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.'"
I thought that was Pfizer and Eli Lilly, not porn...though porn keeps those guys in business as well since the actors apparently take it to, err, work.
Is that classification does not equal regulation. It can be used to assist regulation, but usually classification serves a lot of good purposes outside of regulation. That being said, I don't know that.xxx would be the only place the target material could be put (if it were, then it would be regulation), but honestly, unlike a '.adv' (advertisement), I would think they would like the TLD themselves (the content providers) because it would make them just that little bit easier to pick out.
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.
It sounds like not everyone in the adult industry was happy about the domain.
Actually, it sounds like, this time around, there were more people against it than for it, but the people against it didn't really find a consensus on why they opposed it, only that they did. Which is interesting. At least this time around it doesn't look like a case of "the Republicans told us to reject this."
See, there's an interesting thing that people seem to fail to realize. There's nothing preventing you (or any industry / company / entity) from using.xxx as your TLD. Just point to your own "root" servers.
If you, as a content provider, wish to allow people access to a TLD that doesn't exist, you need only write a simple application that points to a different set of root servers. Your new list would likely include the "standard" root servers *after* your set of root servers had been checked.
The reason there's no consensus about why it was rejected is because there are so many different reasons, coming from entirely different perspectives. People in the porn industry didn't like it because using it would require submitting to regulation from the registry administrators, and because not using it might open them up to criminalization. Social conservatives didn't like it because they felt it would legitimize porn. Porn consumers didn't like it because they wouldn't be able to get their fix at w
Actually, that is/not/ a typo. Easier to find = easier to get customers. That's an industry where they could care less about the people who don't like them, therefore they could care less if those people know where they are online. And if such sites aren't required to have the TLD, then they could also have a.con address as well.
So, really it is to no disadvantage to them for this to be available if it is not required.
I would think it's a win / win for all involved. Those who want to get to adult content would have an easier time finding it and by the same token those who want to filter it out would have time doing that as well. Where is the downside?
Except that half the people looking for it are high school and college students and this would allow schools to filter sites a lot easier. If you've ever had the "fun" of running a college computer lab you know that you have to watch some of the computers in the back sorners even in the middle of the day at times.
Those releasing it would want to be able to get past the filters. The new TLD could be filtered, but if they still have access to the.coms as well, they only need to register an additional DNS entry, not expensive.
So, in the end, there no/down/ side for anyone, but the only ones with an up side are the adult industries.
Regulation and control. If there was an.xxx domain, it wouldn't be long for the Christian* Firewall Network (CFN?) to spring up trying to block it everywhere, and there would be demands to block it at ISPs, etc. It wouldn't be long before legislation was passed requiring all adult content to be "moved" to this domain. (Of course, we're just thinking of the children.)
The mis-perception is that all porn would somehow magically be labeled.xxx, and people would naively think like you did: it's easy to find and easy to block.
Meanwhile, the technological reality is that such blocking would do nothing to stop porn originating from domains outside of the U.S. It also would not stop dotted decimal addresses from working. But because there would be this new "law" requiring porn to be hosted in the.xxx domain, the CFN idiots would be confused as to why their teenaged sons could still access porn even though it was supposed to be blocked, and would demand more regulations to stop this "illegal porn".
Voluntary industry classifications have almost always turned into regulations (movie and video game ratings, light truck emissions, organic foods, etc.) It's just that on the internet, that idea doesn't work worth a damn, so why encourage it?
(*Feel free to replace 'Christian' with the intolerant fundamental religious idiots of your choice.)
(*Feel free to replace 'Christian' with the intolerant fundamental religious idiots of your choice.)
I hope you realize the irony of your comments. You could have easily made the same point WITHOUT insulting anybody, and your argument would have been that much stronger. As it is now, when I look at your post the most striking thing is intolerance on your part...
I hope you realize the irony of your comments. You could have easily made the same point WITHOUT insulting anybody, and your argument would have been that much stronger.
