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The .XXX Saga Continues in Wellington 302

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the site-your-sights-on-pr0n dept.
netrover writes "CircleID is reporting on the latest developments on the .XXX top-level domain as the related ICANN meeting is currently underway in Welligton, New Zealand. From the article: 'The .XXX TLD was widely expected to receive its final approval at the ICANN's last meeting held in Vancouver about 4 months earlier but the discussion was unexpectedly delayed as the organization and governments requested more time to review the merits of setting up such a domain.' But as it has been reported, it appears the discussions at ICANN Wellington are in limbo once again."
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The .XXX Saga Continues in Wellington More

The .XXX Saga Continues in Wellington

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  • Awww, they fixed the typo (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I really wanted the XXX Sega.

  • More Appropriate Name? (Score:3, Funny)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Sunday March 26, 2006 @09:44PM (#15000116) Journal
    ...it appears the discussions at ICANN Wellington are in limbo once again.
    Perhaps we should change their organization name from ICANN to a more appropriate one.

    Like ICANT.

  • Is this necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @09:47PM (#15000127) Homepage
    Why do we need a .xxx domain anyway? Will it make easier for people to block these sites? You can't get into them unless you pay anyway. Is it better for categorization? All the other sites are in 2-3 TLDs. I just don't see what this would help.

    • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can't get into them unless you pay anyway.

      There is plenty, plenty of freely available pornography on the Internet. Enough to last the addict his whole life and result in chronic pain from over-masturbation. The first place pornography spread on the Internet, the alt.binaries.* hierarchy on Usenet, has always been free. Unless you just discovered the Internet yesterday, I fail to understand how you don't already know this.

      • I don't have paid access to usenet (so I have no access at all, effectively) and the content on p2p appears to be very very limited. Plus, I don't look that much for porn anyway.

        • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:39PM (#15000293) Homepage
          The AC that replied to you is right. I haven't been on P2P in a while (the music died, man!) but if there is one thing that is one P2P it is porn. Every single kind you can think of is probably there. And it's free. I'm sure there is true amateur content that people made of themselves, movies people took off web sites and put up, scans of magazines, copies of DVDs and VHS cassettes, etc.

          I would be amazed, AMAZED if even 1/5 of the content on P2P networks was not porn.

          Do you know what found it's way onto the original Napster (what a great service) fast? Porn. Napster could only share MP3s, or so they thought. It quickly occurred to people that you could just rename your file to .MP3 and then it could be shared. Napster didn't care if your MP3 was 1 meg or 1 gig. You would search for some song and find files named "something about porn or content (change extension to avi).mp3".

          Plus there is what is on news groups (NNTP), the web, FTP sites, and who knows where else.

          Music is what made P2P famous in the press, but I'm sure it would be just as big and popular if MP3s never existed. Porn ends up driving just about every technology, like it or not.

        • the content on p2p appears to be very very limited

          Whaaa?

          You may be seeing the same things over and over because many p2p apps limit results to the first 300 (or whatever), and there are a lot of p2p spammers taking up the common search words. There is enough porn on every p2p system to last any person the rest of his or her lifetime.

    • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 )
      It really is the wrong way to think about it. It'd be better if there was a .safe domain.

      My company pays a lot of money for filtering software. On top of that, we fire dozens of employees a year for doing shit they shouldn't online. Most of those are porn-related. It would be so nice if I could just block everything, then allow .safe domains.

      There should be a better catagorization of the internet. We should purge all .com/net/org and never allow them to be used again. We should enforce the use of coun

      • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:38PM (#15000290)
        No, Slashdot should remain slashdot.org, because it's entirely virtual (despite having a disproportionate number of US readers). There are a lot of sites that should be under country-code domains (all .gov and .mil sites come to mind, as well as every .com run by brick-and-mortar companies that only sell within the States), but Slashdot isn't one of them.

        • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 )
          I've thought long and hard about that too. It really is a complicated problem. How many customers from how many countries does one need before registering a .com?

