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Why the .XXX Domain is a Bad Idea That Won't Die

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:28 AM
from the braaaaiiins-and-pooooornnnn dept.
Government The Internet Politics
Reader tqft tipped us to an opinion piece on the UK site The Guardian, which lays out the reasons why article writer Seth Finkelstein feels the .XXX domain is a terrible idea. You may recall that last year (being an election year and all), the concept of a triple-X ghetto was revived, considered, and then quashed all in the space of a few months. We also recently discussed the fact that the idea just won't die, as the company ICM Registry pushes ICANN to allow them to pass out the names by Summer. Finkelstein primarily argues that the new domain is a bad idea from a business point of view. Ignoring for a moment the issue that much of this content is already labeled, he sees this as primarily a means for ICM Registry to gain a monopoly on what is sure to be a hot-selling product. Speculators, pornographers, and above-board companies will all jump on the namespace in an effort to ensure that their domain is represented ... or not, as the case may be. Where do you fall on this issue? Would a .XXX domain be helpful for parents, or just a political salve/moneymaking scam?
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story

Related Stories

[+] Your Rights Online: Top Level .xxx Domain Concept Under Scrutiny 678 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. This is despite the the .xxx domain being approved in June and New.net selling domain names using the .xxx suffix for many months before the approval." From the ZDNet article: " The sudden high-level interest in what has historically been an obscure process has placed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in an uncomfortable position. ICANN approved the concept of an .xxx domain in June and approval of ICM Registry's contract to run the suffix was expected this week Other governments also have been applying pressure to ICANN in a last-minute bid to head off .xxx. A letter from ICANN's government advisory group sent Friday asks for a halt to 'allow time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed before reaching a final decision.'"
[+] Senators Renew Call for .XXX Domain 489 comments
An anonymous reader writes "It's an election year again, and the usual PR causes are being picked up. Senators are once again pushing for a .XXX top-level domain to 'corral pornography'." From the article: "The bill suggests, but does not require, that .xxx serve as the domain name ending. Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department. It's unclear whether the measure will go very far. First of all, it could be struck down as unconstitutional, said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "
[+] ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain 245 comments
stalebread writes "Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites, the Internet's key oversight agency voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet." From the article: "In a split 9-5 board decision, the organisation acted ruthlessly, against its own previous position, in order to put an end to an increasingly difficult and controversial issue - the approval of a .xxx top-level domain. The .xxx registry application has been the focus of enormous political pressure on ICANN for the past six months and was used at one point as a political football in a wider tussle for power within the internet."
[+] Your Rights Online: XXX Top Level Domain May Still See Use 265 comments
eldavojohn writes "The contract between ICANN & ICM Registry has just been revised for procedures on using the .XXX TLD. ICM is saying that the domain should be readily available for registration as early as this summer. This means that parents will most likely have an easier time protecting their children from these sites and these sites will be more tightly regulated and easier to scrutinize by authorities. ICM also mentioned the collaboration with International Foundation for Online Responsibility."
[+] ICANN Rejects .XXX Top Level Domain, Again 134 comments
eldavojohn writes "After yet another contentious vote on the .xxx concept, ICANN has finally rejected the pornography TLD. The debate has gone on for quite some time, and the 9-5 decision was the third time a decision was reached on the subject. This is the second time the body has ruled against the idea, and is likely the last time we'll see it come up for vote any time soon. One member abstained from voting. From the article: 'Many of the board members said they were concerned about the possibility that ICANN could find itself in the content regulation business if the domain name was approved. Others criticized that, saying ICANN should not block new domains over fears like that, noting that local, state and national laws could be used to decide what is pornographic and what is not. Other board members said they believed that opposition to the domain by the adult industry, including Web masters, content providers and others, was proof that the issue was divisive and that .xxx was not a welcome domain.'"
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Why the .XXX Domain is a Bad Idea That Won't Die 50 Comments More /

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  • Heh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fnkmaster (89084) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:33AM (#17780922)
    Ignoring for a moment the issue that much of this content is already labeled

    Yeah, it's labeled all right. About the time you see a writhing vulva on your screen, and a mega-penis thrusting repeatedly into it using the latest in animated gif technology, you may notice a small blurb of text that says "Please proceed only if you are 18 years of age or older".

