ICANN Approves .xxx Suffix For Porn Websites

An anonymous reader tips news that ICANN has officially approved the creation of a .xxx suffix for porn sites, confirming the rumors we discussed on Thursday. While this resolves a 10-year debate on the subject, the Guardian notes that "many pornography companies are unhappy with the idea of a dedicated space online because they expect that as soon as .xxx is implemented, conservative members of the US Congress will lobby to make any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org." Others are more confident, like Stuart Lawley of ICM Registry, the company sponsoring the new TLD. "Mr. Lawley said more than 100,000 domains had preregistered. He said he expected that when the dot-xxx domains opened for business, nine to 12 months from now, some 500,000 domains would register, or roughly 10% of the five million to six million adult online sites."

Comments

100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that 90% of those preregistrations are by domain name squatters.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

great, now can we quit making a big deal of this phony .xxx domain name controversy?

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[ericlondaits]

DNS is just a big extortion racket... I can imagine that Google will make sure to register google.xxx, gmail.xxx, youtube.xxx, etc. just like Facebook and any other big site. Celebrities are probably being advised to register their names (e.g. sandrabullock.xxx). It's the same as with the .net and .org domains defensive registering but much worse.

Ironically, big porn sites will probably want to keep their .com domain around anyway. I can't imagine Vivid leaving vivid.com to someone else, to name one.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[VennData]

"Build it and they will..." ...what, again?

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[nmb3000]

I'm sure that 90% of those preregistrations are by domain name squatters.

Of course they are, which is to be expected since this whole exercise is nothing more than registrars grabbing at cash.

The sad part is all the uninformed idiots posting here who support the idea -- if even a fair number of Slashdot posters still don't understand why this is such a horrible idea then it's no wonder ICANN caved. On the one hand, they look good to the morons who have been pushing for this stupid idea for years, and on the other they were probably bribed with a huge amount money. Win win!

For those wondering why .xxx is a terrible idea that is completely doomed to fail (at all the "official" goals at least, it will certainly succeed as the gravy train it's designed to be), read RFC 3675: .sex Considered Dangerous. It has all the same arguments being presented here, plus more.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[h0dg3s]

DNS is a protocol, you're thinking of TLDs.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[h0dg3s]

Nothing. The quote starts with "If you build it"

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[rs79]

"read RFC 3675: .sex Considered Dangerous"

Let me be the first to call bullshit. If the guy that wrote this had .sex or .xxx he woudldn't jave bothered. Sour grapes.

I was there when this was tossed around in the very beginning and it was a rush to see who could convince other people they had the good tlds and sex and xxx went fast. Notice they were never challenged in 15 years?

I was also there when *cough* alt.sex was created; it took all the sex off mainstream usenet and put it in one tidy place. .xxx will do the same over time notwithstanding all the whining about the domain ecosystem, which, yes is ugly, but nobody wanted any alternatives, you swine bought into this madness, be careful what you wish for.

Pass the popcorn.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[ericlondaits]

My opinion was original and I first stated it one or two days ago to a friend of mine before reading TFA. I don't think it's so original that nobody else can come up with it on their own.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't thank many sites will leave their precious .com's, but maybe they should be made to host all their material on .xxx so if a porn filter blocked .xxx on a child's computer no content could show up even if the user navigated to say, pornhub.com

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[ericlondaits]

The content could be linked directly by IP or using an international domain... it doesn't need to be in a .com. And making a rule such as "no site hosted on a .com domain can link to adult/porn material unless said material is hosted in a .xxx domain" would be almost impossible, starting with the difficulty it would pose to Google/Bing Images and similar sites.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Arkem Beta]

I was also there when *cough* alt.sex was created; it took all the sex off mainstream usenet and put it in one tidy place. .xxx will do the same over time

Because all companies restrict themselves to .com and other organisations stick to their respective .org, .net or .edu?
Because all US based domains are registered under .us?

I don't think .xxx is going to change anything at all, especially if ICANN introduces custom TLDs for sale.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I need my tinfoil hat and crowbar?

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the conclusion of that RFC,

The concept that a single top level domain name, such as .sex, or a single IP address bit, could be allocated and become the mandatory home of "adult" or "offensive" material world wide is legal and technical nonsense.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[bill_mcgonigle]

.sex Considered Dangerous

Use a .rubber.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Jarik C-Bol]

You *always* need a tinfoil hat and crowbar. and sometimes your towel. these should be standard issue.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Joce640k]

You missed the point. They're going to make money!!

After this they'll do the custom TLDs, then do away with the whole thing and eventually they'll sell us the domains we really wanted in the first place. Why let people pay once when they'll be happy to pay three or four times.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus five insightful for straight up regurgitation of another persons opinion. The moderators are rewarding these idiots who are not capable of independent thought. Actual thoughful and unique opinions (what are the only opinions who actually deserve the "insightful" tag) are ignored. The regurgitation of opinion, being passed off as ones own unique opinion gets a plus five. All I can do is shake my head and laugh at ericlondaits pretending to actual use his/her mind, instead of actually doing something with it (I also laugh a moderators who don't know the meaning of the word insightful, and who don't read the linked articles). I am almost embarrassed to be a human because of peers like this.

Something to keep in mind: The average /. moderator is as informed and intelligent as the average /. poster. That is to say, not very.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[abhi_beckert]

Domain squatting is a completely separate issue. And one that has been solved in many countries —where I live it's outright illegal to domain squat, and protected using the same laws/infrastructure as trademarks.

You can buy any domain you want here, but if someone else has a trademark — or if they're simply better known than you — then they can take it off you at any time. It's also illegal for anyone except officially approved registrars to sell a domain name, so taking control of a domain name someone else owns is always free.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Hognoxious]

Nice brand you got there. Be a pity if it got associated with donkey pr0n.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[AP31R0N]

Solution:

Get rid of the nonsense that is TLD. There's no need for them and they cause problems. The shift to IP 6 is a great opportunity to abandon that crap.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[blinking_at]

I don't thank many sites will leave their precious .com's, but maybe they should be made to host all their material on .xxx so if a porn filter blocked .xxx on a child's computer no content could show up even if the user navigated to say, pornhub.com

This is precisely what the people behind .xxx are hoping, of course. That's why they have stayed in the game.

Re:100,000 preregistered?

[Fastolfe]

I was also there when *cough* alt.sex was created; it took all the sex off mainstream usenet and put it in one tidy place. .xxx will do the same over time

This only happened because news readers typically presented newsgroups as a hierarchy. You didn't need to use a search engine to find a newsgroup. Of course, if a lot of people are looking for sex-related newsgroups, and you put it all under one branch, that's a huge findability win and of course it's going to be popular. The same assumptions do not apply to DNS. People don't browse a big DNS hierarchy looking for content.

a little premature

[Anonymous Coward]

First post.... a little premature I know, but......

Re:a little premature

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Redundant. Funny. Premature... Get it.
Yet again, Slashdot + Sarcasm = -1 Mod & lower Karma.

Re:a little premature

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you were late, the opposite of premature. Thus, you fail. And unlike the rest of the 'net, failing isn't guaranteed instant funny here.

"Domain name squatters"

[fyngyrz]

(Tries to imagine hot chick squatting on a domain)

[fails, shrugs] I guess there really is a site for every kind of fetish.

Re:"Domain name squatters"

[Greyor]

Obligatory:
Rule 34.

Re:"Domain name squatters"

[tronkel]

Does this qualify for an xxx domain name? http://blog.esaba.com/projects/catphotos/catphotos.php?image=746/

What is the point?

[axl917]

All this will do is rake in registration $$$ and have zero effect on anything else. Take any site for example, like youporn.com. They will go register youporn.xxx so they have their name protected, and one will redirect to the other. If some other company tried to register youporn.xxx out from under them, the real site would just sue and claim it.

They won't give up their .com addresses, so nothing will change.

Re:What is the point?

[ciderVisor]

They will go register youporn.xxx so they have their name protected, and one will redirect to the other.

But if the .com address always redirects to the .xxx address, then firewalls could be easily configured to disallow all .xxx domains.

I guess that's one possible plus point.

Re:What is the point?

[tomhudson]

That's about it ... after all, the claim:

The company sponsoring the dot-xxx domain, the ICM Registry, said it had a vision of a red-light district in cyberspace that was a clean, well-lighted place, free of spam, viruses and credit card thieves.

... is totally unbelievable. It will be just another hub for spam, viruses, and credit card thieves.

Re:What is the point?

[mwvdlee]

Most likely the .xxx will redirect to the .com so all internal and external links will remain working and you won't have to convert or test anything.

Redirecting .xxx to .com is much faster, easier and cheaper than vice versa and without the risk of being blocked by firewalls or filters.

Re:What is the point?

[tomhudson]

They're more likely to serve both from the same machine, just with different virtual host names. No need to redirect.

Besides, at $60 a domain, when a dot.com is $10, that's obscene!

Re:What is the point?

[maxwell demon]

Besides, at $60 a domain, when a dot.com is $10, that's obscene!

Well, obscenity is to be expected for that domain. :-)

Re:What is the point?

[Dumnezeu]

He said he expected that when the dot-xxx domains opened for business, nine to 12 months from now, some 500,000 domains would register, or roughly 10 percent of the five million to six million adult online sites.

Unfortunately, you're right. This new TLD is an ICANN scheme to bring in more money from their existing customers; to be more precise, they just decided that ICM Registry should get 10% of the porn market investment in domain names.

Re:What is the point?

[Yvan256]

So what you're saying is that getting screwed on the price is normal?

Re:What is the point?

[hedwards]

Not necessarily, it really depends on what they're giving for that $60. If it's just a registration without any extras, then yes it is. However some TLDs are more exclusive than others, while pretty much anybody can get a .com, .net or .org domain name, it's tough to get a .gov or .edu without jumping through a number of hoops.

For the .xxx TLD, it could ultimately be a bargain if it allows for porn sites to demonstrate that they aren't just using random shots which haven't been vetted to be legal or that they aren't just a front for organized crime.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

so what you're saying is you're not nearly as clever as the poster you replied to?

Re:What is the point?

