Neither .Kids Nor .Porn For ICANN 247
JeffMagnus writes: "This CNET article talks about the possibility of extending the number of non-country-code top level domains. According to the article of the 47 submissions for top level domains, ICANN is only going to take 24 seriously. Among the TLDs, ICANN doesn't like are .xxx and .kids. The article then goes on to mention a company named Economic Solutions which has filed an injunction to prevent the creation of top-level domains that resemble the Belize country code .bz." I'm surprised by the reaction to .kids a lot more than .xxx, both of which sound like great ideas to me. Will this stuff come to a Net-splitting head?
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
PICS, however, is self-labelling (i.e. done by the provider/vendor). If someone chooses not to use it and breaks local laws or standards, then that is a matter for the police/courts/etc.
Non-manditory use of .xxx is as well. I don't think that forced use of .xxx is advisable. I DO believe that the advantages will be enough to get many if not most to volentarily use the .xxx TLD.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:5)
Why start now? (Score:5)
Trying to force sites to conform to their top level domain name is bad idea, if only because of the administrative nightmare that would ensue, but that doesn't mean new TLDs which might possibly be misused shouldn't be created, since such activity already goes on rampantly.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Their reasoning: who owns them? (Score:2)
From what I understood, their reasoning wasn't that the .kids/.xxx idea was bad, but that it came down to a matter of who would run them?
It's a valid point. An organization would have to then get into the biz of judging content more critically than any other. The only thing close is .mil[.us].
Would the .kids proponent be a competent registrar? Same for .xxx. Would they keep up certain offense-safe standards, either way?
.not (Score:2)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
I DO NOT understand their logic at all. This is surely not the brightest thing for them to do, they must be trying to keep their corporate sponsors (donations, fees, etc.) happy for now.
I'm no big fan of ICANN, but there is a fairly good explanation here [icann.org].
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
>other peoples.
>Like we don't already have that power as it is.
You said it yourself. They are already trying. We can either embrace a solution that will filter LESS good things (political sites, etc.), or fight with no hope of winning.
The politicians WILL put filters in place, they have, and they continue to. BOTH candidates for president and a majority of congressmen favor them.
We have to look at it logically. They arent going to stop. Their goal is to get porn away from kids.
Like good hackers, lets embrace a solution that works for BOTH sides..
.kidsporn --- Kill two birds with one stone! (Score:2)
-gerbik
Re:Abuse of .kids domain name (Score:2)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Yes, there seem to be a lot of web sites with women's ankles and faces uncovered. Obviously more restrictions are needed.
The problem with .xxx and .kids (Score:3)
Then you have the problem, and I think it is a problem, that when you being pressuring websites to register as ".xxx" it facilitates censorship. As many theaters refuse to carry NC-17 rated movies, local laws prohibit kids under 17 from getting into R rated movies, and so on. Similar restrictions are being put onto video games. The fact that the movies and games are rated "voluntarily" just makes it easier for the government, businesses covering their ass, and concerned libraries and schools, to regulate it with blanket policies.
Remember that depending on how the net is implemented, it can be a place of freedom or a place of oppressive control.*
* Lessig, Lawrence. Code and other laws of cyberspace. 1999
So what? (Score:2)
Sure it sucks, but there will be abuse with any system that gets implemented. Some systems will just allow for a smaller amount of abuse than others; but it's stupid to blindly reject any system that gets proposed just because "it might be abused".
Of course it'll be abused. But having domains like .xxx and .kids will make it a lot easier to control, and cause a lot less confusion and abuse than the current system. I'm sure most people will stick to intended uses of the domain names; why throw out the idea just because a tiny minority of people might not? That's just plain stupid. Overall, life would most likely be much easier for everyone if we had .kids and .xxx. The small amount of abuse might actually become manageable ... I mean, a name like fuck.kids is going to stand out a lot more amongst the list of .kids domains than a name like fuckkids.com would stand out amongst the list of fuck*.com domaings.
Re:.dot - An explnation (Score:2)
This would be for ham radio operators and anyone interested in morse code. They thought about different variations, like
really (Score:3)
No, this is BAD (Score:2)
censorship is Baddddd, m'mkay?
Or did you miss out on that bit of history where the minority was crushed, oppressed, killed, and generally not treated very nicely by the majority?
Which bit is that? Why, its all points in time before this one.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Internation Domains (Score:2)
I Cannot Accept Net Tyrrany. It can be the protestant arm of ICANN.
Insanity.. (Score:5)
I DO NOT understand their logic at all. This is surely not the brightest thing for them to do, they must be trying to keep their corporate sponsors (donations, fees, etc.) happy for now.
AFTER this round of elections, the at-large elected members will finally havea say, and I would wager that things will become considerably different.
As a webhoster, I personally condemn them for not accepting
Yes, there are problems with that, but thats my choice. Dont like it, go to another hosting comapny. But I would wager to bet that PLENTY would do just about the same thing.
As it is I host multiple porn sites all happily, but that would probably change with a
Dont even get me started on how good
Yes, in all, this has got to be their WORST decision to date.
www.goatse.kids (Score:4)
Obviously, people would try to get things like "www.goatse.kids" into the .kids domain all the time. It would be a constant battle, and the owners of .kids might be responsible for anything which slips through, which would make it a risky thing to own.