Well, it's certainly true that many if not most Christians are fine on this issue, but it is true that much of the pro-censorship lobby on this issue comes from religious (mainly Christian, perhaps simply because there are more of them) groups. At least, that's certainly what's happening in the UK (e.g., a recent issue involving churches an
The Slippery Slope Fallacy stops being a fallacy when the person arguing the point provides evidence that there is a slippery slope. In his argument, he stated that movies/video games/emmissions/organic food all started off as voluntary labels and ended up regulated. I don't know how true this is (I always thought movie/game ratings were voluntary) but it is left as an exercise to the reader to prove that the slippery slopes given were in fact false. If they end up as true, then he has a valid point.
Having your movie rated is optional (and obviously hasn't caused any reduction in the production of porn movies!): http://www.filmratings.com/questions.htm#Q6 [filmratings.com]
I'm not sure what the reference to organic foods is about... Obviously you're not allowed to advertise a product as something it's not. How is that different from any other food product on the market?
The other, and I feel even more important, issue is.. who gets to decide what "porn" is? The definition of what is and isn't acceptable changes from year to year, country to country, state to state, and household to household. People have been arguing over what's acceptable for (literally) ages, and it's definitely not going to be solved anytime soon.
So, if we did get the.xxx domain, what has to be moved there? One person's obscenity is another person's fine art, medical diagram, or even religious iconography. Everything from Gray's Anatomy to cultural studies to the contents of any art museum could end up sequestered to.xxx because someone somewhere doesn't want the kiddies to accidentally see naughty bits.
I would think it's a win / win for all involved. Those who want to get to adult content would have an easier time finding it and by the same token those who want to filter it out would have time doing that as well. Where is the downside?
As someone in the adult industry, I do agree that those are upsides to the.xxx domain. The downsides that concern me would be:
1. whether we would be in some way coerced to use this domain exclusively (actually quite easy to do if the US and UK governments (being the mo
Having a.XXX domain would make a simplistic filters only effective for simple people. I doubt a porn domain owner is going to drop chickswithhorses.com and move everything over to chickswithhorses.xxx. He'll just use redirection and have two front doors to his domain.
ISP's and government authorities will NEVER be able to move porn off of.com. There's simply too may jurisdictions out there in our wonderful world.
All of the.XXX media attention and effort seems pointless to me.
See, that's why I think TLDs are redundant. There was a proposal some time ago to abandon TLDs, and restructure DNS. Since nobody seems to care about what a TLD means anymore, aside from perhaps the US Gov't still using.gov, why keep up with the charade?.com,.net,.org seem to have very little relevance to the content of the actual sites.
Country-level TLDs are significant. For example, I KNOW that http://www.toyota.ca/ [toyota.ca] takes me to Toyota Canada's page, while http://www.toyota.com/ [toyota.com] takes me to the US page. Using country-level TLDs for this purpose is correct and should be encouraged - it is a lot better than the alternatives like having a stupid URL like http://www.hyundaicanada.com/ [hyundaicanada.com], or forcefully re-directing people based on their geographic location (what if I am using a proxy? Or what if I want information on the American prices for comparison?).
The "generic" top level TLDs however (.com,.net, and.org), are indeed irrelevant.
Personally, I think the answer is not to *abolish* TLDs, but to make them *optional*, and abolish only.com /.net /.org. Then a company doesn't have to register 3 domains, and they only have to register country-level domains in contries where they actually have a presence.
But how would you implement it - how do you reconcile those domains if different people own them, who gets the new TLD when they are amalgamated?
Country-level TLDs are significant. For example, I KNOW that http://www.toyota.ca/ [toyota.ca] takes me to Toyota Canada's page, while http://www.toyota.com/ [toyota.com] takes me to the US page. Using country-level TLDs for this purpose is correct and should be encouraged - it is a lot better than the alternatives like having a stupid URL like http://www.hyundaicanada.com/ [hyundaicanada.com], or forcefully re-directing people based on their geographic location (what if I am using a proxy? Or what if I want information on the American prices for comp
There's no obvious solution. You could do it by lottery between the holders of the current.org/.com/.net domain, or start a new registry as a free-for-all or one of several other ways.
I think it would be worth it, but it's never going to happen.
I don't think either of those methods are fair. For example, I own keirstead.org (my last name), and have for over 10 years. I have always had the same email address (my first name at keirstead.org). Keirstead.com and Keirstead.net are also registered by other K
I thought about saying something about country-level TLDs, but decided against it. I agree with everything you've said about those domains. As for making the transition away from the.com et al domains, keeping the existing structure in place while the transition happens shouldn't be too big of a deal. ICANN should still be the central repository for managing the new structure, but they should also be a little more discerning in who gets what domain. For instance, if you have a company named "Coca Cola
The "generic" top level TLDs however (.com,.net, and.org), are indeed irrelevant.
