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XXX Goes Live In the Root Servers
An anonymous reader writes that yesterday "IANA added the .XXX Top Level Domain to the root nameservers. While the registry operator Afilias is still in their setup process for ICM registry, the zone is currently propagating. While a number of registrars have already been taking pre-registrations, the actual timeline for the launch has not yet been published."
Yeah, I'm going to pay for a domain that will be blocked in 90% of the world...
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Except now we're going to see arguments that all adult sites should move to .xxx domains.
I hope that idea will be a straight up non-starter and stay that way.
Adult Role Playing Forum
No, ICANN finally approved it because all their criteria for a new tld had been met. There were some back door manuoverings to block the domain during the Bush Administration, specifically Karl Rove told the head of the Department of Communications (who oversee ICANN) not to add it the last time they were going to (the decision had been a "go" at ICANN, and they asked DoC to include it) as a favour to the Southern Baptist Conference who has specifically asked for it in exchange for delivering the south.
This of course isn't legal in that there were processes set up and this sort of thing was never accounted for.
Now, .xxx couldn't sue icann, their contractual obligations mandated they go through arbitration first. Cerf behaved very cagily and it went against him and the arbitration panel decided icann had to do what it said it would do.
And yes it goes back to 1996/97. Up until this year I made sure .xxx worked in every alternative root cluster; I was sorta there at the birth of .xxx
Note that about 10 years prior I also had alt.sex created.
This took all the porn off the rest of Usenet and put it in one place. Those that wanted to filter it did, those that want to find it, know where it is, and you never heard any more about dirty pictures elsewhere in Usenet. For the most part.
My favorite line I ever used during the DNS wars was when I got to tell the newly appointed director of DoC, who'd just been handed the the domain stuff to deal with: "Don't worry Becky, half of .com ISN'T porn". My guess is, in 10 years a porn site in .com is gonna seem really out of place.
It's nice to see this finally go through but they have a way to go to be profitable. 10 years at about a million a year adds up. But I'm sure they'll do fine.
Disclaimer: I have no interest or stake, financial or otherwise in .xxx (or any tld).
Need Mercedes parts ?
What is porn? Who gets to decide the answer to that question? Will all sites covering beach volleyball have to move to .xxx? What about a site which includes instructions for how to put on a condom? How about Victoria Secrets or Sports Illustrated? How about english tabloids which feature "Page 3"?
Let's imagine for a moment you said all those need not be forced onto .xxx, should Playboy be forced on and treated the same in this regard as donkeyrapingshiteaters.com (no idea or interest if that exists or would be legal in any juristiction, just don't complain to me if you go check and throw up)?
Should anyone wanting access to IPs which serve any content hosted on .xxx be forced to opt in and register themselves with their ISP? Should the ISP have to verify that any access to a .xxx site is by someone over an age determined by their local laws (and they are not on any lists banning them from such access)?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I can see the reason for the success of that movie:
"I paid to see a porno in a theater, but they screwed up the showing and I got a movie about Vin Diesel skiing and blowing up boats instead! So I paid again to see a later showing, thinking they fixed this problem, but they didn't. I thought that that theater was bad, but they did the same thing at every other theater I went to! Those morons!"
The porn industry could give a shit. Seven people own nearly half of .com names and a bunch of wanna ba .com kings have hands full of .com names. Enough of these guys felt threatened that they paid some no-account porn people to protest. They even paid a homeless guy in San Fransisco to protest. http://rs79.vrx.net/works/photoessays/2011/dot-xxx/
There's no real opposition in pornland. They don't give a shit. It's the guys with ".com portfolios" that were doing this to try to keep .com names valuable.
The whole point of tld expansion was to create new resources and to prevent regulation of extant resources; that is, life doesn't end at .com. Opposition with vested interests not withstanding.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Are we also going to force all COMpanies out of .org and .net? Really, the only "protected" domain that does what it was intended is .EDU, and there have been some that have been allowed that should really be .COM.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
As an industry insider I can tell you that this new domain is NOT going over terribly well. The only ones in favour are ICM (the ones taking the money for the new domains) and advertising agencies. The adult industry? Not so much.
