

[Sir_Sri]

yes because clearly it's in the interest of playboy to have kids and parents getting letters about kids looking at playboy at school.

Clearly it's good for a porn company when it's paying customers get fired for using their product when at work, and no longer have jobs to pay for their product.

Either way official avenues to your product are going to get blocked, better to make it easier and straightforward on everyone.

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, adults (who make up a healthy portion of internet traffic) who are LOOKING for porn (it DOES happen that some adults actually seek it out) will know where to go to easily access it.

It's like... the internet version of a specific store for pornography. Those things actually exist, too! Who'da thunk it?

Re:This is stupid.

[russotto]

Clearly it's good for a porn company when it's paying customers get fired for using their product when at work, and no longer have jobs to pay for their product.

Far fewer people get fired for viewing porn at work than actually view porn at work, so this is pretty thin.

Furthermore, make it easy and it won't be just corporate and k-12 networks blocking porn. College networks, hotels, and even ISPs will all block .xxx either completely, or by default and requiring payment to get it unblocked, under lawsuit or threat of lawsuit from the modern equivalents to the Moral Majority.

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's stupid because top level domain names are not and have never been content labels. It's even more stupid because anyone can create a CNAME that doesn't reside under .xxx.

In fact, anybody proposing using .xxx for filtering or classification is a total moron.

Not as effective as you would think

[Locke2005]

The company has argued that the .xxx internet domain should be approved for porn site use, allowing parents and businesses to easily configure browsers or filters to automatically block sites that carry the domain. Right... 'cause children and employees obviously aren't capable of typing in an IP address that doesn't need to do a DNS lookup!

Re:Not as effective as you would think

[bami]

That would fail hard in the case of virtual servers or one host serving multiple domains relying on the host portion of the header of a http request.

Re:Not as effective as you would think

[Locke2005]

Valid point, this would fail with name based virtual hosting, but not IP based virtual hosting. I'm sure a lot of porn sites are using virtual hosting, but how many porn sites are actually using name based virtual hosting?

Re:Not as effective as you would think

[miggyb]

I don't know why you're being sarcastic, I've never seen anyone type an ip address into the browser for anything other than troubleshooting. Hell, if you have a netgear router, you can even type out routerlogin.net if you don't want to memorize "192.168.1.1". I'm not saying people won't figure it out if they need their fix, but even something like web-based proxies are vastly unused by high school students trying to get around filters.

Re:Not as effective as you would think

[Locke2005]

Never underestimate the lengths to which an immature male will go in order to get off. They used to steal Penthouses from convenience stores; I think they can figure out how to type in an IP address.

Re:Not as effective as you would think

[soundguy]

The Domain Name system is nothing but "human-friendly" window dressing. It's completely unnecessary. As long as the server is configured to allow it, a virtual named hosting space on a shared IP can be accessed as http://xxx.xxx.xxx./~username. Hosting space on a server (at least for non-toy operating systems) is defined by usernames, not domain names. DNS is essentially "speed dial" for websites, but it's not the only way to get there.

What Would This Change?

[blcamp]

Nothing. Not one damn thing.

What good does filtering out .xxx sites do for sites that reside under every other TLD on the 'net?

How about the ones that purposely evade filters? Drop malware payloads? Engage in a host of other nefarious behaviors?

This is a useless exercise in time-wasting par excellence.

Re:What Would This Change?

[mconeone]

Agreed. But you have technically-ignorant people from both sides of the argument thinking it will do something. It would be nice if both sides were informed that:

1. It could never be mandatory, and if it was made so it would be unenforceable
2. If it wasn't mandatory, few if any sites would actually register to avoid being TLD-blocked.

Re:What Would This Change?

[timeOday]

By the same argument, TLD's themselves are simply a waste of 4 characters in every URL. I would rather just open up TLD's for registration by anybody. The domain name for "slashdot" is then "slashdot", not "slashdot.org". The ".org" serves no purpose. My personal domain name is a .net, and I'm not an ISP.

Re:What Would This Change?

[vlm]

Good luck with georgia.us (peaches!) and soon to be georgia.xxx (I'm envisioning a pair of peaches!) and georgia.ge (former soviet!)

Re:What Would This Change?

[timeOday]

Oh, I still think subdomains makes sense when they capture something meaningful; e.g. putting all states under .us. And .edu is useful too. But .com is so broad it doesn't accomplish anything, and reserving the top-level domain "mcdonalds" serves no purpose. Might as well let McDonalds.com have it.

Headline

[just_another_sean]

Was it really necessary to use the words pressure and mount in this headline? The subject matter is provocative enough on its own!

going the wrong way... again

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet was create by ADULTS for ADULTS. The better solution is to create a ".kids" domain that has the content restriction that everything on it be "kid friendly." That would allow the same ease of use to configure content blockers for children - only allow the ".kids" domain.

Re:going the wrong way... again

[eyrieowl]

Now that's actually a more intelligent proposal. Trying to ensure all "objectionable" material is only located on .xxx is a fool's errand. .kids would be much easier to police....

Re:going the wrong way... again

[nicolas.kassis]

That is not such a bad idea, a porn site found on a .kids website could be prosecuted thus making it a safe playpen.

Re:going the wrong way... again

[zehaeva]

So rather than put all the adults into one place and make it easier for adults to find adult stuff you want to put all the kids stuff in one place for adults^H^H^H^H^H^Hkids to find kids stuff?

*ahem* I can see this going badly ..

Re:going the wrong way... again

[Dragonslicer]

The internet was create by ADULTS for ADULTS. The better solution is to create a ".kids" domain that has the content restriction that everything on it be "kid friendly." That would allow the same ease of use to configure content blockers for children - only allow the ".kids" domain.

Already been proposed

it's because we "bring freedom and democracy"

[Shompol]

under pressure from the US government....

Re:it's because we "bring freedom and democracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is a real (good) reason - they don't want to have to define "porn" and then later have to defend it in court.

Why does anyone besides the proposers want .xxx? The proposed registry owners want it because of the money: Defensive registrations (i.e. coke.xxx) will outnumber legit adult entertainment sites. Porn sites in .com/net won't bother (why change a known domain name?) and they know it will be blocked by ISP's when parent groups complain. What benefit would there be to have a .xxx domain name?

Re:it's because we "bring freedom and democracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking moron. The only thing that could possibly come from porn sites moving over to .xxx or whatever is censorship would go through the roof. Any country that wakes up and decides it doesn't like porn, just block *.xxx and call it a day. Would you really want this? You are a fool. Blocking the instituting of specific domains for "objectionable" content is a boon for freedom on the 'net and the US government should be applauded.

Problem is..

[Capt James McCarthy]

One person's pr0n is another person's art.

Re:Problem is..

[kalirion]

And another person's National Geographic.

Re:Problem is..

[lwsimon]

I disagree. Art is in black and white.

Re:Problem is..

[Anonymous Coward]

SO if I take some hardcore porn and desaturate it it becomes art? I never knew that.

Re:Problem is..

[lwsimon]

Yep, that's how it works.

They seem to have forgotten(or are ignoring)...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The lesson of Port 80 and firewalls. If the "feature" of .xxx is easy filtering, internet smut peddlers are going to be deeply apathetic about adopting it. What rational person makes their product harder for their customers to get to?

At best, if the prices are low enough, smut peddlers with high quality .coms and .nets will be forced to pick up .xxxs to match, to protect themselves from squatters, and peddlers with lousy URLs will pick up .xxxs in the hopes of grabbing some extra traffic. For the most part, though, porn sellers have no particular incentive to make themselves trivial to block.(They do have an incentive, except for the real bottom feeders, to not be perceived as resisting blocking software, or threatening innnocent children, because that could inspire a real backlash; but adults sneaking past imperfect filters are just fine by them.)

Its analogous to the number of oddball applications and protocols that have moved toward port 80, by default or as a common option, because that port is generally minimally restricted compared to the more special-purpose ports.

Re:They seem to have forgotten(or are ignoring)...

[value_added]

internet smut peddlers

Has a nice ring, that one. Good luck with it.

Me, I prefer

    Purveyors of Fine Adult Entertainment ...
        For the Gentleman with Discriminating Tastes

The only smut I see being peddled is in the grocery checkout aisle. I'm told people enjoy reading it, and don't have a problem with the kids seeing it.

Re:They seem to have forgotten(or are ignoring)...

[Jedi Alec]

Purveyors of Fine Adult Entertainment ...
                For the Gentleman with Discriminating Tastes

I do believe good sir, that the ladies are equally entitled to their share of fine adult entertainment, wouldn't you agree?

And if there is one thing that these fine businessmen and -women have demonstrated, it is that they are indeed more than happy to cater to every market imaginable.

However, if the US truly insists on making life difficult for the industry, I'm sure they can find other countries, nay, even continents, more suitable to their specific activities.

Retarded bible belt morons

[BitZtream]

I love America, I really do ... but god ... we can make complete asses of ourselves sometimes ... I mean on a whole new level ...

The porn industry is saying:
HEY! We want to make it REALLY easy for you to classify us so we don't bother you. We're giving you an instant 'adults only' part of the URL so you don't have to even think twice about it! We'll make it easy for you to avoid us and then we won't have to deal with your complaints and you won't have to deal with our sites! Everyone wins! We'll just stay over here in our corner and not bother anyone who doesn't come looking for us specifically!

