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Two Porn Companies Take ICANN and .xxx Registrar To Court
SharkLaser writes "Two of the largest porn companies on the internet, Manwin and Digital Playground, yesterday sued both ICANN and ICM Registry, which runs the .xxx TLD, over extorting defensive registrations with ICANN's blessing. 'The complaint focuses on ICM's recently concluded "sunrise" period, during which porn companies, for about $200, could apply to own a .xxx address matching their trademark or .com domain.' Schools also felt the same way, and had to reserve domains under their name so that no porn content could be put up on them. The .xxx TLD has also previously been subject to criticism by both religious groups and adult industry, but for different reasons. Religious groups believe the .xxx TLD legitimizes pornography, while the adult industry believes it could lead to censorship."
The $200 fee is bullshit, and clearly unfair profiteering. My tax dollars went toward the development of the Internet. Who gave ICANN the authority to require another $200 from me to register a domain name?
Religious people watch just as much, if not more, porn than non-religious people.
They're just publicly obligated to speak out against it, along with all the other enjoyable things in life like smoking Marijuana and polyamory.
Who defines what is porn? Two persons on opposite sides of the planet will have very different opinions on that. That's why there's fear of censorship. It opens the way for a law to have everything deemed pornographic to be moved under the .xxx TLD, which means that the website might as well not exist from the point of view of many networks.
This is just a racket to force many companies to pay ICANN for protection.
Unlike the uselss .biz and .co TLDs that no one care about, .xxx can be used to be actively exploit and damage the names of respected businesses and organizations.
Legitimate porn companies will probably stay away from .xxx names because it is saying that we can't afford a real TLD. It will also open themselves up to be easily censored. There is nothing advantageous to it.
Slippery slope fallacy does not an argument make.
The only 'slippery slope fallacy' is the laughable claim that once there's a power that the government can easily abuse... they won't abuse it.
Except, who creates standards of appropriateness for an international resource like the web? You can't without creating a nonsensical, administrative mess of censorship and general disagreement.
.XXX was just a cash grab. Nobody can effectively categorize and police content on the web outside of a voluntary service, which will never be 100%. And so there's no way to say, "all porn must move to .XXX". If you can't move all porn to .xxx, then there's no real reason to have it.
That's just another example of how
It was just a way to make a crapload of money from people that don't even want the resource, just so that they can protect their existing services. That's shitty, and they only got away with it because the target was the porn industry.
So little problem, in fact, that parents have been prosecuted for innocent pictures of their naked children.
Or to put it another way: it's not as simple as you think it is.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I think you significantly underestimate the number of women, especially younger ones, who watch porn. It's a market with a lot of opportunity considering that they want different niches than do men, but increasing numbers want it nonetheless.
... makes me wonder if you even know what the word means. (Nor does anybody get locked up for watching porn other than kiddie or snuff, and that's not because it's porn but because it's kiddie rape or homicide.)
Further, the vast majority of porn actresses are not being "trafficked"
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Alcohol is legal because it's been established too long to ban. Like tobacco.
I debate with anti-porn crusaders a lot, and their standard approach is to convince themselves that pornography is some super-addictive drug-like poison that'll destroy a person's life with ease. If they can't find any actual mechanism of damage, they make one up. They'll even claim it is spiritually damaging, which has the nice advantage of being impossible to disprove. Take, for example, this quote from pressure group the Family Research Council:
"Pornography is a major threat to marriages, the family, and the society at large. It is not a private choice without public consequence. Pornography alters both sexual attitudes and behavior, undermining marriage, which in turn, undermines the stability of the entire community.
It goes on to list all manner of studies which prove pornography causes all manner of health problems, but I'm not even going to bother checking into the studies myself because I know the FRC has a long history of using worthless junk studies churned out by political pressure groups and distorting the findings even of legitimate studies. But that doesn't matter. It's the confirmation bias in action. If you tell an anti-porn crusader that 'scientific studies' show that, as the FRC puts it, 'Pornography viewing and sexual offense are inextricably linked' then they'll believe the claim without actually wanting to look at the studies.