          Should Microsoft be allowed a .com?

          Should Slashdot?

          How about me? Should I be allowed to run a .org? Why or why not? /. grew out of a blog. It was CTs personal site where people began to e-mail him stuff to post. Eventually, it grew into this. At what point should Rob have been allowed to register a .org?

          Once he started selling ads, should he

          • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Jaruzel ( 804522 ) on Monday March 27, 2006 @04:33AM (#15001272) Homepage Journal
            It is that fucking simple, if you were rebuilding the Internet from the start, but unfortunately we're not, and the current system is SO fubarred that theres no way in hell that it'll ever be fixed in a way that most would find acceptable.

            Whereas most would agree that the current TLD system has been totally abused (I count myself as one of the guilty people, having several .com's and one .org, and being neither a US company* nor a charity), theres simply no way to reset all the domain names to a sensible single tree hierachical naming convention without severely disrupting routers, firewalls, proxys, caches, blacklists, whitelists, favorites, links bar, and every single page on the internet that links to a remote site. Yeah, you could put a translation layer in so that the original name still works, but as any infrastructure architect will tell you, these temporary 'fixes' almost always end up being permemanent .

            Back to the topic in hand. .XXX is a bloody good idea, ONLY if sites with adult content are forced to switch. If they are not forced it's a totally pointless exercise. Why is it a good idea? well for starters we all know that viewing internet pr0n at work is against office regs (unless you work in the pr0n industry I guess**), so removing those 1000s of pr0n URLs from the corporate proxy list and replacing them with a single 'Block: *.XXX' rule makes it oh so simple for those network admins. For parents who feel that censorship is the way to safeguard your kids online (and not the old fashioned method of actually talking to them) then knowing that Firewall Product X 'BLOCKS *ALL* .XXX DOMAINS!' would give them complete peace of mind.

            Of course those of us who like and enjoy pr0n on a regular basis, wont be affected by the .xxx change - if anything

            Personally, I get my pr0n from usenet, it's free :)

            -Jar.

            * I know .com isn't solely US companies anymore, but it was intended to be.
            ** I once worked for a UK broadcast company (one of the big-five) and they had a whole dept dedicated to maintaining their own pr0n sites.

      • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mattwarden ( 699984 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:45PM (#15000311)
        I always get confused when I hear people whine about how ISPs and the government are encroaching on free use of the Web and promote ways of making things more distributed and much harder to control. Then, in a slightly different context, I hear people support ways to make it much easier for these entities to clamp down on how the Web is used. If it's made easier, people will do it. It's hard for you to filter Internet use because I and many others WANT it to be hard. I don't really care about you filtering your employees' use, and I even support that, but the problem is that any tool that can make it easier for you will make it easier for any other agency as well.
        • There is a big difference between being designed hard and becoming had due to lack of direction.

          The internet was supposed to be a fault tolerant network for sending launch codes. However, recent outages have shown that the internet quickly chokes after the loss of a few key routers/links.

          The internet was desiged to be easy to control. .mil people could access .mil addresses. .edu people could access .edu addresses. .mil and .edu shared the same infrastructure, but could not directly access each other.

          Bette

      • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by user24 ( 854467 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:57PM (#15000345)
        It'd be better if there was a .safe domain.

        No, it really wouldn't. The trouble with black or white-listing based on TLD is that the implications don't hold up. if/when .xxx is approved, the implication will be that every non .xxx TLD won't contain adult content, likewise if there was a .safe, the implication would be that anything other than .safe TLDs contained 'unsafe' content.
        Both of these implications would be totally untrue. With .xxx, does anyone really think that all the porn sites in the world are suddenly going to drop their high traffic URLs in favour of the .xxx equivalents? No, they'll just register the .xxx as well as keeping their .com, and I bet the .com's will remain higher traffic than the .xxx's for quite some time. This is why it just won't work. If approved, this will just generate a lot of revenue for a bunch of registrars, with no benefit to users, either those who are looking for porn, or those who are trying to avoid it.