America says:
No, we're rather make it hard to block you from our children who will be emotionally scared for life if they see tits and ass.

Porn Industry:
Emotionally scared? WTF, the first thing most babies see is their moms asshole, the second thing his her tits for breakfast ...

America:
Thats different ...

Porn Industry: ...

America:
You're in contempt of court!

Porn Industry:
Oh fuck off, we'll just keep doing what we do and you idiots can continue to deal with it in an incredibly retarded way while we keep making a fortune off of you because you have some sort of retarded cultural thing that makes sex dirty and somehow different than every other normal type of social interaction.

My question to my country:

WHEN THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO STOP TREATING SEX AS SPECIAL?

Its just sex for fucks sake. Everyone does it and our species has relied on it for longer than our species has actually existed! (Chick and the egg) Stop treating it as different. Stop teaching women to be so emotionally tied to their vaginas, its nothing more than a convenient hole for fucks sake. Stop treating the penis as though its the key to a mans life, it can be replaced with a $15 battery powered chunk of silicon that is more effective for every purpose except urination. (Vibrator for sexual pleasure, turkey baster to transfering sperm).

Stop freaking make sex so taboo. Stop with this 'sex crimes' crap, thats as dumb as 'hate crimes'. STOP TREATING SEX AS SOMETHING TABOO AND IT WILL STOP BEING TABOO.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[bami]

You should try going to Europe.

We got (uncovered) tits in billboard ads!

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

Stop treating women like sex objects.

Incidentally, your basic argument, on the "bible belt moron" side is one that I have never, ever heard in my life. And I am someone who considers sex to be something that should be in marriage, and someone who thinks that the porn industry is immoral and highly degrading; first degrading to women, who are turned into sex objects simply to be used for pleasure, and secondly degrading to society, who turn sex into the end-goal of life.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Locke2005]

Stop freaking make sex so taboo. Right on! Anything that happens between a priest and an altar boy in the privacy of their own confessional should be their own business, and nobody else's!

Stop teaching women to be so emotionally tied to their vaginas I'm not sure this is learned behavior... many have suggested that women are inherently wired that way.

Stop treating the penis as though its the key to a mans life, it can be replaced with a... turkey baster to transfering sperm. When that turkey baster can actually produce sperm, I concede that you are on to something here. In the meantime, I prefer not to think of penises or vaginas in isolation, but rather as part of a larger system. For some reason, my wife prefers that larger system to a vibrator... go figure.

a $15 battery powered chunk of silicon that is more effective for every purpose except urination. Only if you have a really tiny penis. Do you prefer a fleshlight to a real woman?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Anonymous Coward]

WHEN THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO STOP TREATING SEX AS SPECIAL?

The moment a middle-aged lady is being anally fisted while receiving six simultaneous facial cumshots from African-Americans in a Calvin Klein commercial. Oh, you weren't talking about porn? Sorry.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Just Some Guy]

The porn industry is saying

...nothing like what you think it's saying. Here's what the CEO of an Australian adult industry said in a letter to ICANN:

The Eros Association is the peak national organisation for the Australian Adult industry. We represent the majority of the Australian adult retail and on line industry and have done so since 1992.

I am writing to express our opposition to the introduction of the TLD XXX. I attended the ICANN meeting in Wellington in 2006 and met with ICANN and GAC delegates to explain our opposition to the proposal. At that time we submitted letters from major on line businesses that also opposed the introduction of the new TLD.

Our objections have not changed. There is no support from the Australian on line adult industry for the TLD XXX. I note that the ICM website states that they have support form the adult industry and free speech advocates. I am yet to find anyone.

While it's fun and easy to blame stupid, uptight Americans - and even gives you a smidgin of Slashdot karma - the reality is that the people who would hypothetically be using the .xxx TLD have no interest in it and are actively opposed to it.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[EdIII]

Do you prefer a fleshlight to a real woman?

It does talk less......

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Locke2005]

Real women can't talk either as long as they have something in their mouth... trust me, it makes them MUCH more pleasant to be around!

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Shakrai]

When that turkey baster can actually produce sperm

The penis doesn't produce sperm either, so what you'd really need is a pair of testicles attached to your turkey baster.... ;)

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Shakrai]

first degrading to women, who are turned into sex objects simply to be used for pleasure

Unless they were forced into such a production, what's the problem here? If a consenting adult makes a choice to become a sex object I don't see why it's any of our business.

who turn sex into the end-goal of life.

Reproduction is the end-goal of all life on this blue marble. Sex goes hand in hand with that, at least for mammals....

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CorporateSuit]

Your post is why sex still needs to be treated as special. Women are emotionally tied to their vaginas because of biochemical reactions before they are emotionally tied to them by social pressures (google: oxytocin). Humans mate for life, from a natural standpoint (because our children are completely worthless until the age of 14) and from a social/psychological standpoint. You don't bother to learn any of this because you're so sexually frustrated you can't see straight enough to read any writing on the wall.

If we don't treat sex as special, then we can ALL become emotionally and sexually jaded as you are. There are reasons why sex is expected to happen between two people who are married from a social standpoint that shows RESPONSIBILITY rather than what you seem to think is "Obnoxious stupidity." But since sexual responsibility is the opposite of what you're asking for, I can probably assume social responsibility is a moot point.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Locke2005]

What part of "I prefer not to think of penises or vaginas in isolation, but rather as part of a larger system" did you not catch?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[clarkkent09]

That is your opinion and fair enough unless you try to impose it on others through laws or other forms of force. I am just curious why people like you consider sex to be degrading to women but not to men, or at least more degrading to women than to men. Could you please explain it to me? It seems that you assume that women gain no pleasure from sex and are only enduring it in order to please men which makes me think that you don't understand women at all and shouldn't be in the business of "protecting" them from themselves.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[russotto]

secondly degrading to society, who turn sex into the end-goal of life.

A zygote is a gamete's way of making more gametes; sex is a vital part of that process; while not the end goal (I don't think there is one), it's on the critical path.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Grant_Watson]

WHEN THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO STOP TREATING SEX AS SPECIAL?

Maybe when it works the same way as the other human appetites? Which is to say, presumably never. I mean, nobody puts up videos of someone else eating a really good plate of fettuccini alfredo.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[nedlohs]

and secondly degrading to society, who turn sex into the end-goal of life.

Sex is the end-goal of life.

Well reproduction is, but the sex part is pretty damn essential step.

first degrading to women, who are turned into sex objects simply to be used for pleasure

Whereas I think religion is degrading to all people, who are turned into idiots who believe in ridiculous fairy tails and rejoice in being slaves. But I don't try and stop churches from being easily identifiable as churches, and I don't want to try and ban people from believing in their magic stories.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Quiet_Desperation]

WHEN THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO STOP TREATING SEX AS SPECIAL?

Well, it can be special. I guess you just haven't met that certain someone yet. I'm sorry.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[h4rr4r]

What about women who want too?
  It seems to me you turn women into property. Sex is for when people want to have it, not when you own a woman via marriage.

Oh and sex is the end-goal of all life, for without it we would not be here would we?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[h4rr4r]

You would only plan to live till 28? Cause that would be 14 twice.

Humans mate for as long as they feel like. You again want to turn women into property of their husbands which is far worse than any "objectifying" anyone else does.

Sexual responsibility is having it when you want and using protection if you wish to avoid offspring.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[computational super]

Whereas enlightened people such as yourself know that denial of sex is the actual end-goal of life.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[computational super]

we can ALL become emotionally and sexually jaded as you are

Whew! For a minute there I was worried, but fortunately you're around to tell us all how to live our lives and force your irrational beliefs down our throats!

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CorporateSuit]

Well, when someone else on slashdot is telling you that it's just a social stigma not to drink 10 gallons of distilled cyanide every day, I'm glad to be around to tell you that there are facts that refute his claims and that a healthy society does not consist of everyone drinking 10 gallons of cyanide a day -- even if it paints me as an "irrational believer" to slashdot's biggest idiots. Perhaps you should bother to read some of the scientific studies posted in the GP comment that prove that my belief is rational, and those unfounded ape hollers you sound out, in response, are the mating cries of an asstrich. The only thing I'm cramming down your throat is the information you need to make an educated decision in the matter. Perhaps in due time, it will make its way through your system, down to your asshole, where your head can finally read it (if it's not too dark in there)

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[david_thornley]

There's plenty of food sites on the Internet. There's plenty of skiing and sailing and basketball sites, where you can see people skiing and sailing and playing basketball, and buy the stuff they do that with. If you saw a video of somebody else eating a really good plate of fettucini alfredo, you'd hardly notice, so you wouldn't remember.

So why is sex so much different from sailing?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

Unless they were forced into such a production, what's the problem here? If a consenting adult makes a choice to become a sex object I don't see why it's any of our business.

I think the issue here is not whether or not an adult consents... the issue is - were they pressured, socially, to consent?

I think we can all pretty much agree rape is bad, right? Rape degrades women. Why are men okay with it? IMO, because of the way they view women. If you really respect women, you're not going to rape them.

