Plans For .xxx Domain For p0rn Scrapped 361
William Robinson writes "ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has once again scrapped the plan for a new internet "domain" .xxx for pornography. Supporters of the .xxx address suffix argued that it would have helped to protect children and others from accidental exposure to internet pornography, particularly if stronger filters were used to screen out explicit material from other internet domains. Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year to put off introducing a new ".xxx" domain for pornography on the internet. That drew international complaints that the US exercised too much power over the internet and added to a European-backed movement to shift control of the online medium to an international group."
Once again, why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Once again, why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain.
I guess the main argument is that it should be fairly trivial to filter out any domain ending in .xxx, as opposed to trying to determine is a particular .com domain is pornographic based on domain name, copy, images, etc.
But then, I guess it depends on whether you buy into the "existence = encouragement" argument put forth by some of the other groups.
Re:Once again, why? (Score:2)
Either way, it's a moot argument to make because, as you mention, it would be trivial to filter these sites out.
The only argument against
Re:Once again, why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Once again, why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why .xxx must never be (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is why it must never be allowed to be brought into existance. Listen up a second before that inflamatory slashdot article turns this thread into today's two minute hate.
If a
Re:Why .xxx must never be (Score:3, Insightful)
No, just a realistic appraisal of the legal and political climate in the US, as observed by a native who has followed politics for longer than the average slashdotter has been potty trained. I'm not even a crazed leftwing moonbat who sees a police state hiding under every rock, I'm a libertarian leaning small government Republican. But I know what Congress is capable of though, and have to speak out even when it would be Republicans leading the charge.
The only thing th
Re:Once again, why? (Score:5, Informative)
I've not yet seen a reason to have the .xxx domain. I'm not opposed, per se, but I have a hard time understanding the point to it.
Why do we have any TLDs? We can just shove everything into .com right? The point is to organize the internet into usable chunks both for content providers and consumers. Now I don't know about you, but I'd say porn makes up a significant chunk of the internet. Porn providers want consumers to easily be able to find them. They don't want young children to find them since kids generally don't have credit cards and if they do their parents look at the bills and likely will complain. They don't want people who don't like porn visiting them since it costs them bandwidth and is more likely to result in outrage/persecution of them.
Having an XXX domain gives porn purveyors a place to go where no one can complain they "accidentally" stumbled upon them. It will stop all of the "please think of the children" emotive pleas, since anyone concerned can just filter the XXX domain. This is the whole reason the domain system exists.
As to the reason some people oppose it. Certain religious wackos and the con-men who prey upon religious wackos like having an enemy. Most of them say that "porn is evil" and needs to be stopped. They aren't interested in letting everyone make up their own minds, or easily have a choice. Their concern is in telling each and every one of us what we can and can't do based upon their weird religious interpretations. As a result, they want to increase, not decrease outrage. This means they want children and other people who might accidentally access porn to do so as much as possible. They hope that by making it more difficult for people to find what they want, more difficult to avoid what they don't want, and more difficult to filter based upon easy categorization that they can outright ban porn in the entire world, rather than just let those who to see it do so and avoid it themselves.
Since a lot of these religious wackos and con-men are involved in the US government, which in holds ICANN's leash, they are using ICANN to push this agenda upon the world. That, understandably, makes much of the rest of the world less confident that the US will not use ICANN to push other agendas that conflict with global interests.
Re:Once again, why? (Score:2)
One problem I see with it is that lots of pr0n companies do in fact get paid per impression for ads. Therefore, they are likely to continue to try to get around filters. Many pr0n companies try all sorts of things to get people to "accidentally" view their site. I don't see how
I think that there are lots of pr0n sites that make their money off of subscriptions, etc. and I could easily imagine those
Re:Once again, why? (Score:3, Interesting)
(1)
Re:Once again, why? (Score:2)
You're right, there's no particular reason for wanting an xxx domain other than it might seem 'cool' to some.