But the real problem isn't the clear-cut cases, it's the weird fringe ones. Should you let a site like Jessi The Kid [jessithekid.com] onto the .kids domain, even though it's creepy as hell? How about Child Supermodels [childsupermodels.com] which seems to be another creep out site?
And it doesn't even have to get that creepy. On yesterday's Powerpuff Girls [cartoonnetwork.com] marathon, one episode involved the Mayor being naked, and they showed his animated, nude, behind. It was clearly funny, but when some lameass parent in Butfux, Nebraska complains about it, does www.powerpuff.kids get taken out of that domain?
Re:Insanity.. (Score:3)
Their key concerns is that it wouldnt fix a problem, and that there is not a market.
However, if the
Its easy enough for me to monitor to a degree (porn sites are HUGE bandwidth users), its fair, and it makes it MUCH easier to filter CORRECTLY.
Their other argument was that there wasnt demand, and that it would get costly.
There would be demand when yet-another-web-porn-empire went to get a domain, and could only get hosted if it ended in
As to the cost?
Porn is the #1 business on the Net. Beats Yahoo, Amazon, AND mp3.com COMBINED.
They can afford it. We cant afford BAD filters..
Give us
Tired of ICANN (Score:2)
I'm more than willing to help with this project if anyone else is interested in joining, making a team, or humoring me :-)
Re:It's because... (Score:2)
NONE of the are 'good ideas'. (Score:2)
Firstly, ANYONE can think up a billion TLD's and think of a use for them. Does that make them 'good ideas?'. No. It doesn't.
We should be REDUCING TLD's and getting back to alternative lookup services for locating web content. THe current geographic domain space is MORE than adequate to serve what we have already. THe problem is what people want to do with domains.
I ask everyone this: If we add more TLD's now, when will it end? A year or two later, the same parties will be bitching for more domains... and more money and power will be handed out with them.
Easy filtering? My bottom... (Score:2)
Why is this relevant? Because once a user is on a porn site (or any other site), you dont need DNS, it doesn't matter if you're looking at http://www.sexytables.xxx/fetish/woody or at http://1.2.3.4/fetish/woody.
So to get to my point: porn sites only need DNS for the front page, and for indexing. They can put all the content up on something with only an ip address, and nobody will care. This means that even if
How to get round this? You ban linking. Now there's a thought...
Mike.
Re:really (Score:3)
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
You cannot establish a situation in which content must be labeled. It leads directly to censorship, period. Its ONLY purpose is censorship.
//end quote
So the movie rating system in place around the globe is for censorship? Or is it a warning to parents about the content of the film?
But what about parents who don't have a clue about anything technical, but who don't want their kids to be exposed to porn? Should the parent completely throw out the computer and deny the child access to the technology that is vital to his or her future?
This is not about censorship - this is about giving more help to those who need to make correct decisions.
-er
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Very true. The US is one of the most conservative western powers in the world. Here in Australia many movies that get a strict rating in the US are far more freely viewable by kids. We have a lower legal drinking age (18), more lax pornography laws, no death penalty, abortion freely available, etc. etc. Although there was that scuffle over net censorship here a while ago, it was very symbolic - the government was trying to buy one guy's vote on their tax laws, and they didn't succeed. I haven't heard of those laws since. Hey, this is a country where we don't usually beep the word f*ck (I just did then, but we don't usually), let alone 'god damn' as I often see on shows like 'Letterman'.
In fact, this very point was made during a review I saw on a new Australian movie 'Better Than Sex'. It's about a purely sexual relationship that grows personal. The director (I think) said that Australians are so natural and free about sex and portraying it on film that he wanted to take advantage of the idea in this film, and explore relationships from that vantage point. Fine, our current Government has created a censorship board that's been a bit controversial over the past few years, but that's democracy. It doesn't really reflect the truth on the ground.
So, anyway, we don't really want to be hauled backwards morally by the US. Thankyou.
Lisa Evans
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
This is the real problem I have with
Unfortunately, I don't think most people who would like to filter porn have ever spent any time trying to figure out what pornography really is. I certainly have no idea what is "pornographic." Just about everyone would agree that a site like www.whitehouse.com [whitehouse.com] definitely falls under the common definition of pornography. But what about the disgusting site rotten.com [rotten.com]? Certainly, it contains a great deal of disgusting stuff that certainly isn't pornography, and some stuff that might be. Where it go?
Or, for a more difficult distinction, what about a site like photo.net [photo.net]? Certainly, there are plenty of photos of naked people there (or, at least, there were the last time I looked, about 5 years ago). Is it pornography? What about a document describing all sorts of disgusting perversions, like The Starr Report [loc.gov]? Is that porn? Do we have to protect kids from that?
On an even more omininous tone, how about a totally serious political activism site, that just happens to be a political activism site for disgusting sexual perverts, like The North American Man-Boy Love Association [soc-um.org]? Where on earth do we put constitutionally protected political speech when that speech is considered the worse form of pornography available by many people?
Filtering already opens a big enough can of worms, even when the criteria for the filtering is (nominally) in the hands of the reciever of the information -- each person browsing theoretically has some chance to decide for themselves what criteria to use for "bad" sites. But to pre-apply the "pornography" criteria to a huge number of sites, and to apply it based on the discretion of people who are neither the content providers or the content consumers, is asking for a system rife with abuses and problems.