  • No more tlds please... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Beuno (740018) <argentina@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:33AM (#17780928) Homepage
    I'm not against it, I just want new tlds to stop being approved left and right just to make profit out of basically no service.
    It's starting to get very complicated to rely on URLs and the amount of money you have to spend to keep your companys name in your hands is ridiculous.

    • Re:No more tlds please... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:47AM (#17781562)
      Register your company's name under one TLD, the one which your users are most familiar with. Then sue everyone who registers your trademarked name under any other TLD: The existing name registries trump the domain name system. There is no need to register under all TLDs. On the contrary, it only causes confusion for your users and can wreak havoc with your search engine ranking if you're not doing it exactly right.

      Besides, we need many more TLDs. Not dozens more. Hundreds or thousands more. Only when there are too many domains to register under all will that insanity stop. Only then will other TLDs mean something. Today it's either .com or bust, because users rarely see something else. After all, the other TLDs are just partial duplicates of .com anyway. Even big country code TLDs often cause an unbelieving stare when the email address doesn't end in .com. The last part of the domain name isn't just a delimiter, it actually means something and can be something other than .com. It is very important that we get this message through to users. Too much mail gets misdirected to the .com domain when it should have gone to the CCTLD which belongs to the company that the user wanted to send the mail to. This has got to change, and the way is more choice, not less.

  • bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by insertwackynamehere (891357) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:34AM (#17780932) Homepage Journal
    what constitutes porn? to a lot of people it's the act of sex between two people that is captured in a form of "real" media (photos or videos as opposed to paintings). however to a lot of america (or amerikkka as liberal websites would say :/) it is nudity in a medical or anatomy book when not viewed by an artist or doctor.

  • Would a .XXX domain be helpful for parents

    No. Really, stop asking [faqs.org].

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As a parent, it will help me out when I am searching for pr0n so I will later have more time to spend with the kids.

  • I'm for it. I think. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spacejock (727523) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:39AM (#17780960) Homepage
    I help to run web filtering at a small primary school, and while I realise a TLD like this won't shift all the crud into an easily-blocked area of the net, it's a good start. Of course, the downside is that nanny-state governments can then instruct ISPs to block the TLD, thus protecting their good citizens. Protecting primary school kids is one thing, but 'protecting' adults is a whole different ball game.

    I guess I just argued for both sides of the equation. I think I'm getting fence splinters.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Conception (212279)
      On an aside, I think the only way to reliably filter at school is to have a white list of addresses approved at the firewall/router. There's just too much to blacklist reliably, and the list of whitelistable sites is probably pretty small. And with some method where kids can ask to have sites added for whatever reason, you should be able to grow the whitelist easily without worry about some bright kid circumventing or accidentally running across teh pR0n. Primary school kids don't need access to the whole i

    • Protecting primary school kids is one thing, but 'protecting' adults is a whole different ball game.
      Fuck the Children.

      If they come across a porn site "by accident" amid their travel, I considering it part of a process called "growing up". Anyone with anecdotal evidence of some random teenager's life being "consumed" by porn is hearby and forever adviced to move to Saudi Arabia. They love you there.

  • I think I represent the majority (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gazzonyx (982402) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:44AM (#17780988)
    I think I represent the majority of us here when I say, "Who cares?".


    This seems to be rooted solely in politics and the money thereof. Let's leave this one to the politicians, knowing when everything is said and done, more is said than done.

    Just my $.02

  • I have an idea for a solution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JPriest (547211) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:52AM (#17781044) Homepage
    The reality of the matter is that even if a .xxx domain is created it

    A) makes porn easier to find
    B) Does not solve the problem of being able to filter it with parental control software because nobody is going to shut down the porn.com's.

