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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.
I always had trouble finding porn on the internet before, what with there being so little of it out there. This will make it so much easier to find now! Thanks Internet!
I wouldn't be so sure. The porn sites, from what I've heard, want to be in a .xxx domain so that they can be blocked more easily. Why? Because that gives them protection against future bills like COPA that would be much more burdensome for them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a lot of porn sites will continue to maintain their .com or .net domains, but I'd imagine they will quickly be modified so that each page redirects you to the same page in the .xxx domain. It's easy enough to set up a web server to do that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Should have looked closer. The June 2010 was only a preliminary decision. Took That long for the debate to make a final decision.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
I'd really like to see ICANN create a TLD limited to banking sites and online stores the way .edu and .gov cannot be registered by any old scammer. I think that would do a lot in the way of preventing phishing. Few people understand the concept of security certificates and even fewer know why a self signed certificate is bad. ID theft and fraud seems to be a more important issue than preventing a 12 year old from seeing the human body due to a stigma based off 2000 year old mythology.
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'm not going for .xxx. I figure porn is a business so I'm using .com until they do it right and I can use .cum.
More like exploding heads in the opposition's mouth. Let's try to keep this discussion on-topic!
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.
Wait till someone registers $firstname$lastname.xxx .... of their least favorite politician. When they come along and say "hey you're domain squatting my name" you can make sure there is heaps of publicity about them wanting to register their .xxx domain.
this will have absolutely no unintended consequences and certainly wont be abused [/sarcasm]
...it's coming.
And the fq in fqdn!
"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???