No Porn Domain For You…Next!

ICANN, the group that oversees a bunch of Internet-related rules--including the handing out of new top-level domains such as .com and .edu--has voted down a proposal to create a special, super-sexxxy all porn domain, .xxx. According to this writeup, the nay vote is the result of pressures that pulled ICANN out of its normal procedural routine:

Most furious today, though, will be the owner of ICM Registry Stuart Lawley who had spent years and millions of pounds pushing the .xxx domain. Only last month, when the .xxx issue was again delayed at ICANN's meeting in New Zealand, he told us he would continue to answer everyone's concerns. But his sense of injustice was clear: "ICANN have gone well outside their previous procedures for the other sTLDs on this one," he told us. "Given the political posturing I guess it is understandable, yet extremely frustrating. The contract was reviewed by the board during their 18 April call and by inference they must be happy with the terms as they did not ask for any amendments."

Read more here. And to read porn on the Internet? Well, that's what Google is still for, isn't it?

Comments

[jb]

This is bad news on the "sigh, if we're going to have censorship at least make it efficient" front. If there was an xxx domain, libraries and schools could just ban all sites from it instead of relying on content filters that stop breast cancer awareness sites.

[mediageek]

Yeah, but if there were a .xxx domain, people would still have porn sites at .net, .com, etc.

[gaijin]

Yeah, but if there were a .xxx domain, people would still have porn sites at .net, .com, etc.

and do the porn sites really want to be so easily filtered out of people's daily searches?

[Warren]

And to read porn on the Internet? Well, that's what Google is still for, isn't it?

Well, you can use it for that, but that's what Booble is actually for. Only, there isn't much "reading" involved.

Re .xxx:
I think it would work fairly well, If the anti-porn people left that domain alone and focused thier attention on 'off the reservation' sites.

[Timothy]

The internet is for porn.

[Big Black]

Check out from Andrew Sullivan the top sex searching countries.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/googling_sex.html

[Smappy]

Maybe they could back-door this thing. If one of the big concerns is filtering medical information, why don't they just add a ".med" domain?

[Grummun]

and do the porn sites really want to be so easily filtered out of people's daily searches?

There was a faction of the porn industry agitating against for just this reason.

Maybe they could back-door this thing

Heh heh, he said 'back-door', heh heh.

[The Church Lady]

No Porn Domain For You

Wooooooo Hoooooooo!!!!!!!! No more porn on the internet now. What a great victory!

Oh, wait a minute? You mean to tell me that there is still the same amount of porn on the internet? And that this ruling hurts efforts to block "accidental" viewing of porn? How could this happen? Aaaaaaaargh! The enemies of what is good and right and pure have won today, but we shall overcome. Er, or something like that.

[Windypundit]

I don't get this ICANN thing. The internet is a distributed cooperative technology.

ICM Registry should just put up the DNS servers and start giving away .xxx registrations for a year or two. Any Internet Service Provider---heck, any individual computer user---can choose to request name translation services from any node on the internet, so anyone who wants to use the .xxx domain, can.

Publicize it, throw-in some value-added services, and see what happens.

If enough sites register themselves, and enough people start querying the servers, it will catch on and everyone will have to support it.

[Reginleif]

Timothy, I was waiting for someone to mention the Avenue Q song.

Is that why you're the "one-handed" economist? ;-D

[LY]

For a decade now, the American Taliban have been using fears of children running across porn to try to control the Internet. Anything that would give parents effective control over their kids' Internet would threaten the American Taliban efforts to take control.

The fact the US veto'ed it is proof that an XXX domain would be very effective.