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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!
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.
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.
...it's coming.