.xxx Shelved. Again.

First published here.

It looks like the .xxx Top Level Domain (TLD) has been side-lined again.

It seems ironic that while the U.S. is regarded (by Americans anyway) as having invented the internet, the U.S. controlled Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) has been so slow in developing and authorizing new TLDs. The .xxx domain was previously shelved last year after a prolonged campaign by conservative Christian groups and last week it was delayed again at an ICANN meeting in New Zealand.

"This is a great example of the success of the public policy advice process at work, which demonstrates that ICANN takes governmental input seriously. The ICANN Board is committed to continuing to enhance the integration of the [Governmental Advisory Committee]'s public policy role to ICANN's decision processes", said president and ceo of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey.

Well. Nice to know that ICANN bows to U.S. government "input" anyway. I wonder why they even bothered going to New Zealand? It's not as if the rest of the world has any real influence on ICANN. I don't know: perhaps the ICANN board wanted to see Middle Earth for themselves, or go hang-gliding or something.

The Australian government has spoken out against a sexy internet address in the past, but then this is the same government that banned internet casinos from operating here in Australia and lost all their tax revenue when the sites relocated offshore within hours of the law being passed.

I've stopped taking the Oz government seriously whenever they talk about the internet because it's obvious the people who write the policies are the kind of people who open email attachments called really_funny.pic.of.u_and_me.exe. You know, those "what's a linux?" kind of people?

They probably run your government too.

There are many views on the subject of a .xxx domain, but they can be summarized pretty easily:

a. No! Bad idea!
b. Yes! Great idea!
c. Who cares?

Here's a quick breakdown:

No! Bad idea!

This is the view of onservative Christian groups who hold a lot of political clout in the US. The cynical among us say this is because those groups actually like being outraged by obscene content because it allows them to continue holding the "moral" high ground when trying to ban or restrict pornography. If pornography is everywhere, it's a lot easier to point to when making an argument against it.

That's it really.

Yes! Great idea!

This is my personal view and it's based about half on logic and half on my philosophical beliefs, which often seem to overlap.

The logical part of the argument is basically that there are Top Level Domains for a reason. That reason is to divide up the internet into usable chunks that can be categorized for the benefit of people creating content and for people consuming the content. For example, www.random-research-institute.EDU is a government funded teaching institute that researches how people process information in their daily lives. www.random-research-institute.org on the other hand is a fascist think tank that encourages the study of eugenics to breed out the weaker members of society and create a super race to colonize the moons of Saturn.

Which is fine, because the only way we know that we have free speech is if we allow every wacko out there to say what they like as well, and if they want to set up a private organization to help them say it, great. But put it under a .org domain so I can distingush it from infromation that may be politely described as more useful.

So that's why we can't and shouldn't try to bung everything under the regular old .com domain - humans need to organize stuff. We do it unconsciously and after a little bit of experience, we tend to follow the same organizational patterns as everyone else seems to. Then every so often someone comes along and suggests formalizing an ad-hoc system that has been in use for a long time.

Like how to tell people that you've got smut on your web site, for instance.

Punch "glasses for women" into Google and you'll get a variety of results. Some of the sites offer a ranges of specs with feminine designs and attractive prices and some will offer you an insight into the strange world of myopic paraphilia. Luckily, Google can filter out most of the fetish sites with the SafeSearch option, but that isn't something you can use to block these sites completely. You'd need to block them at network, or ISP, level if you wanted to do it properly, which is why a lot of porn sites wanted the .xxx domain in the first place.

From the pornographer's point of view, they want people visiting their site to become customers. To do that, you need a credit card.

Minors typically don't have credit cards, ergo having minors visiting your web site is a waste of time for them and bandwidth for the site owner. Couple that with the all the horror stories of stolen credit card info and trojan horses, and you come to realize porn site operators have their work cut out getting people to actually trust them enough to pay for the hot stuff in the first place. Then there's the whole compliance with Title 18, Section 2257 of the U.S. Code, and the various Age Verification Systems. Wouldn't it be nice of you could voluntarily have your raunchy site regulated up to the eyeballs as proof that you want to do the right thing and keep the kiddies out?

Had the .xxx domain been allowed, what probably would have happened is that a large number of adult sites would have kept their .com names and used them as the entry page (with the standard "I Agree to the terms, etc") and redirected visitors to their main site hosted under a .xxx domain. This would have provided an extra layer of verification, especially in the corporate environment, where the network admin could simply block access to the entire .xxx TLD.

Click on "Enter HardcoreHeaven.xxx" at work and you get a great big screen telling you to get your kicks on your own time, buddy! It would be pretty simple to do at an ISP level too. Got kids? Call up your ISP and get them to block the .xxx domain. They usually offer filtering software anyway (sometimes by law) so from the ISP's point of view it would be much easier to just stop people going to certain domains than create block lists of every adult site they can find.

This leads to the I-have-no-opinion opinion. There are a lot of people with a lot of reasons why a .xxx would be a good idea. Some of them are even the porn sites who want a nice, quite little corner of the net where nobody will bother them with hysterical "won't somebody think of the children" rantings 'cause they did think of the children and asked for a space the children can be kept out of to prove it. The people who don't want a .xxx domain can only offer feeble excuses such as, "it will legitimize pornography".

Does it need to be "legitimate"? I mean, it exists doesn't it? Should we be having a discussion on the fundamental nature of reality and our place in the space-time continuum instead?

So if you don't have an opinion, get one.

One of the main arguments for a .xxx Top Level Domain is that the individual can choose whether they want to visit those sites or not, so check out the (still hopeful) registry operator and the sponsoring organization, see what they have to say and make up your own mind.

http://www.iffor.org/ - International Foundation for Online Responsibility
http://www.icmregistry.com/ - ICM Registry