Plans for an area of the internet dedicated to pornography were killed last night in a vote by overseeing organisation ICANN.
The .xxx registry application has been the focus of enormous political pressure on ICANN for the past six months and was used at one point as a political football in a wider tussle for power within the internet. Despite everything that has been written and will continue to be written about the application however, two simple facts need to be recognised:
* 1. The US government, despite its constant denials, has been the driving force in preventing the .xxx registry from being approved thanks to a campaign of right-wing Christians with close links to the current administration.
* 2. The company behind .xxx, ICM Registry, has done all that has been asked of it in order to answer people’s concerns, but has had its efforts ignored or misrepresented by those opposed to the registry.
The reality is that ICANN has again been compromised by political pressures – pressures that both sides claim not to exist.
Don’t let reality ever get in the way of pandering to pressure groups.
John’s previous column is here.
No suprises here, and my stance is still the same. This administration is taking away what could be a valuable tool for parents by trying to limit something the will never be able to squash. I’ve made my point before and I stand by it. In their infiniate desire to prevent porn from eixisting they are instead forcing it to remain readily aparent in our everyday lives instead of giveing it a place and encouraging porn publishers to move there.
Stupid, very stupid. This would make it easier for parents, elementry schools, and businesses etc. to block this material. (where is it inappropriate) Yes, it would make it easier to find porn for those who want to find it. You aren’t going to stop them from finding it.
But those ignorant right wingers think they can legislate this type of morality. Idiots.
Personally, I think the XXX extension is a galatic waste of time. It’s like designating .org for public organizations and .com for commercial ones. Riiiiight. We can obviously see how well that worked. The IT people in the porn industry are not stupid. They know that if all porn had to be put on an XXX top level domain that everyone would start blocking that extension.
The reason the XXX TLD should be dropped has nothing to do with Christian views, Muslim views, child porn opinions or any of a host of other bullshit reasons. It has to do with the fact that it is unenforceable and thus is a waste.
Come on people. The Republicans DO NOT want to fix the problem. This is an issue that “energizes” their base and keeps the campaign money flowing. Why would they want to fix it? Morals? Yeah …. right.
And just why are you going to make a special, segregated, domain for one commercial industry and still continue to have .COM for all others?
And has been pointed out already, .COM and .ORG aren’t enforced anyway. What makes anybody think that this would be?
The only thing that would have been a real problem for .XXX is the relative ease of cgi proxies with other technologies yet to be developed to do the same thing. This would have required the anti-port software makers to change clothes into anti-proxy. Might have been the same problem all over again.
MOST kids (& adults for that matter) are not that smart, and on the whole, .XXX would have been a good thing. Props to John C. for taking up the fight – I wrote my congressman and senator & am real sorry it didn’t work.
I swear people jsut don’t pay attention.
What makes anyone think it would be inforced? Well thats because it carefully lays out how to right there in the spec. The others don’t, at all.
Its amazing how sure of themselves ignorant people sound…
I am glad the XXX domain did not pass. Pornography is not easily definable. What about nude paintings or statues? Will they want to hide any blog, story, article, or discussion that contains any sexual content whatsoever away in the blocked domain?
Again, it comes back to enforcement – who defines the rules, who enforces them? Are “community standards” the standards of the most conservative town in the country?
Can someone point out to me what part of what regulation would have required porn sites to use the new top level domain? Everyone seems to think that the purpose of the .xxx TLD is to segregate porn from the rest of the internet, but its mere existence wouldn’t make that happen. Futhermore, pornographers might not want to use it because, as proposed, it required them to follow a code of “Best Business Practices.” Even if you think such regulation would be proper, effective and enforceable, I think the extra burdens placed on sites forced to use .xxx might make such legislation unconstitutional in the USA. I believe .xxx was rejected precisely because it would not accomplish what everyone seems to think it was supposed to.
The next time, go to http://www.whitehouse.com for a different kind of “dick” and “bush”
i dunno what all the hoopla is. XXX wont fix anything. and besides, if you’re really not looking for porn,it doesn’t usually show up. I mean, i have yet to see porn advertisers when i google “quantum mechanics”