Just because a "consenting adult makes a choice" doesn't necessarily mean we should encourage said behavior. After all, consenting adults *all the time* consent to eating fast food, soft drinks, sugar, etc... and yet, we are growingly concerned with obesity. But why should we care? It's not any of our business. In general, I actually agree with that; but when the behavior starts to be encouraged or when companies go too far? Say... false advertising? Then people begin to take issue with it.

Really, it will come down to what society thinks is best for itself, since this is a democracy after all. I have my opinion, and you have yours. I am of the opinion that a society where women are seen as sex objects is a degrading society, in the same way that a society that sees blacks as slave-objects is a degrading society. I know, slavery was probably forced... of course, it seems to me that society is putting significant pressure on girls to think of themselves as sex objects. I'm not sure how much of a conscious "choice" it is.

Reproduction is the end-goal of all life on this blue marble.

Well, we disagree significantly there. If that IS the end-goal, then your view is, IMO, quite consistent. I appreciate the consistency. I believe mine is consistent, too... but we appear to be arguing from quite different basic premises.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

I am just curious why people like you consider sex to be degrading to women but not to men,

You misunderstood me. Being considered a toy for men to have sexual pleasure with, and little more, is degrading. It seems that the typical image of women that society has today is completely related to sex. "Sex sells."

It IS degrading to men, in that it assumes that that is all men can think about. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that particular degradation is very untrue.

I am not trying to "protect" women from themselves. I'm arguing that as a society, we should not push women towards thinking of themselves in the same way that rapists think of them, and then wonder why rapists do what they do. Every time someone is raped, we call it degrading, we say that the rapist has such a horrid view of women; and yet it seems that as a society, that view of women is pushed. Women are there for sexual pleasure of men.

I'm not arguing for "no sex." Personally, as I said, I have some pretty conservative and religiously-based ideas about where it is proper, but I'm not pushing for that, either. I'm arguing that encouraging women to think of themselves in the same way a rapist thinks of them - an object for sexual pleasure for men - is not a good thing. And it seems that I am not alone in this, as it seems to me that a whole lot of studies have been conducted that show that women tend to be much less driven by "physical love" than men.

Here is a question: would you be ok with society pushing blacks into thinking of themselves as slaves while at the same time, being shocked at the attitude of whites who forced blacks into slavery? Probably not, most people would see a contradiction there. In the same way, pushing girls/women into thinking of themselves as sex objects while being shocked at the attitude of men towards women (e.g., rapists) is contradictory.

I sense a counter-argument: slavery is different, that's a degrading view in and of itself. I would argue that being thought of as an object for sex is a degrading view in and of itself in a very similar way. However, if you are coming from a worldview where we are just animals like any other animal, then your view does have consistency, because reproduction is basically the only "point." On the other hand, slavery should not be degrading then, since we're all just animals following our animalistic instinct, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't conquer a neighboring tribe and subject them so I can reproduce better...

(this is a really big issue, once you get into worldviews! hehe.)

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

Denial?

If "improper outside of marriage" is denial, then sure. But that's my opinion, and not what I was arguing for in this case.

If "denial" means "saying that women should be respected for more than the fact that men can have sex with them," then sure.

And I did not claim to be "enlightened" anymore than you would claim to be "enlightened" if you thought you knew the answer to something that someone else didn't, like say, how to remove a virus from someone's computer. Believing yourself to be correct and someone else to be wrong does not equate to some sort of gnosticism.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Shakrai]

I think we can all pretty much agree rape is bad, right? Rape degrades women. Why are men okay with it?

I'm confused, who said men are ok with rape?

If you really respect women, you're not going to rape them.

What does that have to do with porn? If you respect your fellow human beings you aren't going to commit any crimes of violence against them. I would posit that the vast majority of people are able to differentiate between porn and the real world.

I am of the opinion that a society where women are seen as sex objects is a degrading society

it seems to me that society is putting significant pressure on girls to think of themselves as sex objects

I agree, but I don't think porn is to blame for this. Porn basically exists for one purpose -- sexual gratification. Porn is something that you have to make a deliberate attempt to obtain. I would argue that everyday TV advertisements, the entertainment and fashion industries do more to objectify woman than porn does. Our young girls are certainly influenced by them more than they are by porn. I watched my sister try to starve herself to death growing up so she could look like the women on TV. None of the women she was attempting to emulate were in a pornographic production.

If that IS the end-goal, then your view is, IMO, quite consistent.

From a biological standpoint that is the end goal of life. Human beings are one of the few animals with the higher brain functions required to set other goals for themselves but the drive to reproduce is still there.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

But I don't try and stop churches from being easily identifiable as churches, and I don't want to try and ban people from believing in their magic stories.

And if your society consistently pressured you into thinking there is something wrong with you if you don't go to church... not church-goers, but society, businesses, etc...? Would you have a problem there?

My argument is that society pushes this view of women while remaining shocked at people who hold the view and act on it. I see that as a contradiction.

If society pushed you to go to church and then was shocked when you did, I'd agree with your analogy. As it is, you probably do not feel pushed to go to church (except perhaps by any friends of yours that go to church), and society does not look shocked when you do.

Sex is the end-goal of life.

Therein lies our dispute; all other arguments fall back this, and since we hold different ideas here, all other argumentation is likely futile.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

while not the end goal (I don't think there is one)

This is not directly related to the conversation... but simply because you stated this, I am interested in hearing more about your view of life. I don't get the chance to ask someone who openly states what you stated :) If there is no end goal of life, then is there anything really wrong if I kill you? Most would say it violates some rights of yours... so my question is - if your life is, basically, useless, then why is it wrong for someone else to end it?

I'm not just trolling, I'm seriously interested in hearing your opinion on it. I have never understood why a worldview that holds no purpose to living can hold to "murder" being wrong or in any way unfair... it's not unfair for a lion to kill his prey, so I've always been confused why it's unfair for a human to kill another human.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[alexo]

If there is no end goal of life, then is there anything really wrong if I kill you?

End goal != meaning.
Very often the process is more important than the result. Sometimes it is the only important part.

if your life is, basically, useless, then why is it wrong for someone else to end it?
I'm not just trolling

Yes, you are trolling. He didn't say "useless", you did.
You are a troll, and not a very intelligent one at that.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

I'm confused, who said men are ok with rape?

Well, obviously, some are. Or it wouldn't happen. I didn't mean men in general, I meant specific men in that case. My fault there, that was unclear. Point was: something in their thinking, something in the way they viewed women, led to their decision to rape one.

I would posit that the vast majority of people are able to differentiate between porn and the real world.

I disagree. Example: what makes a woman beautiful? Most guys seem to have very clear ideas about this, and I don't think it comes from the "real world." I think it comes from porn, from advertisements, and clothing manufacturers. Or: most girls seem to have a very clear idea about what they need to do to be attractive/attract men.

One might argue that porn/adverts/clothing just mimics what people really think. I think that could be a valid argument. One might also argue that porn/adverts/clothing significantly influence the way people think, and it doesn't really make sense.

Food example: Coke. Is Coke good for you? I haven't read a study that said you can substitute coke for water and be just fine. And yet, from the advertisements and the way most kids live, you would think so. Certain aspects of society are teaching young people that soda is basically a valid substitute for water. And most people don't appear to differentiate between an advertisement and what is really true.

I would argue that everyday TV advertisements, the entertainment and fashion industries do more to objectify woman than porn does.

Errr, I would argue that a lot of "entertainment" qualifies as porn... but ok, if you want to separate it that way, then I'd agree. However, I'd suggest you include "internet advertisements" along with TV advertisements...

I watched my sister try to starve herself to death growing up so she could look like the women on TV. None of the women she was attempting to emulate were in a pornographic production.

That's exactly what I am talking about, only a different matter. The issue is what image and thinking society is "teaching." IMO, porn ... and porn-related things ("sex" in advertising, entertainment, the internet, etc) is a contributor to how society is "teaching" young men to think about women, just as the "women on TV" were "teaching" your sister how she had to look in order to be beautiful/attractive/pretty/whatever. One was directly degrading to women (your sister). One is indirectly degrading to women: the way men think about them.

From a biological standpoint that is the end goal of life. Human beings are one of the few animals with the higher brain functions required to set other goals for themselves but the drive to reproduce is still there.

Certainly the drive to reproduce is still there. But this is arguing that, biologically, sex is for reproduction. That was the "stupid Puritans" comment that started this whole thing, that Puritans(/"bible belt morons" :) ) think that sex is for reproduction purposes and not for pleasure.

Interestingly enough, Biblically, that's not even true. If one looks at the creation account in Genesis, one finds that a man and a woman were created to enjoy life together because God knew that it wasn't good for the man to be alone. In other words: the male-female relationship was actually for companionship. Not just reproduction. And in the account, Adam seemed to realize this.

And before I get called chauvinist or male superiority-ist, it's interesting to note that the woman was not created to be a servant, but created to complete ... i.e., the man was incomplete without the woman. And conversely

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

Yes, you are trolling. He didn't say "useless", you did.

Then he can counter and explain why it is useful.

To me, if there is no end goal to your life, or to life, then I would say ... life is useless, in the typical way we understand the term (i.e., it's "useless" to do this or that because it doesn't accomplish anything worthwhile). Perhaps it was too big of a logical jump and I chose the wrong word.

