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The Internet

New .XXX Top Level Domain 543

Posted by Zonk from the wakka-chikka dept.
Jigabug writes "There's a story over at Yahoo! News mentioning yesterday's approval by ICANN on a new .xxx TLD. Domains are currently planned to be offered at 60.00 each for registration. The .xxx joins the recently approved .jobs and .travel." From the article: "Adult-oriented sites, a $12 billion industry, probably could begin buying xxx addresses as early as fall or winter depending on ICM's plans, ICANN spokesman Kieran Baker said. The new pornography suffix was among 10 under consideration by the regulatory group..." CNN and the BBC have commentary as well.
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New .XXX Top Level Domain More

New .XXX Top Level Domain

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  • Hmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Seoulstriker ( 748895 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @07:56AM (#12703414)
    Why not .orgy ?

  • Well great! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DHalcyon ( 804389 ) <lorenzd AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday June 02, 2005 @07:56AM (#12703416)
    More TLDs noone is going to use because ".com" just sounds cooler.
    • Well an even greater issue is for people who own a .com domain name -- do they have first stap at a .xxx domain name first? This is a subject that I see really having problems with. Besides, what about legit sites that are non-pornographic that don't want their name associated with pornography? Do they have a first shot to buy their name in the .xxx to protect trademarks and identity?
    • .xxx is a great TLD. It's short, it's easy to remember, and it's obvious what it's used for.

      But along with .xxx, we get .travel, .cat, .post, .mobi, .asia, .mail and .tel. Anyone care to tell me what a .cat TLD is for? Or what business is going to buy foobar.post WITHOUT also buying foobar.mail to stop their competitors getting it? (never mind the fact if they don't already have foobar.com, they're probably already in trouble... and if they *do*, why would they need foobar.post at all?)

      A little more imagi

      • IAWTP (Score:4, Insightful)

        by trezor ( 555230 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:37AM (#12703814) Homepage

        they should be looking at the needs of other net users. .blog would be a good start.

        It would make it so much easier to filter. Google: "usefulstuff -site:.blog". I like it allready.

        • Not funny, 100% TRUE (Score:3, Interesting)

          by EvilStein ( 414640 )
          Blogs are cluttering up search engines faster than online poker spammers are. seriously. I would *love* to type in a search and eliminate all blogs from the results. Maybe if the blog wankers would come up with a tag that would allow us to skip blogs in Google searches this wouldn't be a problem, but no, that won't happen because bloggers love the page views.

    • Just a price hike (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nietsch ( 112711 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:32AM (#12703760) Homepage Journal
      Porn is one of the most profiting busineses on the internet. What if you just could bunch those profitable business together and force them to pay more? In TFA it suggest a price of 60$ which is about 10 times more then a normal domain. Why should it be this expensive? Are domains with the letter X that much harder to register than domains with the letter c?
      This is nothing more than a gamble that legisation will force adult content to .xxx. The registar hopes to cash in on that move. Since the expense of 60$ is just small change with profitable porn, they may just get away with it too. Maybe /. should ask a licence to print money from congress too?
      • Is porn really that profitable? Who pays for porn?

      • Re:Just a price hike (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rho ( 6063 )
        Sounds like classic discriminatory pricing to me. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. I'll wager good money that you're also in favor of a progressive income tax. This is Slashdot, after all...

        Porn sites are ALL for-profit ventures. A lot of .com sites (and .net and .org) are financed out of the pocket of regular folks for numerous reasons. Moving adult sites into a "ghetto" would solve one of the Slashdot crowds' pet peeves--Internet filters that filter breast cancer sites. (Why Slashdot is so fa

        • Decent idea

          But what is porn? Who decides what qualifies as porn? How about I open a lingerie shop that only sells panties. Then I put up a bunch of pictures of topless women. I am operating a legitimate business. So what if I get a bit of extra traffic. That's not my business. Should I have to move to a .xxx domain? On the opposite side, parents would have a legitimate complaint if they found their 8-year old looking at my panties-only site. But where is the line? Who decides what's "decent?" Sounds like

      • What if you just could bunch those profitable business together and force them to pay more? ... Why should it be this expensive?