And if you believe your narrow definition of pornography is going to be the definition used by all sides when it comes time to start segregating the sites, you should spend some time really listening to what people are saying. No-one is going to be happy with the definition of porn, escpecially in a world where movies like Eyes Wide Cut can be defined as "Adult Only Pornography" by the American standards.
It's because... (Score:2)
In the beginning.... (Score:2)
There was the ARPANET and all was chaos. And God came down and created the USENET and the earth. And it was good. And God took the USENET and said "Let there be rigidly enforced categories." And it too, was good. On the fifth day, God created all the categories of the Earth, such as the comp.*, and the rec.*, and the alt.*. And naught a newsgroup was created which fell where it belonged not, for the categories were moderated. And many people partook of the well-nomenclatured categories, and it was good.
Then came the web, and the corporations, and they too started with categories, such as *.net, and *.com, and *.org. Yet lo, they were unmoderated, and all sense of order was lost and it descended back into chaos.
Come on God^H^H^HICANN, give us categories with meaning!
.xxx is a BAD IDEA (Score:2)
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
Re:They could at least have granted one TLD (Score:2)
They already ruled on that one, we've been talking about it here [slashdot.org]... I don't think that the courts would find that nearly as funny as we would...
"In a surprise move, Federal Express shipping company and soft drink bottler Seven Up merged, to form the first on request soda delivery serivce. Said to be similar to companies that deliver fresh icecream or milk, the new company will deliver the freshest soda pop in the business. The new company, 'Fed Up', will begin operations in the second quarter of the new year"
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
You have to accept one posit for the logic to follow though..
Politicians *will* filter, and *will* continue to do what they can to keep porn from kids.
It is a HUGELY popular stance, it is HUGELY important to parents, and parents are a 2-vote pair generally.
So, with that posit..
If a filter is coming (and they have been!), then we need to find a filter that DOESNT prevent legit info (free tibet, GOP.ORG,etc.) from being filtered.
With the
Thus, no legit info gets sacrificed, or at least, alot less.
No guarantees here... (Score:2)
I partially disagree. The .xxx TLD would pretty much guarantee "nudity" (but I think you mean pr0n). As mentioned in this earlier post [slashdot.org], it would be all-but-impossible to restrict abuse of a ".kids" domain -- a daring website could register something innocuous like "notebook.kids" and fill it with pr0n. Yes, it would probably get shut down, but after how much time? A day? A week? It might be economically feasible to run a company that kept registering domains in .kids that only lasted for a few hours|days|weeks...
ICANN aren't that bad (Score:2)
DEW YEW KEEP A TROSHIN
This sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme to me (Score:2)
This doesn't open up new possibilities. The only thing adding TLDs like this does is make the domain registrars richer.
A little note on .kid (Score:2)
- Encourages disturbed individuals to easily target a youth market for their own purposes leading to violations of privacy, security, and sanctity.
- Encourages breakdown of federal law: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1999/9910/childfinal.htm
- How many articles must be covered out there until parents realize that the freedom of the internet is not safe for subteenage children and the security blankets of their homes because of (even a handful of) deranged individuals?
- Playful hackers could disrupt the family nucleus and do more harm than good by redirecting timothythe.kid to tims.porn.
Bottom line here is thatSoulStriker
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
When I pick up my TV Guide, it tells me whether a film is a comedy, drama, adult, etc. If I go to a bookstore, its contents are divided into fiction, non-fiction, history, geography, computers, etc. On the web, I can see whether the site I am viewing is commercial, non-commercial, educational, military, etc.
This is all useful information. Could it be used to censor? Yes, I suppose it could. Is censorship its "ONLY purpose?" Don't be ridiculous, m'mkay?
-
Blah. (Score:2)
But is this really a problem? No. The solution is to eliminate ICANN and WIPO, and any other organization that controls anything on the internet. Sure, it might be a little chaotic at first, but after a while, I'm sure there would be some agreed upon standard.
or, they could just make a million top level domains. they could use something like .aaa .aab .aac .aad ... etc. It wouldnt be pretty, but I wouldn't mind.
bottom line is, the whole TLD thing was fucked up from the start. so just leave it how it is. It's fine. there is pretty much an infinite combination of domain names you can produce with .com, .org, .net, etc.
Another solution would be just to disable DNS altogether. All we need is the IP address. This would get rid of corporate domain name lawsuits completely, and free up the courts for something productive. Whenever you see an AOL commercial, they would advertise their website as their IP address. This would be great. Everyone would run their own "dns", so they would just type in the IP address and save it as "aol" or something, so next time they opened their browser all they gotta type is "aol". How could it get any easier? Of course, Microsoft would ship windows with some predefined dns entries.
Ok, an even better solution.. From now on, at birth, everyone gets assigned their own serialized IP address. When they get older, they get to take a test, and if they pass it, they can get a domain name. Ok bad idea.
Ok here it is. Get rid of .com, .org, etc. and have like, name.{person}{business}.city.state.country.planet. solarsystem.galaxy. for example. Microsoft's home page would be: http://microsoft.business.redmond.wa.us.earth.sun. milkyway
seems pretty good, huh? that is the only solution.
Well im gonna go now, I think mozilla is finished compiling ;-)
Re:NAMBLA (OT) (Score:2)
You've proven my point perfectly. Censorship is a very dangerous game, and people who play with it are often confused when it bites them. If, as you say, the NAMBLA site described how to have sex with children without legal reprecussions, then it is describing what the laws are, and which of the actions these pervs enjoy that are not criminal. If you want to prevent people from discussing what is legal, and what is not legal, then you are asking for a very, very ugly world. You're asking for a world that most of us would not appreciate. Before we go around allowing other peole to decide what is right, and what is wrong, we should think long about who exactly is going to do the deciding.
Also, I should mention that the NAMBLA website is gone. It's been gone for as long as I can remember -- the only evidence I've ever seen of it is from people complaining of its existance. But if you went there long ago, and read it that close, and remember it that well, I honestly have to question your motives for doing so. I sure as hell wouldn't let you near any of my kids. I'm not kidding about that, either.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
It may not provide a 100% improvement, but it would be a large improvement nevertheless. It would give the operators of porn sites some security against people trying to sue because they accidentally were made to see offensive images, which could be a significant reason to use a .xxx domain. It could help defuse the arguments against porn on the net (i.e. kids and others will accidentally end up seeing naked people), which is definitely something that most site operators could get behind.
Re:Tired of ICANN (Score:2)
--
I Know the Domain admin ... (Score:2)
We were talking about it, and he said they'd never get it because it was "too controversal." ... just think of all the inapprorpriate domains possible: molest.kids , naked.kids , mcdonalds.kids :)
Basically no one wants to take the blame for creating domain thats supposed to be entirely santized for young eyes
What to do with that extra bandwidth?! Games! (Score:2)
I vote for BZFlag...a game which, by the way, is open source, multi-platform, and is badly in need of developers, since the current ones don't seem to have a lot of time on their hands. Check out the bzflag site on sourceforge: http://bzflag.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Aren't TLDs supposed to be generic? (Score:2)
Why the E? Because 'electronic' is the buzzword today? It's on the web, so it's already electronic. And why "biZ"? Why using a buzzword term, instead of a short for the real word "business"?
Why
As to ".bz", the threat must be ignored. Country TLDs were given for a reason - to represent a country. Bending the rules by having enough money and tricking the system is a bad thing to be accepted. I think ICANN should make a reverse claim, that people might confuse people into thinking ".bz" sites represent Belizze (since it's the official meaning of the TLD), while in fact those are from a bought out legacy TLD.
If the goal is to have '.cool', '.sucks', '.notsucks', '.gnu' etc., why not drop the whole thing and have just the domain names? (ala Compuserve's GO MICROSOFT)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
That being said, i'm certain there are plenty of legimate porn sites that would not want to try to circumvent legitimate measures. But would their disappearance from filters be enough to make a difference? I'm not sure.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Re:Tired of ICANN (Score:2)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:4)
Why would a porn company start hosting on .xxx where it would be automatically filtered?
Why would a porn operator want to hide the fact they they serve porn? The only outcome is that those who want porn can't find them and those who don't will click away, possably in disgust, possably to find out where to report a porn operator targeting their kids.
OTOH, with a .xxx domain, there can be no question that the surfer knew what they were clicking for. "Your honor, if Ms. Johnson didn't want to see explicit photos, why did she click on girls.xxx?
Being purely pragmatic, most potential users trying to get past a filter can't afford (or just won't pay for) a subscription anyway, and will just burn up bandwidth.
.kids and security (Score:2)
Internet would be much more secure just by blocking enverything from script.kids.
__
Re:ICANN Needs to Remember... (Score:2)
Inspired. They pay the Belize government so they can own a cool name, that sounds a bit like 'biz'. It would obviously confuse people to have a real .biz TLD. Duh!
What next, the Tongan government trying to claim exclusive use of the To: header?
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
OK, say, as a parent, I've already done this. I still don't want my children exposed to such pornographic material. Why shouldn't I, as the parent and legal guardian of a developing minor, have the right to control what my child is exposed to? Why should your freedom to sell pornography indescriminately impose on my freedom to raise my child the way I choose, especially considering that
--
Re:really (Score:2)
What is apropriate for kids? What is not? Your not going to get any one answer.
Some friends of mine have a little kid, it amazes me whats "Ok" and whats "not ok" with them. We were watching pulp fiction, remember the scene where butch returns to the hotel after his fight?
They were freaking out and turned the movie off because of the sexual suggestiveness of the scene (watch the expressions on the girls face in the closups - her manners are very suggestive of sex). The kid wasn't even watching it - he was playing with some toys and thought the movie was boreing as hell.
However... the Matrix with people being gunned down with machine guns - thats perfectly OK.
Go other places in the world, and expect a complete reversal. Countries like France show pornography on TV at night. You will also notice that their movies tend to have alot less violence than standard americain fair.
The bottom line is that while some people in one communitty may think "sex is ok, violence isn't" others will say the opposite. Its all really just that parents are paranoid and will fight against any imagined danger to their kids.
I don't think that standards committees need to bend to parinoid delusions of "danger".
-Steve
pshaw. (Score:2)
Who, exactly, would be forcing these other countries to filter out the porn TLD? This is just labelling that makes it easier for individuals to self-censor. If you (or another nation) don't feel that it's necessary, you don't have to do anything. The Internet will still work the same way it always did. The only people left out would be the people who don't want to see the stuff anyway.
--
jessithekid.com creepy site (Score:2)
That site is scary... When it first loaded I thought 'CooK' on one of the picture links said something similar but not quite so nice...