Very often the process is more important than the result. Sometimes it is the only important part.

The process is only important because of the result that comes out of the process, as opposed to the actual goal of the process. However, if my life has no actual goal, then I don't see what it matters what process I take to get to a non-goal.

If you and I are playing a game and there is no way to win or lose, what's the point? We may, I don't know, grow somehow, but then we die and it's over. There's no end-goal, and thus, I don't think there's really any meaning to it... and I would call it useless.

Apparently, you disagree with what you and I mean about "meaning," so I'd be interested in how you'd define the meaning ... of life.

Hm. Discussing the meaning of life on slashdot. hehe.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[geminidomino]

WHEN THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO STOP TREATING SEX AS SPECIAL?

Maybe when it works the same way as the other human appetites? Which is to say, presumably never. I mean, nobody puts up videos of someone else eating a really good plate of fettuccini alfredo.

That's because you don't have small-minded idiots banning Rachel Ray, Emeril, et al to late-night timeslots on premium pay channels only.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Shakrai]

Point was: something in their thinking, something in the way they viewed women, led to their decision to rape one.

I am not a criminologist but my understanding of rape is that it's typically driven by the desire to dominate. I'm not sure how much of that I would attribute to the objectification of women. I've known a few chauvinistic pigs in my day but to the best of my knowledge none of them were rapists. Rape has also been around since the beginning of our race, long before sexually suggestive entertainment and pornography came onto the scene.

Most guys seem to have very clear ideas about this, and I don't think it comes from the "real world." I think it comes from porn, from advertisements, and clothing manufacturers.

That might be true to an extent, though I think that sexual attraction likely operates on a more primal level than that. No doubt that environmental and societal factors play a role though.

Food example: Coke. Is Coke good for you? I haven't read a study that said you can substitute coke for water and be just fine. And yet, from the advertisements and the way most kids live, you would think so. Certain aspects of society are teaching young people that soda is basically a valid substitute for water. And most people don't appear to differentiate between an advertisement and what is really true.

So what do you want to see happen? More regulation of advertising? That comes with it's own set of drawbacks and some people (myself among them) don't think it's the job of Government to teach caveat emptor.

The issue is what image and thinking society is "teaching." IMO, porn ... and porn-related things ("sex" in advertising, entertainment, the internet, etc) is a contributor to how society is "teaching" young men to think about women, just as the "women on TV" were "teaching" your sister how she had to look in order to be beautiful/attractive/pretty/whatever.

I see it as an issue too, I'm just uncertain as to what you want to do about it?

But this is arguing that, biologically, sex is for reproduction. That was the "stupid Puritans" comment that started this whole thing, that Puritans(/"bible belt morons" :) ) think that sex is for reproduction purposes and not for pleasure.

Sex is for reproduction, from a purely biological standpoint. In certain species (homo sapiens among them) it also serves a social function.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[alexo]

> Yes, you are trolling. He didn't say "useless", you did.
Then he can counter and explain why it is useful.

You just admitted to being a troll. "He" is under no obligation to educate you.

If you and I are playing a game and there is no way to win or lose, what's the point?

I pity your children.

I played a fair amount of games in my life, including competitive sports. Some games I had no chance of winning and I still played them for sheer enjoyment, and I gave my very best -- knowing that I would still not win the game -- just because it made the game more interesting and more fun.

We may, I don't know, grow somehow, but then we die and it's over.

But the moment before I die (if it will not be too sudden), I will look back and say to myself that I led a good life, that I enjoyed living it and that I made some small contributions to the lives of others and I will live for a little while longer in their memories. Sure, I will regret that the ride is over but we all have to get off sooner or later.

Now you -- you have a goal in life. A purpose.
What if you die before reaching it?
And if you don't, what happens once you reach it? Will you kill yourself then?

There's no end-goal, and thus, I don't think there's really any meaning to it...

That is because you have a very narrow viewpoint and no imagination.
When I need goals, I set some. Good ones, because it feels better to have good goals than mediocre ones. Then I strive to reach them because it feels better than not to. And sometimes, I don't need goals, so I let go of them for a while and just enjoy being.

and I would call it useless.

*You* would call it useless. The problem is in *your* perception. *You* find a way to deal with it.

I would just as soon call your life useless, and I am willing to articulate my claim. You have not enriched my life (emotionally, intellectually or otherwise) in any way whatsoever, neither directly nor indirectly. In fact, I sincerely believe that you never will, as you seem to lack both the capacity and the motivation. However, the main difference between us is that, for all your uselessness, I do not advocate terminating your life. Mostly due to a foolish optimistic hope that maybe, just maybe, out of the 6.8 billion humans on this planet, a handful could be found to whom your existence will bring more good than harm.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

So what do you want to see happen? More regulation of advertising? That comes with it's own set of drawbacks and some people (myself among them) don't think it's the job of Government to teach caveat emptor.

That I don't know, heh. :)

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

I played a fair amount of games in my life, including competitive sports. Some games I had no chance of winning and I still played them for sheer enjoyment, and I gave my very best -- knowing that I would still not win the game -- just because it made the game more interesting and more fun.

You're right, my analogy was bad. I played sports, competitively, but I enjoyed playing them because I enjoyed them, not simply because I enjoyed competition.

Now you -- you have a goal in life. A purpose. What if you die before reaching it?
And if you don't, what happens once you reach it?
Will you kill yourself then?

You are presuming something: that I determined what the goal, or purpose, of my life is. I believe we are arguing from two different premises; I believe each individual life has a purpose. I did not say that I believed that each individual life is responsible for deciding said purpose and pursuing it...

That is because you have a very narrow viewpoint and no imagination.

Hm. I refer you to the "troll" comments that were made earlier. ;) Inferring the narrow would seem somewhat dubious, but I'm pretty sure you can't infer the status of my imagination.

I think we are arguing from different terms, though. You appear to refer to "goals" as something individuals' set for themselves, and when you use the term "meaning," you are referring to it subjectively; that is, meaning is what you derive from something. Is that correct?

As for advocating termination of life, perhaps my original question was badly worded. In fact, reading back on it, it was. It was not in my original thinking and the context I was thinking in, but that clearly did not get across.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

In light of further discussion with another poster, my original response to you was extremely unclear and careless. I want to apologize for that. I actually believe all individuals have a distinct purpose in life, and my response did not at all manifest that.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[EdIII]

the reality is that the people who would hypothetically be using the .xxx TLD have no interest in it and are actively opposed to it.

I wholly support the .xxx domain in principle. If only for the reason it would allow me to give the appropriate QoS on all the routers I control. Which is to say, the best level of service.

Seriously, the real problem is not being expressed in anyone's objection, at least not that I have seen. To break down what I have experienced so far in the objections:

1) So-called uptight, stupid, intolerant, religious, etc. people want to create the domain to theoretically limit access to objectionable materials.
2) ICANN being the greedy fucking whores they are care nothing about enforcing any policies they currently have, or to bring order to the domain system, and simply want more money for doing practically nothing we expect them to do.
3) Censorship will run rampant and will be in a post apocalyptic world in short order creating junkyard fortresses around the sole remaining sources of energy while crazed madmen with Mohawks and ass-less chaps will be threatening our very way of life.

We could create an ICANN policy that would make it mandatory for anything remotely resembling sexual material to be thrown on the .xxx domain. Adult industries could still own the other TLD's, but just have safe "portals" allowing a redirect to the .xxx website. Failure to comply results in the confiscation of the domain.

Obviously the pro is that it does not involve any laws being passed in any country. Simply a matter of ICANN policy. The CON, all too obvious, is that ICANN does not give two shits about TLD policies now. Look at ORG, US, NET to find examples of improper use of the intended function of those TLDs.

The best part about the .xxx domain, is that with a high level of participation it makes content filtering ridiculously easy. Sure, there will be stragglers of course, but they will stand out. It should be a heck of lot easier to identify porn on non .xxx domains and get them shut down.

In a perfect world the Adult industries would be all for this. It removes them from responsibility since they have made the single most effective contribution for allowing parents to block access to these sites... or restrict access to them alone.

The big problem not being expressed is one of content filtering and censorship at a macro level, i.e communities and governments, which has nothing to do with .xxx domains .

In those cases the .xxx domain would be abused by these groups of people to effect censorship and unreasonable puritanical control. It's NOT the TLDs, or any other technology we need to worry about. It's the governments and people that are involved in it.

1) ICANN is fucking retarded and so greedy they can't possibly be considered a fair and competent steward of such an importance piece of the Internet's structure.
2) Some governments are going to go for censorship regardless of what technology is available to them.
3) Religious zealots are always going to the bane of our existence till we get rid of organized religion and are allowed to evolve to a higher level of existence. Whether its car bombs, or cutting the clits off little girls, or shooting somebody in the head over abortion, or torturing some poor boy because he loved penises, these people just suck.

The .xxx domain is a wonderful technical solution to provide user-level (or corporate - see SEC employees) filtering that completely fails to take into account human nature and our current state of affairs. It's like proposing a mini nuclear reactor to power each car to get rid of our dependence on oil. The nuclear reactor is just fine. It's Achmed and that crazed look in his eyes thinking about 72 virgins that makes it a bad idea.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[alexo]

Hm. I refer you to the "troll" comments that were made earlier.