And it is not the reason why people in the world oppose the US. There are many arguments why USA shouldn't have the control over the TLDs, but I susp
Re:Once again, why? (Score:2, Funny)
Ill fated from the begining. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:4, Insightful)
Do porn sites actually make any profit out of that, though? Children that are blocked by the filters wouldn't have paid anyways. Other people that are blocked by filters are usually at places you wouldn't normally get off anyways (work, library, etc.)
On top of that, even if there is no filter in place, I don't think they'd get many ad clicks either in any of those situations. But maybe they don't get paid per click at all?
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:2)
Many such sites get paid per impression rather than per click.
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact it's a dumb idea and that's why it's not going anywhere.
Well I did hear... (Score:2, Flamebait)
http://gracenote.com/music/search-adv.html?q=&qart ist=&qdisc=&qtrack=Jesus+Just+Left+Chicago&n=10&x= 0&y=0 [gracenote.com]
http://www.freedb.org/freedb_search.php?words=Jesu s+Just+Left+Chicago&allfields=NO&fields=track&allc ats=YES&grouping=none [freedb.org]
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:5, Insightful)
Registering your pr0n site as a .com, etc would always be the preffered method, since you site would have a better chance of getting around filters.
Most adult websites though do not want to bypass Internet content filters that parents set up for their children. Many voluntarily list themselves with filtering companies expressly for the purpose of trying to keep porn away from those who should not be seeing it. Of course, they don't do this out of moral reasons but rather to save themselves. Anyone who complains about "too much porn" on the Internet can be directed to use the latest available filtering technology to their heart's content with no government involvement needed.
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:2, Insightful)
1) a minor,
2) an adult on a protected (as in not yours) pc or public place,
3) someone not willing to pay.
Neither of this options fall into the target of legal, credit card or cash based (as in not-publicity-based) porn sites.
So, in my op
Re:Ill fated from the begining. (Score:4, Insightful)
Morality nazis just don't want to appear to be giving their support to something that legitimizes pornography. SO instead we have porn abolition, which is much the same as alcohol abolition in that the suppliers still sell their product and people still buy, but there is no regulation of quality and no means of officially monitoring or regulating product access to minors.
I'd like to be able to block ads from
An uphill battle, anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I expect the preferred method would be much similar to the online casinos that use a .net [goldenpalace.net] for the legal-in-the-US no-money online poker, and a .com [goldenpalace.com] for the not-legal-in-the-US real-money online poker [cornell.edu].
Porn sites would probably register (or maintain) their .com address, and keep the "clean" content there — probably a "WARNING: ADULT CONTENT" page, and maybe a copy of the TOS page. The main site with the adult content would then be on a .xxx address.
As others have noted, most porn sites want those who choose to do so to be able to filter them. They also want those who DON'T chose to filter them to be able to see them unfiltered. Of course, there are some bad apples out there — the sort of "gallery" metasites that only point to other metasites, or which attempt to install various trojans. The scammers and crooks probably won't care (nor move), but the bad apples are the minority.
No, the real bane in this effort is the Religious Conservatives who don't want ANYONE to be able to see smut, regardless of the individual's age or personal preference. Which, in the present US (or globabl) political climate, isn't a complete obstacle, but is a non-trivial problem.
Trolling Post (Score:3, Insightful)
BR> Paint by numbers, brought to you by Slashdot.
Cognitive Dissonance (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't fall under religion exclusively either, almost any aspects of life can become deeply held beliefs that we don't want to let go of when something new comes along to upset the apple-cart.
Re:Trolling Post (Score:2)
Typical of those conceited americans...
Doesn't everyone know that *Usenet* is for pron anyway ? What do they learn at school nowadays ?
It's just as well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing else to see here, move along...
Re:It's just as well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's just as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, this is just if the switch from
It sounds good on paper, but it's ugly no matter how you look at it.
Re:It's just as well... (Score:2)
Re:It's just as well... (Score:2)
Unless it's mandatory, porn sites will still prefer to be dot-coms.
