Thursday, May 11, 2006

Porn Domain Voted Down

What an incredibly stupid decision.

CANN, the Internet's key oversight body, has canned a proposal to create an .XXX domain for pornographic Web sites. The controversial proposal had faced considerable opposition from both conservative groups and Internet porn companies.

The nine-to-five vote by the ICANN board brings to a close a six-year effort by ICM Registry to create and operate the domain. According to ICM, a porn-specific domain would produce a clearly identifiable area of the Internet for purveyors of adult content, and would therefore make it easier to prevent kids from inadvertently accessing that material.

Having a porn domain, ICM has argued, also would help the multibillion-dollar adult industry put an end to some of the major problems plaguing the Internet, including porn-related spam.

With all the whining about protecting children from porn and the puritanical countries not wanting to allow access to porn, you'd think that having a domain with .xxx would allow the most simple of content filters to satisfy all those who have concerns.

The US Government was against it for some reason. I'm sure it was something completely logical, but more likely not.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it was the right decision.

Since porn sites wouldn't have been required to use the xxx domain and they weren't about to vacate their established domains, it couldn't have been used to filter porn.

Nylarthotep said...

Rot. Business requires that you be easy to find. Even if the established sites didn't leave their present .com domains, they certainly would open mirror sites in the .xxx domain.

Also such a move would be smart just for self preservation. Sooner or later there is going to be legislation regulating the internet on this type of content and a move to such a domain would be prudent.

And don't start with the 1st amendment arguments. That would be completely irrelevant since the change of the domain wouldn't be restrictions on free speach by the government, but it would allow the end user to make simple decisions on what they want to have their family access.

Also, the control of the internet is slowly moving into the international realm. It hasn't happened yet, but expect it soon. When the UN gets control of the domain name service you'll see these limitations if not a systematic attempt to eliminate internet porn completely. Countries like Saudi Arabia and China have been screeching for the elimination of porn for years. If you think the US will always have control, you're deceiving yourself.