        Also, there will always be fringe cases that don't neatly fit into a category.

        • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 ) <xptical@gmEEEail.com minus threevowels> on Sunday March 26, 2006 @11:40PM (#15000467)
          >>likewise if there was a .safe, the implication would be that anything other than .safe TLDs contained 'unsafe' content

          That does not nescessarily follow. The only thing one could assume should a .safe domain be implemented is that anything in .safe should be, well, safe. It's not saying that microsoft.com is pr0n, just that microsoft.safe is not pr0n.

          >>With .xxx, does anyone really think that all the porn sites in the world are suddenly going to drop their high traffic URLs in favour of the .xxx equivalents?

          Hence the need for a controlled domain. If one tried to register a .safe domain, he/she would need to submit the content for review by the registrar. This would be similar to how movies and games are rated.
          • If one tried to register a .safe domain, he/she would need to submit the content for review by the registrar. This would be similar to how movies and games are rated.

            So, .safe.us, .safe.au? Because otherwise, who gets to decide the criteria? Europe, where you regularly have full frontal female and male nudity on free to air TV, or the US, where on most channels they bleep out even the word 'ass'?

            • Not only that, but something that is perfectly legal to advertise in NY or California (your new range of adult toys for example) might be considered illegal in Alabama. .safe.ny ?

              Gimme a break
        • "with no benefit to users, either those who are looking for porn,"

          I disagree. Far more people and organizations might want to register a .com than a .xxx. Only a certain bunch would want to do so.

          So with the .xxx tld you should be able to add site:.xxx in a google search and narrow down to stuff in .xxx

          And I believe that will be rather useful to those looking for porn.
      • So, wait - if slashdot were at slashdot.co.us, it wouldn't be in .safe. So your employees wouldn't be allowed there. Which may be something you'd want, but not all employers would feel the same. Maybe some don't mind their employees reading tech news on their breaks. They couldn't use the .safe for filtering.

        What about sites detailing human anatomy and sexual function in a purely academic manner? Some parents wouldn't want their kids to run across that, some would be ok with it. Would it go in .safe or no


    • It just occurred to me that the domain system has similar flaws as the DOS/Windows drive letter system. The top-level .com, .net, C:, D:, etc. are so separated that moving between them is inconvenient at best, and once committed to one choice it pretty much is permanent. E.g., don't try to move MS Office from C: to D: or vice versa...the registry is *not* your friend. There are just too many adult sites (spread internationally) committed to .com, .net, .biz, etc. that filters working on .xxx will accompl
      • It just occurred to me that the domain system has similar flaws as the DOS/Windows drive letter system. The top-level .com, .net, C:, D:, etc. are so separated that moving between them is inconvenient at best, and once committed to one choice it pretty much is permanent. E.g., don't try to move MS Office from C: to D: or vice versa...the registry is *not* your friend.

        Which is of course the origin.

        When this started the biggest domain on the net was .mil. Most of .mil was not visible to the rest of the I

      • Here's how you could do it:

        1.) Have a period of time where current domain owners can lay claim to the the SLD in the .XXX TLD. Those with valid and registered trademarks are given first shot. Then the site that has the oldest name, for example ABCD.com would have first crack at getting .XXX as long as its principle business is in pornography. If that site refuses to accept the .XXX domain, then other SLD's in in another TLD can get the .XXX name. After all the porn vendors have had their crack, then the oth
    • Why do we need a .xxx domain anyway? Will it make easier for people to block these sites?

      Why shouldn't companies have the right to block XXX sites? And wouldn't parents like to block XXX websites? They pay for the internet connection, shouldn't they be able to filter obscene content?

      You can't get into them unless you pay anyway. Is it better for categorization? All the other sites are in 2-3 TLDs. I just don't see what this would help.

      That is not true. Lots of porn is freely available in the .com wo

        1. Define porn in objective terms. Do not use the phrase "community standards," but have a definition that will be agreed to be all cultures that use the internet.
        2. Once that is done, apply that definition to all existing sites.