I concede the point. That was unwarranted. I apologize.

I think we are arguing from different terms, though.

Fair enough. Please explain your terms.

You are presuming something: that I determined what the goal, or purpose, of my life is. I believe we are arguing from two different premises; I believe each individual life has a purpose. I did not say that I believed that each individual life is responsible for deciding said purpose and pursuing it...

OK, let's see if I understand. You believe that:
1. Individual life has a purpose
2. That purpose gives life meaning ("if there is no end goal to your life [...] life is useless")

But then you say:
"You are presuming [...] that I determined what the goal, or purpose, of my life is."

So, the meaning of your life is the purpose, but you don't know what the purpose is?
Wouldn't it mean that your life has no meaning (at least until you find out what the purpose is)?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

I concede the point. That was unwarranted. I apologize.

At the same time, thank you for the harshness. I needed it. I spoke extremely brashly and am quite ashamed of that.

As for terms... "meaning" of life would be the answer to the question why am I here. "goal" of life would be the same.

Perhaps less ... term definitions than a scope problem. What is the purpose, meaning, or goal of my life - why am I here - within the scope of the world? What difference do I make? Certainly, within individual little circles, and if defined in terms of ... feelings, perhaps... then my life has meaning to various people and has various goals or purposes.

To, shall we say "pure naturalists" - those who believe there is nothing more than the natural world and we are simply a product of it - I see really no purpose in being here. I'm simply part of nature, which is simply ... existing.

So, the meaning of your life is the purpose, but you don't know what the purpose is?
Wouldn't it mean that your life has no meaning (at least until you find out what the purpose is)?

I'd generally go along with that second line there. Enter "religious nut" ideas.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[drinkypoo]

The big problem not being expressed is one of content filtering and censorship at a macro level, i.e communities and governments, which has nothing to do with .xxx domains .

No, the problems are ghettoization and the slippery slope. These things have names! None of your list items are serious problems. The real issue is that first you'll have sites providing information, say on gender issues to teens, forced into the .xxx domain if they want to stay online. Then there's the issue of how .xxx domain holders will end up treated, as compared to holders of other domains. Registrars which cater to them will similarly be treated poorly, and .xxx will end up a digital ghetto.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[Anonymous Coward]

$10 says this guys a virgin. Takers?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[alexo]

So what is your answer to these questions?

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[CannonballHead]

I'll boil the questions down to simply one: why do we (or anything else) exist.

It goes back to why anything exists. At the beginning, God apparently created the entire world with man in mind, and created man for mutual enjoyment of the mutual relationship. God apparently enjoys having a relationship with man, and created man to enjoy having that relationship with Him.

So there is the purpose, or original purpose, of life in general and each individual life. Certainly, other meanings and purposes and goals exist for various individuals, but this is from the perspective of a worldview, not an individual point in time.

That relationship with God has been broken by man by choice... but out of love and not because of human merit, God Himself provided a means to repair that relationship for each individual life forever, if accepted.

And frankly, I didn't really display any of that love, which is where that shame part comes in, and I hesitate to even attempt to answer the questions now, because of the poor example I was in this thread of them, heh.

Re:Retarded bible belt morons

[alexo]

God apparently created the entire world with man in mind

Which god?
There are so many to choose from...

Opens the door to censorship

[l2718]

Can anyone tell me why someone wouldn't want the .xxx domain to happen? What possible downside is there to it?

Because the next thing you know there will be government rules requiring certain content to only be located at .xxx, depending on the whims of the reigning censor-in-chief. Also, because companies will register this in addition to their .com address rather than instead of it (would NBC give up NBC.com if we have NBC.tv ?)

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

I imagine they would be required to have a redirect so the final landing page would be .xxx. It would make it a lot easier for parents to filter porn home or public libraries to filter it in the kiddie book section. But, like others have already said, who gets to decide on what gets the XXX? What about those nudism advocacy sites that are loaded with naked people? What about viewing Flickr with the 'family filter' disabled?

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[tepples]

What about viewing Flickr with the 'family filter' disabled?

That'd be easy. Hits to flickr.xxx would have family filter off; hits to flickr.com would have family filter on.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

But what if one goes to flickr.com and then turns off the filter and searches for '[something dirty]'?

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[tepples]

But what if one goes to flickr.com and then turns off the filter

A 302 redirect to flickr.xxx.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[h4rr4r]

How do you define which goes where?
Is a naked baby in the bath XXX material?
What about nudists?

Get over it you idiots, people like sex. Puritanism: the nagging feeling that somewhere someone is having fun.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[natehoy]

"Required" by whom? If 99% of all countries on this planet somehow came up with a unified standard (which is about as likely as a sober person having a conversation with a flying unicorn about the relative shades of pink found on elephants), passed unified international laws that required (we're leaving "fanciful" and getting into "what?"), it and had some mythical way of enforcing it (there is no Earthly term for how ridiculous that proposal is), pornographers would simply move their hosting plans to the 1% that don't, or start using IP addresses directly.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

They seem to have done alright with .mil, .edu, .gov, etc....

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

I think it's the overt, broad-based sexuality that would qualify a site. People get turned on by just about anything (Rule 34), but the lowest common denominator is humans engaged in overt sex acts (with each other, with animals, alone, etc.). Start selling such for money, and it becomes a porn site.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[natehoy]

Right, because all of those are US-controlled domains, controlled by a single unified body with a codified ruleset, following a specific minted charter since the instant they were created.

You can keep non-porn out of .xxx if you make that the charter of .xxx and have someone screen all the sites to make sure none of them are child-friendly.

You cannot force all porn INTO .xxx, because you're talking about defining porn, then taking all other domains owned by every country in the world and applying that definition to all of them.

So if we pick "no titties" as the Line That Shall Not be Crossed, then Europe's going to be pissed because it's too puritanical, and Iran's going to be pissed because you can show bikinis.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

But I thought the only people crying for this were the American soccer Mom's and their elected officials. Who cares what other countries do? Regarding defining porn, that is a sticky wicket to be sure. I imagine it would function somewhat like Google search results or spam filtering. The easy stuff would be auto-filtered out, and maybe there could be some kind of toolbar that would allow folks to 'flag' other sites as porn. If enough flags come in, it's blocked until it starts using the xxx.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[natehoy]

As far as I know, the only people really crying for this are ICANN (because it's a lot of money when a new TLD comes out) and the US Congress (because no one can resist a good useless "Save The Children!" move to garner votes). A few pornographers are also smart enough to know that this makes their sites easier to find, so I'm sure there's some crocodile tears behind their "Oh, no, think of our industry! Oh, goodness, please don't pass this!" Because they are hoping that the people voting on this hate them enough that they'll do whatever the pornographers tell them NOT to do. Next up: "Please don't send us buckets of unmarked bills! PLEASE!"

Those with extreme religion hate it because it "promotes porn", in the same way that teaching kids how to use condoms "promotes underage sex". In other words, for once, they are doing the right thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. The real reason to hate .xxx is because it simply won't do anything.

Actually, maybe that's a reason to like it. Congresscritters get their happy-happy vote, the religious zealots have a new enemy to hate and maybe it'll distract them for a while, and in the end nothing changes.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[plan10]

Cool, so if you put it up for free, you don't need the .xxx domain?

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[plan10]

That's because those sites have a self-motivated reason to attach to those domains.

The rules around .edu and .mil etc concern keeping unwanted sites OUT of the domain, not forcing certain site in.

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[plan10]

Well Soccer Mom's should care what other countries do if other countries don't enforce the .xxx domain.

Hiding away good old Apple Pie American porn while letting the dirty Eurotrash variety pass through seems a bit stupid, doesn't it?

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[rpauli]

So when I blog: "Love taco rides the pink pony" - must I post that on an .xxx domain?

Re:Opens the door to censorship

[Itninja]

That's the feeling I got from the article.

Fear it?

[Thyamine]

A few people are saying that porn sites are going to be worried about being blocked. How much money do they make from the accidental viewings (ads potentially) vs people actively seeking out the sites and or signing up as members? It's not like I'm going to block .xxx at home and then be like 'WTF? Why can't I get to my porn?' The only people this would affect are those at jobs where it gets blocked (stop looking at work), or schools. At home do what you want. Block for your kids and not yourself.

The only problem I see is that plenty of malware providers/etc will continue to do their thing and promote their sites as able to avoid the .xxx filters, so come see us, and oops now you are infected. Legitimate porn sites aren't going to suffer. Members will still come to them and pay their monthly fees.

Re:Fear it?

[BooRolla]

I'm just surprised no one has made a good pron joke about the headline. Pressure, Mounts, .xxx? What are you people waiting for?!

Re:Fear it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people this would affect are those at jobs where it gets blocked (stop looking at work), or schools.

Followed by public wifi. Followed by free wifi in hotels. Followed by major ISPs so they can promote themselves as 'kid safe'. Followed by all ISPs.

Its just a path that isnt worth going down. Until you can give me a definition of porn that the entire internet agrees on, you have no right trying to classify anything as porn for any reason.

Re:Fear it?

[Fastolfe]

It's not like I'm going to block .xxx at home and then be like 'WTF? Why can't I get to my porn?'