[Artifakt]

There will be real effects. Consider - in the US we have had recent obscenity convictions against some porn producers seen as turning out content especially degrading to women (slapping, punching, spitting in faces, and faux rape.). We haven't had anything in well over a decade focused on non-violent porn, targeting gay porn selectively has apparently died out even in the south, and even such things as bondage and fisting videos get a pass, (but many of them are careful to have spoken discliamers from the submissives involved and various "no sluts were harmed in the making of this video" claims included to protect themselves). Scat probably would draw legal action, but the mainstream producers haven't tried that. The industry has been vocally extremely divided over violence for the last few years.
      I'd just about bet real money that some porn producers will use .xxx to prove they are being responsible corporations and trying to keep their material out of the hands of minors, because that would be another way to protect themselves from prosecution, and they seem to be willing to go to some trouble over creating an image that they are not one of 'those' porn businesses, but rather one of the 'other' ones. Some will see it as a financial hit to move content exclusively to .xxx domains, but others will see it as another way to avoid being the rare porn producer singled out.
      The bigest force actually working against this is the evangelical right, which usually sees no difference between a Girls Gone Wild video and Underaged Wet Mule Sodomizers part 83. If they focused their complaints on the companies that produce the kinkiest stuff, they'd get a lot more results from various justice departments, but then they would have to admit that some porn producers really do care if all the 'models' are over 18, really do show safe sex practices, or avoid violent sex, so don't hold your breath.

Re:What is the point?

[tomhudson]

For $60, they're not doing any "vetting" beyond "did the check/cc clear?"

Back when a dot-com was $100 (remember those days?) it wasn't any different.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that the $60/year will actually go to pay for something on .xxx, not just the financial black hole of Verisign.

The bad news is that it will pay for the operation of a private regulatory agency that will stick its nose into your business practices, tell you what kind of content you can/cannot include on your site, etc. For better or worse, .xxx will not the be the wild wild west.

Re:What is the point?

[dmomo]

Not entirely true if they are gunning for SEO. Google looks for the "canonical" meta keyword, but people are still paranoid about serving duplicate content, and this would certainly count as that.

Re:What is the point?

[maxwell demon]

The bigest force actually working against this is the evangelical right, which usually sees no difference between a Girls Gone Wild video and Underaged Wet Mule Sodomizers part 83.

Of course they can't see the difference. To see it, they would have to watch it. :-)

Re:What is the point?

[mrbcs]

The whole point was to put them in the same place to make filtering easier. Eventually, it will happen, by themselves or forced by legislation. (Think of the children :-) ) It really only makes sense. If all porn was there, the people that want it can find it easily and the ones that want to filter it, can do so very easily. I can't understand the so called "controversy". The whole issue seems pretty silly.

Re:What is the point?

[twidarkling]

It really only makes sense. If all porn was there, the people that want it can find it easily

Great firewall of Australia ring a bell? Their filtering list would be a heck of a lot easier to maintain if they just had to do "*.xxx" for the sex stuff. In fact, having a separate domain for anything makes it easier for any point in the chain to slap a filter in. Maybe your ISP decides it should protect minors. Something. All kinds of options for underhanded things to happen if you separate out parts of the 'net in such an obvious fashion.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting screwed on the bed is normal, you insensitive clod.

Re:What is the point?

[Fred_A]

All this will do is rake in registration $$$

That's the point. You nailed it in one.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The more important question is, if I get a .xxx domain, am I required to put porn on it?

Only way to destroy this is to make it irrelevant. Which, since it starts off that way, make sure it becomes even moreso.

Re:What is the point?

[dkf]

The bigest force actually working against this is the evangelical right, which usually sees no difference between a Girls Gone Wild video and Underaged Wet Mule Sodomizers part 83.

Of course they can't see the difference. To see it, they would have to watch it. :-)

And there I was thinking that their preachers did see a difference; Girls Gone Wild is filth, and the other belongs in their personal collections.

Re:What is the point?

[jesset77]

How do you define what would be required to go in .xxx?

Should sensitive eyes then be allowed free reign on "the rest of the internet", or do we need a .nsfw TLD as well? 8I

.spoilers? .blasphemy? .holocaust-denial? .partly-out-of-copyright?

.athiest? .anarchist? .violent? .critical-of-the-government.cn?

.pool?

Re:What is the point?

[Samah]

But if the .com address always redirects to the .xxx address, then firewalls could be easily configured to disallow all .xxx domains.

I bet Stephen Conroy's loving this then. A quick and easy way to block (some) porn in Australia.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only normal for females and faggots. As a red-blooded normal heterosexual male, I prefer to do all the screwing.

Re:What is the point?

[tehcyder]

Underaged Wet Mule Sodomizers part 83

I think that series went downhill after part 70 or so.

Re:What is the point?

[fyrewulff]

Bird fanciers should jump on www.peaco.xxx

also squatters should grab:

www.snorla.xxx

www.bora.xxx

www.shuttleco.xxx

also the ISP Cox Cable should make sure to register www.co.xxx

Re:What is the point?

[drinkypoo]

The bigest force actually working against this is the evangelical right, which usually sees no difference between a Girls Gone Wild video and Underaged Wet Mule Sodomizers part 83.

That is a progressive view indeed! Too bad it's accidental.

Seriously, there's probably a lot more taking advantage of people who don't know what they're doing in the former than the latter. And if they pick the right Mule, it might even enjoy it.

Re:What is the point?

[2obvious4u]

What is wrong with violent sex? Just because you're a prude doesn't mean the people involved don't like it. As long as there are protections to make sure that all participants want to participate, then let them make whatever kind of porn they want. As long as they aren't being forced to do it, what is wrong with it?

I'm a total wuss when it comes to pain, but for some reason during sex things that would normally hurt actually feel good; well until you climax, then you feel it again.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering Joe Francis has been charged multiple times over including underage girls in his GGW series, I think your choice of comparison was a little off.

Re:What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I welcome this. I'll never be inadvertently taken to the kittens again !

Wtf is xxx?

[bjourne]

It is only in the US that xxx is equivalent to porn. In other languages, xxx means crossed over or censored. So why the fuck is the new tld called "xxx" when the porn link is only obvious to Americans? Isn't ICANN supposted to care about the whole world and not just the US? If they wanted a porn tld, they could have called it ".porn," ".adult" or even ".sex" both which would have been more logical than ".xxx" Is it because the word "porn" is so dirty you have to call it "xxx" instead and pretend it is something else?

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[blai]

well? you think "sex" means sex in other languages?

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Ziekheid]

Nope, xxx is actually recognised in a lot of countries. I have never heard of it meaning crossed/censored before.
I just asked people from Germany, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden (IRC ftw) and they all knew what it meant.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[phantomfive]

Heh.....it will mean that soon. And not just in English: all over the internet using world, in any country with a reasonable size user base, no matter what language they speak, xxx will come to mean porn. So enjoy.

Incidentally, xxx comes from our movie rating system, where xxx is the most obscene type of porn.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[icebraining]

Sex is a proper word. XXX is just gibberish.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Aboroth]

"xxx" is also a designation for alcoholic beverages, so I guess at least one of the producers of those will end up registering those sites eventually, if only to be clever.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[mwvdlee]

Actually, quite a few languages use "xxx" as a placeholder for "adult", "porn" and the likes. I have seen it used as such in practically every country I've ever been to.

Words like "adult", "porn", and -- to a lesser extend -- "sex" are English words that have no meaning in other languages. "xxx" is pretty universal in that it isn't actually a real word that would need translation.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Lazareth]

Incidently, no. "xxx" comes from old wordfilters on school nets, where blacklisted words were replaced by x's instead. Guess what sex got replaced with? Yup, "xxx".

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[maxwell demon]

I just asked people from Germany, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden (IRC ftw) and they all knew what it meant.

Ever heard of sampling bias?

I know what it means, but mainly because I read Slashdot.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[bmo]

Incidentally, xxx comes from our movie rating system, where xxx is the most obscene type of porn.

No it isn't.

X is the rating. There is another rating nearly equivalnet, NC-17, which was brought about because X became to mean porn.

XXX is movie publisher hype and gibberish.

What this new domain will do: Nothing. It's a boondoggle for someone to rake in money for duplicate registrations.

ICANN continues to break the DNS system through its stupid politics. Who, honestly, operates a web business solely registered under the TLD .biz?

--
BMO

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[quantumplacet]

Incidentally, no, XXX goes back to porn promoters in the 1970s, long before 'school nets'. Incidentally, you also can't spell incidentally.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Knoeki]

I'd say it's more likely that has to do with the fact that they're people on the internet.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[KDR_11k]

.com isn't language free so why should .xxx be?

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

> What this new domain will do: Nothing. It's a boondoggle for someone to rake in money for duplicate registrations.

It may make it easier to search for porn :).

e.g. google for: site:xxx your keywords here

Not that searching for porn is that hard.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Incidently, no. "xxx" comes from old wordfilters on school nets, where blacklisted words were replaced by x's instead. Guess what sex got replaced with? Yup, "xxx".

No, GPP is right. "XXX" far predates the widespread use of networking in schools, and comes from the movie industry. The story goes something like this: when the MPAA created its film rating system in the 1960s, they copyrighted all the ratings but X. So if you said you were making a G-rated or R-rated movie, say, you had to get the MPAA to sign off on it, but you could rate your movie X without any approval. If you submitted a porn movie (or occasionally a very violent movie) to the MPAA, they'd obligingly slap an X on it, but it wasn't a requirement. The porn industry being what it is, porn movie producers decided that just "rated X" wasn't strong enough to get their target audience's attention, and started slapping the label "rated XXX" on the hardcore stuff. It didn't really mean anything, of course, but it was apparently an effective marketing ploy. Eventually the MPAA decided that they didn't want to be associated with X and XXX at all any more, and stopped rating movies X altogether, replacing it in their ratings scheme with NC-17.

Except for that last bit, all of this happened in the 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when the number of schoolkids using any kind of networking technology was vanishingly small. Trust me, when you register "barelylegalteenlesbians.xxx" it's not images of PLATO you'll be evoking.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[bjourne]

Surely, you must have seen it used in phone numbers, for example 070/XX XXX XXX. Sure they know what it means because they jack off a lot and know everything about American culture. Use google.de or google.nl and search for the most common meanings of xxx in those languages. In Seden, there are companies called XXX Architects and Design XXX. Neither of them have anything to do with porn. Instead the XXX is used to mean "extra extra extra." Probably they think they are really good at what they do.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[bmo]

You're an amateur.

Use Google Translate to find more different porn.

--
BMO

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[tverbeek]

Correct except that the MPAA trademarked their ratings, not copyright. You cannot copyright a letter.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[hackstraw]

Be patient, in 10 years .porn, .adult and .sex will be available as well. This will help to eliminate any confusion. TLDs are getting better all the time. What would we do without .mobi, .name, .museum, .biz, .coop, .info, .int, .jobs, .pro, .tel, and .travel?