    The porn sites have a right to exist, who are we to force them over to .xxx domains? Forcing them all to register with some central DB so they can be black listed would also be impossible becasue there is no realistic way to keep the DB updated. My solution for addressing the filtering software problem is very simple. We amend robots.txt [google.com] to include a section for Adult content. A simple addition on porn sites of a line like this would solve the problem.

    User-agent: * Disallow: /forums/
    Disallow: /members/
    Disallow: /downloads/
    Adult: /

    Sites not interested in adding the field to robots.txt are not required to by law, but many websites would be willing to accommodate something like this to assist Net Nanny etc., but would fight having to leave porn.net behind for pornforyou12341.xxx tooth and nail. On the internet your company name and your domain name are often the same. Moving them to another TLD would equate to making them shut down and start over under a new name.

    This would also greatly assist Google etc. in blocking some of these sites where "safe search" is turned on thus prevent people form going to a jenny.com by mistake and finding porn.

    I have made this suggestion a number of time in the past. Maybe I should look into what it would take to get it drafted into an RFC?

  • Just do it already (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garylian (870843) on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:02AM (#17781092)
    I don't really get why this is such a bad idea. Especially if they make it so that any site that sells/features nudity/porn has to move to such an extension.

    Let's face it. www.whitehouse.com was one of the all-time great name squatting done. For the longest time, that was a porn site. How many kids and unsuspecting adults stumbled onto that one in the early days?

    I'm no screaming conservative by any stretch of the imagination. I lean a lot further towards liberalism than I ever though I would, mostly because I am tired of religion affecting our laws so much, and personal freedoms being stripped from us left and right.

    But I don't see any harm in setting these websites up in a much easier to control/block segment of the websphere. And many of these webmasters would love it if it was that much easier to block content by parents. Just think of all the credit card charges to crap companies that supposedly verify age because a person has a CC #? Sheesh, I had one at 16!

    At the very least, I could see killing 50% of the pop-ups I run into, simply by blocking all .xxx domains if that was the only place they could be. And all these damn library filters and crap could be made easier. Block blatant porn, and anything else is fair game. I don't see them putting the Anatomy books behind locked doors so kids can't see a drawing of a nude human, and they don't do it with National Geographic, either. This makes it easy to block porn, and keep everything else open.

    Besides, think of all the business that it would stir up for a while. All those porn banners having to be redone! hehehe

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You don't see why this is a bad idea? What constitutes porn?

      Does any depiction of a bare breast, buttock, vulva, or penis indicate porn? If you ask my parents then yes it does. If you ask me, I say No. Michelangelo's "David" is not pornographic. "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli is not porn. Those two examples show my opinion on the matter. However, many others will disagree with me and will state that one or the other, or even both are pornographic. What about images that depict Dante's "Inferno"?

  • If we care.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by wanax (46819) on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:24AM (#17781184)
    The basic issue of porn, etc, isn't gonna go away: a significant proportion of people think that sex is bad/dirty etc. In the US we now have a fairly zealous set of laws prohibiting various sexual action/production (just look at the ESPN.com headline yesterday about the 17 year old who's in prison 10 year mandatory for getting a blow job from a 15 year old). With people that are willing to agitate for these beliefs around, I think in terms of technology we should work to make things like porn as clearly classed as possible, like the xxx domain. I would much rather fight over these issues in the .xxx domain, rather than having my freedoms circumscribed in misguided efforts to attain the approval of the zealous because porn is 'hard to filter.'

  • Helpful in the long run (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RyoShin (610051) <tukaro AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:32AM (#17781230) Homepage Journal
    While I can't speak much about the registry part of a .xxx name, I believe that it would be useful in the long run.

    While porn ad sites don't care about age, regular pay-for-porn sites would probably prefer those with access to a credit card, meaning those who can likely be there legally. Basically, market the .xxx name for sites that are looking for a purely adult audience. Not just porn, but maybe places like adultfriendfinder, discussions involving less pleasent ideas, and so forth.

