p2pnet - rss feed: Why XXX .xxx ?
p2p news view / p2pnet: It looks like the .xxx Top Level Domain (TDL) has been side-lined again.
It seems ironic that while the US is regarded (by Americans anyway) as having invented the internet, the US controlled Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) has been so slow in developing and authorizing new TDLs. The .xxx domain was previously shelved last year after a prolonged campaign by conservative Christian groups and last week it was delayed again at an ICANN meeting in New Zealand.
"This is a great example of the success of the public policy advice process at work, which demonstrates that ICANN takes governmental input seriously. The ICANN Board is committed to continuing to enhance the integration of the [Governmental Advisory Committee]’s public policy role to ICANN’s decision processes", said president and ceo of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey.
Well. Nice to know that ICANN bows to US government "input" anyway. I wonder why they even bothered going to New Zealand? It’s not as if the rest of the world has any real influence on ICANN. I don’t know: perhaps the ICANN board wanted to see Middle Earth for themselves, or go hang-gliding or something.
The Australian government has spoken out against a sexy internet address in the past, but this is the same government that banned internet casinos from operating here in Australia and lost all their tax revenue when the sites relocated offshore within hours of the law being passed.
I’ve stopped taking the Oz government seriously whenever they talk about the internet because it’s obvious the people who write the policies are the kind of people who open email attachments called really_funny.pic.of.u_and_me.exe. You know, those "what’s a linux?" kind of people?
They probably run your government too.
There are many views on the subject of a .xxx domain, but they can be summarized pretty easily:
a.. No! Bad idea!
b.. Yes! Great idea!
c. Who cares?
Here’s a quick breakdown:
No! Bad idea!
This is the view of onservative Christian groups who hold a lot of political clout in the US. The cynical among us say this is because those groups actually like being outraged by obscene content because it allows them to continue holding the "moral" high ground when trying to ban or restrict pornography. If pornography is everywhere, it’s a lot easier to point to when making an argument against it.
That’s it really.
Yes! Great idea!
This is my personal view and it’s based about half on logic and half on my philosophical beliefs, which often seem to overlap.
The logical part of the argument is basically that there are Top Level Domains for a reason. That reason is to divide up the internet into usable chunks that can be categorized for the benefit of people creating content and for people consuming the content. For example, www.random-research-institute.EDU is a government funded teaching institute that researches how people process information in their daily lives. www.random-research-institute.org on the other hand is a fascist think tank that encourages the study of eugenics to breed out the weaker members of society and create a super race to colonize the moons of Saturn.
Which is fine, because the only way we know that we have free speech is if we allow every wacko out there to say what they like as well, and if they want to set up a private organization to help them say it, great. But put it under a .org domain so I can distingush it from infromation that may be politely described as more useful.
So that’s why we can’t and shouldn’t try to bung everything under the regular old .com domain - humans need to organize stuff. We do it unconsciously and after a little bit of experience, we tend to follow the same organizational patterns as everyone else seems to. Then every so often someone comes along and suggests formalizing an ad-hoc system that has been in use for a long time.
Like how to tell people that you’ve got smut on your web site, for instance.
Punch "glasses for women" into Google and you’ll get a variety of results. Some of the sites offer a ranges of specs with feminine designs and attractive prices and some will offer you an insight into the strange world of myopic paraphilia. Luckily, Google can filter out most of the fetish sites with the SafeSearch option, but that isn’t something you can use to block these sites completely. You’d need to block them at network, or ISP, level if you wanted to do it properly, which is why a lot of porn sites wanted the .xxx domain in the first place.
From the pornographer’s point of view, they want people visiting their site to become customers. To do that, you need a credit card.
Minors typically don’t have credit cards, ergo having minors visiting your web site is a waste of time for them and bandwidth for the site owner. Couple that with the all the horror stories of stolen credit card info and trojan horses, and you come to realize porn site operators have their work cut out for them getting people to actually trust them enough to pay for the hot stuff in the first place. Then there’s the whole compliance with Title 18, Section 2257 of the U.S. Code, and the various Age Verification Systems. Wouldn’t it be nice of you could voluntarily have your raunchy site regulated up to the eyeballs as proof that you want to do the right thing and keep the kiddies out?
