Senators Renew Call for .XXX Domain 489
An anonymous reader writes "It's an election year again, and the usual PR causes are being picked up. Senators are once again pushing for a .XXX top-level domain to 'corral pornography'." From the article: "The bill suggests, but does not require, that .xxx serve as the domain name ending. Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department. It's unclear whether the measure will go very far. First of all, it could be struck down as unconstitutional, said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "
pron.awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate grandstanding.
Domain Name Squatters (Score:2, Insightful)
If that isn't a Domain Name Squatter's wet dream I don't know what is...
This applies everywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means big freaking whup for internationally hosted sites?
Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX (Score:5, Insightful)
This only helps porn industry (Score:2, Insightful)
Must be election year. Folks, try to vote for people that at least demonstrate a vague understanding of the Internet.
unconstitutional? (Score:0, Insightful)
Way to go, Congressmen! (Score:1, Insightful)
For the baby born today, congratulations, you already owe $30,000 to China. I'm glad the senate is worrying about my ability to quickly locate porn.
It could be struck down beacuse... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of places that, surprisingly, are NOT The United States of America. I hear that those places are prone to ignoring laws passed by the United States. I cannot fathom why those things that are not America would not follow our laws, but I do believe it would make it hard to use a United States law to get them to move thier titties and cockies to a different server.
Re:unconstitutional? (Score:4, Insightful)
Harmful to minors? Is it tubgirl? (Score:2, Insightful)
useful change (Score:5, Insightful)
*If* it could happen, it would be great for many of us who want to block it out. Which is the purpose of the bill, of course.
Any mail that references an
It's also possible for this to happen, I believe, to an extent; at the very least, due to the wonderful recently-showcased fact that the US controls the Internet naming infrastructure. Even foreign sites can be forced to comply by simply removing them from the top-level domains, and threatening to remove sites from top-level domains that host adult content.
One thing I'd worry about though is how one defines what is pornography and what isn't. Is a site that talks about STDs and safe-sex going to be labelled as adults-only by the religious right? Is a nudist colony site pornographic or simply counter-culture? Is a site that has "bad words" an adult site?
I would want to see a very clear, objective, strict, narrow definition of adult/pornographic content for this bill. i.e., "Images displaying sexual intercourse." (That is slightly too narrow, I'd think, but the intent should be clear.)
and about bloody time too! (Score:1, Insightful)
and jail everyone they can that does not conform.
[and I don't give a damn about moderators scoring either! Just make it -1 as usual]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Harmful? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell is porn harmful? That's the worst part of this American culture. Killing people is glorified but OH CHRIST DON'T LET ANYONE BE SEEN MAKING LOVE!
Once upon a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX (Score:4, Insightful)
They recently blocked overseas gambling, why not block overseas porn?
porn.com.xxx, porn.net.xxx (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pron.awesome (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless they were referring to "mindless politicians" as being redundant.
A little sanity here folks (Score:2, Insightful)
I see nothing wrong with this so long as its not the "religious" right deciding the definition of porn.
Re:inconstitutional? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
-Gloria Leonard
--
BMO
Re:Harmful? (Score:1, Insightful)
Degrading standards of society... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:useful change (Score:1, Insightful)
buybikinisonline.xxx
womenshealth.xxx
beachvolleyball.xxx
babiesandbreastmilk.xxx
breastcancer.xxx
birthcontrol.xxx
wikipedia.xxx
It could happen if the Republicans get their way.
Re:Way to go, Congressmen! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one of the most filled-with-BS comments i've ever heard in my life.
First of all, this proposal was made by TWO SPECIFIC SENATORS.
Second, if these senators didn't propose this, would the debt disminish? No, it's a COMPLETELY UNRELATED thing.
Third, you don't know these particular senators' stance on the debt.
Fourth, the congress discusses laws and votes in favor or against. Voting for an initiative doesn't make congressmen vote against another.
Fifth, searching for porn would be a LOT EASIER with the
Sixth, do you realize how much money is spent in porn? If young children find porn, they might like it and later spend your precious american dollars in (either national or overseas) crap, instead of using it for better stuff like cleaning up the planet?
Seventh, the senators are NOT proposing this to limit your ability to search for porn, they're doing it so nobody searches for one thing and ends up with porn on his web searches. Don't children matter? I know it's a cliché saying "think of the children", but let me tell you, if a parent is having trouble with SPAM, do you think he'll be able to block his kid from accessing porn from his computer?
Eigth, there's a lot of porn SPAM arriving to our e-mails daily. Don't you think that forcing porn sites to have a
Finally, if you don't agree with what a senator says / does, why don't you vote (or tell your parents to vote) against him?
Re:unconstitutional? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Harmful? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dad: Hey watch this video me and your mom made!
Son: OMG is that a porno of you and mom?!
Dad: No! How dare you? We love each other!
Re:useful change (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as strip clubs and adult toystores have specific rules set up for what they can and cannot allow, as well as the classifications for what constitutes such establishments, rules can be set up to classify adult websites. It would make filtering much easier, while allowing the sites that really do have educational content. That's something that the current filters have a tough time with. I actually think such laws would help resolve far more issues than they would create.
Smart Move. (Score:3, Insightful)
And not we have this bill.
Seriously, do these pompous old men believe that they can actually control the internet in this fashion?
Re:Define "harmful to minors" (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally after 30 minutes of looking for a description of it. Here's a Congresscritter's words on "Harmful to Minors". As defined by him/his committee/his intern in 2003.
Fact Sheet on H.R. 669: Protect Children From Video Game Sex & Violence Act of 2003e t.htm [house.gov]
http://www.house.gov/baca/hotissues/video_factshe
Re:127.0.0.1 *.*.xxx (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's exactly why the worst, sleaziest porn sites will never move there. The relatively sedate Playboy site will move to .xxx; FarmSex.com, SluttyLolitas.com, AnalMasochist,com... will not and will keep popping up in your browser.
Re:It could be struck down beacuse... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't get the whole world to switch at the same time. AGREED. But
you can try to achieve it over a longer timespan: You show the example by switching in your own country. Other countries will look at you, and if they think that it's a good idea they will follow.
Pretty much the same happened with Copyright Law. Some countries started it. Year after year more followed because they thought it made sense for them too. Eventually so many countries had a copyright law that they felt the need to standardize (Berne convention). Nowadays almost everyone has it and it is considered "uncivilized" to not have a copyright law, which puts pressure on the few who don't have it.
The same thing could work for this
Re:pron.awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:useful change (Score:5, Insightful)
And by "Republicans", you mean "Democrats":
I know this is a difficult concept for Slashdotters to grasp, but neither party has a monopoly on stupid ideas. Vent your anger at the people doing the harm, not at whichever party is the one you don't happen to affiliate with.
If you're a Democrat, write your senator and tell them that you don't approve of these actions. I, a Republican, have done exactly that several times lately. Maybe if we all do that enough, someone will finally get the idea.
Re:pron.awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like complaining about being made fun of by spanish grammar nazis when you use english grammar with spanish words...you're still wrong.
Re:pron.awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Harmful to minors? Is it tubgirl? (Score:2, Insightful)
His point is valid. The blanket statement that pornography "is harmful to minors" is absurdly assumptive. Sure, some content *could* be harmful to minors, but it's ignorant of those with influence to suggest that erotic material is inherently "bad" or "dangerous" simply because our over-protective society has decided it should be based on a sad tendency to involve religious values in law.
Segregating pornography to a specific TLD is not the solution to your problems, people. Educating children is.
Re:useful change (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there a bias on my part for calling those sites tasteless? Probably. Go and care if you want. It perturbs me not.
Absolutely stupid legislation (Score:3, Insightful)
Two, it's deliberate censorship.
Re:Come again? (Score:5, Insightful)
They wont pass national healthcare, so millions of children do not have healthcare.
They do not properly fund education, thus hurting millions of children
They allow corperations to dictate our country and outsource jobs at an alarming rate, thus putting the parents of children out of work, thus taking away any healthcare they had. (if they had any)
They send the children of parents off to die in an illegal war, started by the criminals that run our country. Bush, Cheney, Wolfiwitz, Rove, Powell, Delay, Abramof, Frist, Santorem, hatch, Leiberman, Kerry, and countless others... AND the ones that survive... come back seriously injurred and need special care their entire lives... which the government fails to provide.
They most certainly do hurt far more children than all the pedophiles on the planet combined.
Maybe a .kids domain? (Score:5, Insightful)
By contrast, a
There will always be a clash between people who think that "public space" is "unregulated" space and that people who want "regulated" space should get a private area and people who think that "private space" should not be regulated and that people who want regulation should keep it to the "public areas". Society simply does not agree. That points to the notion that there must always be two kinds of public space, and it should not be thought of as all of one kind. So let there be
Re:useful change (Score:3, Insightful)
I truly, honestly disagree that there's a difference. Name a given subject, and you'll find both Republicans and Democrats that would wish to censor it. Both of them seem to think that this kind of jackassery is good, at least in as much as it buys them votes from people too stupid to understand why it's bad.
Painting these issues as wholly (or even primarily) the province of one party and not the other only distracts from the issue at hand, namely that we need to unite to put a stop to this nonsense. Surely that's something that most of Slashdot could actually agree one?
Mod me down! (Score:2, Insightful)
A
Ok, go ahead and mod me into oblivion.
Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX (Score:3, Insightful)
Who defines what "porn" is?
If i run a BBS and someone posts a pornographic image.. do i suddenly have to give up my
Do i have to remove the image?
This is way ambiguous..
Harmful?" (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I think it's educational, or artistic? Are we going to make bomb making sites have
Now I'm not a bleeding heart liberal or anything, but you cannot go around imposing *your* view on the rest of the world. Parents are supposed to guide their children, not the government.
And while these politicians (who have no touch on anything computer related) think it's ok, they're also effecting the rest of the world.
What I think is harmful to minors (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, I have a whole list of stuff that I think is "harmful to minors". I think it is harmful to minors to not give them access to real, serious sex education, resulting in the teenage pregnancy and STD rates the U.S. is justly infamous for. I think it is harmful to minors to tell them to turn off their brain and just believe God does everything instead. I think it is harmful to minors to pretend that drug abuse is a problem of supply, not of demand, that can be solved by bombing coca plantations in Columbia. It's a pretty long list, actually.
I think what I am going to do is take a look at that bill and see if my senator is somehow involved. And if yes, I am going try my best as a citizen of the United States to get his or her stupid ass kicked back out on the street where it belongs. My friends and countrymen are getting slaughtered in a senseless war in Iraq, North Korea has the bomb and Iran is going to get it, and here Congress is, trying to get around the First Amendment again. Just what is it with these people?
Re:Mod me down! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It could be struck down beacuse... (Score:5, Insightful)
The same goes with countries fighting drugs at home -- those were profitable businesses that local governments probably didn't care about, until we told them they needed to care if they wanted funding from us.
Yes, it's their choice every time, but let's not pretend it's always about us having bright ideas nobody can resist. We have the market, deep pockets, and military power they can't resist, which is different.
Re:Oh, No, To war we will we go for the .XXX (Score:2, Insightful)
If they get too uppity about it though, they're going to learn that it's not impossible for most people to select a different set of root DNS servers - outside of U.S. control.
Re:pron.awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
"!=" != a word
Re:pron.awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
There was an advert a few years for shower gel that had been shown all around Europe without any problems but provoked major complaints in Britain. The reason? It showed a naked woman in the shower and you saw her erect nipple for all of 2 seconds. Sad. Time we all grew up and started treating sex as part of life, not some dirty secret to be embarrassed about.
Re:useful change (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Has it ever been shown that porn is harmful for minors?
And how did they check? Almost all people have seen porn as minors...
Re:Free Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pron.awesome (Score:1, Insightful)
Cigarette companies?
Weapons companies?
Britney Spears?
Re:Hmmm, I seem to recall a (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much a matter of "the Bible says X, so we believe in X" as it is "we want Y, let's find support in the Bible".
Re:This applies everywhere? (Score:2, Insightful)
USA is just holding too much power: " the countries could theoretically be strong-armed into complying."
What we need is a rule that makes
each country a complete owner of domain space
Re:pron.awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, freedom of speech does mean unlimited distribution. That's what the word "freedom" means - that no one tries to stop you. As for the material distributed being "sleazy", that is an appeal to emotion as well as ad hominem attack. Sleaze is in the eye of the beholder - the exact same pic could appear in a porn site or a breast cancer information site.
I didn't know that there was a law about the correct use of ".org" domain. Nor does it matter, since it is a lot easier to make appeals to emotion (like you did) for censoring the xxx domain, while it is a lot harder to use "save the children" -arguments to get rid of the org domain webpages.
False argument. New York Times is a privately owned newspaper, and no one has argued that it should be forced to carry your writings. No, the argument for the XXX domain is analogous to making it illegal to distribute your flyer except in a government-guarded building (the xxx domain), where anyone who enters is logged by traffick analysis and the most politically active groups - such as university students living on campuses - are prevented from entering at all.
Another analogue are the Free Speech Zones - the government doesn't need to silence its critics as long as it can simply move them where no one can hear them. That works as well and pays lip service to the law.
Re:Harmful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in all fairness, I'm actually for banning American porn.
The bang! bang! 'enjoy what I'm giving ya!'-mentality that seem so amazingly permeant throughout it is fucking degrading and has bloody nothing to do with real life. It teaches people to view women as objects and not as actual persons, which really, really is a dangerous line of thought. Impersonalisation of sex is a bad, bad thing.
My own experiences with young Americans and their views on sex has basically lead me to believe that majority of you are semi-psychopathic, ie unable to empathise and recognize that other people are actual people with feelings. This is scary.
Re:Mod me down! (Score:3, Insightful)
You do have the right to monitor what they do. That's your job. Not the government's.
You have the right to earn their respect such that they'll consider porn lame because they know you consider it lame. That too is your job as a parent.
I don't care if every little thing on the net with a mention of a body part is relegated to
But the moment a library terminal blocks
Hell, I've done searches for information on obscure Java bugs while at work, and ended up blocked by the incompetent WebSense filter.
Re:inconstitutional? WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm often surprised by how true this is - there's a surprising number of people out there whose sexuality would be considered "deviant" at best by mainstream society, and who will still berate you for being a sick pervert because you have some fetishes they don't have. Talk about cognitive dissonance...