I disagree. If a .xxx domain existed, porn sites would move to it because it would make them easier to find and recognize. Also, it would make them easier to filter, which is something that right now most prefer, since it reduces their wasted bandwidth and complaints. Major porn sites, generally, register with filtering programs now to make them easier to filter. The only reason this would fail is if governments did make it mandatory and
Re:It's just as well... (Score:2)
I suspect that more people are searching for their porn by using search engines, or following links provided by others. I suspect the number of people looking for a particular category of porn by typing www..xxx (or
If they are following a link and not typing a URL as above, by the time the URL appears in the address field, the page is already being displayed. At that point
Re:It's just as well... (Score:2)
So they'll have an xxx in addition to the
Not how I remember it.... (Score:2)
I'm sure there was pressure from some Christian organizations, but if I remember it correctly, the real pressure was from countries that didn't like the idea (China is one that comes to mind). Anyone else remember it that way?
Re:Not how I remember it.... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. The original story is published in the Financial Times (London). A nice publication, but this stiry is lacking on the details. It's not likely the NY Times or WaPo would get away with that too frequently. Name names.
2. In today's political and media environment, it frequently appears that tossing up "cons
Huh (Score:2, Interesting)
EU has full right to complain about us control over the domains
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Huh (Score:2, Informative)
A bit of a misconception. "The Internet" is a bunch of national networks (funded by their respective countries, with Arpanet being the US network, SUNET being the Swedish one and so on) interconnected and with common rules to make them work together seamlessly. The US funds the US networks and part of the transnational links; the EU countries fund their parts and part of the links and so on.
So the EU
Re:Huh (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did the submitter get this "Christian Veto" thing if they don't (And I certainly hope they don't!) have one.
I find your arguments against the EU are completely unfair. The US doesn't WANT other countries to fund it, because that would take away from the absolute control the US currently has.
You also complaining about the EU "already admitted that they would allow countrys to limit control by their own people, exactly what they accuse the US of
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Huh (Score:2)
Little or nothing. The MSNBC wording is suspiciously ambiguous:
Pressure from conservative Christian groups in the US, which has a veto over the internet addressing system, led the organisation last year...
Reading this quickly leads one to think ICANN must get sign-off from Jerry Falwell or somesuch. In fact, the veto power belongs to the US government, not a US church.
It isn't necessary to rely on religious zealots to provide reasons for opposing
V is for Veto (Score:5, Insightful)
So, please tell me why they have a veto, and the progressive Buddhists do not?
Re:V is for Veto (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is poor use of Englitsch. I think what the author was trying to say was, "The US, which has veto over the internet addressing system, was pressured by conservative Christian groups
Re:V is for Veto (Score:2)
That is what the author said. "which has" can't refer to "groups" because "groups" is plural.
Re:V is for Veto (Score:2)
Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:2)
This I don't understand. Can somebody help me out? Why wouldn't they want to keep all of the porn sites in one domain, where a very simple filter could eliminate all of it from view? I would think it would be the other way around--the porn companies should be against this as it would make filteri
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:2)
FOR THE RECORD: Not all Christians think this way.
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:2)
Yeah, and my little sister wants a magical pink unicorn to play with when she's bored.
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:3, Funny)
As long as your little sister is 18 or older, it's perfectly legal.
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:2)
Therefore, if they just stopped buying it, they would probably reduce the amount of it available just due to the laws of supply and demand.
Re:Conservative groups don't want this? (Score:2)
About the conservative groups, my guess is that they would prefer to ban porn alltogether, and a
The End of the Internet (Score:5, Funny)
The setback is likely to add to pressure stresses that could eventually fragment the internet, breaking it into a collection of separate national systems, some internet experts warned.
The reason for this I assume is because if users can't easily access porn, there really is no point to the internet, is there?
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Re:The End of the Internet (Score:2)
Subtlety at its best (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, this debate already has enough touchy issues to keep both sides warring with each other. Looking at the situation objectively, I don't think ICANN can make any kind of intelligent decision now without sparking accusations from European protesters. So what, then, makes this
Re:Subtlety & Truth at its best (Score:2)
Well, then, who is? The pretzel bakers?
