Comments on: The battle over triple 'x'

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh explains the gathering storm over a proposed .xxx Internet registry.

Porn sites act a lot like spam

You will have a hard time forcing either of them to obey rules. A .xxx domain is a great idea. But don't expect the sites that try and trick you into viewing/ staying to convert over just because it's there, or even if their .com address becomes illegal.

Writers don't cover many of the ramifications of this.

The writers of this story clearly have no idea how many, if not
most, companies handle domain registrations. Most companies
register their names in nearly all of the main domain suffixes,
just to protect them.

If there is a new .XXX domain, that domain will soon become
irrelevant to the subject matter.

Any company that is NOT in the Adult information business will
also have to buy their company's name in that domain, just to
protect it from outsiders posting smut under their "good name".

For that matter, if Sex is the hottest selling word on the Web,
then anyone in marketing, of nearly any item, will also quickly
register under that domain.

Due to this desire to protect company names & trademarks, as
well as maximize marketing, the .COM, .ORG., .INFO, and .NET
suffixes have become virtually interchangable, instead of their
original intent of separating business & organization "types".

Of course, this will be a virtual gold mine for the Registrar. At
$60, they would be charging two to four times the going rate for
.COM registrations. Registrars of new domain suffixes also
have a habit of "reserving" the best generic names for resale at
very high prices.

Just how legit is this group? Will ALL of the names be made
available for public registration, or will the promoters keep &
auction off names like "SEX.XXX" or "GIRLS.XXX" for 6 or 7 digit
sums?

BTW, I personally have absolutely NO interest whatever in any
type of XXX business. However, as owner of a family games
business, I have a very strong interest in keeping smut peddlers
from registering our good name as an XXX site!

For example, If your last name is SMITH, would you want a smut
peddler to be able to register SMITH.XXX as a site for selling
pornography? If you search the Web, you will find nearly every
family name already registered under each of the various
domain suffixes. They will also certainly be snapped up quickly
for .XXX.

I agree.

I completely agree. The initial motives for multiple domain extensions were true, however, in the last 15 years, people more or less ignore the true designations.

I, myself have taken advantage of other domain extensions. When my ideal domain was taken as .com, I jumped at the opportunity to register .net, because it was still available; even though I didn't actually represent a network, but just an individual.

How much more will someone with a slightly lesser mentality take advantage of a .xxx domain in order to make an attempt at being funny?

"Oh, myplacerocks.com is taken... so is myplacerocks.net... oh, .xxx is available! Wouldn't that be funny?"

I can see people coming up with .xxx search engines and such, and they would be doomed to fail 75% of the time.

The only way to keep this from happening is to monitor which sites are wanting to register an .xxx domain, but this goes against what Mr. Lawley himself said: "... we're really not in the content-monitoring business."

So, they're stuck. They don't want to monitor content, but how else can you maintain adult sites having .xxx domains?

Mr. Lawley has a simple remedy for this. He simply doesn't care. He just wants to make some extra cash... which he will (if he pulls this off).

[tsbardella]

Porn is Porn

There is no real excuse for not using the .xxx for everything porn related. I feel that pornography is damaging in any context and would much rather not be exposed.

Any image or video or text produced for the express purpose of eliciting a sexual response could be hosted on the .xxx domain. News items like interviews with Presidents would be hosted on a .com address.

Children would be in a better position to be protected by parents and school systems. Also people that find porn objectionable could avoid it by not unchecking a box in their web browser.

The idea that salon.com could host topless images on salon.xxx is no more undue restriction than asking that they have an accessibility policy.

Thanks for the article.

[COMALite J]

You forget, Tim,

that this is the WORLD-WIDE Web we are talking about here, not the USA-Only Web. Other cultures have completely different ideas about what constitutes sexually-stimulating imagery (porn). For us, women's breasts have sexual overtones and the sight of them is considered titillating (thus the Stupor Bowl Halfwit-Time fiasco). For many other cultures, they accept women's breasts as being only for what nature intended them: a food dispenser for the very young. They consider our sexualization of them just as silly as we do those cultures who think that the sight of the back of a woman's bare neck is sexually titillating.

So, whose definition of "porn" should count? If a family in another culture uploads what they think is a completely harmless family snapshot of the newest addition to their family, and said baby is having a meal in the way nature intended (and which medical science has proven beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever is the way that ALL babies, even in the USA, should be fed for their entire first year, to enormous benefit: such babies are more intelligent, healthier in a very large number of ways, etc., throughout their lives), should that family's entire site be relegated to ".xxx"?

If anything that could titillate anybody is to be relegated there, what about pictures of victims of crimes or wars or accidents who are obviously in pain? After all, a sadist (look up the actual meaning of that term) would find those just as sexually-stimulating as a normal heterosexual virile adult male would find an image of a naked woman.

US legislation still only rules in the US

Although Microsoft would like the EU to use US legislation, this is still something that remains to be seen.

Until then, other countries (and not just EU ones) with more or less relaxed attitudes to pornography will have their own views on whether the businesses in the porn industry should be pressured to only serve pages on the .xxx domain.

Surely, there will be some countries that don't see this need, and surfers can then access pornography on these sites without ever having to enter a (banned) .xxx domain.

If Congress as you think will limit US porn businesses to the .xxx domain alone, that will then be a problem for US business alone. There will always be porn for those who like it on domains other than .xxx.

Altogether, I am puzzled as to why you and your American colleagues can view this problem so narrowly as to American legislation only.

[joezeppy]

Should be .adu

.xxx is too limited and carries a stigma. I'd rather see a .adu site that includes other adult related content.

See http://www.afsac.org

It wouldn't bother me if xxx materials were limited to a certain adult domain at all.

.xxx domain

Seems to me it would be possible to address this online porn
problem by making all such sites only available through a
separate network that would have to be subscribed to
separately. Like the "Internet 2" that is being developed for
universities and labs, such a "Porn-net" would have every XXX
rated site that exists or would exist, and each person wanting
access would have to be a customer of an ISP which was part of
the Porn-Net network, like cable TV. There would be no
crossover possible, just like is true of secure networks of
industry or gov't. Can't that be developed? No more worries of
kids and porn--if the folks aren't paying for Porn Net, there's no
porn coming in.

[1kingpin]

Bush & Congress

Since Bush has talk to GOD. He must have had Congress also talk to GOD. I don't watch XXX net. But there is a lot of people that do. If they don't see it at home they will look else ware. That's what scares me.

[jjroth]

The Rationale

Current porn filters must first become aware of porn sites and then distribute the new template to users. While some people claim that it makes room for more porn sites they already have all the sites that they will need. The XXX is non-language dependent, is a reminder of the poison icon and can be very easily filtered from browsers as a restricted domain. It would be more useful if these people would join the fight and help in getting laws to zone the web while allowing for 1st amendment rights. Zoning using XXX would permit porn sites to continue to exist while affording most people an effective way to avoid themselves and kids from accessing them. While we have laws preventing child porn we see no protection for kids from receiving all types of porn! We see other top level domains with restrictions, domains such as mus, edu, and gov why not one for porn since the courts and the ACLU will not protect people with morals!