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Porn-Industry Outsiders Fear 'Shakedown' In .XXX TLD
The long-debated .XXX top-level domain opens this week; reader SonicSpike sends a snippet from the Washington Times about what may turn into a hornet's nest of anger at how the new domain is being used: "Some adult-entertainment companies are balking at the entire scheme, saying that ICM Registry LLC, which is overseeing .xxx registrations worldwide, does not have permission to sell the .xxx version of trademarked names and brands. In addition, the Florida-based company is raising eyebrows — and charges of 'shakedown' — by trying to get non-porn companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as .xxx sites. After all, what maker of baby food or children's movies, for example, would want to have sites such as gerber.xxx or disney.xxx floating around the Internet?"
We hope you enjoy your stay.
Does Gerber have any idea what big appetites adult-baby fetishists must have? Ka-ching!
I don't see how this is any different than worryabout trademark registrations for .edu, .net, .org, or the country code TLDs.
If you really want to protect your trademark, you have to register an awful lot of TLDs just to cover one variation on a name.
Fortunately the convention seems to be that whoever registers for a .com, first implicily has the rights to that name in other .TLDs.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Its already against the law to make adult web sites with names to fool children. So making a Disney.xxx is already against the law. But since criminals break laws I'm sure someone will give it a try.As far as the other stuff well they have no one to blame but themselves. They were given the opportunity to self regulate and they failed very badly.
Jack of all trades,master of none
There is a clause that allows companies to register their own trademark domain for a steep discount if they don't intend to use it for adult content. A couple hundred bucks to a mega corp isn't a shakedown.
I'd like to see a scheme like the .xxx tld work well- simplifying things for people who don't want to encounter internet smut without error-prone filter setups and without futile attempts to keep that kind of stuff off the web entirely. But it looks like this is being done in the worst way possible.
Exorbitant registration fees will make it so this will never serve its intended purpose- most smut will be hosted on normal tlds just to save on fees. And the claimed "shakedown" racket makes no sense. If there's going to be porn which (ab)uses your trademark, it's not like registering a domain will wipe it out or even make it significantly harder to find. The best route for normal businesses would be to just ignore everything under that tld. It's not like the old whitehouse.com problem- if somebody says "I went to gerber.xxx and was SHOCKED to see what was there! For shame!" there's the easy rejoinder "What exactly were you doing looking up gerber.xxx, and what did you expect to find on an .xxx domain? Why would you think that's affiliated with us at all?" But this greedy registry wants to wring extra dough out of people by playing on their trademark paranoias.
ICANN should make a few simple rules (i.e. easy to understand and to code). Good examples could be
{domain}.com OR {domain}.xxx, but not both
{domain}.TLD (original list) OR {domain}.(arbitrary TLD), but not both.
These could be used to filter out online registrations. Obviously some sort of exceptions will crop up (playboy.com and playboy.xxx), which could be handled by certifying that the owner of the first registration is filing for the second. Registrars could charge extra for this manual red-tape exception.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Disney does wield an enormous amount of power over our culture. Think about the millions of children who grow up watching Disney films, which represent a particular set of values and ideals that are being drilled into the heads of those children. Whether or not this is comparable for pornography is another issue entirely, but it is not as if there is nothing to the argument that Disney is indoctrinating children into a particular culture (nor is it a stretch to think that Disney is subtly using this power to its advantage).
Palm trees and 8
Not to mention power over copyright.
In other news, Verisign is trying to get non-stupid companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as company-is-stupid.com sites. After all, what serious book publisher or university, for example, would want to have sites such as amazon-is-stupid.com or mit-is-stupid.com floating around the Internet?
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Gerber means "to vomit" in french. Since .xxx is not language specific and vomit has a small but very dedicated and well-paying porn following (really, it does), I have every right to register that name and use it to sell vomit-porn to the francophone market. As long as I am not using the name in a way that would lead to trademark confusion (which would be pretty hard to argue), Gerber should just butt out.
I don't know when people started taking the stance that all opinions and all sources should be given equal time and weight, but it has led to a massively uninformed populace.
Alt.sex.watersports never involved synchronized swimming, either.
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BMO
Keyword is rarely. Some TLDs are enforced. mil, edu, etc
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I truly doubt that none of your acquaintances or any of their acquaintances watches porn. It's not as if not knowing they watch it means no one does it. Do you have some sort of neighborhood porn investigation network in which you and your buddies talk about their abstinence from porn or something?
Anyone who thinks animals don't have feelings or the ability to perceive pain either haven't spent enough time with animals, are terrified of them, or have autism. Seriously. Have you never stepped on a cat's tail? Not only will it react in pain - much as a human would if you stepped on them - it will likely hold it against you. Dogs are practically ruled by their emotions. In fact, us humans borrow their reactions to describe emotions - one who is beaten walks away with their tail between their legs. My buddy had a dog with anger issues for no particular reason, and he was treated with an antidepressant. My dog is visibly upset when a human family member leaves the house, and I've seen him give up eating for days, lethargic because he was depressed when a house member died - a cat.
And it's not anthropomorphism either. Us humans are certainly not unique for our emotions, we're unique for our ability to reason past them. The cat in question stares with the same look of revenge that a person would until you're dumb enough to look away. There's no hiding his emotions when he bites the fuck out of your calf. The damn dog lies by the missing person's door, face under his paws. When someone walks by, he'll look up, face still under his paws, make eye contact, and make a big sigh. What the hell do you call that?
Sure as hell, the grandparent is right and animals sure don't talk like people. But if you cannot communicate with an animal, you're a dolt. Seriously. They're not mythical creatures. Like zombies in a B horror movie, they're EVERYWHERE. Back here in the real world, they're more useful.
I sure hope so! He's only 54, after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin