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ICANN Approves .XXX
lothos writes "Pornography will have its own top-level domain, dot-XXX, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided today." Ars Technica has a short but thoroughly-linked article tracing some of the long history (in Internet time) behind the push for .xxx. See also ICANN's announcement of the approval, and — for all the juicy details — the rationale behind the decision (PDF).
Countdown to criminalization of all non-.xxx porn.
This accomplishes only a few things that I can see: .xxx domain whenever a loud enough moral group insist that it should be categorised as dirty. .xxx and filter out "the bad stuff". .xxx domain in the eyes of moralisers and authority groups, regardless of whether the site is donkeyporn.xxx or just some site that was pushed to register under .xxx because it deals with mature topics.
1. Puts pressure on all sorts of sites to operate only under a
2. Falsely creates a sense of safety amongst idiots who think they can block
3. Creates a sense of unjustified expectation amongst a different set of idiots who immediately decide that just because ICANN has created this TLD, that any site they deem improper that operates outside the hierarchy is engaged in some terrible underhandedness for daring to do so, trying to expose innocent people to their content.
4. Instantly tars anyone who visits a site in
5. Creates artificial segregation along lines decided by minority moral bodies. I.e. sexual content has to be treated differently. We don't have a separate TLD for religion, or science - why must sex be so treated?
6. Make pot loads of money for ICANN and registrars everywhere.
I'll leave it to the reader to consider how that last consequence was balanced against the others...
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
And for one simple reason: if every porn site on the planet has the same domain, every ISP/college/corporation/consumer router who doesn't want their clients/students/employees/family members viewing this material will just block it. Heck, as soon as I get to work on Monday, I'm going to update our firewall and IPS settings. No sane operation trying to make money on pornography is going to touch this domain with a 10ft [stripper] pole.
I often wonder exactly what it was that drove people to wear clothes
Run around naked through the woods and you'll quickly discover clothing is quite usefull.
I especially recommend thornbushes for maximum educational value.
Even if you don't want to put on shorts or a shirt, atleast get something to protect the dangling bits.
Seriously though, I think a lot of it is down to status; clothing demonstrates wealth hence people want clothing.
These days everybody has clothing, so we created artificial status through expensive clothing brands, and those seem to be quite popular as well.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The problem is the next push will probably be to force porn sites to move to .xxx and institute general blocking measures.
Also what goes on .xxx, well if it regulated that 'pornographic' sites must be on .xxx and no where else then it will be anything that can be passed as porno from gangbangs to gay and lesbian forums, to sexual health advice.
That's actually a really good idea, until I stand up my fake TLD server and steal half the internet away from their usual .bank sites, around which they no longer do any sort of shoulder-checking when they enter security information.
"The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography."
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-5833764.html
One of many, I'm sure. The conservative arguments about porn have historically been contrary to common sense. When it comes to sex, giving kids access to condoms and vaccines against STDs is immoral, but teaching abstinence and watching the teen pregnancy rate soar is just fine. With porn, it's easier to deny that it exists (or place the burden of filtering upon ISPs, or grant the govt the power to snoop through your internet records to search for pedo material) than it is to simply allow them all to (voluntairly!) migrate to an easily filtered domain.
What's sad, virtually everyone else - ESPECIALLY THE INDUSTRY - wants this. Few people are *trying* to show that stuff to children. Only the producers of (highly ineffective) blocking software stands to lose here.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???