Or (even more implausibly), has this administration suddenly started listening to expert opinion?
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want a kid safe internet, they should put their efforts behind the
Not that they could agree on what falls on the "not pr0n" side of the fence.
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
This technology exists today. It's just that nobody uses it. Perhaps people don't actually care as much about this issue as they'd like others to think?
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Even the tech-savvy conservatives have their own agenda. It'll keep coming up as long as there are "for the children" conservatives (and certain liberals) keeping us safe from ourselves.
For God.COM's sake ? (Score:2, Informative)
And you guys wonder why the rest of the world doesn't trust the US to run the internet
Tell me the above is a late April fools joke.
Re:For God.COM's sake ? (Score:3, Insightful)
For those who haven't been keeping up... (Score:2, Informative)
Overall, a very interesting battle: should we place man's vices (it's true, admit it) in one desolate, but convenient group, or leave them interspersed with everything else?
Re:For those who haven't been keeping up... (Score:2, Informative)
And the crystal ball says... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of quote that will bite you on the ass in six years time.
Patriotism is built-in to the human psyche. Pride might well force the hand of someone like the European Union.
Re:And the crystal ball says... (Score:2, Insightful)
surprising (Score:2, Funny)
Questions & Comments (Score:2)
Who has the veto power? Christian groups or the US? This sentence is confusing, though I would hope they meant US and not Christian.
Why are Christian groups opposed to this? I would think they would like this "great now we can just block anyone from
Re:Questions & Comments (Score:2)
Who has the veto power? Christian groups or the US? This sentence is confusing, though I would hope they meant US and not Christian.
This should be clear. "Which has" is singular, whereas "groups" is plural, so it couldn't be the antecedent. "The US" is singular, so it must have the veto.
Now don't complain about the fact that "US" is an abbreviation for "United States". It's singular, I tell you.
Re:Questions & Comments (Score:2)
Yeah, cause putting "tits" into Google is hard.
Let's run our own. (Score:2)
Bagsie the master
.xxx is a stupid idea (Score:2)
Re:.xxx is a stupid idea (Score:2)
Please explain to me how a "superior and more fine-grained way" is so difficult to manage that PRACTICALLY NOBODY uses it.
Re:.xxx is a stupid idea (Score:2)
PICS allows a web author to specify exactly what objectionable content is present for each resource on his site; and it allows him to do it today. Even Internet Explorer supports it, for God's sake!
On the technical side, implementing it is as simple as adding a PICS-Label header to the HTTP headers of the desired resource.
Why blame the religious right? (Score:5, Informative)
The only justification for new TLDs that I've seen is that it makes companies have to buy them to protect their trademark, thereby making profit for the new registrar.
Re:Why blame the religious right? (Score:2)
The only justification for no new TLDs is the headache for someone to be able to manage them in DNS. Again, that's all laziness.
The benefits of letting anyone register anything far outweigh the negatives. If you could type in "microsoft" in the address bar and get to microsoft's website without having to be forwarded there by wildcard
RFC 3675 is naive to say the least. (Score:2)
I laugh at RFC 3675 because it practically says: "Oh this and that measure won't filter the 100.00% of porn sites, therefore it's useless".
a) There is a representative quantity of porn websites that share the same IP range, so IP filtering IS effective against them, no matter what RFC 3675 says.
b) Unlike PICS labels,
It was bound to happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
for example..
Children coming into school smelling like meth, (ie parents cooking it off in the house)
Children sexually abused.. A lot
Parents that expect society to instill values and morals instead of the home.
\ Nothing but tv and games all day/night.
I could go on buts its just too damn depressing. BUt we have seen it all.
If the .xxx domain was supposed to protect children well.. nothing can be better for a child than a good sound creative, loving, and supportive home, where the parents actively are a part of the childs life..
Maybe we need a .ped domain (parental education domain)... hehe or something like it.
Ive even seen crack/coke babies with all types of physical defects, while mommie is still out on the streets.
