Can a red-light district for the Internet work? Critics question impact of '.xxx' domain NEW YORK - A red-light district tentatively cleared for construction on the Internet — the “.xxx” domain — is being billed by backers as giving the $12 billion online porn industry a great opportunity to clean up its act. A distinct online sector for the salacious, one with rules aimed at forbidding trickery, will reduce the chances of Internet users accidentally stumbling on porn sites, they argue. If only it were so simple: Zoning in cyberspace has always been a daunting proposition, and participation in the porn domain will be voluntary. Critics wonder why “.xxx” got the OK at all when so many other proposals sit unaddressed, some for years. Nearly five years after rejecting a similar proposal, the Internet’s key oversight body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, voted 6-3 this month to proceed with “.xxx.” ICANN staff will now craft a contract with ICM Registry Inc., the Jupiter, Fla., company that made the bid. If the board and ultimately the U.S. Commerce Department approve it, “.xxx” names could appear in use by the year’s end. The market unquestionably exists: Two in five Internet users visited an adult site in April, according to tracking by comScore Media Metrix. The company said 4 percent of all Web traffic and 2 percent of all surfing time involved an adult site. As envisioned, ICM would charge $60 for each of up to 500,000 names it expects to register, $10 of which would go to a nonprofit organization that would, among other things, educate parents about safe surfing for children. The nonprofit, run by representatives of adult Web sites, free-speech, privacy and child-advocacy concerns, would determine registration eligibility. Skeptics argue, however, that porn sites are likely to keep their existing “.com” storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new “.xxx” domain name. And that will reduce the effectiveness of software filters set up to simply block all “.xxx” names. The “.xxx” domain “legitimizes this group, and it gives false hope to parents,” said Patrick Trueman, senior legal counsel at the Family Research Council and a former Justice Department official in charge of obscenity prosecutions. The adult entertainment industry is also hardly behind “.xxx” as a group. Many of its webmasters consider the domain “the first step toward driving the adult Internet into a ghetto very much like zoning laws have driven adult stores into the outskirts,” said Mark Kernes, senior editor at the trade monthly Adult Video News. ICM insists it would fight any government efforts to compel its use by adult Web sites, but the existence of “.xxx” would certainly make the prospect easier...
It won't work unless they actually ban porn from .com sites, which will never happen. These clever domain names aren't catching on, look at .tv or .info which were approved what, 3 years ago now?
It will never happen since we cannot define it. And to know it when we see it, we have to see it first. Here's to my ongoing attempts to define porn!
I think it's an excellent idea, but it's going to be very difficult to implement. That, and I want my own xxx domain just for the helluvit.
The single largest problem that our congress fails to grasp, over and over again with the internet, is that it is WORLDWIDE. The US can make all the rules we want, it won't matter one bit, simply get a domain that is hosted somewhere else in the world. Another issue, aside from the need to ban porn on all .com .org and .edu and all other domains, is site redirection. If you are counting on folks going by the domain and figuring its safe, how do you solve site redirection? You click on a "harmless" url and are "magically" redirected elsewhere. Congress tries to regulate what they have zero clue on how it works.
ICANN controls access to .com names. People in other countries are free to have their own .ru or .uk domain rules.
...is that we do not live in Victorian England. Sex is a natural fun act and the sight of a booby will not scar a child for life.
Obviously not the ones you are viewing that makes sex painful and boobs scarring. My point was not specifically about .xxx, but rather our attitude towards sex generally. We think we've come far from our Puritanical roots, but everytime we turn around....
The internet is a tricky thing. Yes, the US government (or any country for that matter) can create laws concerning it, but laws created in the US concering the internet would have a pretty hard time being enforced in any other country. So if the US government banned porn sites from .com, and made every porn site go to .xxx, what about porn sites created, owned, and operated in Malaysia or Mozambique? And how could the US control a web surfer in Sweden looking at a porn site out of Argentina? How would the Swede feel when their website-viewing habits were taken away by some US-created law?
Yeah. I'm sure seeing body parts won't hurt a 7 year old's eyes, but OTOH, i'm sure that a picture of someone shagging a goat while their brother sprays his juice up the goat's mouth would confuse them.
The good news is you won't be alone. This will help kill the "porn here only, please" push which will follow as seamlessly from this new top-level domain as "doers" follows "evil". There should be at least two other poll questions: 1) what, exactly constitutes "working", and 2) Goodness, I hope not!