Speak for yourself. It's just that the American method for handing out domain names didn't have any criteria attached to it. To get a.com.au name, you need to have an ABN (Australian Business Number), or an ACN (Australian Company Number) - that is, you have to be commercial. To get a.org.au, you need to be a registered charity or non-profit..net wasn't really well enforced - it's under the same conditions as.com. The
The best structure IMHO would be to have only one main TLD which would be int (for International or Internet, your pick) and country TLDs subdivided as each country wishes. So there could be a.us.com in which the US could enforce the commercial nature of websites if they wish so or.us.gov or dot us dot whatever they want. Same for each country.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday March 30 2007, @08:11AM (#18542117)
In the absence of an international treaty governing pornography, any decision to create a.xxx domain would probably violate the laws in one country and the civil rights in another. Avoiding the problem was a wise choice.
We have international treaties on things like trade and maritime law but something on pornography is unlikely because it's a moral issue. What is viewed as harmless erotica in one country will get you executed in another. Anyone trying to get the.xxx domain is just trying to get someone else to do their dirty work for them. Sorry dudes.
I don't understand they don't want to regulate the domain or the content? When did ICANN start worrying about what others want to regulate in content? I thought all they did was handle the domain extensions.
So is this to say 9 of the 14 support porn? Or is it that 5 that votes for.xxx domain just wanted an easier way to find the stuff? And the 1 that abstained was "busy" doing xxx research?
See, and now I don't think that I'll be able to watch that M&M's commercial again - you know the one - they're playing strip poker with a couple of young ladies, Peanut loses and then blushes because he doesn't want to show his peanut...
ICANN was right to reject the.xxx TLD. If it had been implemented, we would see a rash of laws designed to utilize by classifying not only porn, but other material deemed objectionable by just about anyone. These days you cannot use medical terminology without offending someone. Congress would start mandating that all objectionable material be moved to.xxx and they would likely be the body that creates the rules by which objectionable material is classified, WebMD would soon have to be moved to.xxx be
``Periodically there are proposals to mandate the use of a special top level name or an IP address bit to flag "adult" or "unsafe" material or the like. This document explains why this is an ill considered idea from the legal, philosophical, and particularly, the technical points of view.''
I'm for it - if only because it's worth the experiment. Anxieties over prejudices from US lawmakers or some such don't mean much to me. I'm not from the US and I very much doubt that even those that _are_ from the US can do much more than express those anxieties. Nobody can prove anything. Besides that, the reasons given by ICANN are bogus. 'Not in the content-business' ? We're talking about the same organisation that sanctioned '.museum' ?! And even if porn were regulated in there, it would take _ye
The inverse (a domain exclusively for child appropriate sites) always seemed much more practical and effective to me. Let's call it.kids.
Let's put it this way, if you were starting a club, would you A) make the club undesirable for people to come to and then try to force them into it, or B) make the club a place where people wanted to be and then only allow in the people you wanted.
Well,.xxx is that undesirable club that you have to force people in to. The pornographers don't want to be in it because they know that it will get filtered out at a lot of places. So it cuts into their business.
But a.kids domain, is the place where everyone who produces child appropriate material will want to be because they know that a lot of parents will filter out everything but.kids. So you set up.kids and put in place a gatekeeper who monitors to make sure that only the material you want is in it.
Of course, the companies pushing.xxx want to run.xxx and not.kids because running.kids will be a lot more work (with the content monitoring and all) so they won't make as much profit.
And the moral crusaders prefer.xxx to.kids because their ultimate goal isn't just to prevent children from seeing pornography. Their goal is to prevent you from having any access to pornography. And that will be easier if it is all in one place.
Now, that "gatekeeper who monitors" bit about.kids will admittedly be challenging (I would suggest putting librarians in charge of that, they have experience with classifying material and setting up child-appropriate sections). But it won't be that challenging because companies would have a very strong incentive to follow the rules. So isn't.kids a much better idea?