Had the .xxx domain been allowed, what probably would have happened is: a large number of adult sites would have kept their .com names and used them as the entry page (with the standard "I Agree to the terms, etc") and redirected visitors to their main site hosted under a .xxx domain. This would have provided an extra layer of verification, especially in the corporate environment, where the network admin could simply block access to the entire .xxx TDL.
Click on "Enter HardcoreHeaven.xxx" at work and you get a great big screen telling you to get your kicks on your own time, buddy! It would be pretty simple to do at an ISP level too. Got kids? Call up your ISP and get them to block the .xxx domain. They usually offer filtering software anyway (sometimes by law) so from the ISP’s point of view it would be much easier to just stop people going to certain domains than create block lists of every site they can find.
This leads to the I-have-no-opinion opinion. There are a lot of people with a lot of reasons why a .xxx would be a good idea. Some of them are even the porn sites who want a nice, quite little corner of the net where nobody will bother them with hysterical "won’t somebody think of the children" rantings ’cause they did think of the children and asked for a space the children can be kept out of to prove it. The people who don’t want a .xxx domain can only offer feeble excuses such as, "it will legitimize pornography".
Does it need to be "legitimate"? I mean, it exists doesn’t it? Should we be having a discussion on the fundamental nature of reality and our place in the space-time continuum instead?
So if you don’t have an opinion, get one.
One of the main arguments for a .xxx Top Level Domain is that the individual can choose whether they want to visit those sites or not, so check out the (still hopeful) registry operator and the sponsoring organization, see what they have to say and make up your own mind.
http://www.iffor.org/ - International Foundation for Online Responsibility
http://www.icmregistry.com/ - ICM Registry
Alex H, p2pnet - Sydney, Australia
[Alex is an operations manager for an ATM (automatic teller machine) supplier and he specialises in infrastructure development and maintenance, and logistics. He’s also an[other] active member of the Shareaza community. He also runs the Tech Loves Art blog on which you’ll find previous p2pnet posts as well as other good stuff.]
April 4th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Give me a break! If I decide to post one nude photo on my website, it doesn’t make me a pornographer. Nor do I want to pay extra fees attached to an xxx domain for that one measly photo.
The better fix is create a kids only, family friendly domain. That way I can set up my kids’ filter to only allow that domain. I care what kids look at, but this ain’t gonna fix it.
April 4th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Nobody said you’d have to use the TDL, tard.
April 4th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Have you read the law?
tard … good come back, you sure told him.
April 5th, 2006 at 12:17 am
So why not do what the article says and create a .xxx domain to categorize and regulate adult stuff AND THEN create a .kids domain to categorize and regulate family friendly stuff?
Why not do both? It would separate the content much more effectivly.
April 5th, 2006 at 1:03 am
I don’t think if .xxx is necessary. Then they would have to create TLDs for every web theme. How about .air for airlines or vacuum cleaner companies, .car for car companies, .oil for oil companies or deep fryers…
April 5th, 2006 at 3:49 am
How much of the web is made up of oil related content? Take that number and compare it to the percentage of content that is porn. Theres you’re answer.
.xxx is about the importance/relevence of the content. Look at the .coop TDL that was created recently - there are only some 10s of thousands of community co-operatives in the world, but in many places they are a vital part of society and have been recognised as such by being thier own TDL.
Adult content was in many ways responsible for the popularity of the internet and considering how much porn their is out there, it might be a good idea if people want to classify it as such with a TDL.
April 5th, 2006 at 8:13 am
The Internet was first created by DARPA, a US military research agency, as ARPANET, which then evolved into various forms, and into the form you see today.
The WORLD WIDE WEB was created by Tim Berners Lee, a dude from CERN in Switzerland.
Moral of the story: Internet == US creation. WWW == Swiss creation.
Since this article deals with TLDs, and TLDs for for WWW use, you should say WWW, not Internet.
April 5th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Am I the only person that knows the abbreviation is TLD, not TDL? What’s that crap all about? When was the last time you bought a BWM car? How about a car with a VCET engine?