I wonder sometimes what happens when kids are subjected to the attention that this girl is getting... When I was that age (being male) I was playing with model rockets and Hot Wheels cars and Legos and Computers, not being a 'pre-teen lifestyle' person with a tatoo on my lower abdomen in a sexually suggestive spot... That is really sick (IMHO)
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
I hate that the posit is true. If I could fix THAT, I would dedicate my life to the cause.
Sadly, I know the public isnt that bright.
:(
Fake excerpts from the ICANN explanation: (Score:2)
"...kids like porn as much as anybody..."
"...we recommend that
"We were very worried about misuse of the
"Misuse of the
--------
95% pure PR (with a dash of laziness) (Score:4)
Having an
Having a
Either way, it would mean bad PR and more calls for government interference.
The other problem is that all these places that have their great domain names as one of their biggest assets would have to move to the more appropriate TLDs and maybe take their chances on whether they can get a good name again.
--------
Re:Insanity indeed (Score:2)
intl. domains (Score:2)
Domains are first come first serve. So whether it is a test or whatever registar, if you need a domain, you gotta register it first the moment the system becomes avail. So this situation is totally predictable, and it was done totally on purpose.
What is amazing is not only were the registars' servers overloaded, so was the main registration system...
And I am sure people know by now that this thing is all about making $$$. Cybersquating is encouraged. It is obvious. Who the hell would use 30 domains at once? ISPs registering for their clients? Ya right.
No wonder the web is going no where ever since the businessmen got involved.
I have a bucket next to my desk because everytime there is something to do with domains it makes me puke!!!!
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
I DO NOT understand their logic at all. This is surely not the brightest thing for them to do, they must be trying to keep their corporate sponsors (donations, fees, etc.) happy for now.
Why don't you go to ICANN's site and read why [icann.com]... Here's a good quote about the issue:
The absence of a clearly defined and globally diverse policy-making and policy-enforcing mechanism for a content-restrictive TLD is particularly troubling where, as here, there are such great divergences among communities, faiths, cultures, and individuals over the correct definition of what is and is not appropriate content for children.
Other potential concerns about content-restrictive TLDs include the difficulty of applying and enforcing content restrictions to email, chat, newsgroups, instant messaging, and other potential uses of the DNS beyond the World Wide Web.
Short answer - Who says what is acceptable or not, how do you enforce it, what is the procedure for resolving disputes. ICANN feels of all the proposals, none of them have provided effective plans for sufficiently addressing all the issues.
Re:NONE of the are 'good ideas'. (Score:2)
I think that depends on what purpose is given to TLDs. If TLDs are created for the purpose of categorizing the content by topic, like these stupid .xxx, .kids, .biz ideas, then yes, there is no end in sight. On the
other hand, if TLDs are used to represent generic classes of "author types",
like the original .com, .org, .edu, .mil, .gov, etc, along with new proposed
types like .personal or .parody, then I think there is a very limited number
of possibilities, and it won't get out of hand.
---
They could at least have granted one TLD (Score:2)
Re:Abuse of .kids domain name (Score:2)
Say you only allow those domains for your kids. Then put an filter that'll remove any traces of sexual content or whatever. A 10 years old doesn't necessarily need to be able to get to site about abortion.
So if you put your site on
That's at least one way why
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
So any porn operator not hosting on .xxx is automatically targeting children?
I seriously doubt it that they are, but that won't stop someone from alleging it (possably a politition trolling for votes) and dragging them into court. By having an .xxx domain, porn operators could simply reply to the charge with 'We are accessable only through iwantporn.xxx which explicitly informs the surfer that this is an adults only site and can easily be blocked for children.'. In other words, it would remove the allegation from the relm of believability.
business (Score:2)
At least in the US anyone viewing porn at work can expect to be fired. Maybe they get one warning, but that would be it. Sexual harrassment laws pretty much require a company to block it. Besides, the internet connection at work is for buisness use, not personal. I could make an arguement that /. is buisness (Hey, I'm in technology and it is a technology site. I'd probably lose, but it could be made, I can see an arguement for porn at work.
While it is true that buisness would be lost from the few that are looking at porn where they shouldn't be, but I think most porn providors would go for this. Any movie director can slap a X rating on his own film, and most porn directors do this automaticly to get the buisness of people looking for a porn film. to these directors it is better to be rated X, then to be rated R (NC-17? I'm not up on these ratings) with terribal reviews. People going to movies rated less then X generally care a little about a quality film, while some folks going to rated X movies only care about sex. (In general of course)
It is fairly easy to write (get) a script that sends you to a random .xxx website. Again, this is good for all porn operators.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
You're forgetting, there are two major categories of sites with porn: porn for profit, and porn for annoyance.
By having a TLD specifically for porn, eventually the porn operators that just want to make a hassle free profit would migrate there. The porn for annoyance people and those who just don't care would stay in the other domains.
That division is valuable in itself even though it would be imperfect. It would allow the vast majority of porn operators and their adult customers to go about their business in peace and focus the controversy and attention primarily on those that really are a problem (as seen by most people).
As I said, it wouldn't be perfect, but it would sure beat what we have now.
P.S. I may be the first person to get that URL in a non-trolling post. Wow.
