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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."
on fu.xxx
Doesn't anyone bother to read the RFCs? (probably not, they're too interested in trying to sell domains to make money)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
ICANN HAZ PORN?
Hopefully, this is a sign that our policies are not dictated by the "Think of the children" crowd.
on se.xxx
and sex.xxx
and goatse.xxx
With the new rules letting any company/group create a TLD if they've got the money and infrastructure, it's only a matter of time before we'll be going to Sprite.coca-cola and BigMac.McD.... so why not give the sex operators a red light district that's easily blockable. Sure, it won't block 100% of porn, but it's one rule that can block 100% porn with no false positives.
I hope this doesn't encourage would-be censors to restrict the kinds of content allowed in non-xxx domains. Not all content fits neatly into an XXX designation, and even if it did it is simply not right to restrict XXX content to XXX domains. Having an XXX domain has always struck me as either pointless (insofar as XXX content might continue to be hosted on non-XXX domains) or otherwise a really bad idea (insofar as no XXX content may be allowed outside of XXX domains).
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Finally there will be porn on the internet.
Took them long enough!
crazy dynamite monkey
If google.xxx is what I think it would be, it could perhaps be the best website on the Internet.
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The owners of Slashdot.org would most likely serve a C&D on whomever registers slashdot.xxx for the clear trademark violation. TLD owners like .TV and .CC used to brag about the major companies registering all their trademarks with them... when really all those companies were doing was making sure nobody else used their brands the wrong way.
Nobody will use it. Using .xxx will allow every administrator to just wildcard block the .xxx domain, and I doubt its in the adult industry's best interest to use it.
It's almost baffling that the "oh, think of the children" crowd doesn't want this. I would think it would be of their interest to "force" (which I doubt could ever happen) adult companies to use the .xxx domains to allow this "dirty content" to be easily censored, and create a "red light district" of the internet, which you could just easily block with a simple wildcard filter. Fortunately, most of the censors are idiots and would rather put their head in the sand than acknowledge it exists and there is no way to get rid of it, since there will always be demand.
Either way, whatever ICANN approves or disapproves the usage of .xxx domains, it won't make a difference either way. The internet will be full of porn, everybody who wants it will be able to get it, and .xxx will continue to be unused, whether it's available or not.
Really you want a default null tld so Slashdot.org would just be slashdot. I don't care where a site is based, whether it's for profit or not. I want to just type:
slashdot
ubuntuforums
bbc
etc and not try and guess/remember whether they're: .com .net .org .co.uk .org.uk
etc etc. The distinction is meaningless to me.
This is the best improvement of the internets I've heard in years. Hunting for porn should be greatly enhanced if it's address is centralized! I wonder if those military guys who invented internets ever realized what would become of their tech.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
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
It's also worth pointing out that "sex" and "xxx" probably only have meaning in American English - in British English, XXX certainly used to mean "beer".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Really you want a default null tld so Slashdot.org would just be slashdot. I don't care where a site is based, whether it's for profit or not. I want to just type:
slashdot
ubuntuforums
bbc
etc and not try and guess/remember whether they're: .com .net .org .co.uk .org.uk
etc etc. The distinction is meaningless to me.
The distinction doesn't exist solely to help you mentally organize sites. It exists because DNS reads from right to left, and it has to start somewhere. Otherwise there would be no way to organize them.
Members of the American religious right also oppose its creation on moral grounds.
I respect freedom of opinion, but this attitude is plain fucking stupid. As if pornography will become more/less prevalent if the .xxx tld is approved/denied.
This is the same brand of ignorance that believes teens will have more sex if educated about it, or that prostitution should be outlawed instead of regulated.
As a species, we wouldn't still be here if sex wasn't a big deal to us, but the range of cultural attitudes today is astounding. There's Amsterdam, where one can window shop for sexual services. There are ultra-religious societies where women must be covered from head-to-toe since, presumably, their men could not control themselves in the presence of exposed female flesh. There are countries where women have their genitals mutilated to prevent the enjoyment of sex. And there is America, where murder and violence are standard fare for entertainment, but God help us all if a nipple pops out!
You can do that in firefox. Type a site like that in the addressbar. It'll use the google "I'm feeling lucky" thing 9 out of 10 times. The other time it'll show you search results.