TLDs are bullshit. Just search slashdot.com or slashdot.net if you don't believe me.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you on this one. I will eventually have to change my clear and simple asm.org domain into the much more difficult to remember the-fictitious-movie-rating-of-america.xxx. ;)

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only in the US that xxx is equivalent to porn. In other languages, xxx means crossed over or censored. So why the fuck is the new tld called "xxx" when the porn link is only obvious to Americans? Isn't ICANN supposted to care about the whole world and not just the US? If they wanted a porn tld, they could have called it ".porn," ".adult" or even ".sex" both which would have been more logical than ".xxx" Is it because the word "porn" is so dirty you have to call it "xxx" instead and pretend it is something else?

Well they couldn't use .sex either because not all adult content necessarily involves sex.

We should just settle for something that would be recognizable to the entire internet community, .fap

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Jurily]

well? you think "sex" means sex in other languages?

Actually, it does in most languages. And where it doesn't, people do understand it.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's great that there will be a whole section of the internet dedicated to plus size clothing.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had always assumed/heard that XXX was a hold over from when movies were rated X instead of NC-17. Thus movies that with the "XXX" rating were hardcore pornography.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

The porn industry being what it is, porn movie producers decided that just "rated X" wasn't strong enough to get their target audience's attention, and started slapping the label "rated XXX" on the hardcore stuff.

Sorta. There was actually an informal system, which was something like:
X = real sex
XX = + close up shots of penetration
XXX = + cum shots

Of course, absent any censorship, pornographers just made XXX movies. You still occasionally hear the term "single X" to refer to edited-down hotel PPV pornos.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Jafafa Hots]

In 1930s newspaper cartoon world, XXX means a barrel of rum.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Supurcell]

XXX means porn?! Looks like I'm going to have to rethink the domain name for my moonshine business.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Keruo]

gibberish?
It's not gibberish, it's math and its been used for centuries.
Everyone should know that XXX=30.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Z34107]

Which kind of makes them the perfect sample for evaluating a TLD.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[O('_')O_Bush]

Which is who we expect to be visiting internet porn.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it should at least be all capitals (XXX), bright red, and flashing. That's the way I've always seen it.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ermm, weren't there a couple of mainstream movies called XXX (or triple X, or something?)

Wonder what domains they will need to register ......

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Threni]

As is xxxx, especially in Australia!

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[glwtta]

Yeah, and it could just as well be a TLD for the city of Amsterdam.

Wait, that's still kind of the same thing...

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[complete loony]

In Australia, XXXX is a beer. Since obviously we get so drunk we can no longer spell beer.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[CastrTroy]

And even if it does, sex is not porn.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[dargaud]

In other languages, xxx means crossed over or censored. Which is exactly as it's going to turn out once the censors figure out how simple it will be to simply ban *.xxx. Maybe prettypictures.com can make it through Saudi Arabia, but do you really think anything ending in .xxx will ? This domain suffix is an abysmal idea.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Kilrah_il]

Not yet, you mean :)

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[tehcyder]

Nope, xxx is actually recognised in a lot of countries. I have never heard of it meaning crossed/censored before. I just asked people from Germany, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden (IRC ftw) and they all knew what it meant.

Most people speak/understand English pretty well in all those countries though, so it's not a valid sample.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[wvmarle]

Interesting; being a non-American now I didn't know that meaning of xxx, though I do know the related term "moonshine", primarily from American movies set in that time. Anyway that whole prohibition and related issues are of course part of the US culture specifically. If ever I run into old American newspaper cartoons (not unthinkable) I will keep this one in mind for better understanding.

Being an Internet-user and more generally of the modern age, I do know the other meaning of xxx as intended for use in the tld.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Ed Avis]

It's because in the future, all domains and hostnames will be sequences of three repeated characters, for example www.ppp.xxx.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[lewko]

It's a breath mint.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Words like "adult", "porn", and -- to a lesser extend -- "sex" are English words that have no meaning in other languages.

Eh? Sorry, but "sex" is derived from the Latin word "sexus".

The "porn" in "pornography" comes from the word Greek "porne", which means "prostitute" (and "graphy" comes from Greek "graphein", "to write").

Finally, "adult" is derived from Latin "adultus", which does indeed mean "adult".

In all three cases, neither is the word in question specifically English, nor is it that similar words don't exist in other languages, or that if they do, they're derived from the English terms.

Try again, though.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[RPoet]

Heck, Amsterdam even has it in their flag.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, in the Netherlands people think of Amsterdam... ...because of the flag (http://www.fotw.net/images/n/nl-ams.gif)

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look closely to the container the moonshine is in (probably a jug), it will usually have XXX on it.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[computechnica]

Beer.XXX

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[mutu310]

Your suggestions fail to make sense for the following reasons: 1) xxx is language-independent unlike your suggestions which are in English. 2) Something might be of sexual nature and deemed unsuitable for kids without being pornographic, hence ".porn" does not make sense. 3) Something might be targeted to adults, or else censored for adults (eg involving violence) and not be of sexual nature, hence ".adult" would be far too broad a term for what they are trying to achieve. 4) Something might be of sexual nature without involving sex, hence ".sex" might be confusing. 5) Regarding different cultures, I strongly believe that the meaning of a word lies strictly in its use. Once the Internet starts using .xxx, cultures will adapt and it will be universally understood as so.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[MendicantMonkey]

Me, too. I can barely fit into regular websites anymore, even with compression.

Re:Wtf is xxx?

[Lazareth]

Incidently yes I can. Look it up. Incidentally is an obsolete form of the same word.

it took me a while to figure this one out

[phantomfive]

They've been trying to get a .xxx domain for a long time, but I couldn't figure out why. The porn industry opposes it, the people who oppose the porn industry oppose it, and tech people generally oppose it. Took me a while to realize it was only some registrars who wanted some extra cash who kept bringing it up.

My question is, why did ICANN finally relent? Were they bribed? Did they just become impatient over the issue that they've said 'no' to for over a decade? Is it possible to get anything passed through ICANN if you just ask enough times? Why is ICANN supporting this blatant rent-seeking?

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[mysidia]

Because the ICANN board is chosen by domain registrars who stand the most to gain by introduction of a new TLD.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone at ICANN finally got offered a big enough kick-back to support it, is my guess.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[maxwell demon]

They've been trying to get a .xxx domain for a long time, but I couldn't figure out why. The porn industry opposes it, the people who oppose the porn industry oppose it, and tech people generally oppose it. Took me a while to realize it was only some registrars who wanted some extra cash who kept bringing it up.

My question is, why did ICANN finally relent? Were they bribed? Did they just become impatient over the issue that they've said 'no' to for over a decade? Is it possible to get anything passed through ICANN if you just ask enough times? Why is ICANN supporting this blatant rent-seeking?

Next: A TLD ".pirate" reserved to pirating sites. Makes it easier for the **AA to find the people to sue. :-)

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[hedwards]

It's not a question of why they finally relented so much as what took so long. There's no inherent reason why this should've taken so long. The reasoning was that the conservatives don't want any porn anywhere, and the porn industry was concerned about being relegated to a ghetto TLD.

But, ultimately, this is probably a good thing, since .com wasn't ever really very well monitored with respect to child porn and criminal activity. One of the promises that ICM has made is that there will be no child porn on the TLD. Which is probably a part of where the hefty registration fee is coming from. Trying to do that is going to cost a goodly sum of money each year. Ultimately, time will tell whether or not this worked, but I'd say it's probably going to be good for all those involved.

Well, that is assuming that we can keep the conservatives in check about using it as a dumping ground for things that "moral Christians" oppose in public. Like sex education and GLBT information sites.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Anonymous Coward]

But, ultimately, this is probably a good thing, since .com wasn't ever really very well monitored with respect to child porn and criminal activity. One of the promises that ICM has made is that there will be no child porn on the TLD.

So all the pedophiles can just block .xxx and reduce their risk of accidentally seeing naked adults when they search for porn?

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[_Sprocket_]

It's not a question of why they finally relented so much as what took so long. There's no inherent reason why this should've taken so long. The reasoning was that the conservatives don't want any porn anywhere, and the porn industry was concerned about being relegated to a ghetto TLD.

The question likely depends on whether you think this is a good idea or not. ICANN has looked at the issue several times in the past decade and denied it. That didn't take long. It is the relentless pursuit (ICANN notes that Lawley claims an over US$5 mil bill for this pursuit) that took so long.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Adrian Lopez]

... since .com wasn't ever really very well monitored with respect to child porn and criminal activity

That's because it's not a registrar's job to regulate content. When content is illegal it's actually the host's job -- or, if necessary, the police's job -- to remove it. Allowing registrars to regulate content is dangerous and ultimately undesirable.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[drsmithy]

One of the promises that ICM has made is that there will be no child porn on the TLD.

Which country's laws are they going to use to decide what is, and is not, "child porn" ?

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Anonymous Coward]

What do "moral Christians" have against garlic, bacon, lettuce, and tomato?

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Rakarra]

Are you trolling? You're doing a magnificent job.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[soundguy]

... since .com wasn't ever really very well monitored with respect to child porn and criminal activity

That's because it's not a registrar's job to regulate content. When content is illegal it's actually the host's job -- or, if necessary, the police's job -- to remove it. Allowing registrars to regulate content is dangerous and ultimately undesirable.

Tell that to GoDaddy. They'll take your domain if they don't like your politics.

Re:it took me a while to figure this one out

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN allowed the ability to create arbitrary TLDs for enough cash. This is not an exception, it's normal business now. We will probably see .pepsi soon.

Can't work

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they finally understand that a .xxx tld _can't work_?

If it's optional for porn sites to use .xxx domains, it won't have any use - the people running porn sites want to make money so they won't use .xxx domains for their content exclusively, they will always have a backup domain outside of .xxx. They know very well that .xxx could be easily blocked in corporate networks or even at ISP level (= less possible customers = less money), so they will make damn sure not to rely on .xxx domains.

If you wanted to force porn sites into .xxx, you'd have to do it internationally, and you'd have to come up with international definition for "porn" - what would have to go into .xxx, and what could stay outside. Who could come up with a definition that satisfies the most liberal and the most conservative contries at the same time? Who would make sure that no porn sites escape? What would happen to non-.xxx domains that host porn? What would happen to normal sites that have a few nude pictures (like tabloid sites) - would they be removed from the internet like Apple removed non-conforming apps from the App Store?

Re:Can't work

[hedwards]

Sure it can, if the registrar makes good on its pledge to ban child porn from the TLD, that would likely be a significant draw to porn sites. Especially ones that are asking for people to pay. With $60 a year in registration fees, it's not going to make much difference off the bottom line of a decent site, but being able to say that you're free of unadvertised impropriety can easily add up to big sales. People that frequent those sites are often times concerned about things like kiddie pr0n and becoming a victim of ID theft. If the registrar manages to crack down on that more than the .com registrars do, then it's likely going to make much larger sums of money.

