ICANN Rejects .XXX Top Level Domain, Again

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.'"

alt root

[harry666t]

People, please stop using ICANN root DNS servers. Use OpenNIC instead:

www.opennic.unrated.net

RFC 3675

[Kevin DeGraaf]

``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.''

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt [ietf.org]

Re:Not quite...

[avronius]

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.

It's not like this is rocket science. You want to d/l pr0n from the .xxx website? Visit xxxroot and download our handy dandy little plugin.

This is one thing about this sort of argument that has always baffled me. If the rules won't change to support your business, change your business to circumvent the rules.

YMMV