        You will never reach step two. A European country will not consider a woman's breasts as pornographic, but a country under Sharia (Islamic law) may consider a woman wearing a bathing suit to be porn. The Internet is a global entity. Blanket descriptions, such as "pornograph

        • Define porn in objective terms. Do not use the phrase "community standards," but have a definition that will be agreed to be all cultures that use the internet.

          A website that depicts people in a sexual manner for the clear purpose of sexual excitement of the viewer.

          That way a clothing store catalogue webpage of people in swimmers (I do have my doubts that even Muslims find that to be pornography) or people posing naked for art are excluded.

          Once that is done, apply that definition to all existing sites

          Not ne

    • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:3, Informative)

      by MBCook ( 132727 )
      I suppose it would make it easier to find them. And maybe some site operator would prefer "hotteens.xxx" instead of "hotteens.com". As you point out, you'll never get the porn completely out of .com.

      But what it really means is one thing: money. You run the big "joebob.com" porn site? (made that up, no idea what it is). Well now you have two choices. You can either buy "joebob.xxx" (how much? Lets say a few hundred bucks) or you can not buy it. If you DON'T buy it then your competitor ("pornking.net" or wha

    • Why do we need a .xxx domain anyway? Will it make easier for people to block these sites?

      Yes. This is why it's the best solution for *everyone*, except for those too-far-gone whackos who can't even handle acknowledging that porn exists.

    • ...and the politicians in Washington want something to take home to the constituents. Some of these folks are looking for *anything* they can take positive credit for, especially given the controversies of multiple wars, inflated budgets, and Plamegate. Wouldn't you be more inclined to vote for a politican who "helps keep our children safe from the dangers of smut and pornography" or (insert other positive spin here)?
    • You can't get into them unless you pay anyway.

      Oh, I guess "tour" pictures, "demo clips" and "free porn search" sites are safe for children then?

      • Oh, I guess "tour" pictures, "demo clips" and "free porn search" sites are safe for children then?

        You have a good point and the porn sites can be a bit more proactive on this.

        The easiest way is to block all incoming connections from anything that resolves to a .edu domain.

        There, instantly they've moved the "protect the children" from them and put it back on the parents.

        Of course, they're not going to do this and I know it. Even if the major porn sites did, the lesser ones would not. Nor would non-US sites

    • Re:Is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rs79 ( 71822 ) <hostmaster@open-rsc.org> on Sunday March 26, 2006 @11:10PM (#15000384) Homepage
      "Why do we need a .xxx domain anyway?"

      That isn't the issue. Can ICANN get it into the US Government controlled root servers, THAT'S the issue.

      They can't.

      Here's what really happened. .XXX has been around for a very very long time. The prehistory can be told later, but the point is it was proposed to ICANN, they approved it and they submitted it to the Department of Commerce to rubber stamp as ICANN only makes "recommendations". The DoC said no. Why?

      Wellll, turns out a right wing group who had the ear of Bush had trundled into Karl Rove's offifce about that time and had three "action items": 1) No gay marriage, 2) No stem cell research and 3) no .XXX.

      Rove read the list and said "anout that third one", made a phone call and the newly appointed head of DoC stepped on it.

      ICANN bullshitted and suggested it needed fruther study by world governments.

      Because as everybody knows, the naming of hosts on the network has to be ratified if all the worlds governments. Never mind the DNS apparantly worked ok for over a decade without any world governments knowing the network even existed.

      ICANN is a very expensive single-point-of-failure. A choke-hold on the entire net. And now you're watching it in action. Or inaction.

      The US governemnt will never let go of it's control of the root, ever. When it came dangerously close to looking like the warring facitons of the DNS wars of 1996 would actually agree to settle their differences and cooperate, that movement was torpedod by the man who would later be the head of ICANN. Old military officers never really retire it seems.

      You might ask why the US government still has control of the Internet domain name system. Good question.