Re:Can't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it can, if the registrar makes good on its pledge to ban child porn from the TLD, that would likely be a significant draw to porn sites. Especially ones that are asking for people to pay. With $60 a year in registration fees, it's not going to make much difference off the bottom line of a decent site, but being able to say that you're free of unadvertised impropriety can easily add up to big sales. People that frequent those sites are often times concerned about things like kiddie pr0n and becoming a victim of ID theft. If the registrar manages to crack down on that more than the .com registrars do, then it's likely going to make much larger sums of money.

Really?? I have trouble believing that. How could a TLD possibly manage that, are they going to require records for every model, perform audits and comb through every site? No they'll do same thing google does to keep it off, wait till someone complains then review and remove.

And I really doubt it has much effect on customer base, if I don't want to see something then I turn it off. I as the viewer can't ever be certain of the model's age, but I can be certain they appear to be adults.

Re:Can't work

[Hatta]

It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to encourage legislators to pass laws that will allow them to fine or shut down websites they don't like.

Re:Can't work

[hedwards]

That's really bad argument you've got there. They don't have to comb through all those records to effect a ban. It's much less complicated than you make it sound. Law enforcement is more than willing to do that part of the job for them if they report something that doesn't smell right.

All you have to do is ensure that the person using the domain name is who they say they are and that they've got the proper licensing and insurance to run a business. It's not terribly complicated.

The reality is that sites that engage in child porn don't go through those steps. They don't register their business, they don't get insurance, they don't buy in their own name.

The reality is that the more prominent sites already police themselves out of necessity, verifying that they've already done that isn't really that hard.

Ultimately, the main reason why the .com and other TLDs have issues with it is that there's a huge number of domains and not the resources to do it. If you charge more and have a smaller number of sites, it gets significantly easier.

Re:Can't work

[O('_')O_Bush]

This is exactly right. It's the same reasoning why violent criminals don't bother to register their guns, and coke shipping rings swap license plates on their stolen cars.

If they were doing something illegally, going through legal channels to make their actions visible to authorities is incredibly stupid, even enough for wrongdoers to pick up on.

Re:Can't work

[Shazback]

Erm... I can see two problems with this.

First of all, which laws will apply? Say you host a website in Sudan (it's just an example, I don't know the specifics of Sudanese law, but in a Crapsack World...), registered to the Sudanese authorities (with appropriate bribing), and insured by a nice little front company (which has also done all the required palm-greasing). Now, you can "legally" take photos of 15 year-old girls in the nude, and distribute them in Sudan. Does this mean these images can be posted on CrapsackWorld.xxx? Or will the TLD require I only post images of 18+ year old women? On the other hand, Sudan has strong laws that ban intercourse of muslims with non-muslims. Can Sudan be sure that this type of content will not be available? Or will the TLD deem that it's an "unreasonable request" on Sudan's behalf, leading Sudan to block the entire "*.xxx" range?

Even before we start looking at the "criminals", the simple differences in laws between countries mean that it's almost certain the ".xxx" TLD will attract even more controversy and be criticized for "not holding up to promises" by every side in the debate : USA blaming for the profusion of "illegal underage porn", Sudan blaming for the profusion of "immoral interreligious porn", companies feeling that they're just being conned into paying an extra amount since they've got to retain the .com register to be available in the markets where ".xxx" is blanket-banned (like Australia??), and those that "think of the children" appalled that there is still so much smut outside of the .xxx TLD.

Now, where do criminal websites that offer "kiddie porn" usually operate from? The USA? Canada? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? Moldova? They work in countries where there is a lack of general public enforcement of laws, where it's easy to bribe officials or falsify documents, and they can "easily" dissappear. So what is the ".xxx" TLD registar going to do when he recieves the first bunch of documents from Moldova that "appear" legitimate? Authorise them? Refuse them? And when they've been shown to be 30% fakes, are they going to implement a new kind of detective/investigative process to find out with each application if it's legitimate? Refuse the lot and tell them to get similar documents from Russian officials? It'll just be a case of these criminals moving around a little to find the right hands to grease (and if they're into human trafficking, they probably already know enough about that), falsifying a couple of documents, and then waiting for the take-down letter to move to the next domain name they've registered.

Or do you think countries like Congo that just cannot guarantee a minimum of protection against corruption and fraud shouldn't have the right to have companies register .xxx names? In that case, where will these companies go? Vanish? I doubt it. So they'll just host on a .com, a .org, a .net, and so forth, meaning the people who wanted the .xxx TLD will have reason to complain, and websites that did migrate to .xxx will be at a competitive disadvantage.

There are other issues, like free speech and expression (should 4chan move to a .xxx name? should a BBS with discussions of sexual topics be moved to a .xxx?), but even on the point of "it'll stop criminals which is good", I find you're over-optimistic as to how difficult it can be to forge and corrupt officials from some of the poorer and less structured of the 200-odd countries in the world.

Re:Can't work

[wvmarle]

Assuming the current .com registrars will carry the .xxx domain just like they do the .com/.org/etc domains already, I don't expect them to treat the domain much different.

Is xxx trademarked?

[divisionbyzero]

If not, someone should get on that...

Re:Is xxx trademarked?

[Anonymous Coward]

xXx = mediocre movie
Tres Equis = 1970s beer

And Chinese Internationalized Domain Names

[eldavojohn]

More importantly (at least according to Ars Technica) is that ICANN approved Chinese internationalized domain names in this same update notification. What's the big deal with the XXX domain? Okay so now I know that the porn site I'm going to is actually a porn site ... big deal. Ain't going to help filters all that much anyway unless it's required which would be really stupid and shortsighted. I think the changes for a billion Chinese speakers is bigger news.

Re:And Chinese Internationalized Domain Names

[Dylan16807]

It's just translated TLDs as far as I can tell. Domain names can already be in Chinese; that's the important part. I think a controversial-content TLD is more news than that.

Terrible idea

[TuballoyThunder]

I think the concept behind the .xxx domain has the potential of leading the internet down a dangerous path. If the other TLD's are forced by their governing entity, e.g. the US government for the .com TLD, to prohibit pornographic content, the precedent will be set to segregate and regulate content.

Re:Terrible idea

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I have to admit to mixed feelings about this. There's an obvious danger of censorship, and I don't want to see anything on the internet, porn or anything else, pushed into a walled garden. But I'm old enough to remember when .org and .net actually meant something, and I'd actually like to see much stricter standards applied to who can register for those. The precedent is already set; it just hasn't been followed for years. It's a dilemma.

Re:Terrible idea

[misexistentialist]

How much value is there to you in that it is slashdot.org rather than slashdot.com? Stricter standards just adds a layer of bureaucracy at best and the potential for losing all porn (!!!) at worst.

What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Aboroth]

Register yourname.xxx as your personal homepage, and give it out to all of your friends and coworkers! When they ask, "Umm, is this...", respond with, "You'll just have to go find out, now won't you?", and follow with a wink and a wry smile. Of course, you always could, you know, if you wanted...

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[maxwell demon]

Just wait for facebook.xxx :-)

Although, I guess faces isn't exactly what .xxx visitors want to see ...

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Aboroth]

It depends on what is on the faces.

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[hedwards]

That's an excellent way of getting sued for sexual harassment. Even if there isn't any porn on there, I suspect you could still find yourself sued or fired.

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooooooooooooosh!

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Vin Diesel Or Ice Cube? Surely they could make a .XXX website without fear of legal retribution.

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you jack off on their face? Is it any problem in future? Please give me answers!

Re:What a great opportunity to creep everyone out!

[Abstrackt]

As they say in the industry: it's a business doing pleasure with you.

Re:I didn't know...

[Sebilrazen]

no, it's Ice Cube that's the popular one.

why do people think this is a bad idea?

[circletimessquare]

i'm not talking about the religious nuts, i understand their point of view: they think a .xxx domain makes porn legitimate. as if not having a .xxx domain means POOF, all porn disappears. porn is a part of society, and some can argue it actually serves a valid purpose (harmless release of sexual frustrations). get used to it, (hypocritical) social conservatives, you have a better chance fighting the rising and falling of the tides. its not going away, ever

but i'm talking about the porn purveyors: why are they fighting this? it's not a ghettoization, its a domain. yes, it makes it easy to censor sexual content. and what's wrong with that? if i have some kids in my house, and i want to black hole all .xxx domains, i should be able to do that. if a nation wants to blackhole all .xxx domains at a national level meanwhile: ok, this nation is retarded. as if not having .xxx means they won't engage in idiotic censorship? you make it easier for them? do you see iran and china quaking in their boots because censorship is hard? get real: a committed censoring asshole is a committed censoring asshole, the issue of easy or hard to censor is an issue for people who want to block the domain for legitimate purposes (kids in the house), not an issue for those who will censor no matter what

and finally, there's the red herring of sexual content that shouldn't be grouped with porn, like sexual health. well if its sexual health, like how to put on a condom, its sexual health, end of discussion. its not pornography. yes, some assholes will try to group sexual health issues with porn. the existence of such assholes does not mean sexual health issues deserve to be with porn, just that there exists assholes in this world with harmful ideas about sexual health that you need to fight, and the existence or lack of existence of an .xxx domain does not change their existence or the need to fight them. in fact, let them make fools of themselves by trying to group sexual health topics with porn, and reveal to the thinking rational world what ignorant assholes they really are, bring their idiocy to the forefront

the REAL point is that pornography is not some GOTCHA that tries to sneak up on innocent teenagers and corrupt their souls, this is social conservative bullshit (and fails to understand human nature). clearly defining and delineating pornographic content simply underlines the most important point here: pornography is something that people choose to consume, and if some hypocritical social conservative asshole doesn't like that fact, or is ashamed of that fact, then don't click on an .xxx domain, end of story!

because no one is trying to trick you into recognizing that you have sexual urges

fly the new .xxx flag loud and proud. its simply a healthy recognition of the fact that we are sexual beings, and we are happy and comfortable making a space for this material on our internet. LACK OF recognition of the validity of porn is the REAL problem, lack of an .xxx domain is an act of misplaced shame, and that's the real motivation behind ignoring the issue, and denying porn its own domain

giving porn its own domain is sex positive, and good for society. really. every rational, self-aware human should celebrate this

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Aboroth]

Here are some points in reply:

-It is stupid to expect all porn to go to ".xxx".
-Therefore it doesn't make it easier to filter porn, it means your filters have to have one extra line for "block *.xxx". Technically, it is a little more work to block porn now than it was before.
-Who defines porn, anyway? What is it, exactly?
-The only reason it exists is to print money, and everyone is jealous that they can't do that

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[jedidiah]

> -It is stupid to expect all porn to go to ".xxx".