        Indeed. It almost makes sense if you were thinking "well, it costs the community a great deal to cope with the problem of porn 'overflow'. But once you realize that the extra money will not go to any of the people who feel the pain, it looks like outright extortion.

        Also, it's not enough to keep any real porn company from doing business. What it's enough to do is to be a

  • Now how are we supposed to talk about all our registered .com, .org, .(etc) domains all at once?

    "yeah, just update the MX records for www.google.xxx will you?"

    "So that's just one domain, right?"

    What's wrong with .sex?

  • Obligitary (Score:5, Funny)

    by tonywestonuk ( 261622 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @07:57AM (#12703422)
    Goatse.XXX
  • It's going to be about a year before Congress tries to find someway to outlaw all porn that isn't on a .xxx domain.

    Of course, they'll cite the ease with which children could be shielded from the obscenities of the internet...Still, I've heard worse ideas.
    • Of course, they'll cite the ease with which children could be shielded from the obscenities of the internet...Still, I've heard worse ideas.

      Care to explain. The only problem I see is policing the whole thing. Other than that, we don't need to worry about offending the porn industry, they display their movies behind black curtains at the video store right? Just tell them to get a xxx domain or get out.

      • Re:I figure... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Intron ( 870560 )
        and who decides what is porn and illegal on .com or .org now? If a bare nipple sets off a hellstorm [oops, heckstorm] then you better watch your ass [oops, behind] or your site will get banned. Fortunately, obscenity isn't allowed on /.
    • If anything, I think the internet would benefit greatly (not that this is a reasonable goal) if sites were all on appropriate domains.

      Looking for a site in Canada? You know it will be whatever.ca. An american non-profit? It'll be .org. A site about goats in the christmas islands? Well.. You know.

      I guess your beef is more with them actually legislating it, but that doesn't seem like such a big deal to me either. It's not like they would be outlawing it, just trying to keep it in it's proper place.
    • Meh, the most porn I've seen resides at 127.0.0.1

    • Yeah, right. THAT would work (Score:5, Insightful)

      by trezor ( 555230 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:41AM (#12703850) Homepage

      It's going to be about a year before Congress tries to find someway to outlaw all porn that isn't on a .xxx domain.

      Because the entire internet is in the US. (Not saying the morons won't try it)

  • eg. "your mummas house has a .xxx address!"
  • Domains are currently planned to be offered at 60.00 each for registration.

    So clearly this isn't for the cost-conscious smut peddler.

  • The .xxx joins the recently approved .jobs

    I'm pretty sure there's a blow.jobs-joke somewhere in there.

  • I can't wait. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:00AM (#12703454)
    I look forward to the 20-year running gag that will be the legal battle over "sex.xxx".

  • www.playboy.xxx is a restricted domain.
    Please wait while the school security visit your seat.

    Also you could just block off dns on that host completely. I was a kid once, so all that will do is a black market trade of /etc/hosts files with all the "good" addresses resolved to IPs.

    Lastly, not all erotica is XXX .. Anyway, whatever makes it easier to filter/detect people browsing porn (for the children). But beware ISP's cracking down on porn browsers in countries where porn is illegal (think middle eas

  • I would have suggested .sex but nevermind .
    If we can start moving all the pornography on to .xxx sites then we could make it far easier for people who dislike pornography to block it out .
    I don't imagine everyone would comply , but the more ethical porn sites would and its atleast a start.
    ofcourse you could some realy odd stuff on a .xxx domain , like the site for awfull movie xXx.

    • Which is the top reason they *won't* move (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:14AM (#12703577) Homepage
      If we can start moving all the pornography on to .xxx sites then we could make it far easier for people who dislike pornography to block it out .

      Which is the top reason they *won't* move. Porn sites are fully aware that many people are infact paying for porn while pretending not to like it. People have subpoenaed adult channel subscription to disprove "community standards" and found that lots of people that supposedly don't like porn are subscribing to porn.