I never would have expected that to happen. :-)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
Think of the Internet as a big bookshop. Now I don't know about your local bookshop (maybe you've only ever used Amazon), but my local one has books sorted into shelves about different subjects, so if I want something I know where to start looking, and it helps me find related stuff. In addition, there's sections dedicated to kids stuff only, and usually a section of adult books/magazines too. To stop kids getting at the adult stuff, it's placed on a high shelf out of their reach/line-of-sight. Is this starting to sound very close to the new TLDs?
It's not about censorship, it's about usability. Bear in mind that every search engine can "censor" you, wouldn't you rather have a domain setup where you can find stuff easier? Refining the TLDs is the start of that - hopefully we'll see it get more detailed after that, maybe with a 4-level domain structure or something. We'll still have a huge amount of data, and we'll still have a hell of a job finding stuff, but having somewhere definite to start looking would be a big help. As it is, you often have to pick a high-rating option from Google and then start working through links pages to find the more obscure things.
Censorship may be what stops ppl in Afghanistan from expressing their thoughts, but it's also what stops me from posting animal s3x pix all round my town centre. If you think it's a Bad Thing that I'm prevented from doing that, it's not worth the effort continuing.
Even filtering software, the real censorship stuff on the net, isn't a bad thing. It's a bad implementation, certainly, but as a concept I'd say stopping young kids from getting onto pr0n sites ain't a bad intention - I doubt even PeaceFire would complain about that. The problem comes when you prevent adults from accessing what they choose - an adult has the right to do what they want in the privacy of their own home, so filtering everyone is right out. But to try and stop kids from getting to some of the more "differently-inclined" (aka "WTF are they doing?!?!"
Grab.
Grab.
xxx kids etc (Score:2)
Why does it take so long to consider new TLDs? Send me your shortlist of 24 TLDs and I'll give you my decision in 2min. Do you really need to have a business lunch to discuss whether
What would ibm.info contain? Info on the company IBM's credit worthiness, or does ibm put info for their products there? Since many companies also have support.mycompany.com and download.mycompany.com, maybe we should sell them
I hope that when I establish my own country I won't have to wait so long to get a country TLD.
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Abuse of .kids domain name (Score:4)
I don't think many of these targeted domain names are going to meet with much success unless some agency (ICANN, perhaps) manages to come up with a way to restrict the registerable domain names to on-topic sites. What's the good of having
If the people in charge aren't going to restrict use of the new domain names to on-topic sites, why name them
Missed the voting.... (Score:2)
.xxx would be a place where you'd be guaranteed (!) to see nudity, and
I can see their point about determining content in
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
And your own comments about the Alabama textbooks says it all. If they can do that, AND THEY DO, they will OBVIOUSLY put in filters.
I didnt for a SECOND say for ICANN to be involved AT ALL. Voluntary, at the ISP level. PERIOD.
PICS just doesnt do enough for their tastes, and ALSO doesnt bring BIG contributions to their pockets. They have no reason to say no to money.
So, in other words, go for the easy solution that works for everyone. EVEN adult sites. (They no longer have to be griped and sniped at by politicians).
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
For the time being most politicians are rallying behind porn. Not violence, not guns, not bombs.
So, stop porn, and you stop their movement in a BIG way.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:3)
Needless to say I was utterly shocked and my wife and I left rather promptly.
There's a simple solution to all of this (Score:4)
Re:No guarantees here... (Score:2)
Yes, it would probably get shut down, but after how much time?
By targeting porn at kids (what else is .kids for) they would open themselves to a great deal of criminal and civil problems they would never face with a more generic domain name like notebook.com. Having the domain name yanked would only be the beginning of their problems.
I want .violent and .nonchristian. (Score:5)
I also think we should have .nonchristian, so that Christian
fundamentalists can websurf without being exposed to
Buddhism, animism, shintoism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Judaism,
and Catholicism. (You knew the Pope was the antichrist, right?)
I propose Pat Buchanan as TLD registrar for this one.
Oh yeah, you know the people who were proposing .kids referred
to it as a "quality-assured" TLD. You know what would really be
great? A quality-assured .porn TLD! Not that I would know myself,
but I've heard that a lot of porn on the internet is really not
very sexy. It's like, "oh, I have a zoom lens, let's get a real
close-up picture of the female genitals." So I want a quality-
assured .porn that would censor out all the porn that doesn't
turn me on personally. I'll volunteer to administer it.
While we're at it, let's have .islamicfundamentalistporn.
You see, in the same way that I find "Endoscopic Vulva Voyage"
unsexy, a lot of men in Afghanistan probably would find even U.S.
soft porn really nonerotic. So .islamicfundamentalistporn
would have pictures of women with their elbows or
hair exposed, but not much else. I think the Taliban would
make an excellent TLD registrar for this one.
Oh, one final suggestion. As an American, I fear and loathe any political viewpoint that doesn't fit within the nice, narrow, comfy confines of the Republican-Democrat part of the spectrum. Could we have .notrepublicanordeomcrat,
so I can make sure not to be exposed to anything from the
Greens or Libertarians?
The great thing about this kind of stuff is that it would let ISPs and webhosts avoid all those troublesome complaints from people who are offended by content. And by making it administered by private, unaccountable groups, we avoid the inconvenient possibility that anyone would try to weaken the system with dissent. Heck, people wouldn't even know they should dissent, because all the content would have been censored without their knowledge!