At it most basic, it is seen as a money grab. This is clear from how they are going to handle trademark disputes. For a fee, you can remove your trademark from EVER being registered as a .xxx domain. So Disney need not be worried about disney.xxx. As long they pay the fee. How much? They ain't saying (really, I asked at a live forum and the guys in charge refused to answer). But Disney will pay it because it won't be a lot of money (to them) and there are plenty of others who will also pay the fee to keep their name blacklisted (forever for now but of course it is only going to be a matter of time before that comes a yearly fee). That means ICM coffers will get a HUGE boost straight from the start AND they will want to keep that money flowing because money is a drug. The more you get, the more you need.
But there are other issues at work:
As a .xxx domain owner you agree to have your site monitored... for what? Well, child porn is trotted out predictably BUT you have to remember that this is ICM policing the site owners, NOT the police as on ALL other domains. But HOW are they going to monitor?
http://domainincite.com/icm-faces-porn-anger-over-xxx/
I attended this myself and the following is true:
At one point, Liley flatly denied that ICM plans to “spider” .xxx domains to enforce compliance with IFFOR policies, such as the prohibition on meta tags that suggest the presence of child pornography.
Minutes later, a .xxx opponent read aloud from the IFFOR policy (pdf) that says all registrants must consent to “automated monitoring”.
Vaughn refused to answer many questions and weasled his way around others. The porn industry is CLEARLY not in favor of this.
One thing unanswered is how they are going to monitor CLOSED sites. Remember, most porn sites are membership sites and there content is NOT meant to be available to just anyone out there. Is every .xxx site owner going to have to provide ICM with a username and password that allows full access to the site? Who is going to be responsible for breaches where these accounts are lost? Does any other site have to give full access to a private company by default to be allowed on the net?
But should I care
A lot of people, even on slashdot don't like porn and want it to be hidden. Fair enough? No. Not really. If you like freedom of speech and believe me, many do not, then the .XXX domain is the registration of jews.
Godwin? Maybe but its parallels must be found in method rather then is shock effect. How did the nazi's know where to find Jews? Contrary to nazi propoganda they ain't all that easy to spot. It is not like they had it as easy as the US and its prosecuted minorities like blacks and asians. You can just tell a black person just by looking at him/her. Jew? Not so much, unless you believe nazi propoganda.
What allowed the mass murder to happen is the "harmless" registration of religion done long before the true horror of the nazi's became clear.
Yeah yeah, you know. So how does it apply to porn?
Obscenity
What is obscene? The US courts can't tell you AND this has been VERY important in ensuring free speech survives DESPITE being against the law. As long as the courts can't agree on what is obscene, the law cannot be used to ban your material. This is what allowed the porn mags such as Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler to survive countless court battles. Is obscenity forbidden? Yes. Are the mags obscene? Not proven, case dismissed. Why do you think these mags have higher grade journalism then many rags that can be bought from any store? Because it stopped them from being simply labelled as obsene AND banned.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> the zone is currently propagating
Domain name zones do not propagate, and there is no "delay" in "publishing" zone information.
Domain name information is provided by domain name servers. As soon as the server can provide the data it is considered "published". When people talk about propagation they are mistakenly referring to cached false-positives or false-negatives.
A cached false-positive is when a previous lookup has returned a result that is no longer accurate, but the cache persists in providing that result. Instead of doing a new lookup and finding the --now changed-- data, the old stale data is returned. This is an indication of failure on the part of the domain administrator to reduce the cache time-to-live (TTL) field on the record or the entire Start of Authority for the zone.
A cached false-negative --typically on Microsoft operating systems-- is when a previous lookup has failed to return a response, the system caches that "there is no response." A subsequent query by an application OUGHT to do a DNS query and resolve properly, but the cache instead returns the --now stale-- "there is no response." This is an indication of failure of the operating system authors to have read the relevant RFCs on DNS (or ICMP or ...) and indicates lack of knowledge, a poorly designed product, and years of asshattery.
As soon as the ".XXX" TLD was available on the gTLD servers, it ***was*** live. Here's what affilias has: ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
xxx. 300 IN SOA a0.xxx.afilias-nst.info. noc.afilias-nst.info. 70 7200 3600 3600000 300
You'll note that the TTL is 300, the minimum allowable value (300sec=5min). That means they have PROPERLY set a value so that results are refreshed by those who cache them.
Best regards,
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
That is what this is for:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2606.html
2. TLDs for Testing, & Documentation Examples
".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
3. Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the
following second level domain names reserved which can be used as
examples.
example.com
example.net
example.org
Somebody should have read the official documentation before creating their own ~