Why should pornographers want to hide themselves? Really.

They should want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to find them and there non-customers to avoid them.

It serves both their capitalistic needs and their political interests.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[mustafap]

I agree. After all, these guys will be setting the Evil Bit, so it will be easier to filter them out!

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[maxwell demon]

> -It is stupid to expect all porn to go to ".xxx".

Why should pornographers want to hide themselves? Really.

It's not about pornographers hiding themselves. Actually many pornographers will set up an .xxx domain as alternative to their existing .com domain. What they will not do is to give up their existing .com domain, which their customers know, which are likely linked from somewhere, and which are not so easy to filter.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[selven]

The porn purveyors will have to keep their .com domains anyway to get around people filtering .xxx and because everyone already knows about their .com domain. Because of this, the .xxx is simply redundant.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[noidentity]

Just wanted to let you know that your lack of capitalized sentences was what made me decide to pass on reading your post. The capital letter helps me keep my place while reading, and more easily parse the high-level structure (letters, words, sentences, paragraphs). I'm curious as to the advantages you get by not capitalizing sentences.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

"i'm talking about the porn purveyors: why are they fighting this? "

Because they've read some of the fine print on the proposal. ICM isn't going to be just a registrar; they want to be your new business partner, with authority to tell you how to run your business, and shut you off (i.e. revoke your domain name) if you don't play by their rules.

As a casual porn consumer, I'm more than a little concerned about what my local ISP will do when the fundies who run things around here start demanding that the ISP stop carrying .XXX. Will they block it? Or just charge extra for it (like the cable company does for Cinemax and the Playboy channel)?

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Aboroth]

How does having a .xxx domain suffix make it easier to find the site? .xxx doesn't give the site special powers. Does having .org as the domain suffix make it easier for a charity to be found? Does .edu make it easier for a school to be found? Obviously, no. Either way you have to know the whole domain name, not just the suffix, and type it in your address bar or have it indexed by a search engine or something else.
I'm just not buying that there is any economic incentive to the porn industry for having this.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[mjwalshe]

"fly the new .xxx flag loud and proud."

the trouble is the "Loonies" Tm Max Msley will be trying to force all content they considder imoral onto the xxx domain - the trouble wil come when they try to force Murdoch to move the Sun's website as it has topless photos in it.

Its like how walmart censors CD's by the back door.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Jesus_666]

Why should pornographers want to hide themselves?

That's exactly why .xxx is a bad idea. New sites don't have anything to lose but existing ones rely on customers knowing their domain name. The domain name is part of their brand and abandoning the existing name in favor of a .xxx one would be the equivalent of hiding from their customers.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[misexistentialist]

As you admit the only use of the xxx domain is for censorship (for the children of course). If "we are sexual beings" why does porn only get one domain? How about instead a .kid domain for the sexually undeveloped?

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[raddan]

I don't usually agree with you, but in this case, spot-on. .xxx makes porn:

• easy to filter, for people who don't want it
• easy to find, for people who do

I'm all for a legislative mandate that says porn producers must use .xxx. An 80% solution is better than a 0% solution.

The interesting thing will be whether you will be required to be porn-associated in order to get a domain. I would definitely get a [myname].xxx!

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you've never heard of the Google site: operator, have you?

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

> -It is stupid to expect all porn to go to ".xxx".

Why should pornographers want to hide themselves? Really.

They should want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to find them and there non-customers to avoid them.

a) china is going to block the entire .xxx TLD for sure and likely islamic government run countries. that is LOT of lost customers.
b) there is no such thing is bad publicity.
c) [bitchy] wives would call the ISP for the opt-out program leading to many angry men
d) there would be ISPs that require an "embarrassing" opt-in program

you are be stupid. :)

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[_Sprocket_]

Why should pornographers want to hide themselves? Really.

They should want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to find them and there non-customers to avoid them.

Because there is a portion of non-customers who also want all their customers to be unable to find them as well.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for a legislative mandate that says porn producers must use .xxx. An 80% solution is better than a 0% solution.

Enjoy watching the entire internet end in .xxx

slashdot.xxx, due to trolls posting GNAA and shit-eating posts.
cnn.xxx due to political beliefs
foxnews.xxx due to political beliefs
etc etc etc

It already happens with block lists: every time someone leaks a country's "secret" block list there are all sorts of non-pornographic sites on there that are clearly there due to either incompetence or political malice. There's no fallacy when every nation in the world that attempts to manage internet porn ends up at the bottom of the slippery slope.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[whathappenedtomonday]

See rfc3675:

"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."

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[_Sprocket_]

if a nation wants to blackhole all .xxx domains at a national level meanwhile: ok, this nation is retarded. as if not having .xxx means they won't engage in idiotic censorship? you make it easier for them? do you see iran and china quaking in their boots because censorship is hard? get real: a committed censoring asshole is a committed censoring asshole, the issue of easy or hard to censor is an issue for people who want to block the domain for legitimate purposes (kids in the house), not an issue for those who will censor no matter what

Iran and China are not completely effective in their efforts. The problem they face is that the rest of the world does not share their outlook and, therefore, the mechanisms are not in place to help them achieve their goals. Start sorting out content for them and their jobs get much easier. But this isn't just about Iran or China. This is about every nation that has a population who's moral imperative would also like to pigeonhole content they find offensive so that they can then apply pressure to censor it. Use the Government to make content easy to identify (and believe me - having been part of a very large organization's censorship attempts, sexual content is difficult to identify in advance). And then once that is done, you begin to apply local government and private pressure to apply "community standards" to make that content disappear from many ISPs. As much as you would like to couch this as an issue of individual choice, the fact is that censorship of sexual content has long been driven by small groups deciding for everyone. The Internet has been a thorn in those people's sides as it has driven that decission down to the individual level where it should continue to remain.

and finally, there's the red herring of sexual content that shouldn't be grouped with porn, like sexual health. well if its sexual health, like how to put on a condom, its sexual health, end of discussion. its not pornography. yes, some assholes will try to group sexual health issues with porn. the existence of such assholes does not mean sexual health issues deserve to be with porn, just that there exists assholes in this world with harmful ideas about sexual health that you need to fight, and the existence or lack of existence of an .xxx domain does not change their existence or the need to fight them. in fact, let them make fools of themselves by trying to group sexual health topics with porn, and reveal to the thinking rational world what ignorant assholes they really are, bring their idiocy to the forefront

And yet, there are plenty of assholes and fools that will mix sexual health and education with porn. They will use the same community standards to squelch it all. They do this in the clear light of day as they are not ashamed of it; wearing these acts as badges of honor for their beliefs. This is no red herring. It is reality.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[visualight]

Fuck that. The more unorganized and uncontrollable the internet is the better. This is a money grab by the registrars and nothing good will come of it for anyone else.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[visualight]

Only I can decide what is porn and what is not porn.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

$60 vs $10

Simply mathematics really. If I was an amateur producer of free porn, that extra $50 is not going on the domain name. Hell no.

In other words, this is simply a money grab by the registers. If it wasn't a money grab, the price should be the same as for the dot coms. Heck, even better would be, by a dot com, and receive a dot xxx for the same name half price (i.e. $5), so long as the dot xxx was the primary domain. That would almost encourage porn producers to buy up and use the dot xxx. Yet, they aren't going to do stuff like that are they.
Because it's about the money.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Make porn sites with .xxx
2 - Make law requiring all porn sites to be .xxx
3 - Define nonporn sites as porn and force migration to .xxx. (I'll know it when I see it! That's not art!)
4 - Ban .xxx for having "disgusting" and "unwholesome" pornography (THAT'S ALL OF IT)
5 - High five with China.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a site with mixed content?

For instance, a blog which comments on politics, but occasionally does a "porn post"?

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's a bad idea. And yes, I think porn sites should be strongly encouraged to live a hassle-free existence in .xxx land.

This sort of segregation is a reasonable truce. It allows prostitution to exist in certain places, producers to make porn that is clearly labeled, and music and games to thrive as long as their "explicit" character is made obvious.

Freedom of expression doesn't include the right to express yourself wherever you damn please. I like porn. It's fun to beat off to it. But I respect society's disinclination to watch my prick-filled fist flip, flop, and fly.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only I can decide what is porn and what is not porn.

The accepted definition of porn is content whose goal is solely to stimulate sexual arousal. You can wank to a Sears catalog if you want, but it`s not porn.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[LBt1st]

Maybe so but what about people running non-porn sites who are then told by someone with a different opinion that their site is porn and required to pay various fees or face prosecution. What if that happened to be Your site? Your child's site?
This opens the door to a whole bunch of BS.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too subtle for you?

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could be mistaken, but when searching google, isn't there a way to specify that it return only results with a specific TLD?

Of course, you'll still be tasked with trying to wade through the 99.98% of those domain names that are spam sites.

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only I can decide what is porn and what is not porn.

Really? Me too!

Re:why do people think this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

-Therefore it doesn't make it easier to filter porn, it means your filters have to have one extra line for "block *.xxx". Technically, it is a little more work to block porn now than it was before.

Actually, you'd only need a single line for all the xxx, so once you have more than one xxx domain that isn't a copy of a regular domain, it is technically a net win with regard to filter complexity.

Think of the children

[RobinEggs]

Lawley says he expects to make $30m (£20m) a year in revenue by selling each .xxx site for $60, and pledges to donate $10 from each sale to child protection initiatives.

If he actually gives $6 million per year to child protection causes the universe will implode out of shock and amazement.

Also on children, are they supposing children will never stumble into a .xxx domain (or that .xxx can be blocked altogether), so now they're safe from porn? Because I'm sure that .xxx porn sites will never use pop-up loops or deceptive ads or auto-dialing trojans the way many .com porn sites have done forever. The new .xxx porn industry will be squeaky clean, with our children's welfare at heart!

Not to mention the whole thing won't have any damn effect unless you simultaneously force current .com, .net, and .org porn sites to re-register in .xxx and drop their old domains, which will not happen.

Furthermore, for the whole notion of giving adults an easy, consolidated place to access porn, let me give ICANN a big hint: whether it's porn, cracks, bomb making instructions, or whatever, the most obvious place to look for anything even vaguely taboo is always the one most flooded with scams, viruses, top lists, etc. which make the obvious places by far the most worthless places to look. I predict that absolutely all worthwhile porn will remain on .com sites for quite some time, and that .com sites will simply register the same domain registered under .xxx and redirect people back into the .com site.

Re:Think of the children

[O('_')O_Bush]

I don't think they care much about children accessing adult porn, so much as they are of adults accessing child porn.

I mean, all they've done before to fix the previous scenario is require a 1 click through disclaimer in tiny print.