      Recall that it was the genius of Steve Wolff that the NSF backbone was turned over to private industry and the commercial internet was born. I did ask him why he didn't do the DNS and IP space as well. "I forgot about that; it didn't seem important at the time" was the answer.

      It's long been joked that the seventh layer of the TCP/IP protocol stack is the "political layer" and it's no longer a joke. The technical administration of Internet names and numbers should not have any politicians in the loop.

      They have the laws of their own countried to do what they want - Jon Postel recognized this, hence the requirement that a cctld administrator be a resident of that country - but ICANN made a deal with the devil, in a nutshell "if we recognize you and your government will you recognize us as authoritative over the internet" an that was it, Pandoras box was opened. And now the goverments of the world hold the internet by the nuts.

      My day in the sun was as the formation of the DNSO within ICANN in Berlin way back when. It was suggested by the ICANN board that a "Government Advisoty Baord" (GAC) was needed by consensus. When I got my 2.5 minutes at the mike I asked for a show of hands for who thought this was a good idea. Thirteen people (out of about 800) put their hands up and the ones I could see were all government poeple. There is a realvideo (sic) archive of this at the Berkman Centre for Law and Technology site.

      The irony is ICANN is not supposed to set policy, it's supposed to measure "community consensus" and make recommendations. But, the way they change the bylaws to suit themselves that may not even be true any more.

  • local blogger at ICANN (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, 2006 @09:54PM (#15000152)
    David Farrar is an InternetNZ councillor and is attending ICANN in Wellington... he's blogging on the meetings at:

    http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/ [kiwiblog.co.nz]

    mixed in with his other stuff of course.

    Useful stuff like:

    But what is interesting is who else is against the proposal. I had lunch yesterday with the Communications Director of the trade association of the adult entertainment industry. And they are not in favour of .xxx but very much against it.

    Their fears are the opposite of the US Government. They fear .xxx TLD may end up becoming compulsory for adult entertainment websites, with governments then legislating to make it mandatory for such sites to be in .xxx TLD. They also believe credit card companies might refuse to provide services to adult sites which are not in the .xxx TLD which will give the sponros of that TLD de facto control over the entire industry.

    Go crash his server.
    • "But what is interesting is who else is against the proposal. I had lunch yesterday with the Communications Director of the trade association of the adult entertainment industry. And they are not in favour of .xxx but very much against it."

      There is more than one trade association. One is for it one is against it. Why do you think there is more than one trade association? They don't agree on much.

      "Their fears are the opposite of the US Government. They fear .xxx TLD may end up becoming compulsory for adult e

  • I sure hope this doesn't happen. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the_macman ( 874383 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @09:58PM (#15000169)
    First of all even if it DOES pass do they really think they're gonna be able to push all the porn sites into one domain...seriously. Secondly who is gonna be the comittee that sits down and says X is porn, Y isn't. Just how much of a breast can I show before it's porn? Will Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition become porn? This is my biggest concern. It just seems like too much of a damned fine line even bother passing this domain. Just my .02

  • Two issues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Sunday March 26, 2006 @09:59PM (#15000172)
    There are two issues that I see with .xxx

    1) Define porn. Any definition will have to involve questions of artistic merit, like they deal with in other cases.

    2) What do you do with hybrid sites? I mean, wikipedia has several graphic illustrations in the human sexuality articles. Does wikipedia have to move fully to .xxx?
    • >>Define porn.
      If you can see the hole, it is probably porn. Start there and work backwards. Next, I'd say that any shaved genetalia probably qualify. Anything involving multiple partners touching each other's genetalia is a good candidate as well.

      Boobies are not porn. No matter how hard you try, they just aren't. However, if they are being used for a fetish, they probably qualify. Guy eating cereal while lactating woman fills the bowl? Probably porn.

      Feet are probably not porn no matter how hard

    • 1) Define porn. Any definition will have to involve questions of artistic merit, like they deal with in other cases.

      Why? Who cares? Sites that consider themselves to be pornographic will buy .xxx domains because it's good for business. Others won't.