I think if you exercise a bit of imagination, the following similar scenarios have obvious implications:

- A spouse or roommate says, "Hey, our ISP bill says they offer a .xxx block now, and it's not enabled on our account. What do you think about blocking .xxx?"
- You check in to a hotel that bills itself as "family friendly" and, by popular request, has chosen to block .xxx "for your peace of mind."
- Another hotel might add a $10 charge to your hotel bill to enable .xxx.

This particular line of argument has nothing to do with ensnaring accidental clicks on porn ads. It has more to do with deterring access by people that are actually want to see that content. This translates to a direct and likely dramatic loss of revenue for adult sites, so I'd expect nothing but opposition from them.

America.... FUCK YEAH

[drumcat]

Anyone using this .xxx domain is a complete retard. Why? Location, location, location. This is essentially taking a site from the shopping mall and moving it to the shady building that was once a Pizza Hut and now has aluminum foil on the windows. No one will go there in fear of malware or viruses (virii?). Everyone will block it. This is the Scarlet X.

Japan

[The Altruist]

No, seriously. A .xxx domain will save our children from American porn that classifies itself as porn. In other countries where what American consider porn is classified as art, the .xxx filter has no jurisdiction. This is China all over again. We raise EPA standards to get rid of pollution-created companies. They move their factories to China. And we still consume the same products produced in smoke belching factories. Somehow, we feel like we've done a good thing.

Your analogy doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn, unlike pot or any other type of physical contraband, is essentially infinite in supply. Blocking "a bunch" of it is effectively the same as not blocking any at all. Block 99% of porn sites, and the other 1% is just as easy to reach, which means that it will enjoy increased consumption during the (very short) time it takes the 99% to circumvent that block. Success vs. failure is binary here.

No more TLDs!

[Animats]

We have too many TLDs already. Additional TLDs are just a racket for registrars. As Abacus wrote to ICANN when they applied for ".biz", ".fam", ".cool", and a few other TLDs back in 2000, "The more TLDs we are allowed to operate, and the better quality of those TLDs, the greater the total sales will be."

".biz" ended up as the "bad neighborhood" TLD. When you see a ".biz" domain, you visualize a storefront in a half-empty strip mall with trash in the parking lot. We have two vacant TLDs, ".aero" and ".museum". ".aero" is basically a collection of redirects from airport codes to the actual site. See JFK.aero, etc., most of which were created by the promoters of .aero, not the airports.) The ".museum" TLD has so few domains that the entire list fits on one page. We have the redundant TLD, ".info". What was that for, anyway?

All those TLDs could be closed to new registrations and phased out with no great loss.

Porno belongs in ".com", with other commercial enterprises.

Re:No more TLDs!

[mikael_j]

Well, the .info domain was cheap as dirt in a lot of places when it first appeared (some were dumping it at $5 for two years and similar deals) so a lot of geeks seem to have grabbed themselves a few .info domains for various personal projects and such (as have I).

Other than geeks and shady characters it's pretty dead though.

Re:No more TLDs!

[Kjella]

The problem is TLDs in the first place, all they've done is create cybersquatting. Here's what they should do:

1. Create a new global TLD .g, minimum name length 3 characters
2. Declare that any domain that doesn't have a two letter TLDs should have .g appended
3. Grandfather in all the dotcom/net/org/biz/whatever as taken subdomains of .g
4. If the base domain is not disputed, grant the [name].g domain.

This way I can type in "mcdonalds" as the domain name -> macdonalds.g
For anything disputed you still need "slashdot.com/org/net" -> slashdot.com/org/net.g
Country domains are not affected "vg.no" -> vg.no

This way you don't have to go to the global DNS servers on every typo'd query. You would have to go to the .g servers, but I imagine it'd be much like .com today. And TLDs as we know them go bye-bye, I won't miss them.

Re:No more TLDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Porno belongs in ".com", with other commercial enterprises.

Except for the free porn.

Re:No more TLDs!

[Anonymous Coward]

... The ".museum" TLD has so few domains that the entire list fits on one page....

"corkbutter.museum" Really? If ever there was a domain name that screamed for a .xxx TLD it's "corkbutter".

Re:No more TLDs!

[John.Banister]

But, what about typing the name of any random household object, name spoken on TV or food, adding .xxx and seeing what turns up? You would deprive us of the joy of USB-cables.xxx ?

If LargeFormatPhotography.info got "phased out," I would consider it to be a great loss.

Unless you're going to somehow miraculously force all the content of all the sites to conform to your notion of their TLD's category (eg: Diving.net doesn't seem to be directly related to network infrastructure.), what does it matter how many TLDs there are?

RFC 3514

[Anonymous Coward]

.xxx domain is just an extension of the RFC 3514.

Why porn?

[Entropius]

Can somebody tell me why images of people having sex, or naked, unique among all categories of images, deserves a special classification?

Why shouldn't images of people eating, or military propaganda, or lions killing buffalo, or even birds having sex, get special treatment? What is it about porn that makes everyone care so damn much?

Re:Why porn?

[Ant P.]

They get offended because... well, they don't get anything else. Jealousy.

Re:Why porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with images of people having sex... to you and I. But people who want to NOT view that kind of stuff should have an easy way of doing that.

That's a bad sentence, I know.

Please don't say "then don't look", because the internet doesn't work that way. Ever been Rick-rolled? Clicked on an ad when you rested your hand on your mouse without looking?

Ever gotten spam? Anything mis-leading in that spam?

Be open to other people not being open, if you want them to respect your opinions, respect theirs, and recognize that there are problems with the internet that "not looking" won't fix.

Re:Why porn?

[John.Banister]

Because it represents such a large percentage of all internet traffic?

Re:Why porn?

[Entropius]

If those people get an internet with everything arranged just so for them so they don't have to see boobies, and are allowed to pitch royal hell if they accidentally do, then I should be able to get one where I don't have to see spam or ads and can throw a hissy if I do.

They don't want to see boobies. I don't want to see Punch the Monkey. What's the difference?

Maybe we can turn the tables

[dummondwhu]

People can start squatting .xxx domains that are common misspellings of porn stuff. It would work like so:

Porn surfer: Ok, lemme check out www.clevelandsteemer.com. Hey, wait a sec.... this is a blog about crocheting. Ooo...doilies...

Phase 3: profit!

They should do it while they still can

[damn_registrars]

Some of us recall that the idiots at ICANN decided some time ago that they will soon start selling TLDs themselves; at which point all management and responsibility goes out the window (what little remains of it anyways). If they don't establish .xxx and do something to manage it, someone else will (and that other person or group will make a lot more money out of it).

Why .xxx ...

[bagsta]

... and not .sex or .prn(from porn)? The .com is derived from commercial, the .org from organization, .gov is derived from government, etc...

.kid

[flahwho]

instead of all that crap, if you want to make a kid zone how about .kid?

Re:.kid

[Tiger4]

Good idea, but who screens the content? Really, any site in .kid would literally need the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

And can you imagine the uproar when the NRA decides to open the EddieEagle.kid Gun Safety site, or Larry Flynt opens a SafeHealthySex.kid site?

Re:.kid

[Anonymous Coward]

Runs off to register totallynotapedotrap.kid

Re:.kid

[MWoody]

I'd much sooner accept that, though of course it opens up a bit of a can of worms with the "who filters," "who pays for the people filtering," "what criteria do they use," etc. After all, a whitelist is the only really effective form of filtering (aside from, of course, a parent in the room).

Re:.kid

[HeckRuler]

Actually, having a kids site that clearly and safely explains difficult concepts for kids might be a good idea.
Guns can be dangerous and should be locked away unless an adult is present.
Sometimes touching can be a bad thing. If someone ever touches you in these areas, go tell an adult.
Etc, etc, etc.

Of course, trusting the industries to make a kids-safe non-marketing site would probably blow up in our faces.

Re:.kid

[paiute]

Runs off to register totallynotapedotrap.kid

I already got dontbeapussythisguylookslegit.kid.

Re:.kid

[lwsimon]

So, why can't those sites be eddieagle.com or donttouchmethere.net?

Re:.kid

[natehoy]

Reverse that argument. Who keeps everyone else out of everywhere else so adults-only stuff ends up in .xxx?

By that standard, making a .kid TLD and enforcing it is, well, child's play. It would be several hundred orders of magnitude easier, and several hundred orders of magnitude more effective. Which is to say, it would be only somewhat expensive and is only somewhat useless.

Trying to move everything "adult" into .xxx would require a massive, cooperative, coordinated effort between every country on the planet. We haven't managed to do that for far more important issues. And ongoing enforcement would be a huge, expensive pain in the ass.

Then the pornographers will just start using IP address.

Re:.kid

[DrGamez]

Because donttouchmethere.com is way more fun ;)

Re:.kid

[ajlisows]

Yeah, who defines "Porn" is the biggest problem. Some people won't consider anything but hardcore anal penetration to be porn. Some people will think exposed breasts are perfectly acceptable but an exposed vagina is not. Some people will think the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is soft porn and should be on the xxx domain. Some people will think any girl wearing a skirt above the knees will destroy the children. Some will think the same if a woman exposes her fucking face to the public.

I'm thinking I'm in the "Breasts, Not vagina" type group but I guarantee there are enough people out there that will make a push for higher standards for a "Porn Free" site.