[ irc.p2p-network.net -> #zomgwtfbbq ][ http://zomgwtfbbq.info ]
I always thought that if business sites were .com, then porn sites should be .cum
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It seems to me that creating a new TLD is like printing money. Anyone with a brand to protect will be coerced into buying up their {brand}.{TLD} to park it and prevent abuse. Consider for example: www.disney.xxx or www.ford.xxx Creating this won't eliminate porn on the other TLDs and centralized censorship is generally a bad idea.
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.
Hmm... .xxx domains matching our current domains and/or name and make them redirect...
I suppose we should buy up
That might be pretty fun too... Or maybe just really creepy... Can't decide which it is...
If google.xxx is what I think it would be, it could perhaps be the best website on the Internet.
I'm pretty sure that will be 'googal.xxx'.
Have you tried just typing those words into your browser?
In mine (FF3.5) it take me straight through to the site using (I think...) Googles 'I feel lucky' feature. This way, typing in a keyword has a good chance of taking you to the site you want. If people could register single keyword domains like that, I reckon it would cause a net decrease in convenience as more and more single keywords take you directly through to someone's site.
With email, it's usually copy/paste for me, or just entering the first part of an address I've used before. I guess it could be useful, but probably not useful enough to warrant the 'search by keyword taking you to someones site' issue above.
PROTIP: There's more to the Internet than the Web.
Without a mandate to move all porn to xxx, a new xxx TLD would be worse than useless. Indeed, since the laws of the US (supposedly) end at the borders, how would this stop a (foreign to the US) porn site owner from using the standard .com TLD?
Therefore blocking .xxx would not mean you are blocking all porn.
There are only two winners in this scenario of mandating porn go to .xxx: the politicians for doing something that doesn't actually, well, do anything substantial or helpful in any way. The other winner would be the .xxx registrar. Money and campaign contributions for nothing. .xxx would be just another TLD ghetto like .biz. I don't know of any legitimate businesses that use .biz instead of .com, and the ones that probably do have FQDNs that end in both .biz and .com.
It's not like domain names or TLDs matter much anymore. Yes, sex.com was worth a lot of money at one time. But that was before decent search engines. I have not gone anywhere on the Internet in many years by guessing a FQDN. It's been a long time since the 'net has been a "library without a card catalog."
--
BMO
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.
This was discussed a lot in 1996 in the IETF NewDom Working Group, which I participated in, and which partially lead to the creation of ICANN. What a zoo that was - it ended with Eugene Kashpureff going to jail for attacking the DNS root servers. For some reason, ".xxx" seemed to drive people crazy, and I am not sure it is much different today.
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.
I've been saying this for years. Most people don't know about the different TLDs, and because of that most popular sites buy up the other TLDs that match their domainname to prevent people from squatting there, and they redirect (or not) the traffic to their "proper" TLD. Take for example http://slashdot.org/ http://slashdot.com/ http://slashdot.net./
I've always held that country code TLDs are of value. It sucks to do some online searching to buy something and end up at a .com address that is in the UK.
Actually, I don't dare type a URL in my location bar that is not already in my history and/or bookmarks that is automatically completed. Too dangerous if you misspell the sucker. Google is the real DNS provider. Sometimes names aren't what they would think they are either. EG, its not bmw.com, its bmwusa.com.
To belabor this stupid point further. WTF is up with .name and .museum ? TLDs have digressed from their original goal. To simplify and classify things. I mean, how is slashdot.org really a .org anymore? Its a commercial entity. What was ever the point of .net? .biz? And then countries sell off their TLDs like .to, .fm, and .tv, and those are rarely used.
Google (or similar) is the authoritative TLD master, the rest is just novelty.
...when it comes to sex, they think of children.
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).
Good point. Why does google safe search have a setting that "blocks web pages containing explicit sexual content from appearing in search results" when what I want is a setting that blocks web pages that don't contain explicit sexual content from appearing in search results!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
> In order for your plan to work, the root DNS servers would have to personally know every hostname ever and what IP they're on. Sure, you could have the root DNS
> server tell you who is responsible for "slashdot" but it would still require the same amount of storage on the root server for the address, plus you get to spend more
> time asking a second server for the real address.
No, because you could have a dummy tld of, for example, ZZZ, and so when you get a request to look up slashdot you add .zzz to the end (because there was no extension on the request, which is the bit which is easy to code for) so you end up with slashdot.zzz, then you look up slashdot.zzz to get the ip address. You're just not requiring the user to enter .zzz because it doesn't technically exist.
You're welcome.