    The government could work off this, too. They allow it to pass, and encourage its adoption by the "less scrupulous businesses", and in return for them moving to a .xxx and helping the government look better at "protecting children", the FBI and what not leans off them a little. Yes, there are filters in place for porn, but they aren't always the best- it can be hard to teach a basic filter the difference between HOT NAKED BOOBIES and a page about breast cancer. Along with blocking out content that shouldn't be, it means that content that shouldn't get through does. A .xxx domain would ensure that the filter knows what to and not to pick out. (Hell, some crappy ones might now mark this page as pornographic since I mentioned "boobies".)

    I can understand the fear of governments forcing porn sites to move to .xxx, and thus bringing us into the realm of "what exactly defines porn", but if it can stay as optional as choosing a .com or .net domain, then I don't see a large downfall. I'm sure others will disagree with me, though, and reply as such. (I welcome this, as someone may talk about a point I haven't thought of.)
    • Web pages about breast cancer are next on the list to be censored. Remember, the U.S.A. believes that all breasts, regardless of context, are sinful & dirty. Even breast feeding an infant will get people wound up.

      The breasts are for feeding children. Somehow, everyone has forgotten that they are just food dispensers. The anti-porn movement has begun to influence common sensibilities. "Moral values" groups would rather have mothers feed their child formula (much less healthy), than risk exposing a nipple

    • The problem isn't filtering content. The problem is that domain names are a terrible way to do it (see RFC 3675 [faqs.org]), and there are better ways of doing it (see PICS [w3.org]).

      As for a voluntary .xxx, the public and legislators will misunderstand its limitations. It's practically begging for bad law. It's better not to set it up in the first place.

  • Damn the puritans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pestilence669 (823950) on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:47AM (#17781296)
    The idea that the Internet should be made "safe" is offensive to me on so many levels. If parents would do their job and not let their kids roam the Internet unsupervised, this entire argument would disappear. I, for one, want the puritans the hell away from technology legislation. What about you?

    The Internet is not a playground for children. It's not a fun Christian diversion. It's a network for anyone and everyone to connect to one another electronically. Let's not turn it into Disneyland or Utah. The last thing society needs is FCC-like regulations on everything they do online. Besides, the responsibility in raising children shouldn't fall into the hands of people than don't have any. Parents need to police this issue, not parents AND single individuals.

    The "save the children" argument is just a cheap way to achieve the anti-porn agenda. Don't be fooled. It has nothing to do with kids. Trust me, they'll have pre-marital sex and get each other pregnant without online porn. It's been happening for 1,000's of years and will happen for a thousand more. Humans will do what they're biologically designed to do. Legislation can't stop that.

    It CAN, however, open the door for more censorship-inspired legislation. How long until the FCC steps in and begins to fine people that use profanity online? I don't think I'm exaggerating my fears. It's already ridiculous that you can't say "Shit" on the radio. After all, how many kids listen to Larry King Live?

    Censorship of any kind is fascism. It doesn't matter what cause it's attached to. Today it's porn. Tomorrow it's anti-Americanism. Just because you may not agree with porn, doesn't mean that laws should be passed to control it. Look away. Install commercially available filtering products. Don't let your kids surf unsupervised. For that matter, don't leave your kids unsupervised near ANYTHING you don't want them around. Just don't ask big brother to watch over you. That fucks us all.

  • Quite Useful (Score:3, Funny)

    by Flwyd (607088) <dotslash&trevorstone,org> on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:14AM (#17781426) Homepage
    With a .xxx TLD I'd finally be able to distinguish between fullofspunk.net as a motivational business website and fullofspunk.xxx as a site featuring pictures and videos of semen.

    It will also allow us to distinguish between sites run by Landover Baptist Church, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

  • Categories? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by abes (82351) on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:16AM (#17781436) Homepage
    At first glance, the .xxx idea seems fine to me. Right now the .com domain space is cluttered with random domain names that will bring up porn. It's not so much the children, as just the sanity of it all. The probability that you can type in a random URL and likely pull up porn says that the usefulness of the domain name is diminishing.

    The domain name is supposed to be some type of mapping between a company's name, general interest, etc. to a specific web page. This was great when the web was small, but even without all the porn, it still mostly fails. Thus the search engine.