Wget syntax?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the correct syntax for wget to retrieve an entire TLD?

wget -r *.xxx isn't working.

Re:Wget syntax?

[colinrichardday]

The shell is swallowing the *.

Try wget -r "*.xxx"

Re:Wget syntax?

[maxwell demon]

Unless you actually have a file ending in .xxx, the shell will not swallow the *.
See the following (copy/pasted from a real bash session):

$ echo *.xxx
*.xxx
$ touch foo.xxx
$ echo *.xxx
foo.xxx
$ rm foo.xxx
$ echo *.xxx
*.xxx
$

Re:Wget syntax?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first domain registered will be goatse.xxx.

Re:Wget syntax?

[PrecambrianRabbit]

The OP clearly conveniently named all his porn files with the suffix .xxx, so the * was getting expanded. :-D

Re:Wget syntax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. I thought the swallowing was intentional.

Re:Wget syntax?

[Anonymous Coward]

His fault then, for not having at least one per domain...

Re:Wget syntax?

[lewko]

Sweet. Only 23424123465123460897987123487990712349870 hours remaining.

Re:Wget syntax?

[Anonymous Coward]

shell swallow what?

ICANN approves a snuffix?

[stkris]

Wouldn't this snuffix soon be included in the firewall blocklists of corporations and not-so-open-minded states? And that would be bad for the xxx business so the sites would have to keep/create .com sites too.

Re:ICANN approves a snuffix?

[maxwell demon]

Even without the filtering, giving up an well-established domain name isn't something you'd do without need. You'd break all links to it, all bookmarks to it, and people who know the old URL might miss the information about the new one.

sexuality is censored

[circletimessquare]

"It is only in the US that xxx is equivalent to porn. In other languages, xxx means crossed over or censored"

so in countries besides the usa sexuality isn't the biggest target for censorship?

and i said "in countries besides the usa" not "my own special subset of liberal european countries i use to ridicule the usa's policies, rather than the full set of countries in the world, revealing that the usa is actually moderate or left of center on most issues, and even more left leaning on some free speech issues than supposedly liberal european countries"

Re:sexuality is censored

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, xxx means kisses, and often you end notes/letters/emails with such a sequence to a close person. Well, I guess in a way that makes the domain name appropriate.

$60 a year of which $10 to non-profit

[Ziekheid]

"Each domain registration will cost $60 a year, with $10 going to a nonprofit organization promoting “responsible business practices” for the industry." Beside this being overly expensive for a domain name the fact that they donate $10 per domain to a nonprofit organisation is just wrong. Who are they to decide for us that this should be done? Aren't they supposed to be some sort of objective organisation when it comes to this?

Re:$60 a year of which $10 to non-profit

[RobinEggs]

the fact that they donate $10 per domain to a nonprofit organisation is just wrong...Who are they to decide for us that this should be done?

They're not deciding anything "for us". They're making a public decision to donate some of their profit, purely private money, to a certain cause. You make it sound like they're breaking into your house, stealing your piggy bank, and sending it to UNICEF. If you don't agree with mandatory "donations" to charities (eg: your employer appointing a designated United Way coordinator who literally harasses you at work to donate money) I hear you and agree with you, but that is not what's happening here.

Re:$60 a year of which $10 to non-profit

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like they're breaking into your house, stealing your piggy bank, and sending it to UNICEF.

That's exactly what they are doing. Obviously, their price is 50 bucks, a very round and "favorite" figure. The extra 10 bucks is imposed on everyone interested in buying a triple X domain. Donation is indeed forced. Should you disagree with the donation or anything about the beneficiary of the donation, you cannot opt out, you don't have a choice. That's not a donation, that's tax.

Instead of spending so much money on "child protection" (it ain't), maybe they should spend more on psychological research and treatment of why sex is so damn scary to some people, especially in certain countries, then educating people that sex is no big deal. There are countries where sex is not treated like a big deal, and I don't think they have legions of children turned adults scarred for life.

Maybe they should force the religious nuts to explain in a PLAUSIBLE way why pornography is wrong. Which they can't! They just keep repeating "it's bad, it's wrong, it's immoral," they never come around to specifying WHY. They can't, they just pulled that notion out of their ass.

Not being American, I often have fits of laughter when I see Americans using the words "safe" and "unsafe." Like what, the content is going to leap out of the screen and maul you? Or the person (child or not) is going to turn crazy and deranged right there on the spot because of some fucking image, like looking at Gomorra and turning into a lump of salt? Also laughable is the use of the word "adult." Give me a fucking break, I still enjoy porn occasionally, but I certainly was a LOT more interested in porn (and drugs, for that matter) when I was 13 years old and fapping every day. Children are CURIOUS. Once you learn all about something, a lot of the appeal just goes away. Maybe not all of it, but a lot of it does. I am actually saying that sex is just as interesting to children as it is to adults (since we never quite exhaust the subject in our lifetime). That whole "child protection" bullshit could only come from the country where a kindergarten kid can be SUED for pecking a classmate on the cheek (Google it yourself). A country that is terrified of sex, but is not afraid of building a pile of nukes and invading countries left or right to say "Fuck, Yeah!" A country that idolizes violence, otherness and contempt to the most obscene levels.

What children need is less mystery surrounding sex, and perhaps a little more supervision often times. Not hiding it. Hiding is stupid. History has proven that many times, you should only hide from people stuff that you really want to encourage.

Wonderful!

[chucklebutte]

So youporn.com will be the next ebay or next huge social networking site since .com wont be porn anymore? What will we do with all our porn .coms now? since they will roll over to .xxx?

I am so buying whitehouse.com!!!

Yet another TLD

[nurb432]

*yawn*

There are too many now, adding even more just dilutes things further and makes it harder for the consumer.

Re:Yet another TLD

[Alwin Henseler]

There are too many now, adding even more just dilutes things further and makes it harder for the consumer.

On the contrary: essentially the domain part of URL's is just a namespace, a 'random' string of Unicode characters. With the TLD part of that namespace having just a 'few' fixed values, that is: using just a small part of all possible codes.

More TLD's means that on average, that namespace is better utilized. So that on average, shorter domain names can be used to select a specific domain (the extreme being to do away with the concept of TLD's, and allow registration of any domain name). And .xxx would (in general) make it easier to predict the nature of a site's contents, before actually hitting it. Technical limitations aside, that's a win-win from user's point of view.

Re:Yet another TLD

[Aboroth]

Nobody is going to type in a random character string and add .xxx to try to find porn. The idea that ".xxx" will make it easier to find porn is a fallacy. It will still need to be indexed and linked to just like current sites.

XXXX

[Fishbulb]

One month from now:
"But our site is so hot it blows all those tame triple-x sites out of the water! We need .xxxx! Hell yeah!"

good points, except for one:

[circletimessquare]

"Who defines porn, anyway? What is it, exactly?"

this is an age old logical fallacy i'm sick of: "because grey areas exist, we can't say black isn't white"

porn exists, and is real. because there are grey areas doesn't mean we can't characterize something as porn

an analogy: abortion

at some point, its a just blob a woman is purging. at another point it is a human being you are murdering. ignoring for the moment the existence of the complete idiots who believe that when a sperm meets an egg you have a human life, or the complete idiots who think murdering a newborn is just late term abortion, there is a simple question for you: when exactly does a blob become a life?

of course, the ultimate answer is a complete grey area, and will always remain a grey area, forever. it is a completely subjective issue. and yet it requires definition, and is very important to define

that doesn't mean we should make early abortions illegal or make murdering newborns legal. what it means is that life is complicated, there are grey areas, and simply because grey areas exist and are complicated, you are not excused from making tough choices

so yes, there are grey areas: pornography or not? but just because that grey area exists, you are not allowed to chicken out and say "because there are grey areas, i will not take a stand and talk about what is pornography and what isn't." caging your cowardice in philosophical bloviating does not change the fact you are a coward

excusing yourself from the debate just makes you a cowardly asshole, standing on the sidelines does not mean you are morally superior. its just a cop out. take a fucking stand, whether on pornography, euthanasia, religious fundamentalism, free speech, abortion, etc.: grow a backbone, don't run and hide, and take a fucking stand on grey areas in this world

Re:good points, except for one:

[Eevee]

this is an age old logical fallacy i'm sick of: "because grey areas exist, we can't say black isn't white"

Likewise, we can't say that "because there is black and white, we can't say something is grey." And, no matter how you slice it, a top-level domain is black and white. You can't have a web address that's 46% .com and 54% .xxx; you have to call it one way or the other. The problem is, no two groups will call all web sites the same. I might consider a site on preventing the spread of STDs to be non-porn, others would argue it is.

Re:good points, except for one:

[Aboroth]

Thanks for bringing the discussion down to youtube comments level, you childish cunt.
Drawing abortion is just retarded.
You seem to have a habit of only seeing things in black and white, and forcing everything into a false dichotomy. You are also the kind of person who probably thinks that there is only one correct way to think, which conveniently happens to be the way that you do

Is furnitureporn.com actually porn? Some people actually might get off on that. What about burka fetishists? Those people actually exist. These people get off on completely covered women. It is porn to them.

excusing yourself from the debate just makes you a cowardly asshole, standing on the sidelines does not mean you are morally superior. its just a cop out. take a fucking stand, whether on pornography, euthanasia, religious fundamentalism, free speech, abortion, etc.: grow a backbone, don't run and hide, and take a fucking stand on grey areas in this world

You are funny. How am I excusing myself from debate? What exactly am I avoiding to take a stand on? From where I see it, I'm standing for free speech, and against assholes like you.
Thank you, thank you very much for putting words into my mouth, and assuming so much about me. It lets me know that you are a simple minded, juvenile buffoon, and I would do well to ignore you in the future.

Re:good points, except for one:

[IndustrialComplex]

that doesn't mean we should make early abortions illegal or make murdering newborns legal. what it means is that life is complicated, there are grey areas, and simply because grey areas exist and are complicated, you are not excused from making tough choices

And it apparently doesn't exempt you from declaring J and P as the boundaries and declaring anyone who says A-I or Q-Z is an idiot. Logical fallacies don't apply to politics, since the discussion is hardly rational or logical.

But again, it's easy to say that grey exists and that's not a problem when you get to arbitrarily decide how narrow grey is. (also convenient when the point you wish to push is right in the middle that you say we have to choose.)

well its not online yet

[digitalsushi]

just ran a quick dig in the terminal on my mac... captured the results with wireshark and put the evidence on cloudshark.org:

.com working

.xxx not working

To be fair...

[arielCo]

Pornography/erotica is a genre. So are Action, Romance, Documentary, etc. Is there a similar push to create the likes of .action, .docu, and .love ?