The problem with the .xxx TLD is that people are going to try to force any site they deem “indecent” off of .com/net/org/info/etc onto .xxx to try and segregate it from the “proper” internet. The existing domain suffix set is generally ignored (how many .net domains exist that are not Internet service providers or network-related sites?). The problem is not pushing all the hardcore pornography that shows explicit images of sexual activity–it’s what happens when you mix a little Political Correctness (TM) with ingredients such as Being Offended, Playing the Race Card, Disagreeing with Opinions, or even Pushing Your Beliefs Onto Others.
Throw together these kinds of ingredients, and you end up with not only the porn that .xxx was intended for being thrown there, but a general movement to make content filtration unnecessary by pressuring anyone who isn’t big enough to resist or has something to lose out of the mainstream TLDs and into .xxx, regardless of pornographic content. I foresee the exploitation of the existence of an .xxx TLD, where .xxx doesn’t stand for “Triple X” but evolves into “[Potentially] Offensive to SOMEONE Out There.”
That’s why .xxx shouldn’t exist. Not because I want children to get their hands on porn (.xxx would make that EASIER, but that’s another can-O-worms), but because public pressures will force non-pornographic sites that happen to offend any given group into the “bad for children ” TLD.
In other words, it will be exploited by radicals to silence freedom of speech and infringe on First Amendment rights of others in favor of pushing an agenda or two via censorship.
Tell me I’m not right. We’ve seen the exploitation of well-meaning things like this before. Look at the DMCA abuses and the RIAA lawsuits. I don’t know 100% of the facts of each case, but almost every single case prosecuted under these categories are using laws that were meant to help people keep an incentive to create content, yet instead the law is being used to try to suppress competitors and researchers (printer cartridge competition and security research on DRM software, as examples). The DMCA is SUPPOSED to protect copyright holders (which it is overbroad in doing, mind you), but it is mainly being used to silence others and shut down people that someone who has a lot of dollars in the bank doesn’t like.
.xxx = another easy way to erode freedom of speech and press. Go to:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=websense
And see how offended you can get. Maddox’s entire site is quite amusing to me, but there are many who are offended by it. This site is one of many that could easily end up being pushed into .xxx by a bunch of overzealous mothers, kind of like the process he details on the link I provided. He’s not showing even a nipple on the page, but it’s likely he’d end up in .xxx because of a pooling of dollars to shut him out of .com webspace and into .xxx instead. HE HAS A RIGHT TO SAY WHAT HE SAYS. Even if you don’t like it, there’s no race hate speech, only strongly articulated opinion, but I guarantee you that someone will find some way to push it away–legally.
That would be a disaster. Especially because you may very well be next.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:42 am
I don’t agree with lots of the above comment:
* .xxx is not a requirement. You say people will be pressured into moving to a .xxx domain? I say people are currently under just as much pressure to shut down their websites completely. Okay, so if you’re a weak person, you cave in and do what they say.
* 1st Ammendment rights. Not everyone lives in the U.S. for a start, and if I remember correctly, it’s actually up do the individual to defend their rights. What are you going to do: give your rights to someone else to look after and hope they don’t screw you? Someone steps on your rights, you do something about it.
* The DMCA was NEVER about protecting artists and inventors. It was about giving people the ability to litigate other people they don’t like. There was a LOT of debate when the DMCA was first suggested and the people who matter (artists and inventors) almost unanimously said it was a crap idea. Further to that, the DMCA is soooo ambiguous that you couldn’t seriously call it a definative document, which is kinda important when you’re talking about “rights”. If fairy tails were written with the same level of ambiguity as the DMCA, you could be forgiven for thinking the Big Bad Wolf was the one who killed the giant and Goldilocks was in love with the Gingerbread goose.
* Are you perhaps suggesting that having an “X” rating for porno DVDs means that the creators are being unfairly silenced? Why not get rid of the “R” rating so that horror film producers can show their art to EVERYONE, including small children?
Free speach means you get the right to say what you like. It doesn’t mean people will listen, .xxx or no .xxx
April 9th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Next time you use your “logic” mr Alex H. apply reverse engineering on it and you’ll see more beneficial results.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:59 am