    So URLs are relegated to (sometimes) brand name, (sometimes) company names, bookmarks, and printed ads. That is, all other times, it doesn't really matter what the domain name is.

    The .xxx TLD ends up being a small subset of a larger problem, and doesn't even fix the subset problem. As many people have suggested, it's not going to force porn companies from using .com. It may act as a magnet for children, though I'll suspect most browsers will block .xxx by default (think of the children!). Making the entire venture, a method to get lots of money for some TLD company.

    Perhaps a better approach would be to actually put some structure on naming. A hierarchical is already somewhat in use per domain, but is not problem free. Also, name.adult.com is essentially the same as name.xxx.

    Tagging is an already wide-used technique employed on the net, why not use it for names too? The tags can be done in an inclusive manner, such that an organization can allow acceptance of a particular web page to that tag. For example, 'child' could be applied to make sure there is no objectionable material. But wait, by whose standard? Well, there could be several 'child' tag organizations. For parents, they can pick the one which agrees with their standards.

    Am I in favor of censorship? Definitely not. But I'm also going to have to live with the fact that some people are going to disagree with my sensibilities. Why not give them their own playground, and get them out of mine?

  • Use xxx instead of www (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Derling Whirvish (636322) on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:25AM (#17781474) Journal
    If it is such a good idea, then why don't webmasters use xxx instead of www in their URLs? It would allow for all the filtering that a top-level domain name would. Just label a site something like "xxx.pr0n.com" instead of "www.pr0n.com". Simple.

    Or is it simply about the registrars making more money off of a new TLD?

  • All Top-level Domains are a Bad Idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nathanh (1214) on Saturday January 27 2007, @03:44AM (#17781814) Homepage

    This might be controversial but I think top-level domains - .com, .edu, .gov, .org, .net - are all a bad idea. It's a bad user interface. I understand the technical reasons why they exist but technology shouldn't be an excuse for a broken interface. Here are several reasons why top-levels suck.

    1. They are a limited number of categories that will never satisfy everybody. The basic ones seem obvious - .org, .com, .gov, .edu, .net - but really that's not enough. In Australia we also have .asn.au and .id.au. Even that's not enough. The .xxx top-level is an attempt to corral all pornographic domains into a single top-level domain. Why stop there? Who not create .religion and .news as well? I'll tell you why not; it's a slippery slope and it'll never end. Top-level domains are attempting to use taxonomy to attach metadata to the URL and it's doomed to failure because there will never be sufficient variety.

    2. It leads to cross-domain squatting. The classic example was whitehouse.com - a porn site - which caught unwary travellers who were looking for whitehouse.gov. The converse example is a company like Ebay who needs .ebay.com but what about .ebay.org? It isn't registered and Ebay is never going to be given .ebay.org, so it's stupid for the DNS to permit it as an option.

    3. The geographical breakdown is equally useless. Lots of Australia companies register .com domains because it's "cooler" which means the geographical taxonomy is immediately broken. It also means an international company has to register several dozen (160+) second-level domains (.com, .co.uk, .com.au, .co.jp, .com.ca, etc). It would make much more sense to browse http://ebay/au/ [ebay] because then Ebay has an international presence. Apple has the right idea here because that's exactly what they do; all their geographical top-levels redirect to http://apple.com/xy/ [apple.com].

    4. The user shouldn't need to care. Why should a newbie to the Internet be required to type .com after the name for companies, .edu after the name for universities, etc? How would they even know? Especially given point #2 that typically there isn't going to be any variation; only one of the combinations will be valid. In fact, most browsers automatically append .com because they know the user is going to type "ebay" rather than "ebay.com". But that's fricking useless for everybody who isn't in the USA (ie, most of us).

    5. Some companies straddle the line and don't fit neatly into either category. An example in Australia is Telstra - are they .com.au or .net.au? Are they .net.au when they provide network services but .com.au when they provide non-network services? In fact the distinction is as clear as mud: Telstra has both .net.au and .com.au and they mush them together as they feel like. It makes a mess of the browser security because you can be on telstra.com.au one minute and the next link will take you to telstra.net.au. User. Interface. Disaster.