Ive seen a so much of the crazy stuff with regards to bad parenting that i think its about 75% of the problem. The children + porn thing just comes from turning Johnny loose on the net because it shuts him up so the parents can forget about him for a while..
Thats my 2$
Re:It was bound to happen. (Score:2)
Re:It was bound to happen. (Score:2)
Re:It was bound to happen. (Score:2)
DNS isn't a content label (Score:3, Informative)
What happens when a company publishes both pornographic and non-pornographic content? Do they now have to split up into two DNS domains?
We already have content labels today: PICS and ratings bureaus like ICRA [icra.org] (which actually uses RDF instead of PICS lately).
If you want a kids-safe browsing experience, get the kids-safe web sites to start labeling their content. IE, at least, can be configured to only display pages that meet certain minimum requirements defined by the type of label you use.
If you merely want a safe-from-porn browsing experience, get the porn sites to label their content and indicate that the content is porn. They're just as likely to do this as they are to voluntarily move to
Unless this move is made mandatory, many (most?) porn site operators are not going to move to
Mr. Foot, meet Mr. Bullet (Score:4, Interesting)
This reminds me of far-left types who demand world peace and the end to world hunger but vehemently object to the only credible means of achieving either. War isn't going away without the removal of all tinpot dictators; hunger isn't going away without pervasive globalization of all commodity production and the removal of all tinpot dictators; and Internet porn isn't going away without the marshalling of all material into a single TLD and the eradication of all human males.
Internet Evangelical-Theological Force (Score:2)
I'm appalled by the way those Christian Conservatives shape the Internet!
The following links paint a fuzzier picture (Score:2, Informative)
I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)
The proposal for .xxx is here [icann.org] apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994
Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM [icann.org]
Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here [icann.org] it is June 05
And finally one of the many comments [icann.org], of various type,
But... (Score:2)
XXX is a city logo (Score:2)
I'm upset because (Score:2)
There goes my only chance of making big bucks!!! (Score:2)
.xxx a good idea, but for different reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
If we tried to force all pornographic sites to move to
However, internet porn is a very popular vector for the delivery of spyware, malware, and phishing attacks, because of its popularity and taboo nature in our society. If the company that registers
If we really wanted to make censorship easy, let's create a
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck? The Internet in my country was funded by my tax, and my country's backbone is the important one for me.
This "Oh, we did the initial research so we own everything that ever originates from that point" argument is pathetic. Did America invent roads? No!? Well then, I think the rest of the world should be able to tax American cars. What about railroads? Another non-American invention. Tax please!
The light bulb is another non-American invention. I think for that one the rest of the world should just refuse to licence it and people like you can go and live in the dark age you so surely deserve.
TWW
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:3, Informative)
Choice quote from Wikipedia article: Many of his inventions were not completely original, but improvements which allowed for mass production. For example, contrary to public perception, Edison did not invent the electric light bulb. Several designs had already been developed by earlier inventors including the patent he purchased from Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, Moses G. Farmer,[2] Joseph Swan, James
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:2)
Actually, the original locos in America were imports, just as the Internet was originally imported in a slightly more virtual fashion. I think road designs were probably imported too in the early days. I doubt that the settlers had no engineering experience from the Old World.
Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who went before; you can't go around claiming the whole because you made a part. W
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:2)
Edison lost the race to Swan and they formed the Swan Edison Light Bulb company together (Edison had the cash, Swan had the invention). Once Swan moved on to other things, Edison airbrushed him out of his version of the story.
TWW
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:2)
Re:He who funds, controls (Score:3, Funny)
>the technology and who operates the largest backbone?
That's Al Gore obviously. He should be in charge alone!
Re:Vote yes for .xxx (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Vote yes for .xxx (Score:2)
I say bullshit. Adult search engines are what makes pr0n easy to find. Heck, they're even categorized.
The truth is
Re:How about a .cum domain? (Score:2)
Because that would cause problems for people who do Religious pornography, or Political pornography, or perhaps Terrorist pornography (or, as you said, just Fanatic pornography) - they can't decide whether or not that goes under .rpt or .xxx. They'd have to create .rptxxx or something.