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ICANN Likely Finally To Approve .xxx For Porn Sites
shmG writes with this from the International Business Times: "The company that oversees Web addresses is expected to give the go-ahead on Friday for the creation of a .xxx suffix for websites with pornographic content, company officials indicated on Thursday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet on behalf of the US government, has in the past resisted creating a .xxx generic domain name system akin to those for .com and .net."
Step 1) Introduce tld .xxx
Step 2) Pass law that says, any site with porn must be in .xxx tld
Step 3) Block .xxx domain
Step 4) Totalitarianism
Exactly. Who gets to define "porn"? Larry Flint? Fred Phelps? The Pope?
Probably the same group that gets to decide what is a .org or a .net or a .com is. All these comparisons to "burger.McD" really don't hold water. Porn is not only the *reason* that internet access is affordable (early adopters paid the high access rates to pave the way) but it is still a large portion of the traffic on the net, including much of the bittorrent traffic.
I wouldn't get too excited, most porn sites won't switch to a .xxx site anytime soon, as they know that all Nanny Software (c) will be filtering out everything *.xxx anyway.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You missed a step. Politicians start to define what companies must use a .xxx domain. In the US I can easily see some politician putting forth a bill requiring that gay dating sites, abortion information sites, and sex education sites must use the .xxx domain.
Soon followed by lawsuits against ISPs for not blocking the .xxx domain.
And just so they don't fall out of the spotlight, the RIAA/MPAA require that any site that sells music or movies is required to use a .validIP suffix. Any music or movies downloaded or made available on a non .validIP site will automatically be assumed to be willfully engaging in copyright violations.
Most likely, nothing. They'll probably just register the domain and leave it empty, or make it redirect to a .com. I just tried mcdonalds.tk, it loaded a blank page. By extension, they'll do the same to .xxx. So that will get blocked by a blanket ban, but it won't really affect anything. How often do you go to slashdot.com?
I don't foresee many false positives. Besides a few puns like ro.xxx, I think anything in .xxx will be porn.
The number of countries with freedom of speech and the extent of that freedom in many countries is reducing every year. I fear that the concepts of freedom, liberty and democracy were nothing more than a passing fad and will be out of style within my lifetime.
Step 1) Introduce tld .xxx
Step 2) Pass law that says, any site with porn must be in .xxx tld
Step 3) Block .xxx domain
Step 4) A working DNS alternative FINALLY shows up.
Seriously, DNS is pretty inefficient for the web, it organizes things into an outdated hierarchy that never really worked right in the first place (site.city.state.us? Really?). The problem is, we can't figure out a good open alternative, so we use the next best thing, search engines.
DNS was good when the Internet was much smaller and people wanted to map physical locations onto host names, but it's time to seriously think about replacing it, at least for the browser.
For a while new porn sites will be registered at both .com and .xxx, and the existing sites will still probably be primarily .com (although they'll register .xxx for brand purity). As a filter it will be meaningless, and as a tool for censorship it won't work. Legitimate porn sites tend to not try to get around filtering right now anyway, so the free speech concerns seem overblown.
.com names.
.com as the only tld. .gov is useful for a small subset of sites, .org can be useful for some sites (although they almost all try to get the .com as well), and .co.uk is the .com of Britain. If they introduce .xxx and it takes off, it'll be a big step forward in making more domain names viable, and I consider that to absolutely be a good thing.
However, it does offer value to both porn sites and internet users. First, it's a namespace that you always know is porn, so if you're looking for porn this can be a useful tool. Filtering these sites is as easy as it can get, and as mentioned before most porn sites don't try to get around filters anyway. Porn sites now have a way of identifying themselves more fully for customers and they don't have to compete for
Most importantly in my mind, this could be the easiest way to get people weaned off of
First, .net had a very particular meaning once upon a time. It meant you were an ISP or other network service provider (Google might even qualify). This is to be separate from IBM which sells stuff, but does not provide network services (that I can think of. and if you want to be a PITA, try Pepsi or Coca-Cola).
Meanwhile, I think that perhaps we should have per-country DNS search paths, such that if you try to do www.google.com, and you're in the UK, you go to www.google.com.uk. (this would break with .co, due to Colombia).
So you think people will search for porn by typing random domain names ending in .xxx?
I personally use Google to find porn the same as I find anything else. I don't really care what domain it's in Except that .xxx will be blocked on just about every access point except those who have decided to "opt out", and who in their right mind would put in writing that thy want access to porn domains? Fine if you're a single guy, not if you live with your parents, wife, children. Not if you know that the police will very likely have access to such a list. If you have kids, you'll feel obliged to block .xxx anyway. The end result is that any porn company that put their main site on.xxx would be broke in a very short time.
What you'll see there is a bunch of fake "free porn" sites that are full of malware and/or just bounce you to the real sites, probably on .com like always. So it's the last place I'll be looking for porn. It'll be as useful as all those stupid special use domains, like aero, biz, pro that are similarly only used by spammers and as placeholders for the real site.
Nooo, the exact same amount of domain names will be available. www.porn.com will, as quickly as possible, purchase www.porn.xxx. However, also as quickly as possible, www.dell.com will purchase www.dell.xxx.
Every single business I know, including my own, will be picking up the .xxx domain. Do you really think Google is going to allow *anyone* else to own www.google.xxx? Of course not. I am not as big as Google, but I can't let my business name be trashed like that. No business would.
For the same reasons people pick up the corresponding .net, they will be picking up the corresponding .xxx. The same amount of domain names will be available. This was just a way to make the people who run domain registrars, and ICANN buttloads richer in a short period of time. Trust me, plenty of those assholes or shopping around for luxury cars, second homes, and prettier mistresses right now.
The .xxx domain could be a great idea, has less privacy and censorship concerns than most people think (and I am staunch advocate for privacy and anti-censorship), but it will never be implemented in the right way to be effective.
This is going to be a clusterfuck of purchases, squatting, extortion, and trademark dilution lawsuits.