      It is the same reason telemarketers would love to call people that have reserved themselves against telemarketing, and the reason the show pop-ups to people with pop-up blockers. Many people are weak and have installed those in "self-defense". So you stay on .com, and get all the people that have blocked .xxx but will, if you just tempt them properly, subscribe to your site. Result: Profit!

      Kjella
      • Unfortunatly you'r right . Far too many people have far too many hangups when it comes to Sex and the human body , almost everyone enjoys it , but its hard to get them to admit it .
        We had a cruel joke in school ,
        We would ask someone if they liked porn .. If they said no ,they were called a lier and a wanker . If they said yes they were called a wanker and an idiot for admiting it .

  • ... slashdot.xxx
  • I think this is the first actually useful TLD to be introduced in years. Congrats ICANN, you actually did something worthwhile and managed to justify about two weeks of this year's operating budget.

    Now of course, we'll see who actually moves from COM to XXX voluntarily.

    *sound of crickets chirping*
    • I don't think there will be moving as much as just duplication. If I ran ultrasluttysluts.com, I'd buy ultrasluttysluts.xxx as well. And I wouldn't care which one anyone went to.

      And new sites will probably buy both. I don't know enough about the porn industry to be able to predict if they'd want to regulate themselves enough to make the switch. I imagine most of them wouldn't mind. They're trying to make money, and people complaining and giving them a hard time about corrupting their children just slows th

    • Re:Wow, they did something right! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by garett_spencley ( 193892 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:33AM (#12703766) Journal
      This is NOT good news.

      1) ISPs can and many will undoubtedly block .xxx

      2) If any country decides to introduce legislation mandating the use of .xxx for adult sites it will SEVERELY hurt the adult industry as many people who own hundreds of domains would have to pay much greater amount than they currently do for .xxx equivalents ... and you can bet that domain squatters are going to do whatever they can to make a fortune off of registering .xxx equivalents of popular adult sites.

      It's already known that $10 off of each domain sale is designated to go to IFFOR to "contribute to issues facing the adult online industry" .. however, most savvy webmasters pay less than $10 / domain as it is right now... and any adult organization supporting the new .xxx is undoubtedly only in it for personal financial gain .. as the overwhelming disapproval of adopting the TLD by the adult industry as a whole has been seen time and time again.
  • Like .adu instead of .edu, although I'm sure several .adu's would be rather educational.

    I agree that .XXX is a dumb TLD.

  • New Google Site (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:05AM (#12703490) Homepage Journal
    http://www.google.xxx [google.com]?
  • One one hand, it will now make censoring a certain amount of porn sites easier.

    On the other, this could be a good thing because most .xxx sites would be the ones who are less shady about their dealings and willing to comply with blocking.

    But it'll only work if porn sites wern't FORCED to being on the .xxx TDL.
  • XXX reminds me of the flag of amsterdam [flagspot.net].


    Seems odd to see 'XXX' hanging from a town hall, probably more than a few tourists thought it was a brothel.

  • Why an entirely separate TLD for big, brown jugs of whisky?
  • but why can't there be legislation that FORCES pornographic websites to use such a suffix from now on?

    of course, there will be sites that sit on the edge according to more social conservative people: sex education websites, contraceptive resources, sex toy sellers, homosexual resources, etc.

    but such sites are perhaps 0.001% of what i am talking about. a simple litmus test could be that the obscenity rules that apply to broadcasters being the yardstick against which .xxx compulsory domain naming apply

    it s
    • What are you not getting? For a start I'd argue with your assertion that it's just the .001% of sites that sit on a boundary that cause an issue. Have you tried Google's image search? Sites that contain sexually explicit advice? The Onion's Savage Love advice column? And that's three off the top off my head. Since when did ICANN become responsible for moralising the internet?