--
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Well, that would be _your_ choice. Don't want your non-porno site to be filtered? Don't put it in the
That's like saying "If I put my Disney shop in the red light district people won't go there". No sh*t, sherlock.
>Why would a porn company start hosting on
So the local government doesn't arrest them for purposely defrauding young children into visiting their site. By making it obvious that your site serves porn (ie: xxx domain) you CYA. Not just that, but you are making it easy for people who WANT porn (and will pay for it...) to find you.
eg: Altavista (or where-ever) could have a choice to search by domain. Then you search for what you want in the
>Filtering on something as trivial as that is just another step in the wrong direction.
Uhhh, trivial? You choose to be filtered by putting your site in the
It isn't much different than a newspaper. You can safely advertise your 900 number in the "Porno" section of the classifieds, but it won't be noticed unless someone is looking for it. You could, instead, take out a full page ad beside the comics. It'll be noticed alright. Then you'll be in hot (legal) water.
Just my 2 cents (ok, I think I'll quit using that line for a bit).
Re:yah.. (Score:2)
New rating system: free speech/accurate info (Score:2)
And get the MPAA out of the rating business. Conflicts of interest, and they don't exactly support free speech (see the DeCSS fiasco). Get an independent group.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:4)
Why would a porn company start hosting on
Filtering on something as trivial as that is just another step in the wrong direction.
ICANN Needs to Remember... (Score:5)
I'm dissapointed that .kids wasn't allowed while things like .biz are. The Internet is becoming more and more solely a place for businesses to do business with each other, to the exclusion of all else on the web. It is okay when it is happening from the bottom up (web sites on their own are more and more business oriented) but when a mandate like this comes down from heaven, it is very hard to encourage growth in other sectors. ICANN needs to realize that there is more to the web than business, that other things should be allowed to flourish. And I don't buy the claim that they couldn't patrol the .kids domain well enough.... put in guidelines for them if you need to, but don't shut it down.
On another note, this is complete BS:
According to a letter posted on ICANN's Web site, Economic Solutions is seeking a restraining order from a Missouri federal court prohibiting ICANN from establishing a ".biz" or ".ebiz" domain address or any other combination that is similar to the country code of Belize, ".bz."
Lawyers for Economic Solutions say the company entered into a marketing agreement with Belize to use the Internet address and therefore owns the intellectual property rights to the name. .
I'd love to see them even try to win this case.
Most disturbing thing I've read all day (Score:2)
Okay, I have to say that I've seen disturbing stuff [rotten.com] on the net.
Some of it is just downright vile [goatse.cx].
But this Child Supermodels site is just flat-out creepy. I swear to god, you can replace all of the pictures of little girls with clothes with adult(?) women without clothes and you've got yet another porn site.
Look at some [mxphoto.com] of these [lilamber.com] banners [childsupermodels.com]!
And the comments?
"Working with young girls is both a pleasure and a privilege for me." I'll bet it is, ya sick freak!
"Thousends of pictures all exclusive teen models. click and find out why we are the best!" Sounds like a pull quote off of any of a thousand porn sites.
*shudder* I agree with the other poster; I don't care how cute my kids end up being, there is no way in hell that I would ever inflict this kind of life or publicity upon them.
Jay (=
(You can even vote for your favorite "kid model" site! I swear, this is just some kind of crypto-anarchist pedophile ring site or something... ick ick ick...)
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
There is a large difference between voluntary categorization, which is the dewey deciaml system (voluntary by the library); the sections in bookstores (voluntary by the vendor) and MANDATORY labeling.
If you want to use pithy metaphores, its like saying, "You, you like brocoli, so you have to change your name to 'brocoli-lover' so that we can tell who you are", or "You're a jew, you have to wear this little star."
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
You, while supervising your child's surfing and at the same time teaching what is proper or not, or some stupid dumb software that blocks legitimate site and still lets through inappopriate ones?
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
.dot?! are they NUTS??? (Score:3)
Do they have any idea what .dot is going to do to phone based tech support?
tech: That's slashdot.dot
customer: /...
tech: No, slashdot.dot, all spelled out
customer: Oh... slashdotdotdot.com
tech: No, slashdot is spelled out, then there is the period character, then "dot" is spelled out. There is no dot com.
customer: Who is this dot character?
...and so on and so forth, for several more minutes. Really, if it isn't .com, .org, or .net, who cares anyway? It takes a long time for a TLD to become "fashionable". Recently, .de seems to be more recognizeable to a lot of non Germans. Otherwise, unless you are interested in a particular country the "big three" are where it's at.
Pron operators want filtering (Score:2)
Because it's profitable. Successful porn companies *want* to be filtered. You see, in the porn business, you don't want to show your stuff to just anybody -- just people who will pay for it. By and large, the under 18 crowd, and the people who use public libraries for an ISP, don't have much money. The "screening" is good for business -- it focusing your traffic on paying customers.
Whats the point (Score:2)
Thers a lot of country domains now, yet when was the last
Even your local ma and par shop is a
Even if there were enough TLD's so that major companies couldnt register, do you realy think a site could exist at www.aol.dj?? Nope, AOL would sue their butts because of those 3 letters.
New TLD's wont increase the number of TLD's available. People get confused ofer apache.com and apache.org, imagine another 20 apache.* sites! Even the great slashdot, home of the geek, who should know the difference between
The general public want to type one word in and
Whatever happens with the new TLD's,
The only way of changing the system would be to delete all
Just my ramblings.