    Now you can disagree with some or all of those points. Hell, Slashdot seems to be full of nitpickers who delight in pointing out grammatical mistakes, so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said "but without TLD our CEO will be OMG WTF, LOL". But ignore the technical details - they're just problems to solve - and look at the big picture: top-level domains are a broken user interface and no amount of patching will fix it. It was OK as the prototype but because it's the prototyp

  • Reserve either a class A net, or a port for porn. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chris_sawtell (10326) on Saturday January 27 2007, @04:57AM (#17782056) Journal
    That would fix the filtering problem simply and for ever. Also the people should be informed that the numbers are just as good as, if not better than, names. Thus all the interesting numbers would get some intellectual value. Why have the General Electric Company not exploited the IP address 3.4.5.6 for example? Surely that's worth a bob or two? Wake up shareholders of the corporations which hold class A domain numbers, you can sue your corporate directors for not maximising the return on your funds! Taken to the obvious conclusion, a Class A IP number squatter should have all 16 million numbers taken off them and these numbers reserved for porn servers. How about the unused 51/8 network for a start? That would free up 4,294,967,296 numbers which could be especially reserved for porn servers. On the other hand the current user of those numbers could exploit them to provide a substantial income to the British DHSS, who are the current number squatters. Rent your porn server IP number by paying the pension of a poor Briton! Bags 51.52.53.54! The very ages when a flagging body actually needs perking up with a bit of visual stimulation. The mind boggles as to the value of that number. Surely that would keep the even most debauched users of porn happy for a while? As for a .xxx TLD! Well really!! That is just fraud pure and simple. To separate suposedly undesirable content from the rest of the HTTP traffic you just pass a worldwide law to put the all the porn servers on a port other than 80. It's a one digit change in the Apache web server config file. And creating a browser which won't work on that port so as to protect the children's parents from the embarrasment of having to explain to their little ones what the genital organs are for.

    • Re:Crazy (Score:4, Funny)

      by thc69 (98798) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:46AM (#17781006) Homepage Journal
      No more coffee with your paper? What, did you eat a caffeinated donut [slashdot.org]?

    • If a idea is bad, it should go away.

      That's perhaps a nice wish. However, assuming it will go away is another thing.

      Government is not simply a world marketplace that offers ideas and if no one buys, it restocks the shelves with other ideas. We give government the special power of force that we do not give shopkeepers wherein if people disagree with the ideas it is offering, it can take action. The more vague that action, the more subject to the individual whim of an individual attempting to en

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by recursiv (324497) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:48AM (#17781010) Homepage Journal
      Be done with what? Good luck getting the porn off of .com domains.

      • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by techno-vampire (666512) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:58AM (#17781066) Homepage
        Be done with what? The arguing over whether or not we should have the domain. Once we get it, I'd bet most of the pr0n will move there for "prestige" reasons, and most new adult sites will be there. In the long run, I can't see what possible harm it can do to let them have their tld.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by daeg (828071)
          Why would you ever move to .xxx? Prestige or not, it's just too easy to block .xxx. Access is everything to the porn industry.

          While a few of the large-profile sites can afford to move (the subscription-based ones), the smaller sites that are based on the shared subscription model (you pay $XX/year for access to all member sites, those member sites take a portion of profit) will just multiply, compounding any filtering problems.

          Has anyone actually investigated whether the XXX industry actually WANTS the tld?

          • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Matilda the Hun (861460) <flatsymcnoboobs <at> leekspin <dot> com> on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:41AM (#17781544) Homepage

            Access is everything to the porn industry.


            You're not going to sell porn to people who aren't looking for it. And a TLD makes it easier to find, how is it a bad idea again?

            • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Funny)

              by 1u3hr (530656) on Saturday January 27 2007, @03:04AM (#17781662)
              And a TLD makes it easier to find, how is it a bad idea again?

              What does a TLD have to do with finding porn, or anything else? Are you gong to make a list of words, append .xxx, and type them into your address bar: aardvark.xxx,.... zygote.xxx?

              • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Funny)

                by iamacat (583406) on Saturday January 27 2007, @03:21AM (#17781740)
                If you can't come up with a more imaginative description of people exchanging zygote's, this domain is not for you.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Kierthos (225954)
                How does it make it easier to find? Well, I daresay, if you went to whitehouse.xxx you would know in advance that it's going to be naughty bits.

                There are plenty of porn sites that are at the .com TLD that share a similar or same name as a non-porn .org TLD. So, yeah, it's possible to go to the naughty sites and not intend to. Which, of course, can lead to all kinds of trouble at home, work, wherever.

                Yet, if a .xxx TLD exists... well, it's difficult to imagine, at least in the U.S., that someone would go to

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by 1u3hr (530656)
                  There are plenty of porn sites that are at the .com TLD that share a similar or same name as a non-porn .org TLD. So, yeah, it's possible to go to the naughty sites and not intend to.

                  You're now arguing a completely different proposition. It's one thing to create a domain .xxx and say it's for porn. Whatever else it does, you'll certainly get porn sites there. It's quite another to imagine that this will magically lead to all porn disappearing from .com. So you'll be no more safe from "stumbling" on porn

              • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Funny)

                by Ralph Yarro (704772) on Saturday January 27 2007, @08:58AM (#17782820) Homepage

                What does a TLD have to do with finding porn, or anything else? Are you gong to make a list of words, append .xxx, and type them into your address bar: aardvark.xxx,.... zygote.xxx?
                Greetings, I have come back in time from the year 2007 with exciting news. In my time we no longer have to type in random words to find domains under a particular tld, instead we have a powerful and strange technology called "Google".

                For example, to get a list of .org domains we can just enter the following into our web browser:

                http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.org [google.co.uk]

                to get a list of .museum domains:

                http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.muse um [google.co.uk]

                To get a list of .xxx domains this would be:

                http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_sitesearch=.xxx [google.co.uk]

                "But", you say, "of what use is a mssive list of all domains? You could never click them all!" The truth is that we can go EVEN FURTHER and search for key words within sites in those domains, but I fear the culture shock from showing you this would be too much for you to bear.

                This may all sound like science fiction in your primitive era but one day this technology will seem almost common place.

          • Simple reason (Score:5, Insightful)

            by aepervius (535155) on Saturday January 27 2007, @04:28AM (#17781928)
            The biggest advantage for the porn industry is that afterward everybody typing in the address of the link or clickijng a link ending with .xxx KNOWS what he/she wants and thus can be blamed itself for what he tried to see. Whereas with the situation now, the porn industry TAKES the blame if anybody (adult or infant does not matter) accidentaly type in/click a .COM address which does show porn image. By having .xxx everyone wins : all parents or sensible person which can simply then block all .xxx domain, the porn industry because then nobody can anymore talk about being "accidentally" there. The ONLY loss for the porn industry is that then every consenting adult lose any excuse to have browsed on porn domain by accident since with .xxx it willl be obvious that you are on a porn page. ? "ho honey, no I just wanted to learn more about how to solve multiple-body physics interraction and I accidentally clicked onn that porn link" won't hold water if all link end with .xxx

        • Per the proposal they are _required_ to move (Score:5, Informative)

          by JPriest (547211) on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:42AM (#17781272) Homepage
          From here [zdnet.com]. It says that the domains would be required to move.


          Here is the direct quote:
          "Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department."

          Please do not blindly support the bill without first understanding just what exactly it proposes.
          I had another post covering why I think this is bad here [slashdot.org] and proposed an alternate solution here [slashdot.org]

          • Re:Per the proposal they are _required_ to move (Score:5, Insightful)

            by IWannaBeAnAC (653701) on Saturday January 27 2007, @02:57AM (#17781610)
            Hmm, I doubt the rest of the world would appreciate the ISA Department of Commerce dictating to them what is, and is not, porn. Especially considering how puritanical the USA is compared with Europe, and similarly how puritanical the Middle East is compared with everyone else.