      In any case, porn isn't that hard to define. Porn is imagery whose primary purpose is sexual arousal. The question of art is irrelevant. Porn can be artistic, but that doesn't make it not porn. Art can be pornographic but that doesn't make it not art.

      • Porn is imagery whose primary purpose is sexual arousal.

        Really?

        So what about imagery that causes sexual arousal but isn't intended to? What about educational things... like diagrams you might find in an anatomy book. If you don't think that is, what about actual photographs, but still meant for medical purposes?

        What about abstract paintings, say one that obstenantly is a painting of a flower but is strongly suggestive of sexual organs?

        What about commercials that use seductiveness in order to sell products?

        T
        • The grandparent's post already deals with the issues you raised. The diagrams, and the photos, are not porn because their primary role is not sexual arousal.

          The painting could well be porn - just particularly artistic and abstract porn.

          Commercials likewise are very unlikely to be porn because their primary purpose is almost certainly to sell you (non-porn).

          The GP might not be the perfect definition of porn, but it looks like a very good one to me. I think your prinicpal concern with it (as raised by your
          • The grandparent's post already deals with the issues you raised. The diagrams, and the photos, are not porn because their primary role is not sexual arousal

            My point is that there are some people that would consider many of the things that fall into this category porn.

            And the painting I think would be almost universally considered NOT porn.

            I think your prinicpal concern with it (as raised by your advertising example) is that you're really after a filter on age-restricted content rather than a filter on porn.
      • So if I make an ad for watches, and aim to sell watches, and my ads contain a girl wearing only my watch, is that OK? I mean, obviously the reason she's nude is to avoid advertising other clothing brands as well. Not to mention to draw focus to the only article of clothing, the watch? Under your system, that'd fly. Just like Victoria's secret and bikini ads are OK now, that'd not get blocked?
      • No one would *have* to move anywhere. No one ensures that businesses don't buy .org domains, or that ISPs don't buy .com domains, or... why would this be any different?
        Because the whole reason the US Government is pushing the idea, is so that they can pass laws such that all porn sites would have to move to .xxx domains!
    • It seems these two problems have to do with perspecitve. Is the .xxx TLD is a ghetto in which we force any objectionable content to reside, or an equal area that those who choose to produce content that some might find objectionable have the option of utlizing?

      If the purpose is the later the benifit could be significant to all parties. The .xxx TLD can easily be filtered. Those that reside in the .xxx TLD will be less likely to be accused of targeting the content to unsuitable audiences. Those who ope

    • Define porn. Any definition will have to involve questions of artistic merit, like they deal with in other cases.

      I'm not quite sure why people think this is important. It's completely irrelevant to the technical implementation of a TLD, and in the only place it could possibly be relevant (determining whether or not an arbitrary website should be required to use the .xxx TLD) there are going to be existing laws defining what "porn" is in that locality.

      • the only place it could possibly be relevant (determining whether or not an arbitrary website should be required to use the .xxx TLD) there are going to be existing laws defining what "porn" is in that locality.

        Standards on porn/obscenity differ by locality. If something is considered art in one area, and porn in another, what happens when someone hosts that content in the first area, and doesn't use .xxx? Under his standards, he's fine, but under area b's standards, it's a crime.

        • Standards on porn/obscenity differ by locality. If something is considered art in one area, and porn in another, what happens when someone hosts that content in the first area, and doesn't use .xxx? Under his standards, he's fine, but under area b's standards, it's a crime.

          And since his server is in area (a), then he's fine (admittedly this assumes a sane legal system where someone viewing a web page in area (b) cannot successfully argue he was "forced" to view it).

  • Much more useful than .info or .biz (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:16PM (#15000218) Journal
    To all of you who say you can't define porn etc etc.

    I believe the people providing porn and their target audience have a reasonable idea of what it is. If you create a .xxx TLD many of the relevant sites will have a presence there.

    Just skip any stupid legislation trying to pin it down or require sites to use it or to not use it.

    I mean when you do a Google search with site:.au you know you are looking for sites linked to or in Australia BUT of course it's not a 100% thing.

