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ICANN Likely Finally To Approve .xxx For Porn Sites

Posted by timothy on from the type-one-and-type-two-errors dept.

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."

3 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Joking? Satire? by jkauzlar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  2. Re:XXX domain as a tool for censorship by gman003 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:because .xxx is nothing like .sex by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    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 .com names.

    Most importantly in my mind, this could be the easiest way to get people weaned off of .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.