      Besides the only people likely to use .xxx domains are those who can't get .com domains. Just like .biz, .info and all those other do
    • First, who decides what goes into .xxx? Some government? The US government, instead of the French or Japanese? Do we need a *.xxx.jp and *.xxx.fr?

      How are even individual governments going to decide exactly what goes into *.xxx.* and which doesn't? Does nude art belong there? Education about AIDS and condom use?

      Will the US get pissed that european governments allow Yahoo to display softcore porn outside of *.xxx.* domains?

    • STUPID idea, and this is why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by typical ( 886006 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:22AM (#12703649) Journal
      but why can't there be legislation that FORCES pornographic websites to use such a suffix from now on?

      Because the entire world uses DNS, and the entire world doesn't have a consistent standard for what is socially acceptable when it comes to sexuality.

      Some Islamic countries consider it socially unacceptable to show anything other than the eyes and hands of a woman.

      In the US, we'd consider the French and British tendancies to stick topless women on TV unacceptable.

      Japan has a real problem with showing genital hair, but no problem at all with representing underage characters.

      The problem is that it suddenly tries to stick a single moral standard on the entire world to make a few short-sighted people who are agitating for an "xxx" domain (because they're scared Junior *might* discover what a woman looks like before getting married, God forbid!)

      This promises to create an almost unlimited number of social problems. Why, why, *why* is ICANN letting this through? Okay, if we want to have a .xxx.us domain, we can make it, but there is zero reason aside from registrars pushing for more short-term money and a few short-sighted people pushing to "solve" the "Internet porn problem".

      It's possible to build a worldwide content-rating system, but tying it into DNS (at least using the current approach) is just plain stupid. You want websites to be rated, add a /rating.txt file that works like the robots.txt that indicates level of content, and have web browsers and proxies respect it. For Christ's sake. But don't do something goddamn stupid like add a .xxx TLD.
    • but why can't there be legislation that FORCES pornographic websites to use such a suffix from now on? [...] it's a win-win situation according to me... what am i not getting?

      There's been a perfectly good W3C standard for voluntarily classifying the content of your own site for years (not just for pornography, but for plenty of other criteria too): It's called PICS [w3.org], you can classify your own site, and lots of sites do so, and lots of software reads the PICS classification.

      The .xxx suffix does the same

      • They'll pick up on it cause it's easy to understand. Since there are hordes of non-tech savvy internet users, it's pretty much all .com to them. You could probably find plenty of people who could be easily convinced that .xxx means it's on an completely different internet, and therefore harder to find.

        The concept behind PICS isn't terribly complicated, but the simpler you make it, the more likely people are going to try and run with it. Not that any .xxx legislation would work.
    • > what am i not getting?

      That the current US-government considers the pure display of primary sexual parts most probably as obscene. Whereas the rest of the world (well, certainly europe) does not.

      The question is "which and whose obscenity rules?"

    • Re:i'm certain i'm not the first to think of this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:34AM (#12703786) Journal
      but why can't there be legislation that FORCES pornographic websites to use such a suffix from now on?

      Who decides what constitutes "pornography"? You? Congress? What if Iran got to decide? They have internet access, too, remember.

      A simple litmus test could be that the obscenity rules that apply to broadcasters being the yardstick against which .xxx compulsory domain naming apply

      Yeah, the FCC has done such a great job of applying random, inconsistent rules to broadcasters. Skin is immoral and dangerous to our children, but extreme violence is perfectly fine? Also note that radio broadcasters have *much* more stringent rules than over-the-air television broadcasters do.

      it's a win-win situation according to me... what am i not getting?

      Government-mandated morality is not a good thing because it relies on one subset of the population's interpretation of "morals". This is not to say that the TLD is a bad idea, but it needs to be voluntary, not compulsory.
  • When did you ever see a real (not seo spam, ordinary spam, herbal medicine etc) site using any of the new TLDs? This is just ICANN trying to make more money by getting sites to register more domains.

  • It might save my eyes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Thursday June 02, 2005 @08:10AM (#12703538)
    Next time I need some sporting equipment and go to Dicks.com I won't be unpleasantly surprised.