.xxx could be dangerous for civil rights. (Score:5)
To quote the ICANN report [icann.org], which is in turn quoting the COPA commission [copacommission.org]:
It goes on to conclude: While there are many legitimate gripes with ICANN, I think they got this one right.Incidentally, wouldn't this discussion have been a lot more useful if Timothy had taken the two minutes necessary to find and include a link to the ICANN report, or maybe even the ten minutes necessary to read the relevant section and add a couple of comments?
.bz and .biz (Score:4)
I remain convinced that the only solution is to implement a very large number of TLD's, enough to de-value them and stop the two biggest problems: cybersquatting, and people registering in every possible TLD.
--
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
Re:This sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme to me (Score:2)
Re:Insanity.. (Score:3)
Forgive my disagreement, but from the beginning I have not cared for the .porn/.xxx idea. There's too much subjectivity to it. The thing that folks have to keep in mind is this: The US is not the only group of people that view the internet!
What we seem to not realize is that there are other folks with different perspectives out there. Not everybody finds a person posing nude (even in suggestive positions) to be the evil thing that we apparently seem to think porn is. Other folks can actually look at these things and understand, "Hey - sex is natural."
In the immortal ;) words of Eric Cartman, "What's the big fucking deal bitch?"
My problem with the .porn/.xxx TLD is that it gives the US too much power to enforce it's morals and beliefs onto other peoples. Like we don't already have that power as it is.
I keep hoping for a time when we can realize that not everybody sees things the same way we do and that their opinions are equally as valid as our own.
--
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Re:Insanity.. (Score:2)
What does .xxx do that PICS already doesn't? What about porn sites outside the US?
.xxx doesn't require any virtually nonexistant software. Outside the US will do what most businesses do: register .xxx or .xxx.countrycode.
Invoke Godwin's Law on me here... but I have an uneasy feeling that this 'tagging' sounds a lot like a yellow Star of David.
So would PICS. Laws already in place relegate adult content to 'those channels' or 'that part' of the book store and in some cases 'that' part of town, this is no different.
I agree with the rest of what you said, buit I feel that volentary use of a .xxx domain would tend to deflate the arguments of the witch hunters by making it quite easy to keep kids from accessing porn on the net.
No technical solution will keep the witch hunters quiet, only the hearty belly laughs of a more sensible society could do that. I WISH there were a technical way to achieve that!
Re:Most disturbing thing I've read all day (Score:2)
Hey, since when have anarchism and pedophilia gone together? Anarchism is about class struggle, pedophilia is a deviant sexual behaviour. Totally unrelated...
So you can't have a pedophile who is also an anarchist? (Or crypto-anarchist, which is not the same thing...)
Educate yourself before you create crazy terms like that.
I created this term? Interesting; you should Timothy C. May (the guy who wrote this manifesto [austinlinks.com]) that I made him up...
Why don't you educate yourself?
Jay (=
One World Government...er.. Corporation? (Score:2)
ICANN, as well as all the other stakeholders like the CONSUMERS, should lobby int'l standards setting bodies to create some kind of rules for morals as applied to the internet. Until that point it is absolutely wrong for a bunch of Western digerati to screw up the economic opportunities of everyone else in order to promote a moral agenda. Who says a poor country wouldn't want to make money hosting these questionable sites? Debate must happen before action is taken.
Nobody can predict the future and what opportunities it holds, especially ICANN. These people are supposed to be facilitating a prosperous global Internet. What gives them the right to impose any morals on us?
Re:Insanity.. (Score:3)
Because they might not have much choice. Like I said, as a webhosting company, I would have no problem doing my part to help get porn behind closed doors.
To do that, I would be happy to voluntarily only accept porn on my
And yes, you could and would be filtered by default by being on whatever.porn in my scenario. So, you probably wouldnt choose that domain, would you?
Its not trivial. If properly done, over time, it would remove the whitehouse.com's of the world..
The biggest argument against the net and FOR filtering is that porn doesnt belong near kids. With this system in place, the filtering software could be BUILT INTO THE BROWSER...
And, we could say with total impunity NOT to filter anything but those domains.
Granted, it would take a total agreement by all ISPS, which aint likely for sometime, but ANY move towards a better filter (less negative and more positive matches) is a good thing!
Re:No, this is BAD (Score:2)
But if you want to create a ".kids" site, then someone will check that your site is suitable for kids. It's your choice whether you want it to be a ".kids" site or not - that's completely voluntary - but if you do want a ".kids" site then someone will check it, so that you don't get goatse.cx.kids sites.
If you like, have further categorisation into ".young.kids", ".older.kids", ".teen.kids". Or as part of the ".kids" process, get the site-checker to produce a "suggested rating" (eg. PG-13). I don't see anyone complaining about stopping kids watching splatter-movies, so why should we complain about checking what they see on their computer? I'm not a whacko suggesting that it'll twist young and innocent minds so they'll turn into serial killers, but take an example of a site showing snuff pix - that kind of stuff you don't want kids seeing, cos it'll give them nightmares and screw them up for some time to come. Computer games are fine - we all know they're just fancy cartoons - but real-world pix of real-world horrors is not something to face kids with. And trying to explain bestiality to your kid is not a job I'd like to have, either!
Grab.