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

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?

Why not?

[techno-vampire]

Why not just give the pr0n industry its own tld and be done with it? Yes, the bluenoses will scream bloody murder, but they're doing that about pr0n already, so what's the difference?

Re:I'm for it. I think.

[Conception]

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 internet, just the few kid safe spaces they need to do whatever they need to do.

I have an idea for a solution

[JPriest]

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?

Re:Why not?

[techno-vampire]

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.

No, .XXX is bad

[JPriest]

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]

Re:Why not?

[daeg]

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? The only thing I've seen personally is the company that is pushing .xxx, and they obviously only want to make a big shiny penny (just like every other stupid specialized domain, e.g., .mobi).

Helpful in the long run

[RyoShin]

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.)

Categories?

[abes]

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

[Derling Whirvish]

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?

Re:Just do it already

[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"? Many of those paintings show naked bodies being consumed by a demon, and some show burning naked flesh. Are those pornographic?

You may ask why am I bringing up paintings or "works of art" in regards to a .xxx tld. The simple answer is "Why Not?" Let's state this another way, Obscene material is only obscene to those that decide it is obscene. A .xxx tld is not only going to be related to porn. It will be related to anything that someone considers obscene. I know it when I see it [wikipedia.org]* cannot be applied to obscene material unless obscene material is categorized, and that statement, however, truthful it may be, is not good enough.
* Note: that link is to the history version of Wikipedia, following that link should take you to the Jan 5th version that was current when I wrote this text.

Who decides what belongs on a .xxx domain? Will that decision be changed later in time, by a different group of people?

All a .xxx tld will do is first cause a bunch of people to waste money on a new tld for their company. Does that mean that we will have to get a www.whitehouse.xxx domain for the government? I mean technically whitehouse.com and whitehouse.xxx have nothing to do with whitehouse.gov or whitehouse.org. The whitehouse website is not a commercial entity, so why does it need a .com? Yes, I know many people do not use the Top Level Domains correctly. However, the first few Top Level Domains were created to keep people from having issues like this. The foundation was set, it is everyone's fault that instead of a well built and maintained house, we only have a shack built of salvaged items.

A .xxx tld is only a money grab from some and a political move by others. Many "Christian" organizations do not want a .xxx tld as it will legitimize obscene material. Just like how a red-light district legitimized the acts done in a red-light district. These used to be more prevalent here in the States. Freedom organizations should be against this is as it is a censorship move. This is a move against adults and not a solution for kids. .com is the most accurate tld to use when dealing with obscene material that makes money. In most people's views this is pornography. Pornography that makes money directly, should be on a .com. Pornography that makes money through ads and such, should be on a .org or a .us or any country tld. However, since no one is going to force those to work, why should they force a .xxx to work? Just because it has three letters that are all the same? If they cannot make target.com go to the store website, while making target.org go to an informational website dealing with targets, how are they going to make target.xxx go to a site involving targeting of people with fluids from other people? Or will Target the store purchase the target.xxx in order to "protect their name" and redirect you to target.com?

The following paragraph is a bit off from my above, but I wanted to include it.
Do you remember when online services blocked the word 'breast' in order to "protect" people? They ended up blocking people from finding information related to breast cancer and other information that had the word breast in it. That block was removed, as people just started using br3ast more often.

Re:Why not?

[Matilda the Hun]

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:No more tlds please...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Use xxx instead of www

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is such a good idea, then why don't webmasters use xxx instead of www in their URLs?

Like this? http://xxx.lanl.gov/ [lanl.gov]

Reserve either a class A net, or a port for porn.

[chris_sawtell]

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:Why not?

[1u3hr]

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. And as your example shows, many people would still prefer to use the .com just for a shred of deniability when their boss/wife looks through their history.

Re:Per the proposal they are _required_ to move

[l33t_f33t]

I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing the .xxx domain will only be forced on sites using a US registra, as last time I checked the US had no jursdiction outside of itself.

Re:No, .XXX is bad

[j00r0m4nc3r]

When I was in college, UC Santa Cruz had no dress code and you were free to walk around campus with no clothes on if you chose to. And some people definitely, and unfortunately, chose to.

Re:Why not?

[hackstraw]

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

First, TLDs are a good idea that simply do not work in reality. Proof of this is that slashdot.com and slashdot.org are exactly the same even though they have different TLDs. OK, that was a bad example, because a counter to that would be a few years ago with whitehouse.com vs whitehouse.gov.

The deal with the XXX domain is that it will be yet another gold rush for the "good ones" if it comes into existence, but then nothing will change. Porn will be typosquatted and littered all over the .com and other domains like it is now.

My point is that TLDs are ineffective in reality (but great in theory), and the XXX TLD would be great to help save the children (in theory), but the poor kids will see people fucking and sucking even if there is a XXX domain. /rant

Re:Simple reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I'm dropping my screen name for this one.

"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"

As someone who works in the hosting business for a predominantly adult entertainment customer base, I can tell you first hand that "ONLY" does not apply here. When the bulk of U.S. traffic on our bell curves hits around 3PM every single day, one thing becomes clear: the adult industry counts on sneaky employees surfing porn from their desk at work.

By and large, the adult industry shuns the .xxx domain because it makes it too easy for employers to block the entire TLD on the office LAN. Further, searching Google or some other site with "Safe Search" on prevents the "accidental" discovery of adult content when seraching for seemingly innocuous terms. Having the adult sites all under .xxx means that Google will not turn up adult content sites by accident, and thus the adult sites get less traffic, and thus less sales.

There was an additional comment further up the thread here indicating that there are already sufficient standards for flagging adult content sites and that .xxx is not needed for this purpose; that is a false statement. There is in fact NO "standard" for markup of adult content sites. Adult site owners struggle constantly to remain compliant with U.S.C. 2257 regulations which went into effect in the Summer of 2005. They actively seek out every form of markup available such as ICRA [icra.org], pics_label header for IE browsers and whatever they can find. But there's nobody in charge (remember nobody owns the internet, right?) and thus there is no "standard" of compliance.

The goals of regulation a two-fold and, in my opinion, just:

1) Shield people from the content who should not be exposed to it (i.e. kids, purists)
2) Ensure that minors are not being exploited sexually (child porn)

The 2257 regulations for the U.S. addresses point two, but as yet no regulation addresses point one. .xxx would fix this and enforcement is simpler than you think: registrars pull registration for non .xxx domains displaying adult content. Will it piss off the adult entertainment sector? Yes. They could lose enough money to such a regulation that would put my employer and possibly my job into a tail spin.

But profits be damned - this is about doing the right thing, not making the adult entertainment companies fat and happy. The tobacco industry was not destroyed by the Surgeon General's warning; sex has been around a lot longer than tobacco, and I am confident that a .xxx warning will similarly not destroy that industry. What it all boils down to is, as a parent of a pre-teen, I don't want my kid looking at the nasties that Google brings up when searching for school materials.