And of course, the argument that certain content is especially sensitive hasn't been wielded to lobby for creating .hate, .religion or .violence

Re:To be fair...

[maxwell demon]

You forgot the most important TLD: .evil
Probably one of the requirements of this domain is that any servers set the evil bit.

Re:To be fair...

[morari]

Actually, I think it'd be a lot more useful to create a .kids domain and give people the walled garden they want.

Heck, I wouldn't be opposed to having a .christ domain either, that way I can filter it out through my firewall and never have to worry about accidentally stumbling upon it!

Re:To be fair...

[RobinEggs]

Actually, I think it'd be a lot more useful to create a .kids domain and give people the walled garden they want. Heck, I wouldn't be opposed to having a .christ domain either, that way I can filter it out through my firewall and never have to worry about accidentally stumbling upon it!

I'm not authoritative here, but I don't think walled gardens have done society much good where they've been tried. They certainly don't look very successful in China, North Korea, Utah, or anywhere else they've been seriously attempted.

I couldn't tell, really, if you approved of the whole idea, were joking about your Jesus-free garden, or anything, but I thought it was worth making a serious reply in any case. Shutting yourself off rarely helps.

phantomfive was close, you weren't

[Mathinker]

See this explanation. phantomfive (GP) was almost correct, except that the movie rating system didn't have any rating more obscene than "X", porn movie advertisers/marketers invented the "XXX" as even more shocking than "X". And because of the "misuse" of X, the MPAA has moved to calling it "NC-17" which is hard to twist into a marketing advantage.

Of course, there's always...

[allcaps]

There's always a way around domain name filters. http://1113982824/

Re:Of course, there's always...

[Jesus_666]

Did Slashdot swallow the dots of an IPv4 address or do you use an alternative DNS root with the TLD "1113982824"?

Re:Of course, there's always...

[tokul]

There's always a way around domain name filters.

You can't use IP address, if website is name based virtual host.

I don't see the problem

[AnonymousClown]

Companies will need to protect their names and if someone starts a .xxx site with an other companies website, it would damage their reputation. I don't think the general public is capable of understanding that Slashdot.org and Slashdot.xxx are really two different entities. Or BP.com and BP.xxx or etc....

OTH, folks do seem to know that Whitehouse.com and Whitehouse.gov are two different entities. Would they with a business or other entity?

thank you for saying in 20 words

[circletimessquare]

what took me 200

please someone mod parent up

Not just for porn

[lalena]

businesses that wanted to prevent their names from being hijacked. Mr. Lawley said businesses could ensure that their names were not misused in the dot-xxx world by paying a one-time fee, to be set from $50 to $250.

Sounds like trying to extort money from honest businesses. Forcing Amazon to spend money for Amazon.xxx

Re:Not just for porn

[Phrogman]

The whole thing is about ICANN making more money, nothing else whatsoever. ICANN is a means to extort money from legitimate businesses and organizations who wish to protect their image. Each new TLD ensures that, and generates more revenue. Since the Registrars control ICANN more or less, its just a cartel making more money for its members.

and makes it harder for the consumer

[XanC]

That's what she said!

The only way it works

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have to ban porn sites from the .com suffix. That obviously opens the can of worms about internet censorship and constitutes pornographic. The joke is if you are a radical Muslim virtually everything is porn including Christianity. Part of the world is against anything sexual and other parts don't see the issue. The other part of which the US is a part can't make up it's mind. I don't think the grey area is as large as most claim it is and most have a clear idea of what would fall under porn sites. It's the conservatives that tend to think anything that shows too much neck or ankle is pornographic. It's too bad the porn operators wouldn't agree to shift everything to the .XXX suffix. I think being able to easily block the sites would take a lot of pressure off them. Yes they loose some business but they would also save a lot of trouble and expensive fighting the outright banning of it. If everyone agreed to play in their own sand boxes we'd have a lot more peace and general freedom. The conservatives don't have to be tempted by exposed ankles and everyone else that isn't insane can enjoy themselves and relax a bit.

One caveat

[AnonymousClown]

I agree entirely with everything you say. And I'm completely for the .xxx domain.

The thing that's coming up in my cynical fuzzy little brain is that it could be a pressure point by some groups to bully ISPs into banning the entire domain.

I'm imaging protests against AT&T by some religious groups wanting "their" local ISP to ban "indecent" material.

ISPs wanting to do what's "right" cave in and blocks everything from the .xxx domain and we're back to where we've started.

On the plus side, it'll make finding and blocking that material easier for individuals - at least for those sites that participate.

Re:One caveat

[Anonymous Coward]

No major ISP is going to block .xxx EVER. Porn is big business - bigger that pro baseball, basketball, AND football COMBINED. The big dogs in the industry are public corporations and the stockholders are also the stockholders of companies in other lines of business...like phone companies and ISPs. Stockholders don't care what the business does. They only care about money.

Usenet had it right...ish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. But the whole DNS system in general is just backwards and retarded in every way.

protocol://planet[optional].continentCode.countryCode.websiteType.websiteName.subDomainN/directories/
websiteType would take over the role of TLDs designed for countries, museum, info, biz, xxx, etc.
This just makes more sense.
Planet will be optional since we don't really have much of a consumer network in space yet, nor do we live on another planet.
In fact, you could probably even make continent and country optional if you knew for sure that your site was located in your country.
continentCode and countryCode can be set to a placeholder that describes a global-scale company. In that case, continent can be ommited (for example below, assume "glb")
But i just placed that in there to show how it would expand to the future.
Examples:
http://glb.email.google/?usualRandomCrapHere
http://glb.search.google.images/?usualRandomCrapHere
http://glb.news.slashdot.tech/story/10/06/27/151241/ICANN-Approvesnobr-wbrnobrxxx-Suffix-For-Porn-Websites
http://uk.gov.number10/ (for those outside UK, http://www.number10.gov.uk/)
http://us.gov.change/, http://us.gov.whitehouse/
It just makes so much more sense.
And damn it, if people don't want to conform to the standards, just throw them all under a collective "everything goes" chunk of the system... http://goatse.herp.derp.herpderp.4chan/b/
Oh come on, how could i resist?

Right now, DNS isn't even endian when it comes to importance of the separate parts, domains can be more important, sub-domains could be more important, hell, directories could be the important part. It is an AWFUL mess.
I find it shocking that we have suffered this mess for such a long time.

Now there will never be a chance to fix this mess, nobody is going to want to take the responsibility of fixing it, and nobody will agree to it.
And Usenet is dying a slow, but very sure death.

Sex = 6 in Swedish

[Mathinker]

> "sex" are English words that have no meaning in other languages

Sex = 6 in Swedish. I thought this was hilarious when I found out --- OTOH, I was a bit tipsy at the time.

Re:Sex = 6 in Swedish

[lorg]

"sex" are English words that have no meaning in other languages

Sex = 6 in Swedish. I thought this was hilarious when I found out --- OTOH, I was a bit tipsy at the time.

To really make your day then ...

SEX (uk) = 6 (swe, number -- as in ... 4,5,6 ) = SEX (swe, same number as previous but now with letters, eqv of SIX (uk)) = SEX (swe, the act, same as the first in this line) = SEX (... as in gender (male/female) on ID cards, passports etc)

Same word, same spelling, same pronounciation, different meanings. Tricky langugage.

What is porn?

[OzPeter]

What is porn and who gets to decide what business should relocate to the xxx domain? Whose standards apply in something that is in an international arena?

And I can't wait for Four X beerto get into the porn market with a domain of xxxx.xxx (maybe the should sell some Seven X beer?)

Re:What is porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just use x.xxx.

Re:What is porn?

[Jesus_666]

Hey, "x.xxx" yould be a nice domain name.

Re:What is porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, how about registering the x.org in the .xxx tld as xxxxxxxx.xxx?

For those which don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the 32 bits IP addresse put in a decimal number ?

Re:For those which don't know

[mtxf]

Indeed, it is:

1113982824 -> 0x42660768

0x42 0x66 0x07 0x68
__66_.102_.__7_.104

104.7.102.66.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN PTR lax04s01-in-f104.1e100.net.

66.102.7.104

I did not know you could do this until just now, so thanks GP!

(Also slashdot's layout mangling is awful, so please excuse the underscores)

Balattant Value Grab

[ChinaLumberjack]

To protect their brand identity, porn sites already have no choice but to register the xxx domain. What's going on here is a $60 value-grab on the 40 million or so porn sites. That's $2.4 billion bonus revenue going to domain registrars.

the advantage i get

[circletimessquare]

is that it is usually brittle minds who can't deal with a little noise in their signal

by filtering people like you out of my life by poisoning the signal with a little noise, i get to deal with minds that are usually more flexible

saves you time, and saves me time, win win

Re:the advantage i get

[noidentity]

I figured you'd give me the elitist reply. You apparently never considered that sometimes people are just worn out, or their vision isn't great, and things like capital letters on sentences helps them read more easily. It's easier to just write me off as one of the sheeple who just can't deal with non-conformity, who just blindly believes that capitalized sentences are good and uncapitalized ones are bad. I'll have you know that for a long while I tried writing in a less-structured manner, shunning capitalized sentences, but at some point I saw the practical value they provided. I am glad I experimented with it, because I came to see the various structures as aiding in comprehension and visual parsing, rather than accepting them as things you just do because they're convention.

goatse.xxx

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever got the jump on goatse.xxx is going to make millions. The beauty is that it can't be taken away like .cx did.

do you buy cereal?

[circletimessquare]

is it easier for you if the supermarket scattered the cereal boxes all over the store?

or if they had one aisle labelled "cereal"?

it's a rather simple point that most people easily grasp: better categorization has all sorts of benefits for all sorts of reasons

Re:do you buy cereal?

[Aboroth]

Do you seriously think the internet is like a grocery isle? It doesn't have physical boundaries, or a section called "Porn" that you can tilt your head and see. You need to have a website or something that indexes them. At that point it doesn't matter if it has .xxx or .com in it.


You seriously have a horrible grasp of what the internet is and how it works.

Re:do you buy cereal?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're looking for a company online, do you say "OK, let me look through the list of .COM addresses.." No?

Domain names and web sites aren't cereal. You don't need to group them together in one space to make them "easier to find".