            The Europeans will be saying breasts, even full-frontal nakedness, isn't necessarily porn,

            The Americans can't tell the difference between even partial nakedness and sex, so will force half of .eu to be under .xxx instead

            The Muslims will continue to he shocked at all the women not wearing Burkhas.

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Harmonious Botch (921977) on Saturday January 27 2007, @12:51AM (#17781036) Homepage Journal
      Because the implied assumption is that the whole net except .XXX must be protected, that it all must be made child-safe. This eventually results in treating all adults like children. It is far better to give children their own ( such as .kid or .chd ) and retain the assumption that we adults are capable of making decisions for ourselves.
      • The implications already are that .com is commerce, .org is nonprofits, .gov is government, and .net is for networks (for instance, ISPs).

        As far as I know, only .gov is actually enforced.

        So, basically, registering a .XXX domain is like having one of those "You must be 18 to enter" things. It's a way of self-censorship, of saying "I know this is pornography, and not safe for children."

        There have been technical arguments against .XXX, but I think having your filtering software be a line in a host file is real

    • No, .XXX is bad (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JPriest (547211) on Saturday January 27 2007, @01:13AM (#17781124) Homepage
      It isn't the porn industry that wants the change. Creating a red light district would arguably make porn easier to find for children, and at the same time if you don't force them all off the .coms's you have not really solved the problem of filtering. Who has the right to say porn is not welcome on the rest of the Internet anyway? The United States? George Bush?


      In some countries it is considered wrong for women to lift their veils so other men can see their faces, and in some women walk around with no shits on like men. Sure there are obvious cases, but who has the final word on what is and isn't sexually explicit content? Who is going to pay to enforce these new morals and who's morals?

      Do the American tax payers launch a multi billion dollar crusade to purge the internet of porn and bring our Christian morals to the internationally based Internet?

      Early proposals for .xx were to mandate that all porn sites use some form of age verification (ie credit card). With all the fraud on the internet do you honestly believe entering your credit card number and personal into on every porn site you see is a good idea? What age constitutes a "minor" anyway? 18 y/o like in the US? How many people here have never seen any porn before the age of 18? How did you turn out?

      To me this only sounds like a pathway for rampant fraud. I don't want to complain without offering up my own solution, so I think if anything is to be done then appending robots.txt to include a line for "Adult: /" where the webmaster of the site sees fit is a much better idea. I posted more on this suggestion here [slashdot.org]

      • In some countries it is considered wrong for women to lift their veils so other men can see their faces, and in some women walk around with no shits on like men.

        Assuming you meant "shirts," which country would that be? I think I may be going there soon for, um, business *cough*, and uh, I was just wondering if, um, coincidently, it may be the same country?

      • Creating a red light district would arguably make porn easier to find for children

        Explain me with the advent of search engine, how is it difficult for any kids to :
        * type in www.google.com
        * enter free porn image (or free porn video)
        * clicks on "I am 18 and want to see the preview video"


        I am sorry, but that argument do not hold any shred of water. Unless you are speaking of mentally disabled children, if they want to search for porn, they will find it whether it is a .xxx,.net,.org, .com or .fuc

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 1u3hr (530656) on Saturday January 27 2007, @03:01AM (#17781640)
      Why not just give the pr0n industry its own tld

      RTFA. Or were you just gunning to get first post?

      No one wants .xxx except the registrars, who would sell .xxx domains, speculators would would buy them to resell to companies defensively. Big companies would be forced to buy the .xxx rather than let one of the scumbags set up a site on yahoo.xxx, etc. Companies already buy .info, .biz, .net, .org and usually just park or redirect from them. There won't be any less porn on .com. It's just a complete scam.

      • If the only people who want this new tld are the registers, nobody will use it. If so, what harm is done? As far as first post, I'm not a subscriber, and I'm astonished to have gotten it. At least it's something relevant, not a comment about getting first post.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by techno-vampire (666512)
        What if it's strictly voluntary? If you have an adult site, you can have it under .xxx or not as you see fit. Then, those who don't want to be exposed to adult content can avoid it if that's what makes them happy and those who are interested in it can find it easier. So what if some countries block it at the routers? Isn't the Internet designed to work around damage?

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