XXX Domain faces hard times
By Jonathan Schlaffer
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has once again rejected the proposal for adult websites to use the .xxx suffix. In a 9 to 5 vote to deny on Friday, ICM was denied the registry. ICANN raised concerns that the proposal from ICM had far too many public policy concerns and could possibly change the role of what is currently a non-profit organization.
ICM’s proposal could have impacts worldwide as various countries have different laws regarding pornography. “There are credible scenarios that lead to circumstances in which ICANN would be forced to assume an ongoing management and oversight role regarding Internet content, which is inconsistent with its technical mandate,” said ICANN in the meeting.
ICANN has been rejecting .xxx domain suffixes since the year 2000 when ICM began submitting for approval. However, most of the other votes were more unanimous, this time the vote was somewhat split but still denied. At least they are making headway.
ICANN director, Susan Crawford believes the revised proposal addresses all relevant concerns, “It seems to me that the applicant here has identified a sponsored community for .xxx as a self-identified group of adult Webmasters who wish to work together to implement industry best practices in a specific and easily identifiable marketplace”, she said.
The .xxx domain not only faces opposition from conservative groups but from within the porn industry itself saying this will ruin attempts for porn to go more mainstream. Mainstream porn could never be a good thing.
I don’t see why ICANN continues to deny the .xxx domain, no one else uses it and it could be easily identifiable with porn which to me would seem to be a good thing and it would make it easier for web filters and content blockers to identify those sites based merely on domain suffix. I can’t think of any legit (not that porn sites aren’t legit but you take my meaning) website that would use the .xxx domain.
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Stumble It!
March 31st, 2007
Since alot of adult sites already use .com, .net etc domains, creating a .xxx tld would in no way help parents block access to adult sites. Creating a .xxx tld would only benefit 1 company: the ICM.
If you want to protect children from accessing adult content, creating a .kids tld would be alot better option.
March 31st, 2007
I’d assumed that this proposal would force porn sites to change to the .xxx….
March 31st, 2007
Yes, a lot of porn sites do make use of .com, .net, etc but I believe part of the idea behind this would be to force them to switch over to .xxx thus making it easier for the sites to be blocked, instead of having to block individual .com, .net and so on sites, there could be an overlying rule to block any site with the .xxx suffix.
As with all things internet, it may not be possible to enforce this across the board, since there are various laws regarding porn activity in different countries and many of them exist or are hosted outside of the US, it could be difficult (but not impossible) to enforce some of these new rules.
I honestly don’t know how you would force a site to change its top level domain but it must be possible…
March 31st, 2007
It would be ‘hard’ to force them over to the XXX domain; on the bright side, approving the XXX domain would cause digital pornography sites to buy their XXX site as well as their .COM site. In turn, it would allow the internet to have twice as much porn.
March 31st, 2007
Well, at least it will be easier to block .xxx sites but as long as ICANN keeps denying it then there is nothing to worry about as long as they don’t have it.
March 31st, 2007
How do you configure a firewall? It’s simple. You only allow what is necessary and block everything else. People should take the same approach when blocking access to adult sites. Only allow access to sites you want your children to see, block access to everything else. one way to make this easier would be to create a .kids tld.
Creating a .xxx tld and forcing adult webmasters to abandon their .com, .net etc domains would not only be illegal (and in most countries even unconstitutional), it would be a very ineffective way to block access to adult websites.
March 31st, 2007
Let’s say if… the .com, .net and .xxx exist side by side some day then you could block all .xxx sites easily. Everything else, well that could be on the block list set manually.
I wasn’t talking about a Firewall, at least not a software firewall. It’s easy to configure a hardware firewall to block said sites but let’s say you are dealing with the Vista firewall. It’s not at all easy to configure and any advanced configuration must be done via wf.msc (and most parents aren’t going to know that).
That’s where software like K9 Webprotection steps in BUT it is easy to block a single tld (such as .xxx) which really serves no purpose (yet). Besides any net savvy kid can bypass any kind of block you have on a system so most software based systems are ineffective themselves.
The only really effective way to block porn is to set up a router with a password and block access to the sites from the router. Any 13 year old kid with a computer could probably bypass software based systems given enough time but if they do, it’s easy enough to tell.