(If you're really going to pursue porn filtering at the network infrastructure level, that is. Personally I think the whole idea is stupid. I'm just saying that if you're going to do it, isn't.kids better.)
Rather than argue over what is and what isn't pornography, why not just setup a.kids domain which is explicitly for children?
That way, those seeking to register a.kids domain would have the onus of proving their material was appropriate for kids. (Not that this is difficult). With the.xxx domain, every.com.net.org, etc... site has the burden of proving they don't belong in the.xxx domain. But, if the opposite approach is taken, only those sites specifically
In general, beware this manipulation of a democratic process; it happens on national scales, too. Take a close vote and just keep voting on it until the resolution passes. Then, once it passes, generally you don't have to vote on it again.
Due to the nature of random processes, even the exact same population that has the exact same opinions will have different voting outcomes on each vote. Now, if you take just one vote on an issue, it works out in the end; some things get overvoted, some things get undervoted, some things are enacted that "shouldn't" be and some things aren't enacted that "should" be. (Also, it's really hard to know which is which, so resist the temptation to point to your favorite close election and hold it up as an example; you can't prove that the election was 51% instead of 49%, it may well have been 51% instead of 54%.)
By holding votes over and over again, and taking it if it passes even once, you secretly lower the pass threshold. Add in some simple, traditional games for keeping certain groups out (like polling times or other things) and you can muck with another couple of percentage points, and you can keep trying until you get it right.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to prevent this; people simply need to be aware on some level that this is cheating..XXX has lost. Put it away for a decent time period before trying to ram it through again.
Um, so who gets to decide what should be age restricted? What age should it be? Why should I submit my content to the demands of your arbitrary rules? Who exactly is going to US banks not to do business with a website that refuses to participate in this scheme?
And of course, who gets to decide what kind of content should be age restricted? I, for example, think that no one under the age of 95 should be exposed to websites promoting crackpot extremist christian views like intelligent design. Can we add
Good news for porn companies (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news for porn companies (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed that for ya..;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
An important thing to note (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like not everyone in the adult industry was happy about the domain.
Actually, it sounds like, this time around, there were more people against it than for it, but the people against it didn't really find a consensus on why they opposed it, only that they did. Which is interesting. At least this time around it doesn't look like a case of "the Republicans told us to reject this."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing preventing you (or any industry / company / entity) from using
If you, as a content provider, wish to allow people access to a TLD that doesn't exist, you need only write a simple application that points to a different set of root servers. Your new list would likely include the "standard" root servers *after* your set of root servers had been checked.
It's not like thi
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I would think they wouldn't like the TLD themselves (the content providers) because it would make them just that little bit easier to pick out.
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So, really it is to no disadvantage to them for this to be available if it is not required.
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So, in the end, there no
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And that's a problem because?
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Re:An important thing to note (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulation and control. If there was an .xxx domain, it wouldn't be long for the Christian* Firewall Network (CFN?) to spring up trying to block it everywhere, and there would be demands to block it at ISPs, etc. It wouldn't be long before legislation was passed requiring all adult content to be "moved" to this domain. (Of course, we're just thinking of the children.)
The mis-perception is that all porn would somehow magically be labeled .xxx, and people would naively think like you did: it's easy to find and easy to block.
Meanwhile, the technological reality is that such blocking would do nothing to stop porn originating from domains outside of the U.S. It also would not stop dotted decimal addresses from working. But because there would be this new "law" requiring porn to be hosted in the .xxx domain, the CFN idiots would be confused as to why their teenaged sons could still access porn even though it was supposed to be blocked, and would demand more regulations to stop this "illegal porn".
Voluntary industry classifications have almost always turned into regulations (movie and video game ratings, light truck emissions, organic foods, etc.) It's just that on the internet, that idea doesn't work worth a damn, so why encourage it?
(*Feel free to replace 'Christian' with the intolerant fundamental religious idiots of your choice.)
Parent
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Well, it's certainly true that many if not most Christians are fine on this issue, but it is true that much of the pro-censorship lobby on this issue comes from religious (mainly Christian, perhaps simply because there are more of them) groups. At least, that's certainly what's happening in the UK (e.g., a recent issue involving churches an
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Can we say, sometimes slippery slopes are very real? GP's scenario seems not only reasonable but almost inevitable.