    Same goes for .xxx

    So I say it'll be useful to at least more people than it was to .biz or .info which the ICANN didn't seem to have any trouble approving.

    If I were in charge of approving TLDs, I'd approve .here and reserve it for public special use like the 192.168.x.x, 172.1x.x.x and 10.x.x.x addresses. So at least you can address devices or stuff that's kind of within the area". Like jukebox.here or whats.here, whos.here.

    The usefulness and novelty of being able to control a jukebox in UK from Turkmenistan wears off after a while. But as long as physical stuff remains important, it will remain useful to be able to address stuff by rough physical context/locality.

    With this, people don't have to change their domain search paths or even have one (for security or other reasons). They might even be able to bookmark standard URLs for setting their favourite airconditioner temperature or something like that.
    • If you create a .xxx TLD many of the relevant sites will have a presence there.

      Which means that porn will simply become more easily accessible than it was before. Probably not what the people pushing for this really want, but then again nobody in this country is rational on the subject of pornography and sexuality anyway. That in itself is a good argument against .XXX ... nobody can even agree on a common definition of porno, and there's no reason why they should have to.
      • "Which means that porn will simply become more easily accessible than it was before."

        Yes .xxx will be more useful than .info or .biz. Which only benefited ICANN and domain squatters, and benefited hardly anyone else.

        "That in itself is a good argument against .XXX ... nobody can even agree on a common definition of porno, and there's no reason why they should have to."

        Huh? Read my post again. The people it doesn't apply to don't have to. Make no new laws (please!).

        Only certain people and certain organization

    • If I were in charge of approving TLDs, I'd approve .here and reserve it for public special use like the 192.168.x.x, 172.1x.x.x and 10.x.x.x addresses. So at least you can address devices or stuff that's kind of within the area". Like jukebox.here or whats.here, whos.here.

      Well, since those ranges (well, its only 172.16.x.x to 172.32.x.x but close enough) are all private you're more than able to set up a local dns server for your network so you can have such addresses, no ICANN reservation required. of cou

      • The idea is to not use .here to refer to RFC1918 addresses. The idea is to reserve .here for free special and _standard_ use. And so it may become an _easy_ way for doing certain stuff.

        I mean, while you can use stuff 1.1.1.1, 5.4.3.2 etc locally and do whatever you want on your own network, it'll be more useful if things were standard and reserved.

        That way it may be that people could go to any WiFi area and do http://here/ and see a "Site Page" which gives you more about the site like whether a WiFi site is
        • while i see you understand more than i first thought, im still not sure why this would be something ICANN would have any control over. DNS servers are still not going to give a damn about your private address space it's still going to have to rely on the administrators of every network using this http://.here/ [.here] convention to set one up. once again, reserved or not this is already possible, and i'm not so sure that ICANN reserving the TLD would cause people to adopt such a system.

          It does sound like a nice c
    • I'd add .internal and .private and .home to your .here concept.

      You wouldn't have to assign them to anything, either. Just define them as being private and that they'll never be issued.

      Of course, you'd want appropriate translations of those into each language.

  • Cost of enforcement? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Waxed Yak ( 548771 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:17PM (#15000222)
    Good idea/bad idea issues aside, if this were made mandatory what would the enforcement cost be, and who would pay it?

    Last time I checked, domain names were treated like property. Suppose I own hotsweatymonkeysex.com (which I don't, unfortunately). Could they force me to give up my domain name without compensation (other than a free .XXX domain)? If not, then would they strictly be dictating what kind of content I could put on my site?

    The former is reminiscent of "imminent domain" (pun intended), and the latter is a violation of my freedom of speech. The only remaining option I could see would be for them to buy me out, but who would foot the bill?

    Given the logistics of it, I could only see this working on a voluntary basis, which is to say that it wouldn't.

    • Re:Cost of enforcement? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rs79 ( 71822 )
      "Last time I checked, domain names were treated like property."

