Reality missing from the porn domain fight

Regardless of where your personal opinions fall on the subject, a key bit of reality seems to have escaped those arguing for and against the creation of an .xxx domain system. No matter what the technology is called or how it's designed, pornography will always find its way to unauthorized computer screens.

Why? Because two principal parties at issue in much of the debate have proven repeatedly that they can outsmart regulators. At the content level, purveyors of pornography have historically led trends in new media adoption, as evidenced more than two decades ago with their role in the proliferation of home videos. And there's certainly no guarantee that they would have complied voluntarily with the new domain system.

The other key party, underage surfers, have already shown how easily they can circumvent filters and other restrictive tools. In that sense, the .xxx campaign can be compared with attempts to block out MySpace and other sites at libraries and schools. If such a ban were enacted, does anyone really believe that teenagers would simply stop communing on virtual social networks? The same goes for searching out porn.

Blog community response:

"Well-established porn sites wouldn't have vacated their established base and move to a new domain. So, I don't think whether having this extension would have mattered at all."
--Tech Blog

"'Family-friendly' governments and other busybodies would have been much better off pushing for, nay, INSISTING on the creation of the .xxx domain, because it would have been so much easier for ISPs to control. We're clearly a long way off having governments that understand the first thing about how the Internet works."
--Unoriginal Prankster

"As the owner of an online sex toy store, I am not sorry to see .xxx domains go away. Registration was going to be significantly more expensive than what I currently pay for a .com domain, and what value would I get from it? None. But I'd have to quick hunt down my same domain name but with the .xxx extension and pay for that in addition to my current website or risk losing business when someone else snaps it up and my customers accidentally go to the wrong site."
--Enjoy Every Sandwich