The new ".xxx" domain

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Dandelion_Wine

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I always thought this would be a good thing - stick all the garbage in one place and be done with it. Then you can have a filter take care of that domain.

But apparently there is opposition to it. I can’t imagine what it would be. Anyone have any ideas? The only thing I gleaned from the article is that people think it legitimizes it.

Anyone else know?

I also see though that they’re going to let the clowns keep their current .com domains.

I think that’s where this will fail. They should automatically move those to the new domain and hand out fines to anyone continuing to offer that kind of garbage on the .com.

cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/08/16/internet.pornography.ap/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) – The Internet’s key oversight agency agreed Tuesday to a one-month delay in approving a new “.xxx” domain name after the U.S. government cited “unprecedented” opposition to a virtual red-light district.

Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, had stopped short of urging its rejection, but he called on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to “ensure the best interests of the Internet community as a whole are fully considered.”

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 volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx TLD [domain name] is unprecedented,” Gallagher wrote to Vinton Cerf, ICANN’s chairman.

Gallagher said ICANN should take more time to evaluate those concerns.

The chairman of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, Mohd Sharil Tarmizi, also wrote ICANN officials last week urging delay and expressing “a strong sense of discomfort” among many countries, which he did not name.

ICANN’s board decided Tuesday to rescheduled the matter for September 15.

Approval had been expected as early as Tuesday, five years after the domain name was first proposed and two months after ICANN gave it a tentative OK.

Gallagher’s letter, sent last week and made public Monday, had particular resonance because his agency has veto power over ICANN decisions given the U.S. government’s role in funding early developing of the Internet and selecting ICANN in 1998 to oversee domain name administration.

But ICANN also was swayed by an agreement to a one-month delay by the chief backers of “.xxx,” ICM Registry Inc. of Jupiter, Florida.

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.

ICM 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.

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

But ICM chairman Stuart Lawley, in a response to ICANN, pointed out that the agency already offered ample opportunity to raise objections.

“We are, to say the very least, disappointed that concerns that should have been raised and addressed weeks and months ago are being raised in the final days,” he said.

In an interview, ICM founder Jason Hendeles suggested the criticism stemmed from a misunderstanding of the proposal, and he said its executives would spend the next month trying to clarify its intent.

ICANN on Tuesday also delayed approval of a less controversial domain name, “.cat” for sites devoted to Catalan language and culture, citing a need to further clarify terms of a proposed contract with its sponsors.

More than 260 domain name suffixes exist, mostly country codes such as “.fr” for France. Recent additions include “.eu” for the European Union and “.mobi” for mobile services.
 
I guess the resistance would be that legitimizing it will cause the amount of porn to grow substantially. There’s also a mixed message that may be hard for kids to understand, if it’s wrong why is there such support for it on the Internet.
 
This will create nearly unlimited possible new URLs such as catholic.xxx, christian.xxx, jesus.xxx, eucharist.xxx, pope_benedict_xvi.xxx, et cetera, ad nauseam.

Even catholic_answers.xxx

Persons or organizations who object to the use of any of these designations would be put to the trouble and expense of registering these domains to get them off the market before some pornographer sets up shop under the name blessed_virgin_mary.xxx.

:mad:
 
Legitimizing evil is never a good thing. The .xxx makes it easy to filter, but pornographers are in it for money, so they’ll keep .com domain names, which still leaves the problem of how to filter those completely. With .xxx the main problem still remains, and the “industry” has just received a green light to do what it wants. I think it’s a bad idea; we’ve got to kill porn at its roots, not the leaves.
 
I think it’s a great idea if they can get all the junk out of the .coms. I’m sick of hearing stories about kids doing research online for something for school, and accidentally coming across filth. It seems like this .xxx would prevent that.
 
Maybe this will help on the discussion of this particular topic.
I had posted a poll on this very subject when I first heard about the .xxx domain being suggested.
 
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