Comments on: Adult industry welcomes .xxx domain rejection

Adult industry welcomes .xxx domain rejection. Domain would have thwarted industry's "mainstream" ambitions, says insider. Company touting domain insists it had support.

[andrew999999999]

.XXX hurt ICANN

everything about .xxx hurt ICANN greatly. It brought up censorship issues. It brought up the US government exerting control of ICANN. It created something for China to point their fingers at when they censor their "citizens" web access. What a debacle.

http://www.domainnamewire.com

[sinis60]

There should be a .xxx domain

People who want porn go looking for it and people that don't want porn don't want to see it. A .xxx domain would create a place that those looking for porn can go and for those that do not want porn they can stay away from .xxx. Also for parents to block porn from thier kids it would be much simpler to build a .xxx block rather than try to add in keywords, specific domains, etc.

I think they need to create this, but they should offer free domain transfers and allow adult sites to use the same .xxx domain that they had previously. I disagree with ICANN wanting to make so much money on the new top level domain, but I think it's something that should be implemented.

[kxmmxk]

yes there should

I agree and fail to understand the problem.

It's not hard to find porn. It's more of a problem when you don't want to find it.

And the comment about .xxx creating a landgrab is silly. I assume these people have actually been on the net at some point. While it has gotten better, it is so easy to end up on a porn site by accident. It's impossible to protect children. And whatever you think of it, porn is never going to go away.

Having it in one place would be best for everyone. The only ones that should have a problem are the ones that try to trick people in going to a porn site.

Once again those that are dellusionaly enough to think they can stop porn pass up an opportunity that will help them just because of their all or nothing approach. And I'm sure there was some back room changes of money as well. The porn industry is very rich after all.

[Bill Dautrive]

I agree in theory

There is a slight problem. What is the definition of porn? Is it visual, text, only sexual, ect.

This could be used as a censorship tool to block ideas of a non-sexual nature. Have a site, critical of the government? What about a site that mentions sex offhand? People will say it is offensive and must carry a .xxx. Stuff like that.

Then there is sex ed. Is a site that explains how to use condoms and avoid AIDS porn?

I would love to see legitimate site be moved to thier own domian, but it is not possible without cause serious problems.

Besides, since when is sex shameful? If you don't want to look at it, it is easy enough to avoid it.

[GrandpaN1947]

And in the mean time

young children are accidentally exposed to some very disgusting stuff they shouldn't even know about until they are in their late teens.

But everybody is happy about that.

[PzkwVIb]

Doesn't need a new TLD

If you are concerned about what your kids see, try being a parent and monitoring their access, or you could just skip all of the prudery and have the kind of relatinship with your child where they truly feel free to ask you questions if they see something they don't understand.

The bloody right wing religious whackos want everyone to believe that porn is bad. I don't buy that argument.

[Dachi]

Lame idea

Not only did they want adult sites to abandon their .com addresses, they wanted to to subject them to a bunch of regulations (age verification etc.).

Although few of them actually subscribe to these sites, I don't think I have ever met a single person that would not openly admit to viewing "adult content" online.

"age verification" likely means handing over someones credit card details to all of these web sites which in my opinion just opens the doors for fraud. ICANN gets rich while some other orginization has to sort through all the scams where the web site said free and people get a bill in the mail for something they didn't think they agreed to.

Besides, in my opinion if someone not 18 wants to look up sexual content online it may not be "good practice" but I am certianly not going to say I believe it should be against the law.

As for the child model claims (avoiding actually typing the term, who knows who would kick in my front door), it is just a strawman argument used to accomplish their agenda in much the same way a government agancy can get nearly any budget they want so long as their proposal has "terrorist" placed somewhere in every pararaph.

We need marble floors in our building - wrong.

We feel marble floors in our building would prevent a potential suicide bomber from compromising the structure of the building by detonating a shoe bomb in the lobby entrance - right

If they are having trouble blocking the content through filtering software, they should instead extend a simple, more standard idea like robots.txt to reflect presence of adult content. The problem is there is just no money in that for ICANN.

[mlewisok]

Are you kidding me!

'I don't think I have ever met a single person that would not openly admit to viewing "adult content" online'

You know why??? Because you have so many Adult Spammers that lay porn landminds by registering commonly mispelled domain names and embedding links into unrelated websites. When grandma types a word in the address bar instead of a search engine, she gets explicit porn. Many companies don't even bother to have a 'front door' that allows you to choose if you want to see this content! Rediculous... I understand the whole "censorship" argument. However, the '.com' space will never be a viable commercial infrastructure with no high-level regulations. Why do we have '.org' or '.edu' domains? Clearly, they were generated to organize content. Did universities protest and refuse to support the Internet efforts in fear of being regulated and profiled? Of course not! The only reason that the Adult Industry does not want to be restricted to a specified domain is so they can continue to deceive and mislead web surfers. People have no way to block porn sites today if they do not want to see it. It just frustrates the consumer and deters them from using the Internet to its full commercial potential. Other industries should be in full support of such an effort.

If the adult sites will not voluntarily move into the '.xxx' domain, then they should at least register their domain with a resource record to identify them as such. That way, browser software can be used to flag content in the '.com' domain and allow consumers to block the content.

Certainly we do not want the government to limit freedom of speech. You don't see the NY Times or Wallstreet Journal with pornographic add scattered throughout the newspaper. I wonder why? Does that hurt the porn industry? Because when people want to look at the newspaper for stories, they are not expected to run into explicit images and stories. Either the Internet is going to continue to mature into a viable industry, or its going to be a mechanism to deliver unreliable content. Unfortunately we have gotten to a point where we expect to be bombarded by pornography like random landminds scattered across the landscape.

No one said that people should not have the 'right' to look at porn. However, we should all have the 'right' to 'choose' whether we want to see the content. Keep in mind that a large percentage of the content is not found by direct search. Ask the average non-techincal person how often they run across adult material by typing an address that they think is valid in the address bar...

[jedwards77]

Of course they don't want it...

20%-24% of porn (or, if you're trying to hide it, 'adult entertainment', give me a break) income is generated from those below the age of 18, which is illegal. The porn industry loves having the ubiquitous .com quarter of the market becau$e of $omething, I'm ju$t not $ure what it i$. How else is little Johnny gonna get access to his porn? It's a 1st amendment issue, right...

[Stalin Hornsby]

Men who need second chances will never need a woman for less.

Get a life. Better still buy a Ducati motorcycle and a disc rotor lock.

[Lobbydozer]

Five Years and Still Nothing

After five years of trying to get a practical solution to porn filters it looks the Credit Card industry lobbyists have won another round.

Lobbydozer com