Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Feds Urge Delay for '.xxx' Domain

Ok, I'm not really for or against the creation of a .xxx domain for porn sites, mostly because I don't think it will have any real effect on anything with the rules set up how I understand them. But some of the opposition to it is ridiculous. For instance:

The department received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails expressing concerns about the impact of pornography on families and children and objecting to setting aside a domain suffix for it, he said.

The impact of pornography on families and children has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is a separate domain for it. I could see these concers being an issue if there was no porn currently on the internets, and this domain would suddenly make it available. But it's easy to find porn on the internets. Actually, it's almost difficult not to find it. So any concerns over the effect of ponography itself are really beside the point when it comes to setting up a separate domain for it.
A Florida company, ICM Registry, proposed .xxx as a mechanism for the $12 billion online porn industry to clean up its act. All sites using .xxx would be required to follow yet-to-be-written "best practices" guidelines, such as prohibitions against trickery through spamming and malicious scripts.

Use of .xxx would be voluntary, however.

Skeptics note that porn sites are likely to keep their existing ".com" storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new .xxx domain name, reducing the effectiveness of any software filters set up to simply block all .xxx names.

There's the problem, it would be voluntary and would require the sites to adhere to more strict rules. So why would anyone use it, particularly the sites that rely on the trickery, spamming and malicious scripts? If they're really serious about cleaning things up, then require the porn to only be in the new domain. That's the only way it would make any real difference. However, I still don't see how that would be possible, and even if it was, it would be almost impossible to police it.

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9 comments:

The Disgruntled Chemist said...

"Homer, you're the number one non-porn site on the internet!"

"Yeah, which makes you one billionth overall."

John Howard said...

While I prefer Seinfeld, there's always a Simpsons quote that applies to just about any situation.

cookie christine said...

I'm guessing that some porn distributors and users might like the .xxx extention. It might legitimitize some sites and make paying customers feel less like they are getting scammed.

All those pop up adds and the multitude of windows that get launched are really irritating when you just want to find a little donkey on blonde action.

And who wants to wade through all the thick forest of fetish sites when you want something very specific like fish sex. It can really be quite frustrating.

John Howard said...

Right, but the .xxx domain won't really solve any of those problems.

cookie christine said...

All sites using .xxx would be required to follow yet-to-be-written "best practices" guidelines, such as prohibitions against trickery through spamming and malicious scripts.

Would these best practices get rid of some of that stuff?

And wouldn't it be kind of like Budweiser running ads that suggest kids not drink. These companies would willingly make themselves less available to children, as a site with an .xxx extention is more easily filtered than a site that doesn't have the extension.

I guess, I don't know that much about internet porn, though. You're probably the expert.... : )

John Howard said...

The best practices would get rid of it on the .xxx sites, but you'd still have it on the .com ones, which would still be the vast majority of them since the .xxx would cost more and have more rules to follow.

And sure there would be some that would be responsible and see this as a way to legitimize themselves, but those ones aren't the ones that have all the problems anyway. And the .xxx would be easily filtered out, but again, that would only be the small percentage willing to voluntarily pay the extra cost and follow stricter rules.

Anonymous said...

As long as I can get my porn, I don't care where it is.

Anonymous said...

Conservative groups such as the Family Research Council also expressed worries that creating a ".xxx" suffix would also legitimize pornographers.

This crap annoys me also. The vast majority of people enjoy sex. Clearly, the popularity of adult content online shows that a very large number of people also enjoy porn (or erotica or whatever the hell you want to call it). Will we ever be able to stop treating this like it's only something that other people do? Wake up "conservative groups"! Porn IS legitimate! People LIKE porn.

John Howard said...

Yeah, but if they're going to like it, they should at least have the decency to be ashamed of it, like the conservatives are.