10 Years??

[gilgongo]

How the funk can it take 10 years to approve a new TLD? Was ICANN under the impression that if it approved it, the world would be flooded with pr0n, as if it's not flooded already and has been since pretty much the inception of the net as we know it? Only in America are organisations able to take themselves so incredibly seriously and be so incredibly prudish about it. Apple's another one: no nipples in the AppStore boys! Steve Jobs says they make you go blind (or is it just very thin?)

that's temporary

[circletimessquare]

there are plenty of situations in life where the transition process is painful, but the new status quo is far superior to the old

BWAHAHAHAHA

[circletimessquare]

"Thanks for bringing the discussion down to youtube comments level, you childish cunt."

hypocritical troll is obvious troll

ICANN & registrars are thieves

[winkydink]

ICANN has drifted far afield of its original mission and today exists to line the pockets of the domain registrars. Does ICANN really think that adult sites will abandon valuable .com domains and migrate to .xxx? No. ICANN thinks that people will rush to stake new claims in the .xxx space, either to their your existing brand or speculate on a future one.

Re:ICANN & registrars are thieves

[Aqualung812]

Oddly enough, ICANN resisted this for a long time, and was accused of being anti-porn. I even recall their opposition to this as part of the reason that the US needs ICANN taken away and given to the United Nations. If that is the choice, give them .xxx.

Nice work

[kokoko1]

I thinks .xxx is a good idea and porn sites should be force to move to it, and it would be easy to filter porn sites in schools using squid :)

right

[circletimessquare]

that's why we don't need .org or .gov or .mil or .us or .au or .uk or .edu etc...

in fact we don't have to categorize anything. we can just throw web pages out there randomly and let google take care of it

pfffffffft

Re:right

[Aboroth]

My mind hurts.

But, yeah, pretty much, those designations don't mean much of anything, and pretty much things are already not organized without search engines and indexes. Now you are learning!

With some exceptions, of course; for instance if a site has a .mil address, we know it is for the military. But the fact that it had a .mil address didn't make it easier to find. It is also a special case since normal civilians can't get a .mil address.

As for .org, .net, .com, etc., anyone can register them and there is no regulation whatsoever on what kind of sites they can be. In the end there is no real difference between them. Now we are just going to be adding .xxx to the list. It doesn't end up mattering at all.

Here's a serious question. Someone gets online, lotion in hand, and wants to find some porn. Not just any porn, but porn that is right for them, and really gets their juices flowing. Other than guessing, which you don't need a .xxx domain for, how do they find it, without using a search engine or another site that links to it? How does .xxx on the site name help at all in finding the site?

Re:right

[Anonymous Coward]

signed,
some guy posting on a completely bogus .org site.

Re:right

[ImprovOmega]

At the lower levels, nothing is categorized. Every website is gotten to by a 32-bit address and some other information in an IP packet header. DNS is designed to make this more palatable for humans. Search engines just add another layer of abstraction on top of this. In a sense, Google is the logical next step in DNS technology. So, while I realize you are attempting to be satirical, what you say is much closer to literal truth than satire.

A waste of everyone time.

[Tei]

The porn sites don't want it, the anti-porn sites don't want it. Is not usefull for the purpose of a root domain. It will only serve to suck money from some sites that will register yet another domain and not use it.

The ICANN is adding weigth on the idea to deprecate the ICANN.

Re:A waste of everyone time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it as analogous to zoning laws. You can have an adult book store, but just not in a residential neighborhood.

I don't see what all the gripage is about.

CAN WE PLEASE DUMP DNS NOW?

[Joe U]

Ok, it's 2010, DNS still stinks for the web, can we replace it with something more open and tell ICANN to take a flying leap?

Why are we still using DNS for the web? Seriously, can anyone come up with a good reason why we need host.domain.tld (or host.domain.country) to represent a web site?

Whitehouse.com - Whitehouse.xxx?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder. Will whitehouse.com now have to move to whitehouse.xxx?

It seems like the most common misleading domain out there for people who aren't bright enough to realize there's a .gov TLD.

Re:Whitehouse.com - Whitehouse.xxx?

[geminidomino]

Doubt it. It's a domain squatter site now.

I wonder

[thewils]

Who has Microsoft.xxx, or Vatican.xxx

This is nuts. What is porn anyway.

Not conservatism

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the jab at conservatism in the article, the idea that the US Federal gov has, or should be given, the power to force companies to switch TDLs fits into the nanny-state, planned society liberalism M.O.

So, like, fluffycutekittens.xxx ?

[axl917]

Someone should register that and put up an innocuous kitten pic, see what they do.

Re: Who defines porn

[witherstaff]

"Who defines porn, anyway? What is it, exactly?"

We're looking at this all wrong. This is a hidden stimulus package in disguise. Seriously, think of all the IT people who will have to be hired looking at porn sites to define them and mandate a .xxx domain. When will the job offers start being posted? Finally a use for my decades of experience.

Of course should google have books.google.xxx for any of its banned books? Speaking of books filled with sodomy, incest, and guides to oral sex, will there be a mandated bible.xxx?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

open up tlds

[sixsixtysix]

treally. we don't need an organization to regulate tlds. open them up wholesale. http://www.stuff.things/ or http://www.slash.dot./ open it up or gtfo.

Scarlet letters, ironically masturbatory exercise

[drumcat]

Enjoy. The entire TLD will be blocked shortly by most "family" ISPs.

Metadata

[Anonymous Coward]

Domain names are a ridiculously broad brush to use for informing people of content. If people are interested in doing something to allow web users to make informed decisions about what websites they visit, why not define some metadata that can go into the HTML to describe the content? If a site can trivially tag itself to say "I contain nude images" or "I contain information on drug use" or "I contain images of surgical operations" or "I contain coarse language" then browsers can filter content or give warnings based on that metadata. Filters could be made up by different organisations, such as the OFLC here in Australia or whatever authority does film/publication classification in yours or whatever church you subscribe to. Or you could build it up yourself.

No, this will not work 100% of the time (eg some sites won't bother, some sites could use it for bait "I have pr0n come and get it!"). It could be worth considering crowdsourcing to police of this.

Yes, it is difficult to cover lots of different cultures' attitudes.

I think the OFLC guidelines are a good place to start. They emphasise looking at the type of material, it's impact/explicitness, it's purpose, and, importantly, its context. For example, a film with a guy shooting another guy would get a stricter rating if the killer was motivated by selfish reasons and doesn't get punished for his actions. The same scene in a film where the killer goes to jail and repents would get a softer rating.

I wonder how many are thinking like me?

[Jane Q. Public]

... and wanting to register a .xxx domain name, but NOT use it for porn?

Just like all the 2-letter TLDs, eventually it will get watered down and there won't be much difference anyway.

Good

[daveime]

any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org

And how long does it take to do a rewrite rule in apache to redirect any request for domain.com/somepage to domain.xxx/somepage ?

The only concern is the damn domain squatters ... ICANN should give a 6 month grace period to the people holding the .com domain so they cannot be squatted on the .xxx domain. If after 6 months, they haven't registered, then the domain can be opened for anyone to grab.

Of course, they won't, because ICANN has always been about the money ... otherwise the whole domain squatting thing would never exist in the first place.

You and me both

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I thought this the same as you, but then I realized that these aren't actual domains but supplemental suggestive presumed profiles of the content to be hosted through that reservation. .COM, .NET, .ORG, .GOV...it's all redundant because all self-governing or quasi-governing organizations are in commerce to host a route to their network for commercial purposes. The entire registry scheme is bogus in that regard, and the country code scheme you and I would originally agree to is actually debased from any relevance because the nature of that directory system impedes the 1st-come 1st-serve independent registries.

I would prefer ICANN kicked-out so an independent Torrent-like replacement would replace what ICANN ever could accomplish. I always asked myself why any governing agency would require their ardent domain suffix when it has no logical purpose at the root servers. DNS is nothing more than a turring of a tiered DHCP server. We all should be able to type http://slashdot/ and we arrive here, and instead have domain prefixes that suggest the function of a server to reference like http://org.slashdot/index.html for organizational structure or http://com.slashdot/index.html for commercial pursuits: all determined by the owner of that Slashdot domain.

Obviously ICANN is the reason DNS sucks.

The xxx TLD is the best thing since CIDR!

[Anonymous Coward]

The xxx domain is a totally good idea. Even in real world bordellos and whore-houses are not scattered across the city at random. They are either supressed totally by the gov't or legislated into red-light quartiers. In more civilized places the entrances of walled red-light disctricts are guarded and those under-18 who try to enter get spanked for good, thus assuring the high morals of youth.

Whores working outside bordellos get cuffed by the police and whores working in bordellos receive regular, mandatory medical checkups to protect them and their fuckers from AIDS, gonorrhea, etc diseases.

Similarly mandating xxx domain use for web porn will keep minors out of harm's way and adult surfers will be protected from virus, trojan, etc. digital diseases as soon as law mandates enhanced safeguards for porn sites.

Since the global economic crisis, the masono-judeo-libertine media and business immorality is crumbling and christian modesty re-gains foothold. Thou shall not fornicate! Prostitution and orgy should not be in plain sight and in the mainstream media, it belongs in the .xxx ghetto, just like TV porn belongs in the post-23:00-24:00 time domain.

Parent is not insightful.

[AP31R0N]

Because it's an American tld (three letter domain). If it was .xx.uk you'd have a point. Argentinians don't have to use it if they don't like/understand it. Americans can use .xxx to host a children's book store. There's no hard correlation between TLD and content or location, aside from .gov, .mil and .edu (and the like). This is part of why TLD are a bad idea in general... they are meaningless and cause more problems than they solve.

+2 points for trying to impress the girl at the campus bookstore with your cultural thenthativity though.

Congress will force the change?

[Jason Levine]

"conservative members of the US Congress will lobby to make any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org"

And exactly how will these conservative members of Congress do this? Will they pass laws banning sexually explicit content from .com/.org? It's been tried and has failed in the courts. Besides, even if they were able to craft a law that would withstand the courts, how do you force SomePornSite.com, registered in Russia and hosted in Turkey from abiding by the US law? Also, as a side note, don't the conservative members of Congress usually argue against government intervention in private industry? (I know, they're against it except when they're for it, but I always think it is good to point out hypocrisy.)

this is irrational...

[VolciMaster]

What POSSIBLE use could a NON-sex site have for something like free-nude-girls.com? Adding the .xxx is one of those great-on-paper ideas. None of the .com/.org editions are going to disappear - there's no reason to. No one with a "clean" site would want to own supersex.com and then blog about pie recipes, would they?

$60 a year, $10 to non-profits

[Web Goddess]

QUOTE: "Donation is indeed forced... That's not a donation, that's tax."
- - -

RESPONSE: This "donation" is a cynical maneuver. The companies that install huge, bright LED billboards along I80 in California also donate money to children's charities. So... when the populace tried to ban these distracting eyesore billboards, there was a big outcry.

"But they are donating $$$ to childrens' charities, and if we don't let them put up those billboards, then childrens' charities will lose $$$!"

It's a very very manipulative tactic. And it works. Which makes me sick.