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Having your movie rated is optional (and obviously
hasn't caused any reduction in the production of
porn movies!): http://www.filmratings.com/questions.htm#Q6 [filmratings.com]
I'm not sure what the reference to organic foods is
about... Obviously you're not allowed to advertise a
product as something it's not. How is that different
from any other food product on the market?
And who classifies this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if we did get the
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone in the adult industry, I do agree that those are upsides to the .xxx domain. The downsides that concern me would be:
1. whether we would be in some way coerced to use this domain exclusively (actually quite easy to do if the US and UK governments (being the mo
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Because finding porn on the internet is currently soooo difficult.
More drama plz (Score:3, Funny)
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The horses have left, who cares about the barn.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a
ISP's and government authorities will NEVER be able to move porn off of
All of the
Re:The horses have left, who cares about the barn. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Not all TLDs are redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
The "generic" top level TLDs however (.com,
Personally, I think the answer is not to *abolish* TLDs, but to make them *optional*, and abolish only
But how would you implement it - how do you reconcile those domains if different people own them, who gets the new TLD when they are amalgamated?
Parent
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There's no obvious solution. You could do it by lottery between the holders of the current .org/.com/.net domain, or start a new registry as a free-for-all or one of several other ways.
I think it would be worth it, but it's never going to happen.
I don't think either of those methods are fair. For example, I own keirstead.org (my last name), and have for over 10 years. I have always had the same email address (my first name at keirstead.org). Keirstead.com and Keirstead.net are also registered by other K
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Yep, because everyone with a
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Speak for yourself. It's just that the American method for handing out domain names didn't have any criteria attached to it. To get a
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Between a rock and a hard place (Score:4, Insightful)
We have international treaties on things like trade and maritime law but something on pornography is unlikely because it's a moral issue. What is viewed as harmless erotica in one country will get you executed in another. Anyone trying to get the
ICANN answers to no one. (Score:2, Funny)
So is this to say 9 of the 14 support porn? Or is it that 5 that votes for
Romans (Score:5, Funny)
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Who decides (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
Erecting XXX domain faces stiff opposition (Score:5, Funny)
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RFC 3675 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt [ietf.org]
Time to stop flogging this dead horse (Score:2)
Now, do I put that comment on www.blog.bestiality, www.blog.necrophilia, or www.blog.sado-masichism? Life would perhaps be easier with www.blog.xxx
I'm for it (Score:2)
The inverse always seemed more likely to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's put it this way, if you were starting a club, would you A) make the club undesirable for people to come to and then try to force them into it, or B) make the club a place where people wanted to be and then only allow in the people you wanted.
Well,
But a
Of course, the companies pushing
And the moral crusaders prefer
Now, that "gatekeeper who monitors" bit about
(If you're really going to pursue porn filtering at the network infrastructure level, that is. Personally I think the whole idea is stupid. I'm just saying that if you're going to do it, isn't
Why label adult content (Score:2, Redundant)
If the goal is to protect children?
Rather than argue over what is and what isn't pornography, why not just setup a .kids domain which is explicitly for children?
That way, those seeking to register a .kids domain would have the onus of proving their material was appropriate for kids. (Not that this is difficult). With the .xxx domain, every .com .net .org, etc... site has the burden of proving they don't belong in the .xxx domain. But, if the opposite approach is taken, only those sites specifically
Beware this ploy (Score:3, Interesting)
Due to the nature of random processes, even the exact same population that has the exact same opinions will have different voting outcomes on each vote. Now, if you take just one vote on an issue, it works out in the end; some things get overvoted, some things get undervoted, some things are enacted that "shouldn't" be and some things aren't enacted that "should" be. (Also, it's really hard to know which is which, so resist the temptation to point to your favorite close election and hold it up as an example; you can't prove that the election was 51% instead of 49%, it may well have been 51% instead of 54%.)
By holding votes over and over again, and taking it if it passes even once, you secretly lower the pass threshold. Add in some simple, traditional games for keeping certain groups out (like polling times or other things) and you can muck with another couple of percentage points, and you can keep trying until you get it right.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to prevent this; people simply need to be aware on some level that this is cheating.
The interweb police (Score:2, Insightful)