Re:.kid

[Anonymous Coward]

freecandy.kid?

that ship has SAILED

[damn_registrars]

We have too many TLDs already. Additional TLDs are just a racket for registrars.

ICANN already agreed a while ago to start selling TLDs in the not-too-distant future; bringing you the opposite of your wish.

If you think the situation is bad as it is, just wait until you start seeing spam from TLDs representing the 600 quintillion ways to spell viagra.

We have the redundant TLD, ".info". What was that for, anyway?

.info was primarily a TLD for selling DNS services - or domains to do DNS services - to spammers, as best I could ever tell.

Simple answer

[ThatsNotPudding]

to all religions, sexual freedom means the total loss of controlling and subjigating women. Name me one major religion that does not have misogyny as a core principal.

Re:Simple answer

[Just Some Guy]

to all religions, sexual freedom means the total loss of controlling and subjigating women.

350 million Buddhists would disagree. They would most likely content that total sexual abandon is physically and emotionally damaging, but that sex is an important part of life. Note: I am not a Buddhist.

Re:Simple answer

[Quiet_Desperation]

Name me one major religion that does not have misogyny as a core principal.

Jedis

Re:Simple answer

[chudnall]

Name me one major religion that does not have misogyny as a core principal

Name me one major porn producer that doesn't have misogyny as a core principle.

Re:Simple answer

[geminidomino]

They would most likely content that total sexual abandon is physically and emotionally damaging, but that sex is an important part of life. Note: I am not a Buddhist.

I'm not a Buddhist either, just an interested of under-informed outsider, so I ask with all sincerity:

Wouldn't they likely contend that "total X abandon is physically and emotionally damaging"
for all values of X?

Re:Simple answer

[Just Some Guy]

From my understanding, pretty much, yeah. I don't think they care much about sex, drugs, or anything else that doesn't become problematic.

How The Hell Is This Insightful??

[Anonymous Coward]

When will people realize that sensational crap like this shouldn't be modded up. This guy makes a bunch of unsupported claims and apparently mods think it's fact? I must be new here.

As much as I want to say "dude, you're on slashdot, you're preaching to the wrong audience," I was rather surprised to find this modded the highest.

Re:How The Hell Is This Insightful??

[Quiet_Desperation]

He treated "America" as a lockstep thinking monobloc. That's automatic +5 Insightful around here.

Re:How The Hell Is This Insightful??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Insightful" does not mean "factually correct" or even "I agree with this". You're projecting your assumptions onto other people just because they modded up a comment you don't like.

Idiots in Congress

[Enderandrew]

It bothers me when I hear people in Congress oppose this, saying it endorses pornography and will create more of it. We need to keep the web "safe" for our children.

They fail to realize that putting porn behind a TLD makes it easier to filter it out so children can't find it.

Re:Idiots in Congress

[NevarMore]

They realize that putting porn behind a TLD makes it easier for our children to know when it is filtered and get around the filter to find it.

FTFY

Re:Idiots in Congress

[HolyLime]

SSHHHH!! We don't want them to catch on.

Re:Idiots in Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

And you fail to realize that it really doesn't make it easier to filter - as many previous posts have pointed out. It just seems like it ought to in a very superficial sense. It would just urge people to work around the system. Any system that promotes or requires abuse of that system is a bad system - such is a system that fails to deal with the nature of what the system is working with.

Re:Idiots in Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

They fail to realize that putting porn behind a TLD makes it easier to filter it out so children can't find it.

You fail to realise that it doesn't and especially not unless the filtering is done at the resolver (eg: CNAME records return A).

Now, repeat after me: "DNS is not and has never been a content labeling or classification system".

Please read this RFC...

[seandiggity]

...before taking sides on this issue:

.sex Considered Dangerous

Periodically there are proposals to mandate the use of a special top level name or an IP address bit to flag "adult" or "unsafe" material or the like. This document explains why this is an ill considered idea from the legal, philosophical, and particularly, the technical points of view.

Enumerating badness doesn't work

[bk2204]

The problem here is that creating a .xxx domain is enumerating badness. Pornography is something that people want to contain and restrict. People working in the security field have known for a long time that enumerating badness is ineffective: someone can always find a way around it. It is trivial to come up with several ways around a mandate that porn be limited to .xxx.

The secure solution is to enumerate goodness; that is, allow only certain specified things and block everything else. If people want to browse an Internet without porn, they should create a top-level domain that is "family-friendly." Basically, each application for a domain would be carefully vetted under some set of criteria and only unobjectionable content would be allowed. This, of course, would have a very small amount of content, but it would be fine for those with delicate sensibilities.

The way that is being proposed (.xxx) is trivially circumventable.

Re:Enumerating badness doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

they should create a top-level domain that is "family-friendly."

.dull?

I would like to see google.xxx

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would "I'm Feeling Lucky" button do.

Re:I would like to see google.xxx

[natehoy]

Probably make your webcam take a picture of you masturbating and put it on the Internet. When you complain, Google will remind you that privacy doesn't exist on the Internet. :)

It might in this case

[justinlee37]

I can't imagine why any porn producer would want to circumvent that system, though. Making porn available to kids is bad PR. Your point makes a lot of sense from a security perspective, where the malicious coders are trying to sneak malware onto your system, but this seems like a different situation. If I ran a porn site, I'd voluntarily use the .xxx domain.

We could make the system more effective by making it a federal law that if your website has porn on it, it must be on the .xxx domain. It'd be an easy law to pass (think of the children!), and it might actually be worthwhile.

Re:It might in this case

[bk2204]

The problem is not with porn. Obviously, there are some people that do not want to see porn. There are also children, who, for the sake of argument, should not see porn.

The problem is defining porn. Is a line drawing of two people having sex porn? Then Wikipedia has porn. What about text? Does porn have to be an image? How do we determine the difference between an erotic story and, for example, a medical description of sex?

There are numerous sites that describe medical aspects of sexuality. Wikipedia is one. There are others that teach people about how to perform a breast (or testicular) self-examination. Arguably, these sites should be seen by teenagers because they have information that is relevant to them.

The issue is that people who are easily offended want a technical solution to a social problem. This is impossible to achieve. The way we can come closest without widespread damage to the Internet is to allow the easily offended to have their own padded room of sorts.

Re:It might in this case

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is defining porn. Is a line drawing of two people having sex porn?

For some of us as kids, the underwear section of the Sears Catalog was porn. The more you eliminate depictions of sex, the more and stranger things will be fetishized.

your reasoning is completely ridiculous

[circletimessquare]

"smut peddlers" are not interested in forcing people to look at stuff they don't want to look at. in fact, when a delicate social conservative flower DOES see porn, it's usually bad for pornographers, bad for delicate social conservatives who are scared of mammary glands, bad for everyone involved. so its far better for pornographers to have a big red warning sign "DO NOT GO HERE IF YOU TITS SCARE YOU". hmmm... like an xxx domain?

your reasoning supposes that porn is somehow spread by some sort of jump and pounce gotcha! and then people are sucked in against their will. no: if you choose to visit a pornography site, you've made a willful choice on your own, and you and yourself alone are culpable. the "devil made me do it" defense "i didn't mean to the bad man made me do it" doesn't speak very well about social conservative willpower does it (but, since social conservatives are a bunch of hypocrites naive about human nature, that isn't saying much)? it also completely nullifies the concept of personal accountability, which is SUPPOSED to be a social conservative darling of a concept, put seems to disappear as a concept when imposing your will upon others comes up

the only class of people where someone willfully clicks on a porn link and SHOULDN'T be 100% culpable for doing that are the class of people for which informed consent really is a no go: children. and how do you best keep the world of the adult away from minors?

hmmm... howabout an easily identifable and filterable domain? naaaahhh... too easy!

pfffffffft

if you are an adult human being, and you click on a porn link, there's no shame in that. even with the 3 scary christian crosses xxx

Re:your reasoning is completely ridiculous

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Either I was insufficiently clear, or you utterly failed to understand my reasoning.(given that you appear to have identified me as a social conservative, I'm going with the latter).

No, sellers of pornography do not want to lure the unsuspecting(if nothing else, the shocked and horrified are unlikely to have a good conversion rate). However, and this is important, they want to make it easy for their customers to access them without interference from those around them.

Aside from those pushing for straight bans, most anti-porn crusaders advocate measures that make it more difficult to get porn without being noticed (correctly) inferring that that will, in a great many social contexts, have a strong chilling effect.

For instance, say this ".xxx" plan goes through(or the "CP80" one, which is a bit more comprehensive): it can be reasonably expected that ISPs will offer a "block *.xxx checkbox as a feature to attract worried parents and prudes of various stripes. If that comes to pass, an adult who wants access to internet porn will have to come up with some excuse, satisfactory to any other adults(ie. spouses, parents providing financial support, roommates) who have access to the bill, as to why they haven't activated that checkbox... That will be a lot of customers who want porn; but cannot reach it.

In a similar vein, imagine if it were mandated that the titles of all pay-per-view movies purchased in hotel rooms had to be itemized on the bill, rather than just the prices. That would likely have a substantially depressing effect on consumption of porn in hotel rooms; because it would be much harder to acquire without attracting spousal and/or employer scrutiny.