    Adding the .xxx might help normal domains register what they want. There are so many porn sites, there is a chance that your domain might be taken and filled with horse on midget porn. It might be a bad decision to use BiteMyNipples.com for a business anyway, but as long as you stay away from the .xxx your customers might not get tricked.

    This only matters if porn decides to use the .xxx anyway though, and there really isn't any reason for them to start. Old sites probably won't convert. New sites might choose either or both. I guess it is just one more chance for a site to get the URL they want.
    • No, it won't. Dicks.com will be mapped to Dicks.xxx - the transition will be instantaneous and seamless. You don't really think those sites are going to give up their coveted .com net real estate, do you?
  • The new .xxx domain will make it easier to filter out the porn sites. Too bad ICANN can't force the .com porn sites to move to the new domain. It would make it easier for parents (who want to) to block the graphic stuff.

    Of course, it would also make it easier for the adults who want to find porn.
  • Ok, so I didn't RTFA, but exactly who's standards are going to be used to judge sites that need a .xxx domain anyway? Is it the US? UK? Holland? Iran? Who? This is just stupid. .org, .com and .logicalsitetype are all fine since they represent an agreed organisational type, but .xxx? Please.
  • Now all they have to do is ban this TLD, and the pr0n industry should finally be in check, and the conservatives can all retire as their work will be done.
  • could begin buying xxx addresses as early as fall or winter

    Not if I beat them to it. Finally, a chance to sit on some domain names like the moron who wants me to pay him to release my defunct url that he snatched up.
  • This would make parental controls on web browsers easier if adult content could only be on .xxx domains. What are the chances of voluntary compliance by the industry though?
  • The proverbial "someone" who does this type of thing needs to get net.xxx, com.xxx, org.xxx and all the other tlds as domain entries, and allow anyoen who currently runs a sex site off foo.[org|com|net|whatever] to have the foo.[net|com|whatever].xxx domain name.

    While there are plenty of sleazy porn folks out there, many are responsible, and having pointers to their content on the .xxx domain would allow parents to block it all completely.
  • I see a lot of disputes arising out of this. Current XXX site owners on .com or .org etc. should get a free transfer to .xxx. Otherwise I see the competition registering the same site with .xxx on the end to draw away the competition. I hope ICANN is willing to deal with these problems.
  • The .xxx joins the recently approved .jobs and .travel.

    So Apple has its own TLD? Where was /. on that one?

  • Will there be a goatse.xxx? [ducks]
  • What they should do is allow any site who's had a .com (or whatever, really) site up since before .xxx is available to migrate over for free. You don't have to abandon hotsluts.com and shell out $60 for hotsluts.xxx, you just suddenly become hotsluts.xxx and it's "free" until your lease on hotsluts.com (now transferred) runs out.

    If people think they're gettting something fro nothing, they're more likely to do what you want.
  • I do not understand why the comments I've been reading suggest that this will be another avenue to censorship on the web. In reality, it is an opporunity to avoid censorship. I suppose it does provide an easy path for governments to ban access to the .xxx domains, however the purveyors of adult material would just continue to use the rest of the top-level domains to reach consumers. Instead this could be a great benefit to both the seller and consumer by providing a non-intrusive channel to such material
  • ...and buy up all the .xxx domains before they have a chance to. Someone types in analfisting.xxx, and they'll get the Salvation Army's website. Mwuahahahaha!

    IronChefMorimoto

    P.S. - WARNING - No association between anal fisting and the Salvation Army was intentional.
  • I hope the filterers use the fact that the .xxx is a TLD to filter, and don't just filter everything with an xxx in it. At work, our company uses one of those stupid filters which just matches keywords with any part of the url, and it drives me crazy when I want to look up stuff in the lanl arXiv. Yes, I realize that you can look it up through the arxiv.org url, but if the link is an xxx.lanl.gov one, I have to take the time to work around the stupid filter to get my work done.

    Not mention how agravating i

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