      You didn't really check then did you because this is false.

      " Suppose I own hotsweatymonkeysex.com (which I don't, unfortunately). Could they force me to give up my domain name without compensation (other than a free .XXX domain)?"

      No. .XXX is supposed to siphon off porn traffic out of the other tlds in the same way alt.sex took porn out of other usenet groups. It worked for the most part.

      "Given the logistics of it, I could only see this working o

  • I have a better idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AusIV ( 950840 )
    There are a lot of flaws with the idea of forcing porn sites onto an .XXX TLD. The most obvious is that it can only effect sites located within the US, but that aside, I've asked before, what happens when you have somepornsite.com and somepornsite.net owned by two different people? Is it just first come first served for the .XXX domain? And could somebody who doesn't own either of those buy the .XXX and hike up the price real high, since there will be a fight to get that domain?

    And what about doorway sites?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Fundamental problem for govt's and .XXX (Score:3, Insightful)

    by R2.0 ( 532027 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @10:46PM (#15000314)
    The problem governments have with the .xxx domain is that, while it may make reguilation of porn easier (doubtful, by setting aside a domain for pornography, it _legitimatizes_ it. The govt would be in the uncomfortable position of saying that obscenity/pornography is bad, but here's a government approved place for it.

    It's analogous to the situation in Pennsylvania (and Montgomery County MD, where I live) with "states stores". In order to better regulate the sale of hard liquor (presumably more dangerous than beer), sales are only allowed through government owned stores. But this now makes the government the purveyor of a substance which can have dangerous consequences and bad societal results - alcoholism and drunk driving. And when this is pointed out, and the effectiveness of the "regulation" is called to question, the unspoken truth is that the State of PA and MontgoCo are as addicted to the money from sales as alcoholics are to what is sold.

    So Bush doesn't want .xxx to go into effect because it would be endorsing something he wants to eradicate; after all, if porn was gone, .xxx wouldn't be needed. If the next president is a Democrat, .xxx will be endorsed "for our protection" - along with hefty fees to pay for the implementation of said regulation. (e-rate, anyone?)
    • The problem governments have with the .xxx domain is that, while it may make reguilation of porn easier (doubtful, by setting aside a domain for pornography, it _legitimatizes_ it. The govt would be in the uncomfortable position of saying that obscenity/pornography is bad, but here's a government approved place for it.

      How is this any different from having the 'X' rating for films/videos (or whatever your local equivalent might be) ?

    • The problem governments have with the .xxx domain is that, while it may make reguilation of porn easier (doubtful, by setting aside a domain for pornography, it _legitimatizes_ it.

      Porn is ALREADY legitimized. Haven't you heard of USC 2257? Also known as "All models depicted or filmed in this website are 18 or older".

      Sorry, but I don't buy that legitimization crap.
  • Couldn't we just host all NWS pictures at a .xxx image host? "TinyPic.xxx"? It seems like it'd make filtering easier to just say "Don't load anything from a .xxx" domain rather than go through all kinds of complex protocol to determine if a site contains pornography. A lot of hosts have a problem with hosting porn anyway.

  • Drilling down.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by etzel ( 861288 ) on Sunday March 26, 2006 @11:45PM (#15000481)
    Waht's next?

    .069 - why not.
    .mlf - no comments.
    .les - keep them coming.
    .hom - ughh!
    .ana - maybe.
    .sad - pass.
    .mas - pass.
    .bes - never mind.

    My personal favotite: .tit
  • Any system that tries to rely on the goodwill of a naturally sleazy business is doomed to fail no matter how you look at it.

  • Where to apply? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Monday March 27, 2006 @03:26AM (#15001085) Journal
    I'm not so sure porn is so bad for my kids, but I don't want them to risk being brainwashed by religions and want to filter them more easily. Where do I apply for a .rel? :-p

    Seriously, when the DNS is used to push for stances a group of people may have, I doubt it's used for the right purposes. It's not a political tool to censor content "unpleasant" to some, it's a tool to build hierarchies.

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