Yes, pornography sellers have no real interest in targeting the uninterested(barring the real bottom-feeding spammers, who are content with conversion rates under 1%); but they have a strong interest(possibly philosophical; but definitely financial) in making sure that their customers get to choose as freely of outside social pressure as possible. Measures that make that harder are a threat to them.

Since most avenues of access to porn are, at least potentially, subject to social exposure and social pressure(ie. if you have to go to a skeezy part of town, and risk being seen there, to get girlie mags, you are less likely to purchase them, if your hotel bill will reveal exactly what you watched, you are less likely to watch something salacious. If you have to request the "enable .xxx" option, visible on your monthly bill, from your ISP, fewer people will have access) this is a real concern for them.

You are onto something!

[dfenstrate]

There is something very attractive about taboo behavior, particularly to adolescents.
And if you make the ordinary taboo (ie, sex is naughty!), then the actually deviant is beyond the pale.

If your desire for thrill-seeking and naughtiness is sated by plain ol' intercourse, then more extreme sex acts are avoided altogether. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are ready to defend their right to horse-whip and ball-gag their willing partner, but they only got there because they were bored of the 'routine' sex act.

How many actually harmful deviant behaviors are avoided by making plain intercourse 'naughty'? How often does this social more channel what might otherwise end up as destructive behavior into entirely ordinary venues? (hehe, so to speak)

Further, by making the act of intercourse special and reserved, it serves the purpose of perpetuating society* by encouraging sex. If sex is nothing special, easily available, and entirely approved, how long would it take to get rather bored of it?

The human experience is rather complex, and those of us who would call intercourse 'just another biological function' don't realize the intricate interplay between biology, reproduction, society, and of course our own experiences. The practices and mores of our society are the result of distilled experience over the ages. While tradition is not immutable and infallible, it shouldn't be toss aside casually either. Liberation in one area may lead to degradation in other areas, and we may find ourselves painfully relearning the lessons that drove our forebears to create these bothersome rules in the first place.

(*If you think the world is overpopulated, show us you're serious by offing yourself. The rest of us recognize we've got something worth preserving here, and richer societies have declining birthrates anyway, so there's self-correction at play.)

Re:You are onto something!

[scot4875]

If sex is nothing special, easily available, and entirely approved, how long would it take to get rather bored of it?

Are you seriously asking this question? Have you ever had sex?

--Jeremy

Re:You are onto something!

[tompaulco]

If sex is nothing special, easily available, and entirely approved, how long would it take to get rather bored of it?
I don't know, but if someone gets an NSF grant to study this, I am willing to be a participant.

Re:You are onto something!

[dfenstrate]

If you hadn't already labeled me as a 'foe', I might put more thought into answering you.

Instead, I'll answer your sarcastic, insulting question with another one:

Just how long have you been around, son?

Re:You are onto something!

[dfenstrate]

They've done studies like this. Apparently it's not so great. There was a writeup on cracked.com a little while ago, with some title like "10 things that sounded awesome but weren't"

Re:You are onto something!

[Tubal-Cain]

IIRC, participants ranged from 18 to 89. And they didn't get a choice of partners.

Release

[halcyon1234]

Pressure mounting... so much pressure.. must release...

Corporate flags of convenience

[Rix]

Then porn corporations will simply register themselves in countries which don't have said laws, for financial reasons.

Can't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, there is .com for commerce, .org for non profits, .net for a network, and .edu for educational institutions, but how many sites do you see using any of those 3 tlds that DON'T conform to those "rules" ?? You just can't enforce this sort of thing.

Will .xxx have less porn than all other TLD's?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that websites like cnn and msnbc will be effectively forced to buy .xxx domains to prevent porn sites spring up under their banner. These web sites will probably end up pointing at their .com sites.

Porn sites however may end up avoiding the .xxx domains as they know that these will be blocked.

The net effect of these two things may actually be for the .xxx TLD to be the most smut free place on the internet.

Is there a guarantee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because a .xxx TLD is created, that doesn't mean anybody must use it. Playboy et al. could avoid it and keep the .com TLD. Seriously, where's the promise? This is why the rationale that filtering based upon the .xxx TLD is flawed. There is no legal way to guarantee that .xxx must be used if adult content is on a site.

And what qualifies as an adult site? Is it as simple as "any site containing adult content" ? Technically speaking, a lot of Evony advertisements contain what could very easily be considered adult content. That doesn't mean the site itself is an adult site. Oh, and then there's torrent sites. The torrents are hosted, not the files. Do torrent sites really need a .xxx TLD just because some torrents *might* contain adult content? Any site could contain adult content that you can't see in reality. That's the magic of having multiple images stored as a single (larger) image and then only showing one of them. Combine that with the power of CSS, and while your site could very well be legitimate to the point where none of your adult images are shown to your viewers, the files on your server still contain at least one bit of adult content. That means you would need a .xxx domain, right? Ridiculous...

Porn vs. obscenity

[tepples]

The Miller Test is used for OBSCENITY, not pornography. Two entirely different concepts for anyone with an IQ over 80.

This article from West's Encyclopedia of American Law disagrees with you: "Pornography has been regulated by the legal standards that govern the concept of Obscenity." If you claim the existence of a legal standard called "pornographic" above "harmful to minors" and below "obscene", I'd like to see your citation.

I am in favor of .XXX

[mysidia]

But not for porn sites. Wasting XXX on such a narrow category as a web site with specific content seems horrible. TLDs are meant to categorize the nature of the organization not the nature of the content

For example. .COM domains are for commercial organizations, .ORG for non-profits, .NET for networks such as ISPs, and .CC for country-specific sites that are of primary interest to a particular local geographical region.

"X" is commonly used as a metacharacter, meaning (in place of something else) X is used as a generic symbol to refer to it.

E.g. In XXX days, we will re-consider your application.

.XXX seems like a perfect TLD to use when no other generic TLD makes sense and the site is not country specific

Think of it as a miscellaneous TLD to be used for hodge-podge sites that don't need to identify as a category such as 'network', 'commercial', or 'non-profit', or region/country-specific.

For instance, NEWS.XXX would be a perfect name for a global news site that covers events from all over the world, and is neither specifically commercial nor non-profit.

Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun in hell with porn.

DOMAINS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

You don't have an excuse like 'oh I didn't know this was a porn site!' when caught. You can't just say you were searching Large fresh melons and accidentally found such a smutty site.

Yes, you can. This was addressed ages ago, in RFC 3675.

Potential

[plan10]

slashdot.xxx - Babes of Slashdot

Think of the possibilities (or don't)

So fucking ridiculous!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's so fucking ridiculous! Why do they think porn companies would move to .xxx if they're being blocked by other institutions trough a simple domain blackhole?? Seriously!

And if they *really* think they'll manage to move everyone over, well, good luck with that!

DNS is the wrong point to filter at

[jonaskoelker]

Basically, each application for a domain would be carefully vetted under some set of criteria and only unobjectionable content would be allowed.

But wait, a domain is a link from a name, say "www.family-friendly.org", to an IP address, say 1.2.3.45; you don't know that if you contact that IP address, you will get only "nice" responses.

I guess the way to work around that is for the owner of that link to sign a contract with the censorship board (and have routine checks and penalties and courts and stuff). But the censorship board in which nation? Or is it international? Or ...?

Because if it's national, why not just put US porn under .xxx.us? Or is this the US (which owns ICANN) imposing its rules of sex-is-naughty-censorship on the rest of us? Is the US going to tell Danish porn makers to buy a non-.dk domain for their porn? Why do they have jurisdiction over us?

The opposite is a better idea. Lets see .kid

[Zaphod-AVA]

The problem with .xxx is that it is voluntary, and plenty of companies that want to distribute porn will resist moving to this domain. Remember whitehouse.com? Additionally, forcing them to move is easily fought, since it is essentially a form of censorship.

Why are we trying to kid-proof the entire internet? We don't do that to the world, we make playgrounds instead. We should create a .kid domain and license that to companies that want to use it. Posting material that isn't suitable gets your site pulled.

Once that is in place, creating computer accounts that can only access .kid domains is trivial.

Can't move beyond step one.

[DrYak]

Nice slippery slope but there's a hard technical limitation after the first step of creating the .xxx domain :

demand that ALL sites with pornographic content be stored under the XXX domain

That already is not possible. The direct control of USA government stops at its border. It would be completely impossible to force any website located out of the USA to move to any domain at all.

Some foreign websites, which consider themselves as selling adult content (I'm not speaking about websites providing regular content which might happen to be considered porn under US' more stringent morality. I'm speaking about websites specifically targeting an adult audience, no matter if the content itself won't necessarily get flagged as "porn" in the US), could consider buying an additional .xxx domain because of the added visibility.

But you won't be able to force all *European*-based porn sites into .xxx domains with a *US*-law.
And if needed, US producers could simply relocate their servers into a more porn-friendly regions.

In short :
- creating the .xxx domain is just a technical task.
- anything else on the list requires a world-wide control of a level which simply doesn't exist.

(Too bad, because I'm sure that there will be a huge set of Internet Service- / Proxy- / Circumvention- providers waiting to fill the usual "???" step before the final "Profit!" if your Porn-Doomsday scenario was enacted)